The Dark (A Detective Alice Madison Novel)(71)

Madison’s brain—up to that point still in Bellevue, dealing with memories of blood on Warren Lee’s clothing—lurched forward and caught up with her.

“On the original? Do you mean that if we had the right yearbook in our hands, you could match them to it?”

There was static on the line as Madison drove fast through the traffic. There was crackle and a beat of silence.

“Yes,” Sorensen said finally. “Now I have safety copies to make and prints to lift.”

“Thank you, Amy.”

Madison reached for the cell without taking her eyes off the road, pressed the End button, and rang off. Sorensen was right to go hunting for latents, but they had to expect that the only prints lifted would be from Ronald Gray, and a lot of good that would be to them.

On the other hand, the yearbook was the breadcrumbs trail to the man who had wanted to mark David Quinn for kidnap and, ultimately, death.

Madison drove automatically while her thoughts chased a sea of numbers: how many yearbooks had been made that year, how many they could check against Sorensen’s mark, and how long it would take to gather them. There was another point, no less important: whoever had made that photocopy was also looking closely at the investigation into Warren Lee’s and Ronald Gray’s murders, and she could not simply roll up, knock on doors, and demand to see decades-old yearbooks. She groaned; she would need to find a very good excuse to go trawling through people’s basements, and it wouldn’t be dozens but hundreds of books that they would need to get hold of and check.

Madison checked the time on her dashboard—Fynn would still be in the office. They had to come up with a really good story and go lie to the general Seattle public as soon as possible.

She saw an opening in traffic and hit the accelerator. Two men dead by the same hand, nineteen blows including three to the head, two GSWs, three men in the CCTV footage, twenty-five years in psychiatric care. One down, three to go. A sea of numbers.


Sitting at her desk, Madison dialed the call to the Walters Institute, and even before the receptionist asked her to stay on the line, she knew that Dr. Peterson had not gone home yet.

“We are trying to fit all the various pieces of the story together so that they tell us what happened,” she told him. “But, the way things look, Vincent Foley witnessed something awful, something his mind could not deal with. He was a witness because he was with the men who instigated a crime. He wasn’t a victim in the sense that something was done to him. And we still don’t know to what extent he participated in the crime that was perpetrated. However, the fact that Ronald Gray tried to protect him by destroying any evidence in his house that might lead to Vincent, and the things he told you when you last spoke, indicate that Vincent was as involved as he was.”

“What kind of crime are we talking about, Detective?”

“Kidnap of minors and murder.”

Madison saw Eli Peterson in his office, in the white day room where his patients came together, on the pretty grounds where they walked on a sunny day. It wasn’t a facility for the criminally insane.

“The men who killed Ronald,” Peterson said, “will they come after Vincent, too?”

“I think they will,” she replied, “once they know where he is.”

Fynn was already on the phone with the Chief of Ds to work out the kind of protection Vincent Foley could get. Madison could see him through the blinds of his office, standing and talking. Fynn always stood when he was displeased.

“I’ll need to speak with Vincent, Doctor. The sooner, the better. Tomorrow, if we can manage it.”

“I understand,” he replied.

After the call Madison wondered if the man really understood, and she knew that she would have to ask Vincent about his memories of burying a murdered child and the blood on his clothing. Her degrees in psychology and criminology seemed a rather slight tool to go panning for gold in Foley’s mind.

Dunne came over, grabbed a chair from an empty desk, and slid it close to Madison’s desk.

“We have a confirmation of address for Timothy Gilman from 1978 to 1983,” he said as he sank into the chair. “East Howell Street.”

“That sounds—”

“Same block as the couple who fostered Ronald Gray and Vincent Foley. They lived two doors away from each other.”

“He knew them,” Madison said. “He knew them since they were kids.”

“Yup.”

Dunne’s red hair was in a constant state of rebellion however short he had it cut; now it stuck out at the back, as if he had just woken up. He leaned against the chair’s upholstered back and closed his eyes.