The Dark (A Detective Alice Madison Novel)(23)

Rachel lets go of Alice’s hand and flicks a drop of water off the fiberglass.

“My cousin Aaron asked me if you’re going out with anybody,” she says, and she starts a gentle paddle toward the Point.

“Which one is Aaron?”

“Tall, skinny, hair like Taylor Hanson.”

“He looks like Taylor Hanson?”

“No, he thinks he looks like Taylor Hanson.”

They continue paddling.

“If you married him, we’d be cousins,” Rachel says. “Then again, you’d be bored out of your skull. All he does is look at his stupid hair and play on his stupid computer.”

“I won’t marry him, then.”

“Good. Don’t you think the water is pretty tranquil today?”

The girls paddle and giggle.





Chapter 11





The cyclist was traveling south on 35th Avenue SW toward Myrtle Street, still warm from so recently being in the house but feeling the damp chill of the mist creeping in with every breath. The road was deserted. At first he didn’t notice the anomaly in the streetscape: the sun wouldn’t rise for another half an hour, and in the shadows of the reservoir water towers it was only an indefinite patch of darkness.

When he saw it, he stopped, looped his bike around, and gave the object another pass without getting any closer. Even at that distance he knew that it couldn’t be a dummy, that it was a human body sitting on a plain kitchen chair, the top half covered by a black garbage bag and duct tape coiled around it like a snake.

He climbed off the bike, let it fall on the wet grass, and called out softly, all the while getting his cell phone out—fingers ready on the first 9. He called out again as he advanced slowly. The figure on the chair was bent forward as if trying to get up; a puff of breeze brushed the black plastic, making it shudder, and the cyclist stumbled back two steps. He looked around—no one else on the street. He took one step forward, and the smell hit him straight on: both chemical and human, as if everything that’s usually inside a body had been dragged outside of it.

He dialed and spoke hurriedly, breathlessly, the words getting tangled before they could come out in the appropriate order, and the first blue-and-white arrived within minutes. Two officers with heavy flashlights that cut through the gloom got him out of the way as their car radio crackled and more emergency vehicles arrived, red lights flashing, to surround the reservoir green and, at the center of it all, the man on the chair.

Madison got the call while driving North on 509 and managed a sudden and inelegant exit to Westcrest Park to the displeasure of a number of drivers. She waved her hand in apology and hit Roxbury Street as fast as the Seattle Municipal Code would allow.


Madison saw the crowd and knew she had found the crime scene. She saw hands in the air and knew that each pair of them held a phone with a camera, taking pictures and recording, ready for instant upload.

She parked, took a pair of gloves from her kit in the trunk, and slipped her shield onto a thin chain around her neck.

As she approached the crowd, she realized how unusually quiet it was. An outdoor crime-scene could get pretty loud, given the presence of press, neighbors, passersby, law enforcement officers, Crime Scene Unit people, medical teams. Everybody tried to do their jobs as well and as fast as they could before Seattle’s often-wet weather might dissipate any evidence. Here, however, nobody was talking: no chitchat with the officers who were keeping the boundaries, no gossiping among the locals. Madison walked through the silent crowd.

“Detective, this way.” A uniformed officer she knew by sight waved her in past the yellow tape.

“Thanks.”

The ground crunched underfoot as she stepped onto the green. A knot of people—Detectives Spencer and Dunne and Dr. Fellman, the medical examiner, among them—stood under the water towers with their backs to the crowd, creating a kind of human screen. Madison had made it there fairly quickly, and the ME and the Crime Scene Unit officers must have only just arrived themselves. She looked for Amy Sorensen, the senior CSU investigator who had helped her turn around the Salinger case, and did not spot her—occasionally even Sorensen went off duty.

The scene’s boundaries had been defined and secured, and CSU officers were already moving to protect the area and set up privacy screens. In the dim predawn light, the beams of small flashlights sought out facts and details.

Madison breathed deeply. There it was, the simple rush that came with every call, as if all her internal systems had suddenly turned themselves fully on, because driving, eating, shopping, and regular human interaction only required a fraction of her attention, but this, this was where she lived. She turned on her flashlight.