The Gift of the Darkness (15 page)

Silano shook his head. “I don't know,” he said finally.

They found Donny O'Keefe having a cigarette on the deck. The kitchen's back door opened onto a small platform with stairs to the beach. He leaned on the wooden railing with his back to them. There was a stiff breeze coming in from the sea, and the sky was already darkening. O'Keefe was wearing only chef's whites: if he was cold, he didn't show it.

“Mr. O'Keefe,” Brown said.

He turned around. A wiry man in his late forties, his hair gone white and cut short. No taller than five foot six but with enough going on in his eyes that likely no one had ever picked on him.

After introductions were made, he regarded Brown and Madison for a moment. His sleeves were rolled up, and they saw the old prison tattoo on his right forearm: an eagle surrounded by barbed wire. He looked down at it.

“Upstate, twenty-three years ago. I kept it to remind myself I was once young, cute, and as dumb as dirt.”

He took one last puff and killed the butt in a small ashtray he balanced on the railing.

“How can I help you?”

“You know why we're here?” Brown said.

“I heard the news this morning. I figured sooner or later you'd come by.”

“How long have you worked at The Rock?”

“Three years sous-chef. Seven years head chef.”

“That's a lot of poker nights.”

O'Keefe smiled.

“A lot of chat over the table.”

“Yes.”

“You don't sit across the table from a man for years without knowing a little about him,” Brown said as he put his hands on the railing and looked out at the beach. A couple was walking a small dog.

“Sometimes you do. Sometimes the more you see someone, the less you know them.”

“What the paper wrote—you don't think he did it?” Madison said.

“No, I don't.”

“You don't think he could do it.”

“I don't think he
would
do it.” O'Keefe stuck his hands into the pockets of his apron.

“You asked me about him, and I'm telling you. Do you think we all gathered around, over chips and beer, and asked him how he did the guys on the boat?”

“We think he killed a man and his family,” Madison said, her voice soft against the noises from the kitchen, metal on metal. “A man who's been in your life for a very long time. You might know things that will help us find his killer.”

“You think I wouldn't want to find the piece of shit who did this?”

“Talk to us.”

“You don't understand. Cameron turns up for the game once a month:
that
is all we know about him. What he does in between? Nobody asks. Where he lives? Nobody asks.”

He took a pack of Marlboros out of his chest pocket, shook one out—no takers. He lit it and drew on it deeply.

“In there, I have a chowder that would make a grown man cry. Anything beyond that, I just don't know.”

Brown took out one of Cameron's photos from Records and showed it to him.

“Does he look anything like this?”

“Sure,” he said, which sounded more like, “Not really.”

Brown pointed at the kitchen. “We're going to ask around, in case anyone remembers anything worth the trip here.”

“Be my guest. Would you guys like a bite to eat?” O'Keefe crossed his arms and leaned back, squinting slightly.

“Maybe some other time,” Madison replied. “By the way, twenty-three years ago, what did you do time for?”

“I thought you'd never ask.” He pulled on the cigarette until the end glowed brightly. “Grand theft auto. The car belonged to a cop. They found me in three hours.”

He seemed to find it amusing, as if it had happened to someone else.

“Smart move,” Madison said.

“Dumb as dirt,” O'Keefe replied.

They left him out there.

Five men—three Hispanic, two Caucasian—also in chef's whites worked in a long, narrow, spotless kitchen. They stood at their stations, chopping, slicing, cleaning, and getting ready for the evening rush and the Christmas bookings. Brown and Madison walked in, and the chat stopped dead.

Everybody knew who they were and what they wanted. It took Brown and Madison forty-five minutes to interview them one by one. The waiters and busboys had already gone home at the end of their shift.

When they came out, cars were driving past with their headlights on. It wouldn't be long before dark. Brown ticked the names off the list Silano had given them. Madison just wanted to get moving and call the precinct: patrol officers had been checking with car rental places in case Cameron had ditched the pickup and stopped by his nearest Hertz.

What she would have done, she thought, was have a clean car ready. One with local plates, paid in cash, and unconnected to her. And she would have done that
days
before the murders.

There were also the security cameras at the airport: someone ought to go down to Sea-Tac with the photo from Records and check at least the first twenty-four hours after the crime. A slim chance, assuming he had not altered his looks too much. Madison used the standard black police notepad with the rubber band around it. She took it out of her jacket's inside pocket, leaned against the roof of their car, and wrote two words:
Poker night
. She closed her eyes, and for a moment she was sitting up high, looking at her father's hand over his shoulder. She could have learned a lot about Cameron if she had watched him play even once.

Brown was a few steps behind her, already on the phone. It was late afternoon, Madison was hungry, and that chowder had looked pretty damn good.

“That was Kelly,” Brown said, after he snapped his phone shut. “He's at a crime scene up on Genesee Hill. He said we should go over.”

“What's he got?”

“White male, knife wound to the neck.”

Madison nodded. Kelly was far from being one of her favorite people, and she knew from experience that he would be even less adorable if he was the primary on a case.

“You play poker?” Brown asked her out of the blue.

“I used to know people who did.”

Brown drummed his fingers on the roof of the car. “Right,” he said. “We could go via Husky's.”

Husky Deli. Now, that was a happy thought.

The press was already there. They had followed the scent and stood in groups, cameras poised, ready and waiting.

“They always know,” Brown muttered under his breath.

Three blue-and-whites blocked the entrance to the drive. Camera flashes started as they approached. Brown showed his badge, and they were waved through.

The house was large, built on the most expensive part of Genesee Hill. The front lawn had been fenced, and Madison spotted a small security camera mounted by the top of the gate. The Crime Scene Unit van was parked next to an ambulance by the main door.

Chris Kelly came out just as Brown and Madison stepped out of their car.

“Just in time,” he said. “I wanted you to see him before he's moved.”

Kelly's partner, a skinny malcontent called Tony Rosario, was just back from sick leave. He nodded hello and went to his car. Of course, Madison thought, it was perfectly possible that Rosario was really the nicest guy: you spend twelve hours a day with Kelly, it's got to do something to you.

Kelly walked them through to the living room. Forensics people were already deep into the scene. It was a modern house, the inside matching the outside in a vague attempt at minimalism, a style Madison deeply disliked. The living room was furnished in black and white. A massive black suede sofa and a knee-high glass table dominated the space; the rest was sharp edges and hardwood floors.

Madison registered the blood on the walls even before she realized what she was looking at. She saw it and knew it and felt the adrenaline spike kick in. Her eyes followed the red spray as it rose and fell, a fine mist covering the white cushions. No one could lose that much blood and live.

The man was slumped against the back of the sofa; you wouldn't have seen him unless you'd gone around it. You wouldn't have seen him from the door unless you had noticed the blood.

Madison couldn't tell what color his shirt had been—maybe pale blue, maybe white. Blood had drenched it and his denim pants.
It had pooled in the creases of his clothes and around him on the wooden floor. His hands were lying at his sides, already bagged up, slick with red.

He had been a big man: around six foot six and wide to match, his hair dirty blond with a receding hairline he had tried to hide. He looked fit, and if there had been a struggle, he would have been a dangerous opponent. But he lay there now with a deep gash under his throat that ran almost from ear to ear and his mouth open as if in surprise.

“The girlfriend found him; the paramedics had to sedate her,” Kelly said. “The main door has four locks, what with my man here being so keen on security and all. When the girlfriend opened the door with her keys, all four locks were in place. The windows haven't been touched, and the back door has another three locks to get through before you can come in. All were in place. No signs of forced entry anywhere. And here's the kicker: in the main bedroom there's a safe you can actually take a walk in. Wide open. And enough white in it to build a snowman.”

“A dealer,” Brown said.

“Erroll Sanders.”

The name rang a distant bell with Madison.

Brown sat on his heels and peered into the wound.

“Mr. Sanders. Long time no see.”

“You know him?” Madison asked.

“He's been as quiet as a mouse for a few years.” Brown straightened up. “Roughly since one of his boys bobbed up in Lake Washington minus eyes and hands.”

There were French doors on one side; the other three walls had been painted in dazzling white. Madison looked around: aside from the dark spots of blood in rising arches, there seemed to be no immediate evidence of a struggle. There were a couple of vases on a mantelpiece near the door and lamps on two smaller tables by the sides of the sofa. Nothing had been disturbed.

“He got him from the front,” Kelly said, looking down at the body.

“Yes.” Brown examined blood spatter on the right-hand wall. He pointed. “This here came from the knife as it moved away, after the cut.”

His finger traced a fine, straight line of droplets, their tail indicating the direction they had come from. His arm moving slowly, as he worked out where the killer had stood.

The wound was very deep, and, given Erroll Sanders's height, it was unlikely that his killer could get him in a lock from behind and cut his throat in that manner.

Madison sat on her heels: the wound was deeper on the right side and slightly slanted up toward the left. The killer had been fast and incredibly strong; one quick slash and Sanders would have had only seconds before he lost consciousness from blood loss.

“He cut him right to left,” Brown said. “He's right-handed.”

“CSU has been dusting for prints for hours.” Kelly seemed strangely pleased with himself. “They've found diddly. He had a piece in an ankle holster, for all the good it did him, and a .45 on his nightstand—looks like he had just taken that off. It's still there, untouched. There's about $5,000 cash next to the white. This wasn't about drugs; this wasn't about money. I think we have a
Nostromo
-type situation here.”

“We don't know that for sure,” Brown said. “How about the security camera outside?”

“I've checked: the tape is missing. There's a couple of glasses in the kitchen sink, washed up. This doesn't mean that Sanders had a drink with our man, but if he did, the killer cleaned up after himself.”

The glass table would have been a perfect surface to retain prints, and that's where they could have put their drinks.

“Nothing there,” Kelly said. It had already been dusted and found spotless.

The violence had started and ended with Erroll Sanders. Nothing else in his life had interested his killer aside from the taking of it in one quick, devastating blow.

“What about time of death?” Madison asked.

“Probably between four and six this morning.”

It was one of the pleasant quirks of their relationship. If Madison asked Kelly a question, he usually gave his answer to Brown. For a second there Madison wondered if it was worth her time and effort to have a word with him in private one of these days and put him straight.
Not now
, she thought.
Not here
.

“Can we take him?” A paramedic had been standing behind them.

“Go ahead,” Kelly said, and Erroll Sanders was carefully lifted off the ground, zipped up into a body bag, and carried away.

For a few moments the only sound was the Crime Scene Unit officers collecting and preserving.

“We don't know if he found the intruder already in the house when he got back. Whether the man followed him in. We don't know why, and we barely know when,” Brown said.

“What do you mean?”

It was suddenly clear to Madison that Kelly would be pretty pleased if Cameron turned out to be the doer.

“I'd love to know how he got in,” Kelly said.

“You might want to make sure they dust the victim's car for prints. Maybe it was a Trojan horse. Mind if we have a look around?”

Kelly thought about it for a second, not a Homer reader but definitely familiar with the idea.

“Go right ahead,” he said, and he went to find Rosario.

Brown glanced at Madison, who was trying to work out the sequence of events by the blood-spatter patterns on the walls. Ultimately, the way she dealt with people like Kelly would be as important in being a cop as her gifts as an investigator. It was something she would have to find out by herself. That day Kelly would wish he hadn't gotten out of bed.

“We have little, but we do have something,” Madison said. “We have Sanders, and we have the bodies on the
Nostromo
. I want to check the postmortem reports and the description of the wounds.”