First Watch: An exclusive prequel to The Gift of Darkness (Alice Madison) Read online

  She heard sirens, or maybe it was just her ears deceiving her and giving her what she wanted. Madison peeked again into the room: three hostages were still there but one was missing – the chair was gone too – and so was the intruder.

  They couldn’t see her and she wasn’t altogether sure that it was a bad thing. What would have they seen in their terror? A fresh-faced probie with a shaky hand. They deserved better.

  Madison leant against the wall. The missing hostage was the teenage girl; the others had slumped forward and from where she was Madison couldn’t see whether they were still alive. She prayed they were – should any deity be listening.

  Her shirt stuck to her back with ice-cold perspiration; she passed the Glock to her left hand and wiped the right against the rough fabric of her navy blue trousers. She had been trained, she could do the job. Tonight, this was the job. Here we go . . .

  In two quick steps Madison reached the back corner. If the house was built like pretty much any other house with a yard there would be an entrance somewhere on that side.

  She had to look. A fast peek, and back into position. One, two, three. The yard was deserted. The French doors were eight feet to her left and, in the eerie brightness, she could see that one pane was ajar.

  Where was Walsh?

  Madison, heart drumming, opened one side just enough to slide inside and crept into the sitting room – it smelled of popcorn.

  On the other side of the farthest wall three people were tied up, hopefully unhurt. The music was barely tolerable and Madison hated not hearing her own steps; all her senses blunted as she inched forward.

  The life lived inside the house was present in every book on every shelf, in the sofa cushions still a little squashed, in the mug with the remains of last night’s coffee on the low table. Madison looked away: her priority was to get the hostages out quickly and safely.

  She stole a glance into the corridor that lead to the front – the first door on her left must be where they were kept. Somewhere in her mind something was keeping time with the track and told her that a three second beat of silence was about to come up. She froze, ready to pay attention. Silence came like a breath of fresh air after drowning: a three second stretch of nothing that felt like cool bliss. Something crashed and smashed on the floor above her and just then the drum opening rang out and all other sound was obliterated.

  Move. You have to move now. Madison dashed along the corridor and pushed into the dining room just as her radio exploded into life with crackle and voices.

  Broken glass and crockery covered the floor. The curtains were ripped and gashed where the intruder had struck and, in the middle of the destruction, the hostages, tied and blindfolded, struggled against the coils of tape.

  Get the blindfolds off, get the cloths out of their mouths. Madison went to the father first: gently, fumbling a little, she undid the torn grey sheet that covered his eyes. Look at me, I’m a police officer, you’re going to be okay. They were all alive. Their clothing torn and spattered with red. They saw her and started to scream, their voices lost in the racket. It was the same word. Our daughter.

  Madison felt the vibrations on the wooden floor – heavy steps, dozens of them – and suddenly the room was a sea of dark blue as the SWAT team poured into the house. They didn’t even bother to untie the hostages: two officers grabbed each chair and they were gone the same way Madison had come.

  The hell of noise stopped suddenly mid-song and she could see the SWAT officer’s lips moving and she could actually hear him.

  ‘Where—’

  ‘Upstairs. He has one hostage, a gun and a kitchen knife. My partner could be up there too.’

  Another crash made them jump and they were running fast up the stairs, Madison chasing two SWAT officers and high school graduation photos getting knocked off the walls.

  Three shots rang out as Madison reached the landing and she saw the young man crumple to his knees and onto the floor still holding on to the back of the chair with the girl tied up to it. The smell of cordite and the smoke from Walsh’s weapon were so sharp Madison’s eyes watered.

  ‘Let’s get her out of here!’ Two officers grabbed the chair and the girl and lifted her easily; one of them took the cloth out of her mouth and spoke to her as they carried her downstairs. Madison stood by the threshold of what was the girl’s room – everything had been thrashed and ripped off the shelves. The young man’s eyes were open. Walsh had hit him twice in the chest and once in the neck. He stood over him and moved the .22 away from his hand with the tip of his boot.

  When he looked up and noticed Madison their eyes met and held. ‘Don’t come in,’ he said, the tone softer than the words. ‘Don’t touch anything.’

  ‘I know,’ Madison said in a whisper.

  It was her first body. The arterial blood spray from the neck wound had drawn high arches of droplets on the walls.

  ‘I saw him dragging her out of the room and up the stairs,’ he said. ‘I had to follow.’

  Madison nodded. He had saved the girl’s life.

  The flow of officers, medics and detectives filled the house and Madison found herself answering questions, giving details, and walking them through the crime-scene while a noise not unlike static seemed to saturate her very thoughts. It was her first body.

  A detective took Walsh’s weapon – standard procedure after a shooting – and placed it in an evidence box. Madison watched him tag it and pat Walsh on the shoulder.

  The family had been taken to the nearest hospital and, on the edge of the sidewalk, the chairs they had been tied to had been left for the Crime Scene Unit to collect. Madison looked them over: they were just chairs now, with short lengths of silver duct tape still attached to the pale wood.

  *

  ‘Kyle McManus,’ Pitbull Richards said.

  ‘Yes,’ Madison replied. ‘He had dated Sarah Bailey in high school and they had broken up some months earlier. There was a restraining order against him, he was stalking her.’

  ‘The family’s okay though.’

  ‘As okay as they can be. There were cuts and bruises. That’s just the physical part.’

  ‘Sure,’ Richards said. ‘It must have been quite an experience for you.’

  ‘It was.’ Except for the bare bones of what had happened, Madison had no intention to talk to these strangers about that night. They had asked her to come here today, and it wasn’t to talk about her feelings.

  ‘That was the only shift you had with Sgt. Walsh?’ Richards continued.

  ‘Yes, it was.’

  After a shooting the police officer who has discharged his weapon goes on administrative leave while the shooting is investigated. Every person at the table knew it, and Madison wondered where Richards was going with it.

  ‘What did you think of Sgt. Walsh?’ he asked. ‘Let me put it differently – what did you think of Sgt. Walsh’s behavior that night?’

  ‘His behavior?’

  ‘Yes. When Sgt. Walsh shot Mr. McManus, did you see what Mr. McManus was doing? Was he pointing his .22 at the hostage? Or perhaps was he moving to put the weapon down?’

  ‘I wasn’t in the room, Sgt. Richards,’ Madison replied. ‘And I think you know that because that’s what’s in the report. The SWAT officers were running up the stairs in front of me and I have no idea whether they saw anything, but I know I didn’t. I heard the shots as I reached the landing and what I did see was Kyle McManus falling and still hanging on to the back of the chair.’

  ‘Of course, that’s exactly what’s in the report.’

  Madison wanted to say it’s in the report because that’s what happened however she said nothing and waited for Richards’s next words. If he wanted to hang Walsh on something it wasn’t going to be on what had happened that night.

  ‘You don’t have anything further to add to the report?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘You’re quite sure?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Madison didn’t n
eed to look around the table to know she had disappointed them. Then again, if there was an issue with the quality of her work she’d much rather have it out now than let it be dragged on through other meetings in similar rooms. She was about to speak when Richards smiled. ‘Well,’ he said, as he gathered his papers. ‘Then we’re done here. I have all I need. Everyone’s happy with the notes we have?’

  There were nods and agreements and before Madison knew it the group was filing out of the room and the meeting was over.

  ‘Thank you for coming in, Officer,’ Richards said.

  Madison stood up. ‘I’m not sure I’ve added anything useful to what was already in the file.’

  I’m not sure I understand what this was about.

  ‘Oh, you did.’

  They were alone in the room now.

  ‘Sgt. Walsh saved the girl’s life,’ Madison said. ‘If he hadn’t followed him, McManus would have killed her and then shot himself, that was the plan, that’s what he told them. The track he was playing . . . it was their song.’

  ‘I know. I agree with you. If Frank Walsh had been ten seconds later in that room the girl would be dead. ‘

  ‘Then—’

  ‘They told me you were smart, Officer. This wasn’t about Walsh, it was about you.’

  ‘I wasn’t in the room.’

  ‘That’s right. And you knew I have been after Walsh for a while. He’s a dangerous officer and the department will not tolerate the kind of behavior that he has exhibited over and over again. The question was whether you would be a good partner for Walsh, someone the Office of Professional Responsibility could trust. You are young, you want to do well. There was a chance you might turn out to be someone O.P.R. could count on in the future.’

  ‘I see,’ Madison said, finally understanding the presence of the seven people around the table. ‘I guess I failed that test.’

  ‘Spectacularly,’ Richards replied, without animosity.

  ‘That’s how it goes,’ Madison said.

  ‘I’m not the enemy, Officer Madison. Whatever you might be led to believe.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’

  She moved to leave the room.

  ‘Where are you going to go after Patrol?’

  She turned to him. ‘Homicide. I’ll apply for plain clothes and then work my way up to Homicide.’

  Richards clicked the catch on his leather briefcase. ‘No doubt you will. See you around, Officer.’

  *

  A thin layer of snow had washed over the sidewalk by the time Madison walked out of the Seattle Police Department Headquarters; she found Sgt. Carrie Weston waiting for her. The windows of their patrol car were fogged up and two cups of fresh coffee sat in a plastic container.

  ‘Thought you might need some of the good stuff,’ Weston said, handing Madison a cup.

  ‘Thank you. What’s on the menu tonight?’

  ‘First, we got ourselves a nice juicy grand theft auto over at . . .’

  The evening had come on and Seattle was a blur beyond the glass; Weston’s words came from a great distance as Madison settled into her seat and watched the city go past.

  *

  Eighteen months later Sgt. Frank Walsh was charged with the use of excessive force during an arrest – the suspect had ended his day in the hospital with two broken ribs and a concussion. Walsh didn’t fight the charge and was fired by the department. The case was settled out of court. In the end it wasn’t Pitbull Richards but another O.P.R. detective who closed the file on Walsh. Madison read about it in the papers; she hadn’t seen him or spoken to him since the night of January third; they had gone on to different precincts and different shifts. That day she went to the range and shot the core out of several targets and, after her arm was too tired to hold up her weapon, she went running on Alki Beach and watched as the sun dipped behind Bainbridge Island in a smudge of orange and green.

  The light, Madison told herself – her lungs burning and her legs in the cool water up to her calves – she had returned to Seattle because of the light.

  Read on for an extract from the first in a thrilling new series featuring Detective Alice Madison

  A sky so blue it hurts to look at it. Ancient trees rise a hundred feet, red and yellow cedars next to black cottonwood and vine maples, their roots twisting out of deep green slippery moss and rotting wood. The boy runs barefoot. He stops in a small clearing, breathing hard and fast, and listens. Eleven maybe twelve years old, dark eyes wide. His jeans are torn where dead branches have been caught and snapped, the muddy gray T-shirt is stained with sweat on his back and the sleeves cling to his thin arms. Skin shows through where the fabric has been cut and blood covers his arms and hands as if they have been dipped in it.

  The boy sweeps a strand of hair from his eyes and throws up what little is left in his stomach. He steadies himself against a tree and then, downhill. His body pulled by gravity, losing his balance, wading through the fallen leaves. Under his feet the world crackles and shifts.

  Last night

  Darkness. The waves roared and crashed against the pebble beach. It was the loudest sound James Sinclair had ever heard and it filled his whole body as if poured into him.

  He couldn’t remember waking up and walking across the lawn and down to the pier. A cold wind brushed his face and something hot and dry started to spread through his lungs. He panicked and tried to wake up; instead he tasted blood and heard himself cry out: the bed he lay on, the blindfold, the wire around his neck and hands. He thought of his children, he thought of his wife.

  Chapter 1

  On a good night you can smell the sea from way up on University Hill. Alice Madison rolled down her window a couple of inches and sniffed the air. The night was cold and December mist hung low and damp between the houses and the naked trees. Christmas was two weeks away and the students who could afford to live on that side of the hill had already left for the holidays, gone back to homes all over Washington State.

  The clock on the dashboard said 4.15 a.m. Detective Sergeant Brown, a dark shape sitting next to her, had put the seal on the evening hours before.

  ‘After all the coffee has been drunk and all the talk has been talked, stake-outs are just long stretches of time with little to do, for people who would like to be doing something else, somewhere else, in somebody else’s company.’

  It was a pretty fair description of their partnership, she thought.

  Her breath was vapor on the pane. It was a choice between being cold and being reminded of other men’s hours of boredom and sweat. She’d rather be cold.

  Brown turned around to look at the other end of the street and she caught a whiff of aftershave, cool and not unpleasant. Madison knew that they had been sent out there with next to zero chances; Brown was not a happy man.

  Gary Stevens – white male, 23, no priors – was hot favorite for the murder of a 19-year-old student from the campus. Handcuffed to a radiator, Janice Hiller was sitting up with her back to the wall when the police found her, dead from a single blow to the head. A half-drunk cup of coffee was neatly placed next to her right hand.

  The day she had joined Seattle Homicide, four weeks earlier, Alice Madison visited her grandparents’ grave in a cemetery near Burien. She put a bunch of white roses by the stone and stood there alone. In their heart they would know, wherever they were, that she was who she was because of them, and their love was a blessing she carried like gold, on her skin and out of sight. That night Madison went home, fixed herself dinner – nothing frozen, nothing canned – and slept for ten hours straight.

  Brown had since been neither cold nor unhelpful, just detached. He was as good a cop as they come, better than most. They would never be friends, that much she knew, yet she would trust him with her own life any day. Maybe that was enough.

  Brown and Madison had not discussed the nature of evil when they saw the ring of seared flesh around Janice Hiller’s wrist, the radiator heating up the metal of the handcuff at regular intervals; they j
ust got busy trying to save the next victim, working steady and fast to get the innocent out of the path of the hurricane.

  At the other end of the street two men in a dark Ford Sedan were trying to keep each other awake, long out of coffee and dirty jokes. Madison would much rather have spent the evening in their company: detectives Spencer and Dunne had been partners for three years, knew each other from the Academy and worked well together. They were an odd couple. Spencer was second-generation Japanese, married with three kids and a degree in Criminology from night school. Dunne, on the other hand, was Irish red, put himself through college with a football scholarship and dated women whose short skirts were part of the mythology of the precinct. They knew each other’s thoughts and could anticipate each other’s actions.

  Alice Madison sat and waited; she hoped that she wouldn’t need that much from Brown, or anybody else. Still, this was where she was and the rest mattered little when all she wanted to do was stare into the darkness ahead.

  Brown had been right about the essential nature of stake-outs and yet Madison suspected that a part of her actually looked forward to the quiet waiting before the target appeared, when everything in the world stilled and there was nothing but the trap and the chase.

  The Police Academy had taught her much, except what it feels like to run full tilt after a human being who means you harm – that she had to learn on the street. Detective Alice Madison settled into the worn leather seat. Spencer and Dunne might have been better company, but tonight she was exactly where she wanted to be.

  The wind was blowing hard now; only a few blocks away the sea rose and fell, spraying the deserted piers, shaping puddles of black seawater. Stevens would not come home tonight; he would never come home again. He had probably already left the state, changed his name and started all over in some other campus. Madison did not dwell on that thought – she was still at a stage where she could remember every single red name on the Homicide board, and those gone from red to black, the all-important clearance rate.