The Dark (A Detective Alice Madison Novel)(92)

Madison grabbed Vincent and inched backward, putting her body between the men and him, keeping low, careless of the rustle of clothes and Vincent’s yelps.

A car drove past, the engine picking up speed as the siren came on. Madison continued backward: they were sandwiched between the men hunting Vincent and the wall that surrounded the property, and in a few yards she would find their backs against the iron railings; the search party was pushing the men right onto them.

A car pulled up and stopped in the driveway, engine still ticking—she could glimpse the headlights through the bushes. Suddenly the flashlights moved sideways and away from them, and after a beat two car doors opened and closed. The car—Madison had not seen what it was—sped away.

Madison let go of Vincent, who crumpled on the ground behind her, and she quickly searched her pockets for her cell phone. The small square screen lit up her face and told her exactly what time it was. Traffic cameras; there are traffic cameras all over the darn road.

Vincent was slumped against the railings, his hands opening and closing around fistfuls of earth. Madison sat down next to him.

“It’s all right,” she said. “They’ve gone—the bad men have gone. We’re safe now.”

Vincent shook his head as if she’d missed the whole point. “It’s not personal; it’s business,” he said.


Uniformed officers of the SPD made a cautious sweep of the grounds and found no trace of the intruders. The body of Thomas Reed was carried out on a stretcher before Health and Safety could snap into action and declare the building a no-go area until it had been checked for structural failings due to the blaze.

Madison gave her statement to an officer of the North Precinct, who took her piece—standard operating procedure when a weapon is discharged—and watched Vincent Foley as Dr. Peterson checked him over and gave him a mild sedative.

Most of the patients had been temporarily dispersed among a number of institutions, and no one knew when and if they would be allowed back inside the place they had called home. Dr. Peterson looked drained and pretty close to collapse himself; the rest of his staff wandered from patient to patient, trying to make themselves useful and not think about Thomas Reed.

As Madison had imagined, Vincent had been evacuated with everybody else and then had slipped away in the confusion. Reed had gone back—into a burning building—to look for him.

“You’d said they’d come,” Lieutenant Fynn said. He was unshaven and wore no tie.

“Not like this,” Madison said. “I never thought . . .” She gestured at the blackened, ruined east wing.

“Was it Conway?”

“Yes, I’m sure of it. I saw his eyes, and I’m not going to forget them in a hurry. But any lawyer five minutes out of law school would be able to get a jury to doubt: it was dark, there was a reinforced glass window in between us, and it lasted only seconds.”

“Still . . .”

“Still . . .”

“Where are they taking Vincent?” she asked him.

“Peterson’s deputy is going to chaperone him, and two uniforms will stick to them like glue. They’re still looking for a secure, appropriate environment. We can’t exactly drop him into a B-and-B.”

Madison nodded.

“Are you all right? Do you need to get checked over?”

Madison looked at herself: her clothes were muddy, and her hands had a few nicks and scratches from the run down the fire escape but nothing that needed a bandage.

“No, I’m fine, sir. I need a cup of coffee, a shower, and my piece back as soon as humanly possible, but aside from that I’m okay.”

“Did Foley say anything useful?”

“I honestly don’t know. I need to write it down and think about it. It’s difficult to sieve what’s relevant from the rest. One thing I know is that Ronald Gray gave him some instructions, and Vincent retained some of that.”

Among the police officers and the firefighters Madison spotted Detective Kelly. He gave her one long, somber look from a distance, as if at some point, somehow, he knew this mess would turn out to be her fault.

“It’s almost dawn,” Fynn said. “And you look like death warmed over. Go home, grab some sleep, and get to the precinct when you don’t need to spell-check your name.”

Madison waited until she saw Vincent Foley climb into a Fire Medic One truck, together with the doctor and two police officers.

“How many people know where they’re taking him?” she asked Fynn.

“Not as many as those who knew he was here. Go home, Madison.”





Chapter 40





August 28, 1985. Ronald Gray put one foot in front of the other and tried to hold on to the very small pool of calm and common sense he still possessed. The air was heavy, thick with humidity and the scent of earth and undergrowth that the sun never reached. They had been walking for a while with their shirts stuck to their backs and a growing sense of panic crawling in their guts.