The silence in Judge Martin’s chambers pushed against the small group gathered there. Spencer and Dunne were next to each other at the back, Lieutenant Fynn and Sarah Klein in front and by the desk. Madison stood to one side; in her pocket her hand was tight around her cell phone, willing Sorensen to call back with the result of the DNA test. They all waited on the judge as she read through the warrant’s application, her fountain pen already in hand.
Somewhere to Madison’s left, away from the others, Nathan Quinn had watched them file in together, his face betraying no emotion as the judge prepared to lift the warrant for John Cameron’s arrest and issue one for Salinger’s. Madison had felt a single sting of guilt remembering their exchange earlier that day; she had swiftly suppressed it and reminded herself that the man had, maybe even there in his Italian leather briefcase, the means to yank her out of the only place she had ever wanted to be, should he wish to, now that she was no longer the only other person on the face of the planet believing in his client’s innocence. Quinn seemed entirely unaware of her presence or anybody else’s.
“A lesser man might indulge in a small amount of gloating, Nathan,” Judge Martin said as she signed the warrant, “considering that last Thursday we were all ready to throw your attorney-client privilege to the dogs.”
“With what I had, I’d do the same today, Your Honor,” Sarah Klein interjected.
“With what you had, you’d have the same results, Miss Klein,” the judge replied. “Lieutenant, what are the chances of locating Mr. Salinger with more success than you had with Mr. Cameron?”
“We have just started looking, Your Honor. His last known address has been vacant since he went to jail; after his probation was done, he went to ground. He has no family and no ties to the city. We don’t even know for sure that he’s still in Washington State.”
“He’s still here,” Nathan Quinn said. “Someone tipped you off about the boat. It wasn’t the Kitsap County Tourist Board.”
“It was an anonymous tip on the hotline from a public phone in Poulsbo Harbor,” Fynn continued. “The area is not covered by any CCTV. We have local officers canvassing the shops, but I’m not holding my breath. He has had a lot of time to set this up; he’s not going to get sloppy now.”
“What’s our best chance?” Judge Martin replaced the cap on the fountain pen.
“Blanket coverage. We put Salinger’s face everywhere from Seattle to the Florida Keys. We build a profile, and we keep looking until we find him. This thing is hours old—we still barely know the man.”
“That should make you happy, Nathan. Your client is now only the second most wanted.”
Quinn did not reply.
“Are we done here?” Judge Martin extended the warrant for Salinger’s arrest to Fynn.
Madison’s cell started vibrating, and she took the call.
“Yes. Thank you. We are there right now.” Madison flipped her phone shut. “The small amount of coagulated blood found on the Sinclair crime scene matches the basic markers of DNA we have for Salinger. He was there. He shot them, and he shot Brown with the same .22.”
It was a start. The group moved to leave.
“Detective Madison, Nathan, a word if you please.” The judge waited until they were alone. “I am not entirely sure that I understand the sequence of events that brought Harry Salinger’s name to our attention, but my gut is telling me that there were a number of conversations and actions that your superiors were not in any way aware of, Detective. And you, Nathan, have done everything in your power to aid that line of inquiry. Now, I’m all for this—shall we call it—strained and unwanted cooperation if it leads to the arrest of a wanted felon. However, if anything you do on my watch forces me to throw out the prosecution’s case because you have a partner in ICU and you have a client with blood on his hands, were I in your place, I’d just pack up and move to another state—better still, make it the other side of the country.”
Judge Martin slipped on her navy coat and tied a silk scarf around her neck, the light blue pattern doing nothing to soften the steel in her voice. “That’s all. Have a lovely evening.”
Alice Madison and Nathan Quinn left the chambers. They managed the ride down in the elevator without exchanging a word, and it was only as they reached the main entrance that Madison turned to Quinn.
“Am I right in assuming that Cameron has already asked you to leave the city for a while?”
“He might have.”
“It’s good advice. Salinger’s face will be everywhere in a matter of hours. He still wants to get to Cameron, and you’re close enough to him to be in as much danger as the Sinclairs were. The Thirteen Days thing might get shortened to thirteen hours if he feels hounded and under pressure. And, believe me, he will feel hounded and under pressure.”
“You don’t know what he wants.”
“He wants to destroy Cameron, and he almost succeeded.”
Nathan Quinn thought of the notes on the heavy cream paper. 82885.
“I wish it were that simple,” he replied. “I wasn’t the one he went after last week. You are as much of a target as I am.”
“I am alive because he let me be. I don’t say this lightly—he could have had us both if that was what he wanted. He’s not going to come after me again, whatever his reasons and his plans. You are the only person on the planet who is seemingly able to contact John Cameron, and he is the only one who might have any idea why any of this is happening. I need to talk to him, and I need you to tell him that.”
There were shadows under Quinn’s eyes, and under the harsh public-building lighting Madison could see just how pale he was.
“You are very frank, Detective. Your thoughts seem to just flow out without much consideration for circumstance or propriety. If I put you in a room with John Cameron, both of you curiously unencumbered by the slightest regard for consequence, what are the chances that you will say something, he will say something, and fifteen other open cases from here to LA will suddenly come into play? How many people will read every word of your report, pore over the details, look for admissions and confessions and every scrap of information they can scavenge? And you, won’t you be looking for a little of that currency yourself?”
“There will be no report. I’ll take notes, and they will be for me alone. It will be in a place of your choice, and you can check that I will not be wearing a wire. This is what I’m interested in—Salinger and the Sinclairs’ murder and my partner’s shooting. The rest is for another day. I’m not saying I will not investigate other cases to the best of my abilities and hunt Cameron down with everything I have, should it come to that. But, right now, this is what I have—Salinger and the Sinclairs and my partner. The rest is not my business, not today.”
“Do you know what you’re asking me?”
“I’m asking you to trust me, while we are doing this in the name of people you cared for and in the name of a man I would gladly trade places with.”
Quinn’s eyes glittered with something akin to humor—Madison didn’t know him well enough to be sure.
“How much is it costing you to ask me for this, this tiny little thing, given the recent history of our acquaintance?”
“More than you’ll ever know,” Madison admitted. The time to be coy had come and gone.
“I can believe that.”
“We’re on the clock, and this has to happen as soon as possible.”
“And here you are, asking me to barter the future of my client and put my trust in someone whose career I could put a final stop to with one phone call—someone who despises what I do and how I do it.”
Madison had no answer to that; she held his burning gaze for as long as he held hers. The things she had said would not be taken back, and an apology would be tacky and insincere. On the other hand, what he’d do with the tape was not something she could let herself think about too much.
“I would still make the call, Quinn, even knowing what I know now. Do with it what you like.”
Madison had no doubt she was being measured by parameters she couldn’t possibly fathom, and that might prove to be a good thing in the long run. She was aware of others walking around them, footsteps on the marble floors and voices and snatches of conversations. Still, Quinn held her eyes.
“You gave me George Pathune. You knew I would do what I had to do. Let me finish this,” she said.
“I’ll think about it.”
“No report, no wire, and you can chaperone the hell out of the meeting.”
“I’d expect nothing less.”
“Remember the thirteen days. Definitively not more, probably much less.”
He looked away then, and the icy draft from the open doors suddenly found her.
“I’ll think about it,” he said again.
Quinn walked out into the early evening, his coat whipping around him. Madison felt winded, like after a particularly hard run. She hoped she had done enough, said enough, tried hard enough. There was no way to predict what Quinn would do, and she had to prepare herself to go forward without the benefit of an audience with his precious client. She felt coarse, like a tool too blunt to do a piece of work that required a subtle edge and a nimble hand.
Fuck it, she thought. The shortest prayer in the world indeed. Madison screwed up her eyes as she walked outside and into the bitter wind.
Lieutenant Fynn beckoned Madison into his office as she walked into the detectives’ room. He closed the door and shrugged on his jacket.
“I’m on my way to the press conference. Joy. What did the judge want with you and Quinn?”
“She was wondering why Quinn hadn’t contested the warrant straightaway. She thought there might have been some quid pro quo between us and wanted to make sure we knew that if she had to throw out the prosecution’s case against Salinger—because of something I did for Brown or Cameron or the Sinclairs—she’d have our skin. The message was direct and to the point.”
“You might want to have it tattooed on the palm of your hand and read it every hour on the hour.”
“I think I got it, sir.”
“Good. The ME called, but I just don’t have time to get back to him. Check in with Dr. Fellman, will you?”
Fynn was already halfway out of the door.
“Lieutenant, I asked Quinn to arrange a meeting with Cameron. He might know something, anything, that could help.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he’d think about it.”
“What do you say?”
“I honestly don’t know. Quinn is . . .” Madison struggled to find the thread of that image.“He’s unpredictable. He hates the idea of the meeting, but he might see the point of it if it gets Salinger off the street before he gets to his client, or vice versa.”
“Why would Cameron have any interest in talking to you about anything?”
“I went a few rounds with Salinger. Cameron will want to know about that.”
Fynn considered it for a moment. “You don’t really think it’s going to happen, do you?”
“No way. Hell freezing over and all that,” Madison replied. “I’ll let you know about Fellman.”
At her desk, Madison looked at Brown’s empty chair and neat work surface for a few minutes as she gathered herself. She had no ego about this: if the meeting was going to happen, it should have been Brown who would meet John Cameron. He had years in Homicide; she had five weeks. She’d check in with Fellman and then call Fred Kamen in Quantico: in the extremely unlikely event that Quinn agreed to it, and if, even more unlikely, Cameron agreed to meet someone who had chased him through French doors, she should be as ready as possible. A good point: how do you prepare to meet an alleged murderer? She dialed the ME’s number. Speak softly and carry a big instrument designed to measure unobserved constructs. Psych/Criminology student humor.
“I need to show you something. What’s your e-mail address?” Dr. Fellman sounded as if he’d had a very long day. Madison gave him the address.
“I need to ask you,” he continued, “are you at your desk, and is it private? No members of the public coming and going behind you?”
“It’s very private, Doctor. We set up here for that reason.” Something cold started to coil itself around Madison’s insides. “Why do you ask?”
“The trooper who found the second body lost his breakfast at the scene. I have seen you at autopsies before, but this is not for anybody to walk in on unprepared.”
“All right.”
“I’m sending you two sets of pictures. I’ll take you through them as you open the files.”
“Got them.” Madison’s hand hovered for less than a second over the key, a fresh new hell about to unfold. She pressed the key and opened the file.
She sat back in her chair and blinked once, slowly.
“What—” Her voice caught. “What am I looking at, Doctor?” Please don’t say it’s a human being.
“Unidentified set of human remains. The first of two. Both found in Pierce County in the last three weeks.”
Madison gulped down a sip from a bottle of water in her bag. It was lukewarm.
“Is it an animal attack?”
“We wish. What do you see?”
“Massive tissue damage, deep cuts all over the body, especially the chest. Blood loss would have been fatal, and internal organs would have been affected, too.”
“That’s the least damaged of the bodies. Open the other file.”
Madison did. When she hadn’t spoken for a while, Fellman’s voice came back as if from a great distance.
“Detective.?”
“I’m here.”
“You’re looking at the second set of unidentified human remains. Actually, this John Doe was found first, but he died after the other. Both men were killed in the last five weeks, give or take a few days; they were left outdoors, and if it had been summer, the injuries would have been almost impossible to read due to postmortem insect activity. The cold weather worked in our favor for once.”
“What did this?”
“The Pierce County ME thought animal attack until the second body turned up and he realized the pattern of injuries was identical on both remains. In the case of the first man to die, the victim had a very specific pattern of cuts, but he actually died of a gunshot wound to the head. In the case of the second man, the victim has the same pattern of cuts, except his are much more extensive, and there are new ones that don’t appear in the first body. He died of shock and blood loss. Detective—”
“I’m here.”
“A person could not have easily duplicated these particular injuries from one victim to the other. Someone has constructed something that does it, some kind of mechanical device, and the person who is locked in has no choice but to go forward, and that’s what creates the injuries. Steel blades, most likely.”
“What do you mean, go forward?”
“From the depth and the slant of the injuries, we think the men were forced to physically go through this mechanism. They had to crawl through it with a gun to their heads; no one in their right mind would do it voluntarily. And that’s why the cuts are lengthwise on the bodies. The first man to die couldn’t do it and was rewarded with a gunshot wound to the temple; the second man went farther, but the damage was too grave, and he died of his injuries.”
Madison eyed the photographs, trying to understand and visualize, then abruptly trying not to.
“It’s a box, some kind of cage?”
“Maybe. It’s still very much guesswork.”
The slimy, cold feeling inside her coiled itself tighter.
“Doctor, why did the Pierce County ME call you?”
The pause was only a moment, but Madison knew it before he said it.
“There was a piece of glass embedded inside each man in one of the chest injuries, close to the heart. It couldn’t have ended in there by chance and not in the same place for both men. The glass matches the kind of glass we found Cameron’s print on in the Sinclairs’ kitchen; it comes from an identical tumbler. The first John Doe was shot with a .22, no casings to match, but it could be the same weapon that shot James Sinclair and Kevin Brown.”
Salinger.
“The men are not on the local missing persons lists?” Madison found herself speaking while her brain was trying to absorb what she was seeing, her voice steady while her mind stuttered.
“No, homeless probably, picked up somewhere discreetly, wouldn’t have been reported missing by anybody who knew them.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
Madison clicked on the files, and the pictures were gone. Spencer’s knock on the door startled her.
“The press conference went well. Fynn is on his way back, Salinger is all over the news, and—”
“Get Dunne, please,” Madison interrupted him. “I need to tell you something. Both of you. I need to tell you right now.”
The drive home had been awkward: her arm was not cooperating, and Madison had decided not to take any painkillers until after she had spoken with Fred Kamen.
Earlier she had sat Dunne and Spencer down and explained what Dr. Fellman had told her. She had done her level best to describe what they were about to see, and they had listened without interruption. Maybe her description would be enough to lessen the impact of the actual pictures. Probably not.
Madison had clicked on the icon and opened the files. Neither man had made a sound. After the longest time Dunne stood up. “Okay.”
Nobody had said it, but everyone was thinking it: Thirteen Days. What they were looking at were pictures of the rehearsals.
Back in her house, Madison lit a fire in the hearth and gave herself a moment of healing warmth. She hoped Fred Kamen was in the mood for grim, because she was fresh out of everything else.
“Mr. Kamen, I’m sorry it’s so late.”
“I did say day or night, and I meant it.” Kamen sounded as if he was still in his office. It must have been near midnight in Virginia. “I saw the news: you had a good day.”
“Yes and no, actually.”
She told him about their brief victory with the Salinger warrant and the horror of the John Does from Pierce County.
“I’d like to see the pictures, if possible.”
“Thank you. Anything you might get from them would be welcome.”
“You think what happened to the John Does is connected to the Thirteen Days message?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“It could be.”
“The victims were not part of the narrative Salinger gave to the reporter, Tully. He wanted to identify them as his own work; hence the glass near the heart. But they were incidental, merely tools to aid his main objective. There might be more we haven’t found yet.”
“Makes sense so far.”
“Sir, I have asked Nathan Quinn to pass on a message to John Cameron. I need to speak with him, and even though there’s barely the shadow of a chance they might agree to it, I need to be prepared.”
“Quinn didn’t say no straight out?”
“No, he said he’d think about it. Which is a partial victory, I suppose, except that we don’t really have time for partial victories here, as the discoveries of the day have pointed out. Cameron is—well, honestly I don’t know what or who he is or how he will deal with a direct conversation on any subject. What I know about him personally I could put on the back of a very small stamp. But for all these years he has followed patterns and been incredibly careful, private, and spectacularly successful at keeping his life in watertight compartments. If he will talk to me, it will only be because he’s curious about Salinger and my encounter with him last week.”
“What do you need from him?”
“He’s the reason Salinger started all this. He must be. Salinger created the illusion of embezzlement perpetrated by Sinclair to taint an innocent man. He created the perception of guilt for the murders of people who were, in fact, Cameron’s only family, forcing Nathan Quinn to defend him for an atrocious act that he, for once, had not committed. If I met Cameron, I might learn more about the man who is trying to destroy him.”
“Are you afraid of him?”
The question surprised her, but her own answer did not.
“No. It wouldn’t be the first time we ran into each other, strictly speaking: we were both on the Sinclair crime scene at the same time one night last week, I followed him, and we ended up in a patch of woods near the house. I tried to speak with him then. I knew he was innocent, and I put my weapon away. If he had meant me any harm, he had his chance then.”
“If you’re asking me whether I can handle being in a room with him, the answer is yes.”
“I asked about fear because I expect you might have some PTSD after you were attacked, and it might affect your judgment.”
It was Madison’s turn to be quiet.
Finally she said, wary of sounding weak and even warier of a levity she did not feel, “I seem to react badly to the smell of chloroform. For the rest, I’m fine.”
Kamen’s voice was kind; he would be a deadly interrogator.
“Just be aware of yourself. He’ll be watching you, and he’ll try to get as much as he can out of you. I imagine he believes he will get to Salinger before you do and before Salinger gets to him. But he hasn’t survived all these years by being overconfident; be honest with him about what it was like to go up against his enemy, and you have nothing to lose. If he thinks you’re lying to him, he’ll have no reason to talk to you. Would Quinn be there?”
“Definitely. He’s the gatekeeper. He’ll make sure Cameron does not incriminate himself on other cases.”
“What about your relationship with Quinn?”
“He wants Salinger caught as much as his client does; he just goes about it in a different way. And his main objective is to protect his friend.”
“Does Quinn trust you?”
“No. He thinks I despise what he does and how he does it.”
“Do you?”
“Sometimes.”
“Again, nothing but the truth with Quinn. He already knows how you feel about them both. Madison, do not ask Cameron anything to do with anything else; none of the other homicides matter at this point. You will be tempted; the conversation might very well go in other directions. He will pick up on your interest, and you might lose the rest of the conversation. If you don’t want to answer a question, say so and why, but don’t be glib. Cameron will probably bait you a little, just to test you. Quinn will not be pleased.”
“That’s not my problem.”
“Detective, whatever it is you haven’t told me about your dealings with Quinn, I hope it won’t get in the way.”
“What—”
“You answered all my questions very directly, including the one on fear. Except for one. What about your relationship with Quinn? You admit he doesn’t trust you, and he knows you despise him. Always a great starting point for any exchange of information. What else?”
Madison closed her eyes. If she lied to Kamen, he would know; if she told him the truth, it could be a disaster. The question was whether his counsel was worth her confidence, whether his experience and support were potentially worth her badge. Quinn was right—she did not care about advancement, but she cared very much about being where she was and doing what she was doing.
“Detective.”
“I’m thinking about it,” she snapped.
Kamen let out a short bark of a laugh. “At least you’re not trying to lie to me.”
“I might be economical with the truth, if I thought I’d get away with it.”
“With all due respect, Detective, it’s past midnight in Virginia. Talk to me or put the phone down. Neither one of us has the time for the cosmetic version. Brown trusts me completely, if that means anything to you.”
“It does.”
Madison told him about the tape. “Quinn said he’d use it to contest the warrant against Cameron if I didn’t get it scrapped in twenty-four hours. I told him to do whatever took his fancy with the tape. Hours later the evidence was in place and the warrant was scrapped. That’s all.”
Kamen sighed. “Quinn holds this over your head, and you tell him to go hang.”
“He’ll do whatever he needs to do. That much I know of him. The rest I’ll find out soon enough.”
“Were he to say, ‘Do this thing or I will take your job away from you,’ what would you do?”
“Look, now that Salinger is the prime suspect, he has no hold over me; the investigation will go on with or without me and—”
“This is not about today. It’s about Nathan Quinn two years from now and you about to charge Cameron with some God-awful felony he will undoubtedly have committed.”
“Frankly, Mr. Kamen, if we’re all alive and able to get into that kind of trouble two years from now, I would consider it a personal victory.”
“No wonder he’s thrilled at the idea of you meeting his client.”
“We both know he’ll never let that happen. The more I think about it—never mind, we’ll just do what we do and find Salinger some other way.”
“Let me know what happens, Detective.”
“I will. Thank you for the advice.”
“They won’t thank you for it, but your call saved a few lives,” he said.
“I’ll probably get a medal.” She was too tired for funny, but she could do wry.
“Madison, don’t allow your lack of professional self-preservation to put a dent in your career. Brown will need a partner when he wakes up.”
“I’ll try to remember that.”
Madison sank into the sofa, leaned back, and closed her eyes. The house was quiet except for the soft noises from the fireplace, a few clicks and pops as the wood shifted and settled in the heat. She could still find comfort in the crackle of a fire, even though her psych degree had explained to her the mechanics of her reactions; she was grateful for that small pleasure.
The sound of the car pulling into the driveway had her on her feet in an instant. Too late for Rachel—she’d call first, anyway. Her left thumb unhooked the safety strap on her piece. The car door slammed shut, a polite gesture from someone not afraid of announcing himself. Madison ran through a list of possibilities, and the worst came first: Brown had died after all, and the news was being delivered in person. She was at the door in an instant, her eye at the peephole.
She yanked the door open. Nathan Quinn stood a few feet away; he made no move toward her.
“Good evening, Detective.”
“Mr. Quinn.”
“You said it should happen as soon as possible.”
“Yes, I did. Are we doing it now?” Madison’s heart pounded; nothing but adrenaline—it would slow down in a minute.
“Yes.”
“Where is he?” Madison looked beyond him, at the car and into the night around the house.
Quinn hesitated. “He’s already here,” he said.
His face was blank, and he still made no move toward her. Madison’s hairs rose against the sleeves of her sweater, and she felt more than heard the presence moving through the room behind her. She turned and looked into the amber eyes of John Cameron, standing easily in the middle of her living room. Tall, dark clothes, no visible weapons, gloved hands in sight, looking straight into her eyes. The fire behind him crackled and hissed.
He was there. He had been there all the time.
With the clarity that comes from being on a very fine edge, Madison realized that how she handled this moment would reflect on the rest of their acquaintance, however long or short that might be, given their situation. What she wanted to do was cold-cock him for breaking into her home; then again, such a threat would likely mean little to this man.
Her voice calm, her hand away from her piece, she said, “Mr. Cameron, I understand that tonight circumstances are what they are, but this is unacceptable. We need to operate with a level of trust for this to work, and your breaking in here is one sure way to blow that trust to hell.” She didn’t grace him with the time to reply, and she turned to Quinn. “Counselor.” She stood aside and let him in.
As she closed the door, Madison knew without a doubt that for sheer surreal value, whatever twists her life might take, this moment would always take the gold.