The Dark (A Detective Alice Madison Novel)(58)

“What would you do if you had information that could net you in excess of a million dollars?” Dunne asked the room.

“I’d come in, testify, and pick up the check,” Spencer replied.

“What if the information Quinn was after is about what you did twenty-five years ago?”

One down, three to go. Three to go.

“I’d get out of town.”

“Not just Gray,” Madison interjected. “He tried to destroy any link to Vincent Foley before he left.”

“How about interviewing Foley? Is he anywhere near sane?” Dunne asked.

Madison shook her head. “Not really, no. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t have anything to contribute, though. There might be something there.”

“Great. Two dead guys and one certified psychiatric patient. That’s three perfect witnesses.”

“Okay, starting point for the rest of the day,” Fynn said. “What was Ronald Gray doing on August 28, 1985? I don’t care what he was doing two weeks ago; I want to know how he got hold of that chain and why he left it for us to find. Madison, the photograph is being processed?”

“Yes. Sorensen is trying to pick up as much detail as possible from the photocopy, see if anything can be matched to an original.”

“Spencer, is Foley in danger?” Fynn asked.

“Once they know Gray was protecting him, yes, definitely.”

“Dunne?”

“Maybe, but we still don’t know what they’re after.”

“Madison?”

“He will be in danger the minute they find out that Gray was protecting him.”

Spencer and Dunne left.

“Aren’t you off today?” Fynn asked her.

Madison shrugged. “That’s not how the day played out. I’ll be around.”

“Kelly?”

“I left him a message.”

“How’s it working out with you two?”

“It’s delightful, sir.”

“I thought it would be.”


Madison had officially given up on having a day off. Then again, if she hadn’t been at the precinct, she likely would have been home thinking about the case or experiencing the charms of a prison visit. Even if she had wanted to take out her kayak, the rain would have made it, while not impossible, thoroughly unpleasant and ultimately a waste of time. Which was a pretty accurate description of her relationship with Kelly, Madison reflected as she sipped her coffee.

The Ronald Gray autopsy report was open in front of her; the photographs, stark and bleak, fanned out on the desk.

None of the detectives had said it, because they didn’t need to: the obvious reason Gray had the medal might be that he was one of the men who had taken the boys into the woods, one of the men who had dug a hole in the dirt and put David Quinn in it.

Madison looked at the autopsy pictures. Was this the fate that Ronald Gray believed had been stalking him and Vincent Foley?

The case required a change of perspective, and Madison had felt that in Fynn and the others. For them Gray had started out as a victim; now he was possibly a kidnapper and a murderer, and yet he was still a victim. Madison replaced the pictures in the report and shut the file.


As lunchtime came around, Madison’s thoughts were batting against the precinct’s walls, and she needed to get out and stretch her legs. The sky was overcast, the rain had decided to give up for at least a few minutes, and she resolved to walk down 5th Avenue toward Pine Street. She passed the public library on the corner with Spring and resisted the sudden impulse to go inside and spend the afternoon reading instead of going back to the precinct and looking at pictures of dead men who might or might not have been murderers.

She had always enjoyed ambling down 5th Avenue: the trees were doing their best in the winter chill, and it was so much more pleasant than going from point A to B in her Honda, even for half an hour. Other people hurried past Madison in the bubble of their own lunch break.

She reached Nordstrom on Pine and turned left. The food court on the third floor of the Westlake Center was as busy as always, and that was exactly what Madison needed: watching people leading their lives, shopping, eating, and generally getting on with things. The smell of food being cooked or, more often, simply reheated was as sharp as it could be in a world of central heat, air-conditioning, and ventilation. The warm air was heavy with jostling spices.

She silently apologized to her grandmother and got into a queue for a burger and fries to go with it; she found a spot at a large table and picked at her food. It was predictably awful, and yet sometimes that particular kind of awful could be perfect. Half the burger patty disintegrated in her hands, and she wiped the mustard and ketchup off her fingers with a small paper napkin that wasn’t really up to its job.