Traffic in town was definitely busier than it had been since the detectives arrived the previous day. People walked down Main Street with a definite purpose, almost hurrying toward the square. They were coming with candles and flowers. Some carried small stuffed animals. Children, he had taken care of children.
Madison was surprised by how familiar the place felt after having been there for barely twenty-four hours. Some of the faces she had seen in the diner, others she had walked past once or twice. In a group she recognized the woman she had bumped into at the pharmacy earlier that morning.
The weather was on their side: cold but clear, the sun as high as it would get on that late February day, and the air was still.
It was a vigil and it would also be another occasion for an appeal for information—it had been decided that Chief Sangster would do it. Madison felt a rush of unease without knowing why; she watched as the crowd gathered in the open space, and something inside her bristled.
Lee Edwards stepped out into her backyard. It was time to go to the square, but she wanted to try one more time.
She took a deep breath and hollered. “Tucker!” She waited a few seconds. “Tuckeeeeeeer! Here, boy!”
There was no movement around the shrubs or by the trees, and it was the darndest thing. Tucker would never leave; he just wasn’t that kind of dog. He wasn’t one of those fancy huskies who—soon as you let them off the leash—run off to join the wild packs and you never see them again. No, her Tucker was a sweet dog who stayed close to home.
She called out again, but there was no answer, and Lee Edwards felt that the weight on her heart, not knowing where her darling boy was, would never lift. She was in her late sixties, her grandkids lived in South Carolina, and that little dog meant the world to her.
She went back inside and her husband, Ty, gave her a brief hug. They left the house for the short drive and all along the road she looked out for the poodle.
When Madison and Sorensen widened the perimeter around the car crime scene, they had made it difficult for the locals to have a place where they could leave their tokens of remembrance and sadness in the mourning of their doctor. The gazebo in the town square had filled that need, and since Madison had walked past it that morning, flowers, candles, and notes had been left on the gazebo’s steps and all around it. A trestle table had been set up on one side and volunteers were handing out coffee and hot chocolate to the milling crowd from large metal pots. The mood was muted, the talk was hushed.
Chief Sangster had briefed his deputies and the Seattle investigators in his office and they all knew what they were doing: six of them in all to keep an eye on a crowd of a few hundred, and people kept arriving.
Brown and the chief would be by the gazebo, with the mayor and the family, while Madison, Sorensen, and the deputies would mix with the crowd. Both Madison and Sorensen had checked their cameras and were already taking discreet pictures.
“Do you think he will come?” Kupitz asked Sorensen.
“I think it’s likely. Not a certainty, but a definite possibility.”
“What . . . what do you want me to look out for?” he whispered, as if Sorensen was now the highest authority in his own private hierarchy and the chief’s instructions were important but secondary to hers.
Sorensen hadn’t missed this. “Do what the chief said,” she replied. “Look out for anything that feels wrong to you, and especially if you see any lone strangers.”
Kupitz nodded and went off.
Sorensen looked around: too many people and too few warm bodies to cover them. Just then the crowd parted and she saw a woman with a baby in her arms and two young children by her side. They walked by the flowers without seeing them; there was no question about who they were.
Randall Gibson, the mayor of Ludlow, had replaced his bright red parka for a subdued smart black coat. When he tapped on the microphone that had been set up in the gazebo, the crowd moved closer. They want to hear, sure, Madison thought—unlike the deputies this was not her first vigil—but they want to look just as much.
She stepped to the side, out of the main body of the crowd, sweeping her eyes over the faces turned to the mayor: four hundred people, maybe more. As Randall Gibson began to speak, the silence in the square was a heavy, tangible object pressing down on all of them. She saw Dr. Lynch with someone who could have been his wife; she saw the lady from the diner; and Polly, the chief’s secretary, her gray hair tightly permed and her hands busy with a handkerchief.
“We are here today. . . ,” Gibson started.
But Madison was not listening to him. She was looking for something, anything, that would catch her attention, and she knew that Sorensen, on the other side of the crowd, was doing the same.
Kevin Brown didn’t really want to listen to the mayor, and he sensed that the small, dapper man in the black coat would have been quite happy to do all of the talking during the event.
Brown’s main concern was the crowd: How many of them were there? Three, no, at least four hundred. Inside the gazebo they were a few feet higher than the ground, and as much as Brown hated being on show, it gave him a far better view of the square. He went into a sequence: his eyes searched for Madison and then Sorensen, then he scanned the first few rows of watchers, checked the position of the deputies, scanned the back rows of onlookers, and went back to Madison.
Brown hoped for something unequivocal, like a crazy stranger who would begin to rant about doctors and medical insurance—someone they could cuff on the spot and interview at leisure in the police station. Then again, he doubted they—or the town—would be that lucky.
Alice Madison was vaguely aware that the mayor was talking about Robert Dennen and how much the town owed him. And yet, like a hunter, her attention stayed fixed on the mourners. A look, a gesture, a smile at an inappropriate moment, body language that spoke of unease, of repressed anger: the list went on and on—though when it came down to it, it meant that Madison had to follow her gut and question anything that felt out of step with the event.
Her gut, Madison considered, was clenched hard, and as the crowd stepped forward to hear the mayor’s words more clearly, she understood why: if there were 450 people at the vigil, it was more than two-thirds of the whole town’s population in one place at the same time. She wasn’t sure why this should be a concern, but there it was. Nothing like this ever happened in Seattle, where even CenturyLink Field could seat only 67,000 in a town with ten times that number of residents.
Madison observed and took note. Most of the people present had dressed in similar fashion: a lot of dark colors, coats, baseball caps, and woolen hats, many hooded tops under jackets, and boots. The age range covered all generations. It made for a homogeneous mass that Madison was finding difficult to keep distinct.
Some stared at her, some glanced and looked away. Her Seattle PD gold badge was on a thin chain around her neck. They knew who she was and it was a good thing. She wanted to be visible. If anybody was nervous about Madison watching the crowd, she wanted to see it in their eyes.
The mayor had moved on to the values held dear in the heart of our community, and Madison moved down the side of the throng, taking pictures on a small camera that fit neatly in one hand. A woman with a toddler in her arms was weeping silently as she bounced the little girl. A couple of teenage boys in the back pushed each other and giggled. Someone threw them a harsh look and they fell silent.
Betty Dennen was not going to speak. Madison had seen the lost, haunted look of someone still deeply in shock too many times to count, and she was pleased to see that the widow had her family and friends around her. She would have found it hard to breathe, let alone to speak coherently, in front of a crowd. Mostly she just sat—thank God someone had organized chairs—and nodded.
The crowd stirred, and from the front a group of teenagers stepped out and lined up by the bunches of flowers. It was the Ludlow Goldfinch Choir and their voices rang out in the square. They sang John Lennon’s “Imagine” a cappella, and they sang it with more emotion than talent. Though they wouldn’t make it onto Glee, Madison felt a knot in her throat: they were singing for a man who had lived and died among them.
A movement to her right and Madison was suddenly aware of the camera operator filming. No prizes for guessing who’d end up in the news—the dull mayor or the cute kids singing.
“What’s going on?” a voice said to her, and she turned.
An older man fixed her with a piercing glare and repeated his question. “What’s going on? You’re one of the Seattle detectives, right?”
“Yes, sir, I am.”
“Nobody’s telling us anything. The local news is useless and all we know is that there was a fire and the doctor was found dead in his car.”
“Yes, he was.” Madison’s eyes shifted between the man in front of her and the people behind him. The last thing she wanted was to talk to him.
“Well?” He was getting into his stride. “It’s been two days already. What’s going on? The chief is usually really up front and straight up, and that’s why we like him around here, but he’s told us diddly-squat about this and the community is feeling . . .”
Madison would never find out what the community was feeling. The song was coming to an end and Chief Sangster moved to the microphone to speak.
“Here you go,” she told the man. “I think you should listen to the chief, sir. Pardon me,” and she moved off.
A small crackle in her earpiece and Deputy Kupitz’s voice whispered, “I see someone.”
“Where are you, Koop?” Hockley replied through the static.
Madison stood on tiptoes to look around.
“I’m Chief Will Sangster, y’all know me, and I have the privilege to serve this town . . .”
“I’m at the back of the crowd,” Kupitz said, “and I’m looking at a guy I’ve never seen before—”
“Details, Koop,” Sorensen cut in.
“About late teens, early twenties. Five ten. Dark clothes, black hood, and a baseball cap. I’ve never seen him before, and he looks real squirrelly.”
“Where is he?” Madison said as she turned left and right.
“Edge of the crowd, by the TV station’s van.”
“When something like this happens,” Chief Sangster said, “you need to know that we are doing everything possible . . .”
“I see him,” Hockley said.
It occurred to Madison that she could have been standing right next to the guy and she wouldn’t have known: she could very well spot a liar and a crook, but she didn’t know the faces of all the town’s residents like the deputies did. There was no point in trying to push her way through, so she rushed around on the outside of the crowd to get to Hockley. A few turned but most were listening to the chief—the mayor had given them the values held dear, but the chief was a decent man and they might finally get some facts instead of all the rumors that had been flying around in the Tavern and the Magpie Diner.
Brown had heard the exchange in his earpiece and noticed Madison was on the move. He kept his gaze on the van and on the young deputy near it. He stayed where he was, even if he’d rather be among them. Slowly, approach him slowly and carefully. Be polite but watch his hands.
Madison saw the van and headed for it. She spotted Sorensen and Kupitz with Hockley, arriving from the other side. They all converged on the side of the truck. The lettering on the doors read “KSKD IS THE NEWS,” which, even in the urgency of the moment, Madison thought made no sense.
Kupitz nodded toward a group. There he was: a young man, his eyes fixed on the family in the gazebo. His hands were in the pockets of his hooded top and he was balancing on the balls of his feet. A second later he took his cell phone out, checked the screen, and then the hand went back into the pocket. He did that every few seconds. His hood was up and his narrow eyes searched the crowd.
“You don’t know him?” Sorensen said.
“Never seen him before,” Kupitz replied. “You?”
Hockley shook his head.
They had agreed on a procedure at the briefing: the deputies wore the local uniform and represented the local law enforcement agency . . . they would approach any individual they wanted to check out. And Madison and Sorensen would back them up.
Hockley stepped forward. “Sir?” he said to the young man. “May I have a word?”
The young man turned. “What?”
“I’d like a word, sir.”
He had stubble on his chin and his eyes were red rimmed. Madison could smell the stale cigarette stench of his clothes from where she was standing. There might have been some marijuana in that reek too.
“What?” he repeated.
He didn’t seem any more dangerous than a campus kid after a really long night with a keg. They were looking for a murderer and the worst this kid had likely ever done was some drunk texting after too many shots. Madison’s main focus went back to the crowd.
“Would you—?”
But Hockley was cut short by a large man in a parka who had stepped up to the young man and eyed Hockley with mock suspicion. “What’s he done now, Hock?” he said.
“Hey, Walt,” Hockley said. “Do you know this young man? We’re keeping an eye out for strangers. You know how it is.”
“I know how it is. He’s my nephew. Got here last night from Spokane for a visit.”
The young man nodded.
“Thanks, Walt.” Then he added to the nephew, “Thanks for your cooperation, sir.”
“Walt’s my neighbor,” the deputy said as the two men walked away. “If he says the guy’s his nephew, he’s his nephew.”
“His nephew stinks of pot,” Kupitz said, embarrassed for his bad call.
Brown saw the young man being led away by a larger man and the deputies’ frowns. To Brown the guy looked like a stoner who had turned up at the wrong party.
Chief Sangster was still talking, and Brown tuned in for a moment.
“. . . this is a safe town and we’re going to keep it that way . . .”
He tuned out again.
In a few minutes the mob would disperse and the Tavern and the diner would reap good business. Maybe even the bakery. The sky was still clear, and there was nothing like a morning pastry after a brush with someone else’s grief.
Madison caught the last words of Chief Sangster’s speech—something about the police station’s telephone number and his own private line. In the middle of the crowd a child let out a shriek and Madison flinched.
The choir started a new song, something uplifting that Madison didn’t know and didn’t much care about. She was eager for the vigil to end, for the crowd to break up, and for everybody to go back home. Madison, who had never been claustrophobic in her life, for some reason couldn’t wait to get the hell away.
She was moving back toward her previous position as she watched people take pictures of the singers, but a sound kept intruding into her consciousness. The child shrieked again and Madison flinched. It was a sharp wail and it cut through everything else—except for that sound, still there, still tugging at her attention.
What now?
It was a dog. A dog was barking, somewhere behind them—close by, but out of sight. It had been barking for a few minutes and it was becoming more and more upset—a small dog by the sound of it. Others had noticed it and had turned away from the choir, craning their necks. A couple were walking fast toward the other end of the square and Madison picked up something in their gait, something in their hurrying that felt like panic, and she followed.
The footpath lined the end of the square, and beyond it rushed the stream that Madison had seen that morning. On the other side a steep bank rose to the forest, the firs so close that hardly any light filtered to the ground.
Madison caught up with the couple on the footpath. They were somewhere in their late sixties, and the woman was leaning forward against the railing.
“It’s Tucker! That’s our dog!”
A small brown poodle was on a leash, tied to a tree on the top of the bank, on the other side of the stream. The dog had seen them and was dancing in a frenzy of happiness, yapping and whimpering and straining against the collar.
“That’s my dog,” the woman said to Madison, as if that explained everything. And Madison remembered her in the police station the previous night. Eagle bait.
“Stay here, hon,” the husband said. “I’ll go to the bridge.”
“We had lost him, see?” the woman said. “And I told the chief.”
“It’s okay, sweetheart, I’ll go get him.”
Madison looked at the dog, and from somewhere the image of a goat on a tether came to her. Eagle bait.
A handful of people had joined them and Madison heard someone behind her say, “We can’t cross here, we need to—”
The first pop was like a firecracker, and it hissed close to her ear.
The second found its target next to her.
A muzzle flash flared between the trees, and the third pop flew above her head as Madison grabbed the woman and dropped to the ground on top of her.
“Shots fired! Shots fired!” she yelled into her radio as the fourth pop landed somewhere to her right.
The railing was metal bars screwed into the ground and afforded no protection at all: the shooter was in the woods above them, and they had nowhere to run.
Madison struggled to understand what was happening, but her training kicked in. She was crouching and shooting before she even realized what she was doing. She had seen the muzzle flash in the gloom under the trees and that’s where she aimed, sweeping the area around it, covering anybody who was trying to run away from the sniper and emptying her magazine into the woods. Her chest had been punched by the adrenaline spike and it was hard to draw breath and think straight.
Let them get away, let them get away.
Her ears rang and buzzed and her hands automatically ejected the spent mag—quickly, without thinking, because thinking makes you slower and slower makes you dead—body memory at work, she reached for the new mag in her belt, clicked it into place and was about to start shooting again when she stilled and breathed. Breathed and listened. All around her the square was quiet and only the elderly couple remained next to her; everyone else who had been near them had vanished.
Madison lifted her Glock toward the woods—her hands were shaking. The woman lay curled up at her feet. Madison kept her eyes on the line of trees. “Ma’am, are you shot? Are you shot, ma’am?” she said.
The lady shook her head. Next to her on the ground her husband lay on his back: he had been shot four times in the chest, a tight grouping that would make any sniper proud.
Across the bank the dog was barking, struggling to free itself, miraculously unhurt.
Brown watched Madison veer away and hurry in the opposite direction from the gazebo. He narrowed his eyes. She had definitely seen something and two people ahead of her were in a serious rush.
Brown saw them arrive at the bottom of the square, and saw the woman point at something. Others had joined them now.
The first crack was a distant pop that didn’t mean much to the crowd in front of him. He heard the second and the third, and he knew it—even before Madison’s voice burst through his earpiece. He bit his lip and tasted blood.
“Shots fired! Shots fired!”
The choir kids were still singing as Brown grabbed Sangster’s arm. “Clear the square. Now!” he said. And then he ran.
How long was the square? How long would it take him to cross it?
There was an explosion of noise on the radio as the chief issued his orders.