The Gift of the Darkness (16 page)

“Kelly's the primary.”

“I know. But Cameron has been lying low for years and now, within a few days, we have five murders.”

“And you're looking for a connection?”

“Aren't we?”

Brown rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “All five men on the
Nostromo
had their throats cut by a right-handed man. Three from behind, cut left to right. Two from the front, right to left. Judging from Sanders's height and the high angle of incision of his wound, that puts his killer at about five eleven. The blade on the
Nostromo
was a non-serrated, razor type, sharp enough to cut your breath in two. Same as what did this.” He pointed at the dark spots on the walls.

“The knife is a close-up weapon,” Madison interjected. “And it's dangerous because you have to get that much closer. Kelly was right: someone was so ticked off with Sanders, he didn't care. He was so angry, he had to get him up close and personal.”

Madison was struck by that point.

“With all the blood on Sanders and around him, the killer would have been covered in it when he left.”

Brown nodded. “I'm sure Kelly has got them checking the garbage cans in the street.”

“No, he's too smart for that.” Madison started looking on the floor by the sofa, close to where the body had been found.

“He knew that once Sanders was hit, he was going down,” she continued. “The danger for the killer is over. He can just relax and enjoy the show.”

She found what she was looking for.

“Look.”

On the hardwood floor, three feet from where Sanders had fallen, was a slightly curved line of blood drops. The drops were large and round and had fallen perpendicular to the ground. They didn't come from the spray that had hit the wall.

“He wore a long coat. A rain slicker. The blood hit it and slid to the ground. Once Sanders is dead, he takes the coat off—and whatever he had put over his shoes—and that's all. Stuffs it in a bag and goes home. Clean.”

“What about the bag?”

“A thin rain slicker burns easily; you don't want to leave that kind of thing around.”

“A rain slicker.”

“One of those clear plastic ones.”

“Exactly.”

“Neat.”

“I'd say.”

They walked through the hallway and the kitchen and the pool room and the bedroom with the vast open safe—the drugs and the gun gone by now—just to get a sense of the victim and possibly a reason for his death.

The house told them nothing except that Erroll Sanders had lived with poor taste and little judgment, and one December morning either one or the other had caught up with him.

Back at the precinct, the
Nostromo
file, thick as it was, offered little help. It confirmed all the details Brown had remembered earlier and nothing more.

Erroll Sanders's former employee, the late Joe Navasky, had been in Lake Washington for days before they found him. By then it was difficult to judge whether the near-decapitation and the mutilation of his eyes and hands had been postmortem or not.

Madison liked consistency: the
Nostromo
, Navasky, Sanders. She could see the similarities there: the manner of death and the obliteration of trace evidence and prints. She went back to her own notes on the Blue Ridge murders.

The weapon of choice, the mode of death, the use of chloroform on the blindfold, the involvement of the wife and children, and even the evidence recovered on the scene: nothing matched.

She thought of the boy's room in John Cameron's house and the baseball bat in the closet. The lab had told her that the blood and bone splinter were at least fifteen years old.

Brown had hardly said a word to her since they had gotten back from the Sanders crime scene. Madison had learned to negotiate her course around his silences, but this time Brown had been reading the same page for half an hour. Assistant County Prosecutor Sarah Klein arrived to prepare for Quinn's hearing, and the moment passed.

Just as Klein left, Kelly put his head in the door.

“Sanders's car was spotless, almost. They found the partial of a thumb on the axle.” Kelly twinkled. “It's half wiped off, but there's nearly enough points of similarity to stand up in court. What time is the hearing tomorrow?”

It was good. Good that Cameron was still in town and had gotten a little sloppy. Good that there was a lead in the Sanders case. Good and bad for Madison, who sat reading the Hoh River clippings for an hour until Brown stood up and put his jacket on.

“Go home,” he said. “We're done for the day.”

“Quinn's younger brother,” Madison said. “Why did the kidnappers take the body if he was dead?”

“At the time it was impossible to prosecute a case without a body. The other two boys were blindfolded and couldn't testify to anything.”

After Brown left, Madison tried to read old interviews, but her concentration was off. She wasn't quite ready to go home yet and wandered into the main squad room. The usual comings and goings and the usual smells of takeout.

Someone had left a copy of the
Seattle Times
on a table. Madison picked it up and turned to the second page to avoid reading about the case. A few lines near the bottom caught her eye: the photographer she had ejected from the Blue Ridge crime scene had been attacked and left unconscious in an alley. In his statement Andrew Riley had said that somehow the police might be behind it—that some officer, meaning herself, might have it in for him after what had happened at the Sinclairs'.

Madison blinked. She had completely forgotten about him. It took her two phone calls to find the detective who had the case.

“He's a weedy little shit, but he was knocked around some,” Detective Nolan said. “Now he's locked up in his apartment like someone's out to get him. Actually he mentioned you.”

“I'm sure he did.”

“We're not taking that seriously. Still, he must have pissed off somebody somewhere.”

“It wasn't a robbery?”

“No, nothing was taken, though a camera was destroyed. He was in Jordan's, off Elliott Avenue, got a call at the bar, no one on the line. Minutes later, he comes out, and someone punches him. Badly enough that he passes out. And the guy destroys his camera. There was hardly anything left on the strap to tell you it
was
a camera.”

Madison drove home with her windows rolled down. Andrew Riley had slammed into a wall of bad luck, but nothing seemed to connect him to the Sinclairs except for his presence on the crime scene.

Two things stuck out: one, the phone call had been made to identify him in the bar. Which meant the attacker had been standing right there to see him get the call. Two, the attacker had looked for his camera and destroyed it. In fact, he had made a point of destroying it.

He had sought out Riley in a crowded bar and, without explanation, without any threats or warnings, he had attacked him and smashed his precious camera out of existence.

Whichever way you sliced it, someone had taken offense at Riley's line of work. So had Madison, for sure, and she knew for a fact that if it had been her own loved ones Riley had tried to photograph, her reaction might not have been as contained.

The Sinclairs' closest contact, apparently, was Nathan Quinn, but Madison couldn't see him waiting in the dark for Riley—it wasn't his style. Quinn would never lay a finger on him. If he wanted Riley punished, she figured, they might never even meet, and yet things would happen, and Riley would never sell another picture in his life. And Quinn would make sure Riley knew why. How far she herself might have gone was something Madison did not dwell on.

The Sinclair house was a dark shape beyond the trees. Madison drove past slowly, catching a glimpse of the patrol car parked out front. In a flash she remembered that she had not returned the keys to the tree trunk. They were still in the inside pocket of her blazer. She braked gently. She was about to put the car into reverse, her hand already on the clutch.

Not yet
.

She slipped the car into first and drove on.

Hours earlier, Erroll Sanders had driven back to his house. Maybe Cameron was in the car with him, maybe not. Whatever. At that point Sanders had, perhaps, half an hour to live.

Madison drove past her own driveway and toward Rachel's house. She hadn't done that in a long time, not since the months after her grandfather's death. She pulled up before the turn.

The only light was above the front door; a wreath was pinned to the knocker. Two cars were parked on the side, and the curtains were drawn. Madison turned off her engine. It did not worry her that sometimes, after a day of blood and random evil, she would come here and sit in her silent car for a few moment, where she could feel Rachel's life inside the house, Rachel's family inhabiting a world that overlapped with her own only in part; theirs was safe and loving and as distant as it could be from the horrors she knew. It was a comfort beyond description.

After a couple of minutes, she left and made her way home.

Nathan Quinn locked the glass door behind him as the office alarm beeped softly. He said good night to one of the cleaners who was pushing his cart along the ninth-floor landing and called the elevator. In his right hand he carried his briefcase, in his left a small stack of correspondence he had not yet had a chance to look at. He pressed the button for the underground car park and flipped through the envelopes.

Fourth from the top, Quinn recognized the heavy cream paper before his mind could tell him what it was. He tore it open and took out a card that matched it. On it, five numbers were printed in black ink:

The elevator's doors opened. Quinn looked up as if a voice had spoken.

He went back to his floor, punched in the code for the alarm, and went straight for his office without turning any of the lights on. He flicked the switch for his desk lamp and pulled open a drawer in the
filing cabinet behind him. It was the first one in the file; he had placed it there himself on Monday. The same paper, the same card, only the message was different. He put the two cards next to each other on his desk.

There was no doubt in Quinn's mind that the same hand that had written the words and these numbers had taken the lives of James and his family.

He picked up the receiver, punched in a telephone number, and replaced it on its cradle. After maybe thirty seconds his cell phone rang, and he picked it up.

“Jack,” he said.

Chapter 22

Harry Salinger sits at the workbench in the basement of his house. He looks at a shard of glass through his jeweler's lens; he holds it delicately between his right thumb and forefinger and turns it around until he is pleased with what he sees.

In a corner the fruit of his hard work has taken shape: the base was easy to fix, considering he had to keep it light and portable, but he knows it will be the metal bars that will make or break his masterpiece. He stands up and slips on his welding goggles.

Lynne Salinger was thirty-nine years old when she found out she was expecting a child. She cried for hours: the precarious routine of her life was about to be shattered, and within her rigid Catholic background an abortion was out of the question.

Her husband, Richard Salinger, forty-one, a uniformed officer with the Seattle Police Department, bought a few rounds of drinks in the bar and at the end of the evening was driven home by his partner.

It was widely known within his precinct that his bullying temperament had cost Richard Salinger a promotion many times over. He had never hit his wife because he did not need to: he did his manhandling out on the street but kept his darkest moods for the home.

Lynne Salinger gave birth to twin boys, Michael and Harry, and immediately sank into three years of undiagnosed postpartum depression; the week after their third birthday she took her life with an overdose of sleeping pills and died as she had lived, with very little fuss.

Her passing became an adverse reaction to prescribed medication, and if anyone at the station wanted to check her death certificate, Richard Salinger would just have to set them straight. It was something Richard did a lot, putting people straight—it was the job and his life and his particular place in the order of things.

Ten years later. Michael and Harry Salinger are riding their bicycles at full speed on the curb, flying toward their house in time for their afternoon curfew. They are tall for their age and blond, their eyes almost colorless. They take after their mother, whom they don't remember at all: soon they will be taller than Richard Salinger, not that it will do them any good.

They hear it as they are locking the gate behind them: the telephone ringing in the kitchen.

It is an acknowledged fact between them that Michael runs faster.

“Go!” Harry yells.

Michael throws his bike to the ground and legs it to the back door. He grabs the key from the pocket of his jeans, shoves it into the lock, and turns it. He pushes into the kitchen and gets to the phone in one stride. His hand is slick as he picks up the receiver.

“Hello,” he gasps. “It's Michael. Okay. Yes, sir. Here he is.”

Harry takes the phone from his brother.

“Hello, sir. Yes. Okay. We will.”

He puts the receiver down, and for a moment they stand in the dark room. Then Michael opens the fridge door and starts to make them both peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Richard Salinger kept his promise to himself: he brought up the boys alone, in the same house they were born in. A local woman in her fifties, Etta Greene, looked after them and did a little housework while
he was out; the rest of the time it was just the Salinger men, as he used to call them.

He knew the boys were afraid of him and enjoyed telling them what he had done at work, especially if any violence had come to pass.

One afternoon when the boys were five, during their playtime, Etta Greene asked Harry to name a color with the letter b. Without hesitation Harry said, “Red.” Etta looked a little disappointed, and Harry didn't understand why.

As far back as he could remember, the letter b had always been red—it felt red, and it brought a sense of red to any word it was a part of. Even though they sometimes disagreed on what color went with which letter, Michael knew exactly what he meant. It was their mother's gift, undiagnosed and unacknowledged.

She had considered it a kind of madness, but Lynne Salinger was neither crazy nor cursed, and the only issue with synesthesia is that it is statistically rare and deeply misunderstood. It frightened her that most sounds carried a sense of color, vibrant and beyond her control. She did not cherish nor begin to understand the experience: she endured it and every day tried to suppress it. Then she would think of her husband, and his name would come to her unbidden, in shades of charcoal and red.

Etta Greene assumed that Harry was confused and left it at that.

By the time the boys started school, they knew enough of the world never to mention the hidden colors, not to anyone, especially their father.

When Richard Salinger was shot in the line of duty by an armed robber, he took a bullet in the right knee. Once he left the hospital, he had a limp and a disability pension, both guaranteed as long as he lived.

The stream of visitors and well-wishers who had come by in the early days of his injury became a dribble and then stopped altogether. Six months later, they were completely alone.

One morning, while the boys were at school, Richard Salinger went through their room and found a soiled sheet in a bundle in a corner.
When they came home, he was waiting for them in the living room. He was stone-cold sober, and his face was set hard.

“I'm going to ask you one question,” he said. “Be straight with me, and it ends there. Lie to me, and I'll know it.”

From a plastic bag he pulled out the bundled sheet. Harry's insides filled with icy water.

“Who did this?”

Salinger knew and didn't need to ask. He could have washed the sheet and let it go, but he was not that kind of man. He waited. Michael stepped forward. Harry's eyes grew wide.

“I did, sir,” Michael said. “I'm sorry.”

Richard Salinger's eyes did not move from Harry's face. “What have you got to say, boy?”

At ten years of age, Harry knew exactly who he was: a skinny runt with neither guts nor smarts. He knew that, because he had been told enough times. Still, he'd rather get a hiding than let his brother take the rap.

“I—I did it,” he stammered.

“I know,” Richard Salinger said as he stood up. “This is how it's going to work from now on: when one of you fucks up, the other will be punished. Michael, you're up.”

Harry Salinger, thirty-seven, crouches in his basement. Sparks from the torch flare across his goggles. It's not his best work, but he can see the beauty of the idea beyond the faults of his own workmanship, and it pleases him. Salinger peels off his gloves and throws them onto the workbench. Time to go.

In the Olympic National Park, a three-hour drive from Seattle, there is a stretch of ground blessed by old-growth trees and ferns, trunks thick with moss, and twisting paths that tourists travel days to see and take pictures of with their cell phones.

Harry Salinger does not take pictures, and he hardly looks up from the slippery, rocky path. In the depths of winter there are no visitors, and in the gloom of the early evening he takes in every detail of the trail. It is in all likelihood the last time he will have the opportunity to do this.

He bends to check that the laces are properly tied on his walking boots, and then he waits, making sure the last little bit of daylight is extinguished. When the time is right, he's off. He runs, trusting his memory of the trail, weaving among the trees because a straight run could get him killed; his boots cut and rustle through the greenery, not too fast and not too slow.

In his mind the earth rises to meet his feet and steady his purpose—the forest is on his side. It is the thirty-eighth time he runs the trail, the twenty-first in darkness.