Madison had already worked cases in the Industrial District, an area of warehouses, depots, and workshops on the edge of the Duwamish Waterway. It consisted of row after row of identical, washed-out, single-story buildings, the grayness interrupted only by occasional patches of rust. It was built on a grid and unremittingly miserable on a cold, wet February morning.
Madison ignored Kelly, who sat shotgun with his linebacker arms crossed, and her thoughts went back to the remains in the ME’s morgue and David Quinn’s last day on Earth; no one from the Cold Case team had approached her yet, and as far as she knew, no one had been looking into Timothy Gilman’s death in the last twenty years, either. One down, three to go. The chances of getting a forensic anthropologist to look at the remains with any urgency were slim. The question was, what did Nathan Quinn know that they didn’t? She remembered the first time she had met the man in Quinn, Locke & Associates’s smart offices in Stern Tower, Brown and Madison bringing him the news of the murder of James Sinclair and his family like harbingers of the doom the following thirteen days would bring. Quinn had kept his secrets until the end, risking his life in the process, and Madison wondered what he was prepared to risk now that his brother’s killer was the ultimate prize.
The flashing lights of the blue-and-whites at the top of the road told them they had arrived. Madison had decided during the ride to sit on her doubts and wait for Kelly to make the first move. Fynn had been right: they had to work together; that is to say that, as homicide detectives, they had to be able to work with anybody and make the best of it. The case couldn’t suffer because two cops would rather lose a limb than talk to each other. And so Madison would wait, hoping to discover that Kelly had reached the same conclusion, and maybe they’d both make it out alive until either Rosario or Brown could get back to work and the universe would be right again.
Kelly had not said a word. He unfolded his large frame from the passenger seat and hooked his badge on the chest pocket of his overcoat. Madison looked him over quickly as she would a witness to assess his reliability. Late forties, married, put himself through college on a football scholarship. He had probably passed as good-looking then but now his somewhat dainty features looked lost in his wide face, and, since his nature had given shape to it as much as had genetics, there was a bright, hard light in his eyes and furrows in his brow. He was several pounds heavier than he should have been and wouldn’t catch you if you ran fast, but if you stopped and he did catch you, he would do a lot of damage and enjoy it immensely. Madison looked away.
The warehouse, the last one in the long road, was evidently not in use at present; old metal signs discolored by the weather hung by the two front doors—a wide one for trucks and a narrow one for people—and made their statements in peeling red paint over white.
The metal shutter over the larger entry was still intact, but the smaller door next to it had been forced open; the wood had splintered, and the cheap lock had simply given up.
Madison understood that security was expensive, and for companies going bankrupt it was cheaper to replace a lock and fix a door of an empty warehouse than to pay for an alarm that needed to be set up and monitored, or for a security guard to go past every night. Squatters, vandals, and anybody who needed a discreet place for a questionable deed were quick to find these places. Whoever it had been this time was her victim, her case, her questionable deed. A small spike of adrenaline hit below her sternum.
Three patrol cars outside, two officers by the door, the others inside.
Madison knew one of them, and they nodded hello.
“First responder?” she asked him.
He pointed to the doorway to the building. Madison walked in, Kelly a few steps behind her, and her eyes adjusted to the low light. Feeble strips of fluorescence overhead threw a sickly pale glow over everything. A vast space, bigger than she had expected, and bare except for a few stacks of discarded pallets here and there. The floor was concrete and stained; it had been a while since anyone had taken care of it. The air felt grimy with dust and the memory of motor oil. Three uniformed officers stood at the other end, the beams of their flashlights running over the walls and the floor.
Madison smelled the body before she saw it, and for an instant she thought of the man on the chair under the water towers: it was the same foul scent of fear and the beginnings of decomposition. The officers turned when they heard Madison and Kelly approach, their footsteps clicking on the concrete.
“Madison, Homicide. Who’s the first responder?”
“Here.” A tall woman with short fair hair and a plain face stepped forward.