The Gift of the Darkness Read online

  She was going to need both hands to get over the fence. She put her piece back into the holster and automatically secured the thin leather safety strap on it.

  Madison and Spencer exchanged a look and, without a word, both of them vaulted over the fence and landed quietly on the inside of Cameron’s yard. Weapon in hand and pointed at the ground, Madison crossed the dead grass, keeping close to the edges. In five seconds they had all the entrances and exits covered.

  Now, she said to herself.

  Brown was about to step into the driveway. A car came down the street. He wanted to wait for it to pass. When the car had almost reached them, Brown heard it brake, and he turned toward it. The car stopped.

  A young man in a suit and tie rolled down the window. “Detective Brown?”

  That was really not what he wanted to hear, and he sensed that things were about to go south from there.

  “My name is Benny Craig. I’m from Quinn, Locke. Nathan Quinn sent me. You are about to execute a search warrant on this address. He thought you might want to have these.”

  Benny Craig stepped out of the car and extended his right hand to Brown. A key ring twinkled in the dim light.

  “He said this way you won’t have to break down the door, and he won’t have to fix it.”

  If Benny was smiling at all, Brown couldn’t really tell.

  “May I see your warrant?”

  Brown took the keys and started walking briskly up the drive. “Let’s go.”

  Benny wasn’t finished.

  “There is no alarm, and I am to have the keys back when you’re done.”

  Without pausing, Brown fished out the search warrant from his inside pocket and passed it to Benny Craig. Officers Buchman and Glaiser were not quite sure what was going on or why Brown looked as if he was passing razor blades, but they were not altogether unhappy they wouldn’t have to force the door open.

  “Stay back.” Dunne put his open hand over Benny’s chest and gently pushed him out of the way. He pointed about twenty feet to the left and toward the road. Benny retreated.

  The four police officers all unholstered their weapons. Brown inserted a key in the bottom lock. It turned easily. He tried the top one and felt the door coming open.

  The room was barely lit by the outside glow of the lampposts. They all paused.

  “This is the Seattle Police Department . . .” Brown heard all the right words coming out of his mouth.

  They turned on lights, walked from room to room calling “Clear!” to one another, and checked every space where a person could hide. Dunne opened the garden door and let in Madison and Spencer.

  Benny was now standing by the front door, unsure what to do with himself. Dunne pointed at a bench by the coat rack.

  “Sit. Don’t touch anything.”

  Benny did as he was told.

  Madison snapped her latex gloves on and rested her back against the front door. They were inside.

  Madison had done searches in more places than she could remember: from large houses to one-room shacks to cars people drove around in during the day and slept in at night. Every time she felt she knew more about the person after ten minutes of looking at how they lived than after an hour in the box.

  She had had good teachers, John Douglas at the Academy and Dave Carbone in uniform. She knew the moves and what they wanted out of that warrant. The .22 that had shot the victims would be nice, and any part of the ligatures that had been used to tie them would be pretty welcome, too. Also, any paperwork that could connect Cameron, Sinclair, and any evidence of embezzlement would be gold for the prosecution’s case.

  A search, Douglas used to say, is always about more than what is tangible. It’s not about the one book on the shelf that’s been put back sideways; it’s about the last thing a man was reading before he went out to kill somebody.

  Madison stood stock still. She was aware of the others talking and working out who was going where and wished they would just shut up for one second.

  “What’s up?” Brown asked.

  “I’m trying to see the room without us in it.”

  John Cameron comes home, puts the key in the lock, turns it, and steps in. This is what he sees. This is where he is. He would put his jacket on the coat rack. She ignored Benny Craig. There was a small table with a handsome porcelain dish on it. The keys would go in that. It was empty. The hall opened into a wide and long living room. It had been decorated by Cameron’s parents, quite probably. There were two large sofas and two chairs, upholstered with a discreet flowered pattern that felt both old-fashioned and pleasant. Something her grandparents might have chosen.

  A couple of ceiling-high bookcases stacked with hardbacks and paperbacks. There were small objects in the spaces in front of the books: someone had collected tobacco tins.

  Spencer and Dunne were already at work on the bookcase and the antique rolltop desk in one corner. Madison stood back: the cushions on the sofa and the chairs were puffed and in place. She ran a finger along the table: no dust.

  There was a fireplace at the end of the room, on the mantelpiece only one photograph: a couple in their sixties smiling at the camera. Cameron’s parents. The picture frame was centered. There was a basket on the right side of the fireplace, four pieces of wood neatly stacked in it. A scent of vanilla from dried petals in a dish on the coffee table.

  Madison had a feeling that if she opened the fridge, she would find fresh milk.

  “Guys,” she said.

  They all turned, and she pointed. On a corner table, a tall glass vase. In the vase, a bunch of white lilies. There were tiny drops of water on the leaves. At the bottom of the vase the powdery residue of flower food had not yet dispersed. He had been there, not even hours before them.

  “Sweet,” Spencer said.

  “Tell me about the witness at the Sinclair house,” Brown said to him.

  “Neighbor in the house opposite came home from a party about two thirty a.m. An office party, by the way, but he was the designated driver—”

  “Thank you, God.”

  “He happened to glance at the Sinclairs’ house and noticed the pickup parked at the top of the drive. Nothing else, just the truck.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Solid witness. He’ll be fine in court.”

  Madison found the kitchen. Cameron’s father had been the chef of the restaurant, and the kitchen reflected the taste of people who knew about food.

  It was larger than average: cupboards and glass-fronted cabinets along two walls and a vast preparation island in the middle. Saucepans hung from hooks on one side, and on the other stood a professional metal stove with two ovens and six burners.

  Madison could not resist and opened the fridge. It was clean and empty. No milk, no eggs, no leftovers of any kind. She opened the freezer: a single carton of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey. She smiled for no real reason. Maybe it was just that the ice cream brought John Cameron a little closer to human. Madison closed the freezer door and looked around the surfaces: there were ladles and spoons in tall, slim canisters.

  She heard Brown behind her.

  “No knives yet,” she said without turning.

  Madison opened and closed drawers until she found what she was looking for: cutlery.

  “Cameron’s father was the chef of The Rock. Knives are pretty important to a chef, but there’s only one photograph on the mantelpiece and no chef’s knives in the kitchen.”

  She slid the drawer shut with a rattle of the metal inside.

  “We are not going to find anything personal here,” she said. “He’s emptied the place. He’s got another nest somewhere with all the stuff that should be here but isn’t. Family photographs and his father’s knives.”

  “You’re cheering me right up.”

  “Sorry,” she said as she checked every cupboard and cabinet.

  “Saltzman called. He found nothing in the tax lawyer’s files. He’s going back tomorrow.”

  Brown delivered good ne
ws and bad news in the same steady voice. Madison saw his pale blue gaze drift unfocused over the room.

  “Oh, and the truck is not in the garage.”

  “What’s in the garage?” Madison asked.

  “Absolutely nothing. I’m going upstairs.”

  Just as he was leaving the room, the first unmistakable bars of The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go” filled the air.

  “Dunne’s ‘get to know your perp’ theory,” he said.

  Madison peeked into the living room: Spencer was running his hands around the sofa cushions, and Dunne was shining a slim flashlight at the space between the bookcase and the wall. Both of them were engrossed in their work.

  From the outside it must have looked like some kind of party, lights blazing and The Clash blasting through the speakers. Benny Craig shifted uncomfortably on the bench and, for the first time, appeared seriously concerned.

  Madison finished in the kitchen. Her steps creaked on the stairs. The landing opened onto three rooms and a bathroom. Brown was in what seemed to be the study. He sat behind the desk and was cleaning his glasses with his handkerchief.

  “Your folks have your graduation picture on the wall?”

  “Sure,” Madison said.

  “Well, looks like our boy is pretty touchy about getting snapped.”

  The walls were bare except for three mountain landscapes. Madison thought of David Quinn’s funeral photos.

  As the music found its way to them, they worked the room together. The Camerons’ life was summed up in utility bills and receipts and fifteen-year-old correspondence with relatives in Scotland.

  By the time they were done, the others were in the parents’ bedroom, where the shoeboxes in the closet contained only shoes.

  The door to what had to be Cameron’s room was shut. Madison put her hand on the knob. Brown, Spencer, and Dunne were behind her, as if one of the uniformed officers hadn’t already checked and cleared it.

  She pushed the door open. Slowly, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

  Bright red blankets covered bunk beds; Mariners and Sonics banners were pinned to the walls, clashing with the delicate pattern of the wallpaper. In the bookcase, sci-fi paperbacks and encyclopedias. A pile of schoolbooks lay in disarray on the desk, and a green windbreaker was draped on the back of the chair. Hung from the ceiling, a model airplane swayed gently. A terrycloth robe was on a hook behind the door. A pair of worn sneakers were half visible under the bed, their laces tangled and mud on the white leather sides. A boy’s room.

  Dunne exhaled.

  “Okay,” Brown said.

  “Okay,” Madison replied, and they walked in.

  They stood for a moment in the middle of the room. Brown ducked to avoid the airplane.

  “Closet.” Madison started on the top shelf, keen to get busy.

  Brown went to the desk and flipped through the pages of every book in the pile.

  There weren’t many clothes hanging in the closet, but those present wouldn’t have been worn by an adult. Madison ran her hands over denim jackets and polo shirts, most of which demonstrated an obvious preference for the color blue, and considered that, at most, Cameron had stopped wearing them in his late teens. There was a red high school warm-up jacket with yellow sleeves, a smaller size than most of the other items. Perhaps he had stopped caring about school games after that. Madison didn’t know whether he’d gone to college or whether that mattered anyway.

  A baseball bat with a leather mitt, the ball still cradled in the pouch, was in a corner behind the clothes. Madison picked up the bat and held it with two hands as a batter would; she angled it and looked at its clean lines. It never ceased to amaze her how good the weight of an ash bat felt in her arms, the swing almost slipping off her, right to left.

  Something caught her eye: the wood was unblemished and well taken care of except for one small mark. A sliver of something no thicker than a human fingernail was embedded pretty much dead on the spot where you would expect to hit the ball. She ran her finger over it; even through her glove she could feel the smoothness of the wood. Whatever it was, it was in so deep, you wouldn’t know it was there unless you were looking for it.

  “Can you see a magnifying glass anywhere?” she asked Brown.

  It was standard equipment for any kid who, at some point or other, would try to use it to burn a hole in something. There had to be one somewhere.

  “Here.” It was in a china mug with an assortment of pens and pencils. Brown handed it to her. “What have you got?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Madison turned on the Anglepoise lamp on the desk and moved it so that it shone straight onto the bat. The lens was not as good as the one in the police lab, just good enough for her to see what she needed to see.

  When she was in Little League, a boy her age but twice her weight had had the great idea to try to stop her from batting by grabbing the bat from behind while she was in full swing. The boy got his hand broken, and Madison learned what a bone splinter looks like when it’s embedded in a baseball bat.

  “It’s old,” she said.

  “It’s very old,” Brown replied.

  “Still, it’s worth having it checked.”

  “Yup.”

  Madison stood the bat by the door. The room wasn’t any less eerie than it had been at first; if anything, she was expecting that locker-room smell that seems to hang over every teenager’s room.

  “I’m calling him.” Brown sat back in the chair and dialed his cell phone. After getting transferred a couple of times, he reached Fred Kamen at Quantico.

  “I’m in a place that doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “No, I mean that literally. Do you have five minutes?”

  You have a golden time at the beginning of an investigation: after those first precious forty-eight hours everything begins to fade. With each new day witnesses forget details, and the pencil line between victim and killer becomes a little less clearly drawn.

  Before they’d found a check with Cameron’s name on it, Kamen might have helped them build a profile of the unusual killer. Now he might help them understand him and find him. This call was not to the FBI, however; it was from Brown to Kamen. One hand held the phone; the other went through the drawers in the desk.

  Madison tuned him out. If you are a boy, and you have bunk beds, where would you normally sleep? Top bunk, no question. Madison lifted a corner of the pillow with two fingers. No pajamas. She didn’t really expect to find them there; then again, she didn’t really know what to expect.

  She leaned against the beds, stretching her arm over the top one until her fingertips brushed the triangular Sonics banner over it. It was fabric with raised lettering, the kind they didn’t make anymore.

  Cameron had left the room as he had once had it, not for them to find it—he couldn’t have known they’d come—but because he’d wanted or needed to. Madison took off her glove and traced the lettering with her fingers. As surely as the dark line around the bone splinter in the bat was somebody’s blood, this room, whatever it meant to him, would eventually bring him down. Madison knew it then like a hound that has just caught the scent. She wished that knowledge would make her feel better about being there, but it didn’t. She put her glove back on.

  They finished their jobs, each to his own thoughts, and were glad to leave, having found little and taking with them a chill they wouldn’t shake off for hours.

  Chapter 17

  “What did Kamen say?” Madison asked Brown.

  They had just left Laurelhurst, and the baseball bat was on the backseat in an evidence bag.

  “He said Cameron has been smart all these years, and $25,000 might have turned him into a schmuck.”

  “Go on.”

  “That was the gist of it.”

  Madison kept quiet and let Brown come out with the rest in his own time.

  “What would you say is the difference between ‘posing’ and ‘staging’?”

  “Are you giving
me a pop quiz?”

  “You asked me what Kamen said.”

  “Okay.” Madison shifted in her seat. “‘Staging’ is when something is arranged to look like something else, like when a hit is made to look like a robbery. ‘Posing’ treats the victim like an object, which is put in a particular position to make a point, to leave some kind of message.”

  “Yes. How many cases of posing have you worked?”

  “None. It’s extremely rare.”

  “What is the perpetrator’s reason for it?”

  “It gives him a high—not only the kill but the complete control of the scene.”

  “Yes. In the Sinclairs’ homicides the victims were posed, bound and blindfolded. The signature, the thing the killer had to have, was complete power over them even after their deaths.”

  “Agreed.”

  “This is what Kamen asked me: was there any posing in the Nostromo killings? Was any physical evidence recovered afterward? Was there any posing in the drug-dealer murder in Lake Washington? Was any physical evidence recovered afterward?”

  “No and none, for both.”

  “Of course, Cameron might have committed other murders that we don’t know about. Still, no posing, no evidence, and no warning or messages left at the scenes he is suspected of.”

  “What you’re saying—”

  “If Cameron’s the killer, then he’s changed. Suddenly, the wife and children are included in the kill, and he wants to show off.”

  “This time it was personal: a friend, his own lawyer, may have tried to steal from him. He made sure Sinclair knew what was happening to his family by killing him last. He had to, I don’t know, repay the insult.”

  “That was the point. The knowing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You just answered the question you asked yesterday. Why the different mode of death for the father? Why the chloroform? Why tie him up before he died and not after, like the others?”

  It was so simple.

  “Because he wanted Sinclair to know,” she said. “He wanted him to know what was happening to his family—that was the punishment.”