The Dark (A Detective Alice Madison Novel)(3)
Madison knew next to nothing about gardening, yet she would weed, water, prune, and make sure that everything stayed alive, because her grandparents weren’t there to do it anymore. She worried that good intentions wouldn’t make up for ignorance. In her job they usually didn’t.
Once the stars were bright, Madison stepped inside. Her Glock went under the bed in its holster, and her backup piece—a snub-nosed revolver—was oiled and dry-fired. Madison peeled off her sweats and climbed into a long, hot shower.
The message had been from Rachel: “Tommy’s birthday party is next month. I hope you can make it.” Nothing but love and kindness in her voice.
You have occasional nightmares, possibly an exact memory of the event but more likely your own perception of the event and whatever troubles you about the nature of your own actions in it. And, most of all, I’m willing to bet you are careful never to be alone with your godson since you got him out of that forest.
The nature of your own actions. Madison wasn’t exactly sure she understood the nature of her own actions, and she was honest enough to admit to herself that there had been moments that night that she probably did not want to fully understand. The night had been a blur of fear and rage, and she didn’t know exactly how much of one or the other.
Tommy would be seven soon. On that awful night she had sung “Blackbird” to him, and he had come back to them, to life, to his red bicycle and his little boy’s games. Her godson would soon be seven, and Madison tried hard and failed to come up with an excuse not to go to his party.
As had been true every night since that day in December, her last thoughts went to two men: one in jail, locked behind bars and metal doors guarded by armed correction officers and yet more terrifyingly free than any human being she had ever met; and the other in the prison of his injuries, somewhere deep amid the echoing corridors and the silent rooms of a hospital a few miles away. His sacrifice had meant that Tommy would have a seventh birthday party. She could not think of one without the other.
Madison closed her eyes and hoped sleep would come quickly.
Under the bed, inside the safe, a neatly folded page from the Seattle Times rested under the off-duty piece.
BLUE RIDGE KILLER CAUGHT
In the early hours of December 24 the nightmare that had gripped Seattle for thirteen days finally came to an end. Harry Salinger, the prime suspect in the murder of James and Anne Sinclair and their two young sons, was apprehended by Seattle Police Department homicide detective Alice Madison in an undisclosed location in the Hoh River forest.
John Cameron, who had initially been under investigation for the crime, and his attorney, Nathan Quinn, of Quinn, Locke & Associates, were also present. The former is being held without bail on a charge of attempted murder. Salinger, an Everett resident, sustained life-threatening injuries and is now under guard in a secure medical facility.
Salinger has also been charged with the kidnapping and reckless endangerment of Thomas Abramowitz, age six, Detective Madison’s godson, and with the assault on Detective Sergeant Kevin Brown and Detective Madison earlier in December.
SPD has not made public when Det. Sgt. Brown will return to active duty.
Cameron and Sinclair were first connected by tragic circumstances as children twenty-five years ago, when three Seattle boys were abducted and abandoned in the Hoh River forest, Jefferson County.
Chapter 2
Nathan Quinn held up his left hand and flexed it. It was flawless. No scars, no pain. He stood in the clearing in the Hoh River forest; he felt he could see every twist in every branch, and there was nothing but woods and winding streams for miles. The air was soft on his skin, and sunlight slanted through the spruces. A warm, sunny August afternoon. All was well; all was peace.
A whisper through the grass behind him made Quinn turn.
A boy watched him from the edge of the trees. Twelve years old, fair, wavy hair and pale lips. So pale.
“David?”
The boy was barefoot.
“David?”
Nathan Quinn felt the jolt of awareness as the morphine wore off and he remembered that he was in a hospital and that his brother had been dead for twenty-five years.
“Mr. Quinn.” The nurse’s voice found him through the dull pain that had welcomed his body back to reality. “There are some police officers here to speak with you. If you feel up to it.”
Nathan Quinn held up his left hand: it was covered in bandages, and as he attempted to flex his fingers, pain ran up his arm. In the last four weeks he had seen no one except doctors, nurses, two detectives from the Seattle Police Department who took his statement, and Carl Doyle, his assistant at Quinn, Locke & Associates. Everyone else without exception had been turned away. After two weeks in a medically induced coma, he had barely the strength to breathe.