The Dark (A Detective Alice Madison Novel)(57)

“Here we go . . .” she said, and Madison leaned forward, ready for anything.

A white paper coin envelope, about four by six inches, had been placed in the middle. Sorensen opened it with her tweezers, and something in it caught the light: at first it seemed as if a minute pool of gold had taken shelter in the small print of Revelations.

She laid the envelope next to the Bible and delicately teased her find out of its niche.

“It’s a medal,” Sorensen said.

A neck chain unraveled as Sorensen lifted the delicate oval to her eyes. “There’s the image of a saint and some words: ‘Saint Nicholas—pray for us.’”

Madison stepped forward.

“On the other side I have initials—‘D.Q.’—and a date—”

“April 14, 1972,” Madison said.

Sorensen looked up. “Four, fourteen, seventy-two. How did you . . . ?”

Madison stared at the droplet of gold that now seemed to hold all the light in the room. “It’s David Quinn’s date of birth, and that’s the medal his father’s relatives gave him. He was wearing it the day he was killed.”

Madison heard Detectives Frakes’s voice. Did you find the gold chain on the remains?

Sorensen was never speechless, so this was a first. For a moment they both just watched the medal as it swayed lightly with each heartbeat.

“What else is in the envelope, Amy?” Madison blurted out.

“Yes,” Sorensen said. She laid the medal to one side.

The woman reached inside with the tweezers and slid out a thin yellowish scrap of paper folded in half. Sorensen spread it open.

The scrap was the top corner torn off a page; someone had ripped it very precisely to get exactly what they wanted.

“Photocopy,” Madison said, her eyes on the shaded blacks and grays of the image.

“Yes,” Sorensen replied.

“Yearbook?”

“Looks like it.”

On the scrap of paper, grinning as if he’d just heard the silliest joke, was David Quinn in his school yearbook picture, around it a faint but unmistakable pencil line.





Chapter 27





Madison walked out of the lab and into the veil of rain. She resented the necessity of getting back into her car; she needed to be outside, where at least she had the illusion of breathing more easily. They were connected, all of them, from Ronald Gray in the warehouse and Warren Lee tied up to a chair with picture wire, going all the way back to the boys blindfolded in the woods. And Jerry Wallace, who had known so much about so many people, had gone missing just as she had needed his counsel.

Madison called the precinct to make sure Fynn was in his office and left word for Spencer and Dunne, too. There was one more call to make, and when it went to voice mail, Madison could have whooped with joy.

“Kelly, it’s Madison. Ronald Gray left a Bible in Foley’s safe-box at the clinic. Inside it, he had hidden a chain that belonged to David Quinn and a scrap of paper with his yearbook picture. I’m on my way to the precinct to brief the boss.”

No hello, good-bye, or see you later. If Kelly wanted to come in, he would; if not, she had told him what was going on, and that was enough for the moment. That was plenty.

One of the things she missed about working with Detective Sergeant Kevin Brown was that they could develop ideas together and argue about them and eventually come to a conclusion, more often than not a shared conclusion. Brown. She’d call him later; he would want to know about this. And Detective Frakes, too—he deserved to know.


In the end, whether Kelly had listened to the message or not, he had decided not to be a part of Madison’s day. She briefed Fynn and the others in the lieutenant’s office—door closed and blinds drawn.

“We seem to understand less about the Lee and Gray murders every day,” Dunne said once she had finished. “Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”

Madison replayed in her mind the conversation with Peterson’s deputy; she had called him on her way in, and, though groggy with sleep, he was very clear about the sequence of events.

“Gray took the Bible to the clinic last Thursday. He looked beat and edgy as hell,” she continued. “He delivered the medal for safekeeping the day after Quinn’s television appeal and before Warren Lee was attacked and his body found.”

Madison remembered Gray’s apartment: the disarray left behind, the evident haste and fear.

“The time line begins with the appeal,” she said. “Gray saw Quinn on television, and he knew he was holding something that could get him into serious trouble. He wasn’t going to come in, testify to whatever he knew, and claim the reward. He was getting out of town as fast as he could.”