She slipped her feet into a couple of woolly socks at the bottom of the bed and padded to the kitchen to make herself some hot milk. It didn’t really help; it never had. And yet it was what her grandmother had done when Madison was a girl, and that was the comfort, that memory.
She crawled back into bed and stared into the darkness above her. She started to think of ways in which the inmates could have smuggled vials of undiluted bleach into their cells at KCJC and kept them hidden until they needed them, and how many inmates it would have taken to make sure they surrounded Cameron, and her last thought as she fell asleep was that the inmate who had frozen during the attack was in as much trouble as Cameron right now.
Chapter 16
Ronald Gray sat in the waiting area of the bus station; the long strips of fluorescent lighting gave him a headache, and the seating—row after row of metal mesh—bit into his back. The clock said 8:22 p.m. Almost half an hour to go. His bag, a black American Tourister with wheels, rested against his leg. He had bought the ticket and then grabbed a bite—more to kill some time than out of real hunger—and now he wished he hadn’t.
All he wanted to do was to get on that bus, rest his head against the cool glass, and fall asleep. He didn’t know how long it would be before they let the passengers on board; he had never traveled by bus. His car, a 1998 maroon Lincoln Continental, sat idle in front of his apartment house.
Ronald Gray was fifty years old, looked fifty years old, and today felt a hundred and seven. He was wiry and capable, but his nerves were in shreds, and he was exhausted. He stood up and looked around: at least he could visit the restroom before the journey. He wheeled his suitcase behind him and tried to get through the dozens of passengers waiting in the cramped station. A man behind him took offense at a vending machine and started kicking it. Ronald Gray jumped at the sound, but security guards were already moving.
Chapter 17
“Jerry Wallace is gone,” Madison said to Dunne, both of them standing by the coffee machine. “I went by last night, and the house looked like someone had come in and just snatched him off the chair he was sitting on and dragged him into the woods.”
“Some weird burglary-type felony gone wrong?”
“Not really. The house was untouched. No big valuables that I could see, but his wallet was in plain sight. Plastic and cash inside.”
“Was he kidnapped?”
“We don’t know what happened yet: the daughter couldn’t get hold of him for a couple of days, but there were no ransom calls or notes.” Madison took a sip. “He was just . . . taken.”
The call came in at 9:27 a.m., and Madison, being the primary for the next homicide case, got up to get her things and go to the crime scene.
“Madison,” Lieutenant Fynn said from the door to his office as he beckoned her.
Madison stepped in. Detective Chris Kelly was slumped in one of the visitors’ chairs with a face like a big dog at the groomer’s. He looked up, and she knew what Fynn was about to say, and the sheer inevitability of it hit her with full force.
“Boss . . .”
“No way around it, Madison. Your partners are both out on medical, and you both need a partner for the next few weeks or whatever. This is how it’s going to be.”
Kelly was speechless in his obvious misery. He and Madison had disliked each other from the moment Madison joined Homicide. She thought he was mean, obtuse, and proud of it. He didn’t need a reason; he just plain disliked her. Nothing to do with gender, history on the force, or anything else that could pass for a reason. Kelly’s disregard had been immediate, absolute, and unreserved.
The one positive thing—if one tried very hard to be positive—was that they both knew where they stood, which at the present time was in a corner and without a hope in hell of changing Fynn’s mind.
It was Madison’s turn to be the primary on a case. She slung her bag across her shoulders and nodded to Fynn. “Okay,” she said.
The ride to the Industrial District passed in complete silence. Madison drove under the spitting rain, the day promising just as much light and blue skies as the previous one had. She spent the first ten minutes mentally kicking herself for not having considered the possibility that this could happen until after it had actually happened. The last time she and Kelly had gone head-to-head, Rosario had stepped in and defused the situation; this time it was the two of them riding in the same car and forced to share a case and no one left to step in as needed. Madison decided she’d call Brown the first chance she had and drag the man to the shooting range whether he liked it or not.