The Dark (A Detective Alice Madison Novel)(35)

The body lay several feet behind them; a man was curled up against a wall in a corner, his knees up against his chest and one arm over his head. One shoe was missing. Even in the dim light Madison could see that the dust and dirt on the floor had been disturbed: the man had dragged himself, or had been dragged, into that corner. Like Jerry Wallace, dragged into the woods, likely kicking and screaming.

She turned to the officer. “What do we know?”

“One of the workers in the next warehouse saw that the door had been forced and called it in—third time in three months; they have the owners on speed-dial—and they sent a clerk to check it out and call the locksmith. Anyway, the guy comes over, turns on the lights to assess the damage, and sees”—the officer turned and pointed—“him in the corner there.”

“Where’s the witness?”

“Having a cup of strong, sweet coffee nearby—my partner took him. No witnesses to the break-in or the assault. We asked at the offices nearby, but they were all shut for the night. The owners had a CCTV camera, but it was stolen a year ago, and they didn’t replace it. Usually it’s just local kids breaking in for a dare: once they found chicken feathers everywhere—don’t ask. But this is a first.”

“For him, too, I’d imagine,” Kelly said, nodding at the victim.

The beam of Madison’s flashlight traveled over the body as she went closer, his left arm giving the impression that he was shielding his eyes from the light. She stepped carefully around the marks left on the ground. She wouldn’t touch him until the medical examiner had arrived, but she didn’t need Dr. Fellman to fathom the cause of death: two bullet wounds to the head. Instinctively she swept her flashlight beam over the floor nearby for the casings.

“No casings that we could see,” the responding officer said.

Madison nodded. The holes were small, and she couldn’t see blood spatter on the wall or on the concrete from where she was. A .22 perhaps. Brown’s voice came to her then. Tell me what you see. Madison froze everything else randomly circling through her mind—the pit in the woods, the nightmares, vials of acid thrown through metal bars—and did just that. “Male, Caucasian, possibly fifties, two GSWs to the head. I can’t see his face well, but there’s dried blood on his chin and streaked down his shirt collar and front.”

The victim was wearing pants and a shirt, their fabric quite thin, considering the weather. There must be a jacket or a coat somewhere, as well as the other shoe—no one would leave the house dressed like that.

“There might be some other clothing around,” she said.

“We’re looking,” the officer replied.

The socks were dark and plain, nothing special, and the remaining shoe was black leather with Velcro straps, comfortable and inexpensive. The sole of the exposed sock was dusty, a small tear in the material. The longer Madison’s beam shone on the folds of the clothing, the more she saw of the last hours of the man’s life: blood droplets from being repeatedly hit, dirt and grime on the knees because he had tried to crawl away, and in the palm of his right hand, open and slack, half-moon nail marks.

Madison stood up and wished the ME would get there quickly; the victim was curled up tightly, and she wanted to see his face. He had suffered violence, sustained violence, for a period of time, and then, when his assailants had what they wanted or maybe because of the opposite, someone had stood at the exact point where Madison was and shot him in the head twice.

“We’ve got something,” one of the officers hollered from behind a stack of pallets at the other end of the warehouse.

They all gathered there, everybody wearing gloves and no one touching anything. In a bundle on the floor a suit jacket, a coat, and, to the side, a small traveling suitcase with wheels, overturned but still locked.

“I’ve got the shoe,” another officer called out from the half-light.

The coat’s inside pocket was visible. With extreme care not to disturb anything, Madison reached in with gloved thumb and forefinger and extracted a brown leather wallet.

At least they would have an ID, she thought. She flipped it open, and a Washington State driver’s license told her his name: Ronald Gray.


Half an hour later the inside of the warehouse was brightly lit by the Crime Scene Unit’s portable floodlights, reaching into every corner and every imperfection in the uneven flooring.

The lights had warmed up the air considerably. Doctor Fellman expected they would and had taken the body’s temperature as soon as he had arrived.

“Rigor?” Madison asked him.

“Still coming on,” Fellman replied as he gently lowered the arm and revealed the man’s face. Pale stubble, sallow skin under the discoloration from the bruising, a broken nose, and dry blood in sticky flakes. Madison took in every detail. The low temperature in the warehouse had impeded the progression of rigor mortis, and the doctor could still move the arm.