The Dark (A Detective Alice Madison Novel)(37)

The officer’s gloved hands turned over the flap and moved back. Madison stilled and stared; then she turned and looked at the medical examiner zipping up the body bag.

No, not for travel—the suitcase had been packed for running. A jumble of items of clothing thrown together, balled up and crammed into the small space without any care except for speed. As much as could be carried of the man’s life was in that bag. She could almost see his frantic hands grabbing shirts from a drawer and papers from a table and shoving everything into the case until it could hold no more. There was something unspeakably ugly in the way the things were twisted and molded into each other. Fear, Madison thought—fear had made him move fast but, in the end, not quite fast or far enough.

“Packed in a hurry,” the officer said.

“Evidently with good reason,” Madison replied, and she straightened up. “Thank you.”

“Here. We found these in the coat’s inside pocket.” A CSU officer showed her two thin plastic bags: in one, Ronald Gray’s passport; in the other, a bus ticket in his name to Vancouver. The bus would have left the previous night just before 9:00 p.m.

She needed air. Madison edged out the door as two forensics officers were taking off the lock. It had started to rain in earnest, and it was eerily dark outside compared to the blazing light inside. The clouds were rolling in from the sea, heavy with rain, their edges black with it.

A patrol car had been dispatched to the address on Ronald Gray’s license: the residence had been empty, the front door secured. Madison would get there as soon as she could. Her unmarked car was parked just beyond the blue-and-whites, and, she realized, Kelly was sitting inside it in the passenger seat, possibly talking on his cell phone. She hadn’t even noticed when he had left the warehouse and couldn’t see his face behind the windshield. Maybe that was his first move.

Madison breathed deeply. He could do what he damn well pleased as long as he stayed out of her way.

The body bag was loaded into the ME’s white wagon, and Sorenson’s people left. Cars and trucks came and went on the road, unloading their cargos and picking up deliveries. Cars. Ronald Gray had a driver’s license in his wallet, not somewhere lost in a kitchen drawer or under last year’s bills. He had a driver’s license in his wallet because he had a car he drove every day, and yet he had bought a bus ticket to Vancouver. Madison, a fast driver even on her slowest day, could make it in three hours, maybe two and a half if traffic was on her side. She turned and considered the suitcase, already repackaged in plastic and ready for the lab. Gray had been on his way to the bus station. Maybe he had already made it there when he was picked up by his killer.


Madison drove toward downtown, her brain making a list of what they had and her body reminding her that it was past lunchtime. Kelly sat next to her, looking ahead, observing the traffic flowing around them as if words and language had not been invented yet. Madison realized that they had not spoken since leaving Fynn’s office: Kelly had wandered through the warehouse, fixed the body with his small blue eyes, listened to the medical examiner, and taken his own notes. More than anything he was an absence sitting next to her in the car, and Madison regretted her desire to reach out and talk to him, start the conversation, get him talking. She reminded herself of every single instance when he had been condescending, aggressive, or quite simply yard-dog rude, and her desire to make peace was slapped down by her appreciation of his silence: a quiet Kelly was someone she could work with.

There were some facts in the case—not many, but enough to get them started. They had an ID, they had a primary crime scene and the ticket to Vancouver. They had who, how, and where; what they did not have was a reason for the attack or any clue to the number or identity of the attackers. Madison wanted to let the evidence guide her thinking and was wary of giving a meaning to the packing of the suitcase, a meaning that might mislead her reasoning. Her gut told her that Ronald Gray was on the run; her head told her to wait and use the suitcase to confirm a scenario, not to create one. The man had been found in a corner, curled up and trying to shield himself from two bullets to the head; he might not have been afraid when he was packing, but he sure had been in that warehouse. Why had he been beaten and then killed when nothing on his person had held any interest for the murderer? Was it all about the violence itself? Madison wondered, and her gaze brushed past Kelly. There were reasons police officers worked in pairs: you need a partner to back you up and to talk things through with. But more than anything you need a partner because, otherwise, you spend your days asking yourself those questions. Was it all about the violence itself? Was that seventeen or eighteen blows before the guy was shot twice in the head? Madison saw a gap in the traffic and hit the accelerator.