The Gift of the Darkness (17 page)

Chapter 23

6:30 a.m. The offices of Quinn, Locke were still deserted. Nathan Quinn closed the door behind him and Tod Hollis. From a filing cabinet he pulled out a clear plastic envelope and passed it to Hollis. The envelope contained the anonymous notes.

Hollis wore a heavy coat with a black turtleneck underneath. He took the envelope and looked at it for a few seconds.

“Coffee?” Quinn asked.

“Thanks.”

Quinn left him in his office and went to the kitchen. From a box he took out a paper filter, shook some fresh coffee into it, and turned on the machine.

He knew Hollis would tell him to go to the police with the notes, that they'd have the resources to examine them quickly for prints and run a check on the paper. He would recommend they call the detective in charge and give them to him specifically. It made perfect sense, of course. Except Quinn was not ready to do that yet, not until he knew what the writer wanted.

Hollis would not be happy about it, but there was little he could do to change his mind: it all came down to a choice Quinn had made years before, for a time he had hoped would never come. Judge Martin
would be waiting for him in a few hours, and everything else was nonsense. The coffee started to drip.

Quinn's reward had brought in more than a hundred calls in twenty-four hours. All of them had been screened and logged, and none had had anything to add to the investigation.

Madison flipped through the sheets of calls while Brown was on the phone: a SWAT team was on standby to back them up if they got an address, telephone records could be accessed in minutes, and Crime Scene Unit officers had been warned of a possible quick-response situation. Depending on the outcome of the hearing, there might or might not be a press conference, in which the picture of John Cameron would be made public. The one thing Fred Tully did not already have.

“We never did understand why he retied the knot,” she said.

Brown looked up.

“The ligature,” she continued. “Cameron replaced the ligature around James Sinclair's wrists. We found the hairs, but we still don't know why he did it.”

“Do we need to know?”

Do we need to know?

“Quinn is going to blow a hole right through anything we're unsure of,” she said.

Brown stood up, closed the door between them and the squad room, and sat back down.

“Okay, what do you need to know?” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Just that. We have four bodies, a motive, a suspect. We have physical evidence. What else do
you
need to know?”

“Everything,” she replied without hesitation. “If something happened, I want to know why. If it didn't, why didn't it?”

“Cameron does exactly what he needs to do. No more, no less. The murder of Erroll Sanders fits that principle. The murders of the Sinclairs do not.”

“Sometimes people break their own patterns—it depends on circumstance. With James Sinclair, the punishment was Cameron's priority. It's possible that killing him was entirely secondary, and knowing that his family was being slaughtered was more important than Sinclair's own death.”

“Tell me this: why does it matter to you so much to know why the ligature was tied twice? Forget about the case in court, and tell me why we should be asking that question.”

“You know why.”

“You tell me.”

“It's about behavior. The ligature is one tiny part of it. Like the prints on the glass.”

“What about the prints?”

“When we got the call that Payne had matched the prints to Cameron's, you looked like that was bad news. I asked you why, and you said—”

“I was surprised.”

“You were disappointed.”

“Maybe you're worrying too much about the small stuff.”

Madison leaned forward. “The glass the prints were recovered from was by the sink in the kitchen. I saw it before the CSU officer collected it: it was standing right next to a can of Coke.”

“Okay.”

“They did not recover any prints from the can. Why is that? Cameron, wearing gloves, pours himself a drink. Then he takes off the gloves, picks up the glass, and drinks from it. It's sloppy, and he is anything but. There is no small stuff here.”

They regarded each other for a moment. It was the first time she had even half raised her voice with Brown.

“Why did you join Homicide?” he asked.

“Excuse me?”

“It's not for the money, and I'm pretty certain it's not for the glory.”

“Why are you asking me now and not five weeks ago?”

“If I'd asked you then, I wouldn't have had any context in which to put your answer. Now I've seen you work. Why Homicide?”

Madison realized she had been waiting for him to ask her since they had first met. She heard herself say: “It's the only place I wanted to be.”

He nodded slightly. Someday he might ask her again.

The press surrounded the courthouse. Brown, Madison, Kelly, and Rosario had to push through bodies, microphones, and cameras. Flashes went off, and nobody missed the significance of the primary detective on the Sanders case being present at a hearing for the Blue Ridge murders. For the occasion Kelly wore his court suit.

It was going to be Sarah Klein's show. Away from the noise of the crowd outside, the courthouse was quiet, and people went about their business, this hearing only one of dozens.

Tony Rosario was still pale from his recent illness; then again, drained pallor might have been his natural state. It didn't help that he was wearing a suit, shirt, and tie combination in shades of gray.

“Do me a favor and don't lean against the wall; I'm afraid I'm gonna lose ya,” Kelly said.

“Gray is my signature color,” Rosario replied.

The elevator doors opened, and they stepped out. Klein turned to them, her voice low.

“If you want to tell me anything during the hearing, write it on a piece of paper, and only if it's absolutely necessary.”

“Can you ask him anything about the Sanders situation?” Kelly felt involved but only marginally. They had Cameron's print on the underside of Sanders's car, but it wasn't enough even for a search warrant of Cameron's residence. Not that a search had done Brown and Madison much good.

“No, it has nothing to do with this. I have to stick to whatever passed between Quinn and Cameron when they first met to discuss the murders. Anything after that is privileged. You're a tourist, Detective Kelly—just enjoy the ride.” Klein walked into the courtroom, and they followed.

Madison had been in court a number of times, both as a witness and as a spectator. She had seen some juries get it right after the
prosecutors did their worst and others get it wrong after they had done their best. She believed in the system because it was what they had and it was meant to change and develop as human beings did, in their wisdom and their flaws. She took a seat in the pew behind the prosecutor's table; Brown sat down next to her, Kelly and Rosario behind them.

Brown took his glasses from their case and put them on. He was glad the hearing was closed to the public. Everybody wanted something out of it, and though his expectations might not be the same as everyone else's, he knew he wouldn't be disappointed. The night before he had spent an hour on the phone with Fred Kamen. He looked at Madison and hoped that by the end of this long day he'd be able to tell her about it.

Nathan Quinn took his place at the other table. He was representing himself, as Madison had imagined he would. He was alone, and if anything about the proceedings was troubling him, it didn't show.

“Sarah,” he said.

“Nathan.” She nodded back to him.

The rest of them did not exist.

Judge Martin took her place on the bench, and Nathan Quinn was sworn in.

“Swift and to the point, Miss Klein,” the judge said. “There is no jury to impress, and we all know why we're here. Mr. Quinn, you're under oath now, and you know what that means.”

Quinn sat in the witness box, and Sarah Klein stood by her table.

“Mr. Quinn, would you please take us through the events that occurred last Monday from the moment Detective Sergeant Brown and Detective Madison came to your office and told you about the murder of James Sinclair and his family?”

“Detective Sergeant Brown told me that James Sinclair had been found dead in his house, with his wife and children. They had been murdered by an intruder. They asked me to identify the bodies, which I did.”

“What was the time frame?”

“By then it was early afternoon.”

“What did you do after that?”

“I called John Cameron.”

Klein looked up from the papers she was holding in her hands. It had taken them all of forty-five seconds to get there. Quinn held her eyes.

“For the record, who is John Cameron, and what is your relationship to him?”

“He is a friend and a client. I now represent him in legal matters, and we share a business interest in the property we inherited from our fathers. James Sinclair was part of it, too.”

“Why did you call Mr. Cameron after you left the office of the Medical Examiner?”

“I knew that reporters would be swarming the case, and I did not want him to find out that way. I thought I should tell him in person. I called his beeper number, and he called me back on my cell phone.”

The court stenographer finished tapping his keyboard, and there was a beat of silence. Something was wrong: Klein was getting what she wanted, and it shouldn't have been that easy.

“Your Honor,” she began, “the purpose of this hearing is to make sure that Mr. Cameron—who, for the record, has an outstanding arrest warrant for four counts of murder—does not avail himself of the attorney-client privilege in order to escape capture.”

“We are very clear on that, Counselor,” Judge Martin replied.

“Mr. Quinn, how do you contact John Cameron when you need to?”

“As I said, I call his beeper, and he calls me back.”

“That's all?”

“That's all.”

“The People request the number, Your Honor.”

“Are you going to object, Mr. Quinn?” Judge Martin asked him.

“No.”

Quinn gave them the number, and the stenographer took it down. So did the detectives. A beeper: Cameron had probably tossed it into the trash five seconds after Quinn told him about the hearing.

“When Mr. Cameron called you back, what did you say to him?”

“I told him it was an emergency and that we needed to meet straightaway.”

“Did you mention the nature of the emergency?”

“I did not.”

“Did he seem surprised?”

“He asked me what it was about, and I said I couldn't tell him on the phone.”

“Right, the phone. Where did he call you back from?”

“I don't know.”

“Does he have a cell phone?”

“I don't know.”

“This is an old friend and a business partner, and you don't know if he has a cell phone?”

Quinn turned to the judge. “The question was asked and answered, Your Honor.”

“Move on, Miss Klein,” she said.

“So, you called his beeper, and he called you back. How long did it take him to do so?”

“A minute, maybe.”

“Was he standing right next to a pay phone when you called him?”

“Possibly.”

“Miss Klein.”

The attorney half raised her hand in apology and moved on.

“You told him you couldn't tell him on the phone. How did he react to that?”

“He just asked me where I wanted to meet.”

“Do you often have this kind of conversation when there are subjects you'd rather not deal with on the phone?”

“No.”

“In all your years as Mr. Cameron's attorney—”

“Yes.”

Klein gave him a look.

“Who was it who brought up the location of your meeting?”

“I did.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him to meet me at my house.”

Klein's only reaction was to lean back slightly against her table. Behind Madison, Kelly exhaled through his nose. Quinn's house was a no-go: nothing to search, no witnesses to the meeting. It was the safest place Cameron could be.

“You didn't go to him.”

“No.”

“Where was Mr. Cameron at the time of your call?”

“I don't know.”

“He didn't say?”

“I didn't ask.”

Klein turned to Judge Martin. “I would like Mr. Quinn to be reminded that lying under oath is perjury, Your Honor.”

“You just have, Miss Klein. Do you know something we don't?” Judge Martin asked her.

“No, Judge.”

“Then keep it moving. Mr. Quinn knows exactly what will happen to him if he lies in my courtroom.”

Klein nodded. “Did you go straight home after the identification?”

“Yes.”

“How long did it take you to get there?”

“About twenty-five minutes.”

“How long after your call did Cameron arrive at your house?”

“About an hour and a half later.”

“Where do you live, Mr. Quinn?”

“Seward Park.”

“So, it is reasonable to assume that wherever Mr. Cameron was at the time you called, he was within an hour and a half of Seward Park.”

“Yes. Then again, maybe he stopped for gas, he might have hit traffic—I don't know.”

“Sure, that's reasonable,” she said. “When he arrived at your house, what happened then?”

“Your Honor”—Quinn turned to the judge—“we are getting away from the communication initiated by me for a personal purpose and into privileged information.”

“We're not quite there yet, Mr. Quinn. You may answer the question.”

“I told him about the murders,” he replied to the prosecutor.