The Dark (A Detective Alice Madison Novel)(69)

“If they have, I trust you’ll find them.”

“I’ll be in touch.”

They hung up, and Quinn went back to the pile of mail that Carl Doyle had delivered that morning. He picked up one envelope—heavy paper and his name in the black ink of a fountain pen. No address was needed: the envelope had been handed to Carl by the other senior partner in his law practice. Conrad Locke.

Quinn read the card inside, written in a familiar scrawl.


Dear Nathan,

I hear that you are confounding the doctors’ expectations and healing faster than they anticipated. They might be surprised, but I’m not: I know what you’re capable of, my boy. Once you are well enough to go home, you might like to come and spend some time with us at the estate. It will be peaceful. Grace wants to spoil you and bake that pie she knows you love.

Let me know if there’s anything I can do with regard to John’s case.

Take care of yourself,

Conrad




John’s case. No other attorney would refer to it as such except for Conrad Locke. He had been a friend of Quinn’s father’s, had run a thriving law practice, and, most of all, had known John Cameron since he was in elementary school. There was still someone in the world who remembered him as he was then, and it was an unexpected source of comfort. And no one else would dare to call Nathan Quinn “my boy.”

Quinn had no real desire for company, and even one of Grace Locke’s blueberry pies held no attraction; however, he picked up a blank card and started writing a reply, because their kindness and their concern required paper and ink.


September 1985. Nathan leaned on the wooden banister and breathed in the salty air. David’s memorial service had come and gone, and somehow he was still walking and breathing when he’d thought he couldn’t possibly live through it.

The ceremony had been brief, the rabbi himself almost in shock, and they had all gathered at the restaurant, which was going to be closed for the rest of the week.

The fathers were in the kitchen, everybody else was in the main room, and Nathan had escaped to the narrow deck that ran along the building. So this is what hell is like. He felt empty. A photographer had intruded into their grief as they were leaving the cemetery, and Jack—his arm still in a sling—had reacted and attacked the guy with all the strength and the madness of that day. Everybody else, including Nathan, had been too numb and dazed to do much of anything.

The sky was a shade of gray barely lighter than the water, cloudy and yet bright even without the sun. Too bright. Nathan looked away from Elliott Bay and took off the velvet yarmulke he was still wearing. He couldn’t go back inside, not yet.

“Nathan.”

He turned to see Conrad Locke standing there in his dark suit and black tie.

“How are you, my boy?” he said. “Forget it—stupid question. May I keep you company for a moment?”

Nathan had nodded, and they had stood companionably in silence for a while, looking out at the view as the gulls did their best in the wake of a fishing boat.


Twenty-five years had passed, and Quinn still appreciated how the older man had not tried to talk away his grief. Years later, when Quinn’s law practice had become so successful that he needed to expand it, joining forces with Conrad Locke was the logical thing to do. Locke had spent most of the last ten years in San Francisco, semi-retired and busy with his charity foundation, and Quinn had run the most successful legal practice of the Pacific Northwest.

Tod Hollis would find something—Quinn was sure of it—and there was much that he himself could do, starting with Cameron’s bail and the plea-bargain situation.

He looked around the room: the monitors were still there, reminders of a time when his life had been measured by the fluid ounces of the IV drip. This room, both comfortable and featureless, was where he had found his way back from the jagged metal cage in the forest. He had no idea how the rest of his life would be measured. Time to go home.





Chapter 32





Amy Sorensen sat in the darkness of the lab and studied the image projected on the portable screen. It took up most of the wall and was blessedly archaic in a world that was dominated by digital technology. It couldn’t be simpler than that: the scrap of paper recovered in Ronald Gray’s Bible had been carefully unfolded, straightened, and placed under the keen eye of an overhead projector.

Amy Sorensen was a great believer in “simple,” and she thought that the most important thing that she could do at that point was just to look at the darn piece of photocopied paper and see what it would tell her.

They already knew it was standard copy supply—the kind you buy in Staples in boxes of 5,000 sheets—20-pound weight, 92 US brightness. Good for heavy-duty, high-velocity copying. If you wanted thicker, stronger paper, you had to be ready to shell out a good deal more.