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Synopsis
'I didn't want this book to end' Amazon reviewer. A chilling thriller, perfect for fans of Patricia Gibney's The Missing Ones . Homicide Detective Alice Madison has been sent to the remote town of Ludlow to investigate an unspeakable crime. Together with her partner DS Kevin Brown and crime scene investigator Amy Sorensen, Madison must first understand the killer's motives...but the dark mountains that surround Ludlow know how to keep their secrets and that the human heart is wilder than any beast's. As the killer strikes again Madison and her team are under siege. And as they become targets Madison realises that in the dark woods around the town a cunning evil has been waiting for her. A tense and thrilling page-turner - you won't want to put it down!
Release date: June 15, 2017
Publisher: Quercus Publishing
Print pages: 422
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Sweet After Death
Valentina Giambanco
Dedication
For my mother
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Five weeks later
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Acknowledgements
Prologue
The woods pressed into the town from all sides. The bite of land that had been scooped out of the wilderness by the original residents was barely visible from above during the day, and at night – when the only lights were a few scattered street lamps – it was all but gone.
The deer raised its snout, sniffed the cold night air and took a couple of steps. It paused by the line of trees and waited.
Somewhere much higher up on the mountain the winds howled and shook the firs for what they were worth, but in the hollow of the valley the town of Ludlow lay silent and still.
The deer ambled into the middle of the empty road and three others followed it out of the shadows. They made no sound as they padded on the veil of snow and their reflections crossed the windows of the shuttered stores on Main Street.
The town stirred in its sleep but it did not wake: a dog barked from inside a house, a porch light – triggered by a faulty motion sensor – came on and went off in one of the timber-frame homes, and one of the town’s three traffic lights ticked and flickered from red to green to marshal the non-existent 3 a.m. traffic. And yet, tucked away in an alley, a thin shadow tracked the progress of the deer and matched them step for step. They didn’t pick up its scent because it smelled of forest and dead leaves, and they didn’t hear any footsteps because it made no sound as it wove between the houses.
The deer followed a familiar route that would lead them to the woods at the other end of Main Street, and it wasn’t until they had almost reached their destination that they caught the ugly scent. It was a few hundred yards away yet sharp enough to startle them. For an instant they froze and then, one after the other, they bounded out of sight. The acrid smoke spread through Main Street, reaching into the alleys and the backstreets, under the doors and into the gaps of the old window-frames. But the car burning bright by the crossroads would not be discovered until morning, and by then the thin shadow was long gone.
*
A few miles away Samuel shifted his weight on the thin mattress and listened out for birdsong: he couldn’t hear any, and it could only mean that it was still pitch black outside. He sighed and tried to grasp the tail of a half-remembered dream. Something had woken him up, though, and it took him a moment for the notion to sink small, keen teeth into his mind – dulled, as it was, by sleep and the warm cocoon of his blankets. Then a rough hand grabbed his shoulder and Samuel flinched and understood. He sat up without a sound, eyes peering through the gloom.
The bedroom – such as it was – was plain, with pallets for beds and a wooden stove in the corner. Embers from last night’s fire lit the bundles of blankets lying on the other pallets, and a cold draft found Samuel as soon as he threw off the covers.
He didn’t have much time, and he knew it. His heart had begun to race and his mouth was a tight line as he pulled on his boots and snatched his satchel from the side of the bed. The tip of the boy’s finger brushed against his good-luck charm, hidden in the folds of the satchel, and he felt a crackle of pleasure.
Two minutes later, Samuel walked out into the night and the door closed softly behind him. He looked up: the sky was low with heavy clouds, and he could almost taste the snow that was about to fall. He ran across the clearing and straight into the forest. He knew each tree and boulder and rock, and the dusting of white on the ground showed him the way.
They had always called him ‘Mouse’ because he was small for his age – fifteen years old the previous November – small and fast. He needed all the speed and cunning he could muster now.
Speed, cunning and the spirit of the mountain on his side.
He was three hundred yards away when the bell clanged and shattered the silence. They would be waking up then, rushing and scrambling after their things, and when the door opened to the night they would fall out and come after him. And God forbid they should catch him. The black raven feather in the boy’s satchel would have to work hard to keep him safe.
Chapter 1
The small plane flew into a cloud and for a moment there was nothing but hazy gray. Then, faster than it would seem possible, they came out on the other side and sudden rain streaked the windows and blurred the view of the Cascade Mountains way down below.
The pilot had not spoken since his last attempt at conversation had been met by a polite but economical response and, after that, turbulence had demanded his complete attention while the three passengers had kept to themselves.
George Goyer had held his license for nineteen years and flown the red Cessna U260A for the last seven. He carried supplies in the winter and holidaymakers in the summer, and he knew this unscheduled journey on a chilly February morning was not about cargo or recreation.
It was still early and the sun was barely a smudge on the horizon. On the tarmac of Boeing Field, George had removed two seats from the line-up to make more room and helped the passengers load and secure their luggage inside the cabin – three smallish bags and some surprisingly heavy boxes – while making calculations about gross weight, fuel and distance. Although there had been formal introductions, by the time he had shaken their hands George had promptly forgotten his passengers’ names. When they were all strapped in and cleared by the tower for departure, the Cessna had taken off and George had allowed himself one wide, smooth turn over the flat, glassy waters of Elliott Bay and the shimmering skyscrapers of downtown Seattle before he had curved east towards the mountains. The way he saw it, they might as well begin the flight with something pretty since they were heading straight for some moderate to heavy chop.
‘It’ll be short and sweet,’ he had said through the headset, trying to sound reassuring.
‘The shorter, the better,’ the man behind him had replied. He was in his early fifties, with ginger hair turning silver, and sat in his leather seat as if he’d rather be somewhere else – anywhere else.
The two women seemed to fare better: the redhead in her forties sitting next to the man had closed her eyes and possibly already fallen asleep. She had been particularly fastidious about the loading and securing of the cases, but George didn’t mind being told what to do by a pretty lady who knew her mind. The other woman was the only one of the three wearing a mountain jacket and walking boots that looked like they had seen actual walking – George was quick to spot and scorn brand-new gear bought by city folk who wouldn’t know a moose from a whip snake. The woman, younger than her companions, had helped him load their cargo and barely said a word. The rain had stopped and he caught himself watching her as she gazed at the landscape rolling and changing and at the dark mountains drawing near. The towns had disappeared and the plains had become forests: an expanse of deep green that covered valleys and peaks, except for stretches of bare rock and occasional snow. Slivers of lakes reflected the clouds above, and most roads – where there were roads – were hidden under the canopy. It was relentlessly beautiful and it never got old. After that brief moment the clouds had closed in and the rain had started again, harder than before. George glanced at the woman. She hadn’t asked him silly questions and had known not to spoil the moment. He liked her already.
The Cessna bumped through a hard crosswind and George spoke into the headset.
‘I know we’re getting slapped around some, but don’t you worry, I see this and worse every day.’ He added a little chuckle for good measure.
None of the passengers ventured a reply. Though he didn’t remember their names, George Goyer knew who they were and why the call the previous day had come from Chief Sangster himself. Maybe, he thought, they could have done with a little more of the pretty at the beginning of the trip because, Lord knows, where they were going there was going to be nothing but ugly.
Chapter 2
Twenty-four hours earlier, in downtown Seattle, the weather had been overcast with a chance of aggravated assault. Alice Madison’s feet hit the ground hard and slipped as she felt the crunch of glass. She swore under her breath. Bottles, perhaps shards from the broken windows in the alley. Maybe so, but she didn’t have time to care. The figure ahead of her flying towards the mouth of the alley was going at full tilt and Madison was going to catch up and grab the runner if it was the last thing she ever did. She righted herself and kept going. Behind her she heard someone scramble over the same chain-link fence she had just climbed.
‘Mind the glass!’ she yelled over her shoulder. She heard Andy Dunne land heavily, slip in the glass, swear under his breath, then a moment later his steps were thundering behind hers.
Ten minutes ago they were on their lunch break, sitting at the Grand Central Bakery in Occidental Square, talking about mortgages and the Seahawks. Then the call came in, the worst call possible: one officer down, another in need of assistance, two attackers on the run.
Detective Alice Madison and her partner, Detective Sergeant Kevin Brown, were in the car and driving in less than thirty seconds; Detectives Andy Dunne and his partner, Kyle Spencer, were close behind them. They were all Homicides but that was the kind of call that got everybody to come running.
The radio in their car squawked and crackled with the back and forth between dispatch and the different responding units, while every officer in the area converged on the same place, wondering about one thing: who had been hurt and how badly?
The International District sat a stone’s throw away from the more picturesque Pioneer Square area with its new art galleries and expensive restaurants, but it held none of the charm: boxy concrete warehouses followed grocery stores and shuttered businesses under the shadow of the Interstate.
They saw him streak out of the back of a Chinese store and they gave chase. The kid – how old could he be? – was white, skinny, wore jeans and a black hoodie, and probably right about then had realized the magnitude of the trouble he was in. His partner was already sitting in a patrol car with a bloody nose because he had had the good sense to stop when four uniformed officers with their weapons out had told him to. He had dropped the metal pipe and stretched out on the ground in the middle of the road. The nosebleed was courtesy of the small envelope of white powder in his back pocket.
‘Let me out here,’ Madison had urged Brown. The alley was too narrow for a car, anyway – never mind the chain-link fence – so Madison and Dunne had continued on foot while Brown and Spencer tried to cut off the attacker from the other side.
Madison ran almost every day; however, the guy was fast. She wondered briefly what kind of drugs he was on, and what had happened with the officer who had been hurt, and then she pushed the thought away. She could run and catch the guy, or she could examine the intricacies of the drug war in downtown Seattle, but she really could not do both at the same time.
The alley floor was covered in litter and the two buildings on either side were tall enough to cut out most of the sky, except for a strip of gray above them. Madison tried to avoid the flattened cardboard boxes and the empty food cartons, and worked through a mental checklist. Is he armed? Is he injured? Is he on drugs? How far does he want to take this? She could see his hands, and there was no weapon there – just clenched fists and arms pumping to get speed.
The alley opened into a street and the runner rushed across the sudden glare, ignoring the horns from the cars driving in both directions. Madison blinked. The man dived into another alley and disappeared. Madison crossed the road and followed as Brown and Spencer’s cars shrieked to a halt beside her, five seconds too late.
The alley was as narrow as the previous one and just as long and, Madison noticed, completely empty. She stopped abruptly and Dunne almost bumped into her back.
‘He couldn’t have made it to the end. He was out of my sight for no more than a few seconds. He’s still here.’ A part of her was pleased that she could speak almost normally.
Dunne, gulping air, nodded. Somewhere in the background sirens were approaching.
They each took a side and proceeded slowly. There was a dumpster at the other end, but aside from that there was nothing but fire escapes and boarded windows. Madison’s heartbeat was slowing down after the run and the adrenaline was already kicking in: there were no hiding places before them, which could only mean that the runner had managed to break into one of the buildings. Soft steps behind her told her that Brown and Spencer had joined them.
A dank, earthy smell permeated the alley and occasionally a puff of white steam was released by a grid a few feet above their heads – somewhere on the other side of the building an Asian restaurant was serving lunch, and the air was thick with garlic and spices.
They were about a third of the way up the alley when they saw it: a broken pane on a door, big enough for a person to squeeze through.
‘What is this place?’ Spencer whispered.
‘Warehouse,’ Brown replied. ‘Been empty for years.’
Well, Madison thought, at least he didn’t run into the restaurant. She bent and looked into the darkness behind the broken pane: nothing but a murky glow.
‘No time like the present,’ Brown said, then unholstered his weapon and edged himself into the opening.
Brown and Madison had worked together in the Homicide Unit for just over two years, since she had joined it, and he had never lost the chance to be on point – one of those times, early in their partnership, it had almost cost him his life. She reached out to stop him and go first, but he was already inside.
The small room was dim, with paint coming off the walls, and it stank of dead rat. The only light came from narrow horizontal windows way up near the ceiling. Whatever had been stored here was long gone and the place had been taken over by the gods of dust. Even the sounds from the street only a few yards away didn’t seem to reach it.
An open door in the corner led to a cavernous space and in the distance, somewhere in the heart of the building, metal clanked against metal. As the detectives went deeper into the warehouse four thin beams from their flashlights crossed and parted on the concrete.
Spencer pointed. Someone had been coming and going and had left a number of tracks on the floor.
Madison examined her surroundings: it might have been the middle of the day outside, but inside the empty warehouse the world existed in a state of perennial, gritty dusk. Time had stopped the day the workers had left, and it wasn’t by chance that the young man had ended up in that alley and found that broken pane. He had intentionally gone back there. The notion that this desolate, abandoned building might be somebody’s safe place was more than a little troubling.
Madison’s train of thought was interrupted because they had reached the other side. The only way forward was through a single door, and a stairway that led to the floor above. Natural light flooded in through frosted windows. They put away their flashlights and peeked: the tall shaft that went all the way up to the building’s roof was deserted.
Madison and Brown started climbing the metal stairs, with Spencer and Dunne bringing up the rear. Their weapons were unholstered and pointing at the ground. Let him come easy, Madison pleaded silently, let him come without fuss. Behind them and back in the alley Madison heard the crackle of police radios.
Let him come easy.
They reached the landing and something moved beyond the door into the main room. Madison made sure she took the first step inside and her piece was half raised.
‘Seattle Police Department,’ she said, loud and clear. ‘Come on out now.’
Spencer and Dunne were on her left, Brown on her right. Madison’s eyes were slowly adjusting to the gloom when a timid cough rang out from the other side of the room.
‘It’s okay,’ a soft voice said from inside the dimness. ‘It’s okay.’ Feet shuffled towards them and a woman appeared with her gloved hands raised. ‘It’s okay,’ she repeated.
She was wearing layer upon layer of clothing, and her graying hair was shorn close to the scalp. And then it hit them: the scent of stale sweat and unwashed human beings. The woman’s skin was flushed pink and her bright blue eyes were the only points of light. Even bundled up, as she was, she was tiny compared to the detectives. Madison instinctively put her Glock away and tied the safety strip. She raised her hands so that the woman could see them, so that she could see she meant her no harm.
‘Where is he, ma’am?’ Madison said.
‘He’s a good boy,’ the woman said.
I’m sure he is.
‘Where is he?’ Madison repeated. She was aware that the others had lowered their pieces but had not put them away.
‘Come,’ the woman said, and she turned.
They followed her into a room that a long time ago had been an open-plan office – some desks and chairs were still piled in the middle, some had been broken up, and Madison could see the evidence of small fires that had been lit to keep out the worst of the cold. They crossed the wide room all the way to the opposite side of the building.
‘Oh boy,’ Dunne whispered.
The group had huddled against the far wall and created a kind of fort with the discarded furniture, the sort a child might make out of sofa cushions. Ten maybe twelve figures reclined and sat on the vinyl flooring; some were bundled up in clothing, others wore cheap shelter blankets wrapped around their shoulders. They all looked at the detectives with fearful, startled eyes. Someone had pushed discarded food wrappers, empty bottles and beakers into a corner in an attempt at tidying up.
The woman pointed and, behind an upturned table, the young man they had followed lay with his arms around his knees, rolled up into a ball and covered with an old coat. His eyes were squeezed shut. I don’t see you, you don’t see me.
There were loud steps behind them and four uniformed officers flanked the detectives. The two groups eyed each other.
‘Tommy, is that you, man?’ one of the officers said, and headed straight for a shape sitting against the wall.
At first, bundled up as they were, Madison couldn’t even tell their gender, let alone their age.
‘I haven’t seen you around in months,’ the officer continued, crouching next to the man. ‘Where have you been?’
‘On holiday,’ the man croaked, and he chuckled. ‘On the Riviera.’
‘Who got hurt?’ Brown asked the patrol officer next to him.
‘Scott Clarke from Downtown, broken collarbone. He was checking out a public disturbance call and his student officer took his eyes off the ball for a second. Told us enough before going to the Emergency Room, though, and he,’ the officer pointed at the young runner on the ground, ‘didn’t do anything except look scared and scamper when his pal went nuts.’
‘It’s okay,’ the woman said to no one in particular.
No, Madison thought, it’s really not.
Chapter 3
Madison edged herself out of the broken door and was grateful for the rush of fresh air. She had been a uniformed officer in the downtown precinct at the beginning of her career in the Seattle PD, and she was familiar with the drill. Fifty percent of the day-to-day calls the patrol officers in the warehouse dealt with were more social work than policing. Someone had already called the Mobile Crisis Unit, and they would come and help with temporary accommodation and whatever ongoing medical treatment each homeless person might need. Her own field-training officer, Monica Vincent, had known the name of every down-and-out on her beat, their histories and their conditions, and Madison was glad that at least one of the police officers at the scene had been able to put a name to a face.
At the time, Officer Monica Vincent had been everything Madison had wanted to be as a cop. She was capable, kind and compassionate; she had chosen to stay downtown, chosen to deal – day in and day out – with the realities of homelessness, shelters, mental illness and the plight of the conveniently forgotten. It was an unremitting tide of misery, and the joys it brought were subtle and elusive. After a while Madison had moved on, but the front-line work was still there – if anything, the front line had become visible at almost every corner.
Only a few minutes from the warehouse, Kobe Terrace stretched its green walkways over a hill with a view of the city. Monica Vincent had taken Madison there the first day they were working together. It was March and the cherry trees were in bloom, heavy with pale pink petals on their curved branches. Madison had gone back at least once every year to sit under those trees. As they left the alley she looked up, but a few buildings were in the way – and it was too early in the season, anyway. It felt as if winter had decided to dig in and bring its friends. Madison made a mental note to call Monica that night; she couldn’t remember the last time they had spoken.
‘No rest for the wicked,’ Spencer said to the group, tucking his portable radio back in his inside pocket. ‘The boss wants us all back, asap.’
‘Do we have time to go back and pick up our lunch from Grand Central?’ Dunne asked him.
‘Sure, the boss said to take the scenic route and stop to pick up wildflowers too.’
Their boss, Lieutenant Fynn, was in charge of the Homicide Unit, and when he said, ASAP, he meant, Teleport yourselves back to the precinct this instant.
*
They drove, barely stopping for red lights, and once there, they found Fynn angry enough to chew glass.
‘Go wait for me in the conference room, if you please,’ he said, the last words clearly meant to reassure them they were not the reason for his foul mood.
Madison was glad of a couple of minutes’ reprieve as she was still metabolizing what she had seen in the warehouse. She looked around the conference room – a pale green, spartan space which would never win any prizes from Martha Stewart. It seemed that the whole shift was sitting around the table: Detectives Spencer and Dunne, Kelly and Rosario, and Brown and herself.
Spencer and Dunne spoke quietly among themselves, and Dunne let out a snigger like a teenager before class. He was Irish red and the complete opposite of Spencer, who was second-generation Japanese and the calm core at the center of their long partnership. Both men had welcomed Madison into the team when she had joined just over two years earlier; since then they had been through enough that she considered them more than good friends, and when Dunne had got married, three months previously, Madison had been the only woman at his bachelor party.
Detective Chris Kelly studied his nails and scowled at the world in general: he was not a friend, any kind of friend, and never had been. Madison and Kelly worked together because they had to, but it was painful for both. Their dislike had been immediate and had not improved on further acquaintance: at first Madison thought that Kelly might be an old-style cop who was wary of newbies, but had soon realized that he was merely a bully with a streak of aggression a mile wide and the social skills of a skunk.
As an unfortunate consequence of their mutual loathing she had not had a chance to exchange more than a few words with Tony Rosario, Kelly’s partner, and had no idea what kind of person he was – aside from the fact that he was mostly mute, often on medical leave, and his usual color seemed to be an unearthly pallor. He was leaning back in his chair now, utterly still, with his eyes closed; Madison was relieved to see his chest rise and fall.
Brown passed her a bottle of water and she nodded thanks. Madison’s partner, Detective Sergeant Kevin Brown, had been the shining light of her time in Homicide. He ran a hand through his ginger-silver hair, pushed up his glasses and looked over the front page of the Seattle Times, spread on the table. He was in his early fifties – twenty years older than Madison – and liked to get his news on paper. She could take a thousand Kellys as long as she had one Brown.
The door opened and Lieutenant Fynn hurried inside, followed by four detectives from another precinct Madison had never met, two investigators from the Crime Scene Unit, and a tall dark man in an immaculate suit who drew the gaze of all the police officers in the room.
‘Let me get straight to it,’ Fynn said as they took their seats. ‘I presume you all know each other. If you don’t – quite frankly – I don’t care, let’s deal with that later, right now time is of the essence. I need to have an answer for the Chief within the hour. Mr Quinn . . .’
The tall man looked around the room and Madison noted that two of the detectives from the other precinct were giving him the classic cop stare that is supposed to make regular people break into a sweat and trip over their feet. Nathan Quinn was not a regular person, and he ignored them. His voice was quiet because he knew he didn’t have to shout.
‘In case we haven’t met before, my name is Nathan Quinn and I work for the US Attorney for the Western District of Washington.’
Quinn had been a criminal defense attorney for many years before taking up this latest post, and chances were the detectives who were looking daggers at him had met him in court and come out the worse for it. Madison knew the feeling. Quinn had been lethal when he was working for the defense and had made many enemies.
‘I was contacted this morning by the Office of the Governor regarding a situation in Colville County,’ Quinn said.
Fynn sighed at the blank stares around the table. ‘Anyone who can find me Colville County on the map gets a cookie,’ he said.
‘Somewhere northeast?’ Dunne ventured.
‘Somewhere northeast,’ Fynn conceded.
‘Between Stevens and Pend Oreille County, squashed against Canada,’ Brown said softly, to save the day.
‘Teacher’s pet,’ Dunne whispered.
Quinn continued: ‘Colville is a small – very small – county in a mountainous area with more deer than people, and their law enforcement is not equipped to deal with the present situation. Generally a case could be turned over to the State Police or the County Sheriff, but in this particular instance they need the skills represented by the people in this room. The State Police are up to their necks and cannot take the time needed to deal with it properly.’
‘And we can?’ Kelly said.
‘Deal with what exactly?’ Brown asked.
‘Murder,’ Quinn replied. ‘The first murder ever recorded in Colville County.’
There was silence around the table. The first murder ever. Madison found it almost impossible to get her mind around that simple point. How could it be possible? The statistics for Seattle were what they were, and still they were better than many other larger urban areas in the country. More deer than people, she thought, that figures.
‘They need help,’ Quinn said simply. ‘They need a team of Homicide investigators to support their local force, and they need a crime scene officer with extensive experience of murder scenes to examine their evidence and help them collect, preserve and analyze.’
‘How many do they have working it?’ Spencer asked.
‘The whole force,’ Quinn replied. ‘That is to say, one person. One full-time police officer, two part-time.’
Seattle, Madison knew, had over one thousand officers.
‘I need volunteers, people,’ Fynn said before Quinn’s words could sink in, ‘and I need them fast. Because you’re going to have to leave tomorrow morning, early – before the crime scene is blown away to all hell.’
‘The Eastern District has Spokane and Yakima,’ said one of the detectives Madison hadn’t met before – a skinny man with eyes like a bloodhound. ‘They have police departments. It’s their district. Why don’t they help out?’
‘Yes, they have departments. And yes, they deal with major crimes,’ Fynn said.
Madison knew that Spokane had a pretty healthy crime rate – in many ways higher than Seattle, which had three times the population.
‘But,’ Fynn continued, ‘right now Spokane PD has got its hands full and cannot offer the necessary support. There’s no point in sending somebody over to Colville County next month when they need warm bodies on the ground tomorrow. The next time, it might be Spokane’s or Yakima’s turn.’
It was Brown who picked up on that particular turn of phrase. ‘The next
For my mother
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Five weeks later
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Acknowledgements
Prologue
The woods pressed into the town from all sides. The bite of land that had been scooped out of the wilderness by the original residents was barely visible from above during the day, and at night – when the only lights were a few scattered street lamps – it was all but gone.
The deer raised its snout, sniffed the cold night air and took a couple of steps. It paused by the line of trees and waited.
Somewhere much higher up on the mountain the winds howled and shook the firs for what they were worth, but in the hollow of the valley the town of Ludlow lay silent and still.
The deer ambled into the middle of the empty road and three others followed it out of the shadows. They made no sound as they padded on the veil of snow and their reflections crossed the windows of the shuttered stores on Main Street.
The town stirred in its sleep but it did not wake: a dog barked from inside a house, a porch light – triggered by a faulty motion sensor – came on and went off in one of the timber-frame homes, and one of the town’s three traffic lights ticked and flickered from red to green to marshal the non-existent 3 a.m. traffic. And yet, tucked away in an alley, a thin shadow tracked the progress of the deer and matched them step for step. They didn’t pick up its scent because it smelled of forest and dead leaves, and they didn’t hear any footsteps because it made no sound as it wove between the houses.
The deer followed a familiar route that would lead them to the woods at the other end of Main Street, and it wasn’t until they had almost reached their destination that they caught the ugly scent. It was a few hundred yards away yet sharp enough to startle them. For an instant they froze and then, one after the other, they bounded out of sight. The acrid smoke spread through Main Street, reaching into the alleys and the backstreets, under the doors and into the gaps of the old window-frames. But the car burning bright by the crossroads would not be discovered until morning, and by then the thin shadow was long gone.
*
A few miles away Samuel shifted his weight on the thin mattress and listened out for birdsong: he couldn’t hear any, and it could only mean that it was still pitch black outside. He sighed and tried to grasp the tail of a half-remembered dream. Something had woken him up, though, and it took him a moment for the notion to sink small, keen teeth into his mind – dulled, as it was, by sleep and the warm cocoon of his blankets. Then a rough hand grabbed his shoulder and Samuel flinched and understood. He sat up without a sound, eyes peering through the gloom.
The bedroom – such as it was – was plain, with pallets for beds and a wooden stove in the corner. Embers from last night’s fire lit the bundles of blankets lying on the other pallets, and a cold draft found Samuel as soon as he threw off the covers.
He didn’t have much time, and he knew it. His heart had begun to race and his mouth was a tight line as he pulled on his boots and snatched his satchel from the side of the bed. The tip of the boy’s finger brushed against his good-luck charm, hidden in the folds of the satchel, and he felt a crackle of pleasure.
Two minutes later, Samuel walked out into the night and the door closed softly behind him. He looked up: the sky was low with heavy clouds, and he could almost taste the snow that was about to fall. He ran across the clearing and straight into the forest. He knew each tree and boulder and rock, and the dusting of white on the ground showed him the way.
They had always called him ‘Mouse’ because he was small for his age – fifteen years old the previous November – small and fast. He needed all the speed and cunning he could muster now.
Speed, cunning and the spirit of the mountain on his side.
He was three hundred yards away when the bell clanged and shattered the silence. They would be waking up then, rushing and scrambling after their things, and when the door opened to the night they would fall out and come after him. And God forbid they should catch him. The black raven feather in the boy’s satchel would have to work hard to keep him safe.
Chapter 1
The small plane flew into a cloud and for a moment there was nothing but hazy gray. Then, faster than it would seem possible, they came out on the other side and sudden rain streaked the windows and blurred the view of the Cascade Mountains way down below.
The pilot had not spoken since his last attempt at conversation had been met by a polite but economical response and, after that, turbulence had demanded his complete attention while the three passengers had kept to themselves.
George Goyer had held his license for nineteen years and flown the red Cessna U260A for the last seven. He carried supplies in the winter and holidaymakers in the summer, and he knew this unscheduled journey on a chilly February morning was not about cargo or recreation.
It was still early and the sun was barely a smudge on the horizon. On the tarmac of Boeing Field, George had removed two seats from the line-up to make more room and helped the passengers load and secure their luggage inside the cabin – three smallish bags and some surprisingly heavy boxes – while making calculations about gross weight, fuel and distance. Although there had been formal introductions, by the time he had shaken their hands George had promptly forgotten his passengers’ names. When they were all strapped in and cleared by the tower for departure, the Cessna had taken off and George had allowed himself one wide, smooth turn over the flat, glassy waters of Elliott Bay and the shimmering skyscrapers of downtown Seattle before he had curved east towards the mountains. The way he saw it, they might as well begin the flight with something pretty since they were heading straight for some moderate to heavy chop.
‘It’ll be short and sweet,’ he had said through the headset, trying to sound reassuring.
‘The shorter, the better,’ the man behind him had replied. He was in his early fifties, with ginger hair turning silver, and sat in his leather seat as if he’d rather be somewhere else – anywhere else.
The two women seemed to fare better: the redhead in her forties sitting next to the man had closed her eyes and possibly already fallen asleep. She had been particularly fastidious about the loading and securing of the cases, but George didn’t mind being told what to do by a pretty lady who knew her mind. The other woman was the only one of the three wearing a mountain jacket and walking boots that looked like they had seen actual walking – George was quick to spot and scorn brand-new gear bought by city folk who wouldn’t know a moose from a whip snake. The woman, younger than her companions, had helped him load their cargo and barely said a word. The rain had stopped and he caught himself watching her as she gazed at the landscape rolling and changing and at the dark mountains drawing near. The towns had disappeared and the plains had become forests: an expanse of deep green that covered valleys and peaks, except for stretches of bare rock and occasional snow. Slivers of lakes reflected the clouds above, and most roads – where there were roads – were hidden under the canopy. It was relentlessly beautiful and it never got old. After that brief moment the clouds had closed in and the rain had started again, harder than before. George glanced at the woman. She hadn’t asked him silly questions and had known not to spoil the moment. He liked her already.
The Cessna bumped through a hard crosswind and George spoke into the headset.
‘I know we’re getting slapped around some, but don’t you worry, I see this and worse every day.’ He added a little chuckle for good measure.
None of the passengers ventured a reply. Though he didn’t remember their names, George Goyer knew who they were and why the call the previous day had come from Chief Sangster himself. Maybe, he thought, they could have done with a little more of the pretty at the beginning of the trip because, Lord knows, where they were going there was going to be nothing but ugly.
Chapter 2
Twenty-four hours earlier, in downtown Seattle, the weather had been overcast with a chance of aggravated assault. Alice Madison’s feet hit the ground hard and slipped as she felt the crunch of glass. She swore under her breath. Bottles, perhaps shards from the broken windows in the alley. Maybe so, but she didn’t have time to care. The figure ahead of her flying towards the mouth of the alley was going at full tilt and Madison was going to catch up and grab the runner if it was the last thing she ever did. She righted herself and kept going. Behind her she heard someone scramble over the same chain-link fence she had just climbed.
‘Mind the glass!’ she yelled over her shoulder. She heard Andy Dunne land heavily, slip in the glass, swear under his breath, then a moment later his steps were thundering behind hers.
Ten minutes ago they were on their lunch break, sitting at the Grand Central Bakery in Occidental Square, talking about mortgages and the Seahawks. Then the call came in, the worst call possible: one officer down, another in need of assistance, two attackers on the run.
Detective Alice Madison and her partner, Detective Sergeant Kevin Brown, were in the car and driving in less than thirty seconds; Detectives Andy Dunne and his partner, Kyle Spencer, were close behind them. They were all Homicides but that was the kind of call that got everybody to come running.
The radio in their car squawked and crackled with the back and forth between dispatch and the different responding units, while every officer in the area converged on the same place, wondering about one thing: who had been hurt and how badly?
The International District sat a stone’s throw away from the more picturesque Pioneer Square area with its new art galleries and expensive restaurants, but it held none of the charm: boxy concrete warehouses followed grocery stores and shuttered businesses under the shadow of the Interstate.
They saw him streak out of the back of a Chinese store and they gave chase. The kid – how old could he be? – was white, skinny, wore jeans and a black hoodie, and probably right about then had realized the magnitude of the trouble he was in. His partner was already sitting in a patrol car with a bloody nose because he had had the good sense to stop when four uniformed officers with their weapons out had told him to. He had dropped the metal pipe and stretched out on the ground in the middle of the road. The nosebleed was courtesy of the small envelope of white powder in his back pocket.
‘Let me out here,’ Madison had urged Brown. The alley was too narrow for a car, anyway – never mind the chain-link fence – so Madison and Dunne had continued on foot while Brown and Spencer tried to cut off the attacker from the other side.
Madison ran almost every day; however, the guy was fast. She wondered briefly what kind of drugs he was on, and what had happened with the officer who had been hurt, and then she pushed the thought away. She could run and catch the guy, or she could examine the intricacies of the drug war in downtown Seattle, but she really could not do both at the same time.
The alley floor was covered in litter and the two buildings on either side were tall enough to cut out most of the sky, except for a strip of gray above them. Madison tried to avoid the flattened cardboard boxes and the empty food cartons, and worked through a mental checklist. Is he armed? Is he injured? Is he on drugs? How far does he want to take this? She could see his hands, and there was no weapon there – just clenched fists and arms pumping to get speed.
The alley opened into a street and the runner rushed across the sudden glare, ignoring the horns from the cars driving in both directions. Madison blinked. The man dived into another alley and disappeared. Madison crossed the road and followed as Brown and Spencer’s cars shrieked to a halt beside her, five seconds too late.
The alley was as narrow as the previous one and just as long and, Madison noticed, completely empty. She stopped abruptly and Dunne almost bumped into her back.
‘He couldn’t have made it to the end. He was out of my sight for no more than a few seconds. He’s still here.’ A part of her was pleased that she could speak almost normally.
Dunne, gulping air, nodded. Somewhere in the background sirens were approaching.
They each took a side and proceeded slowly. There was a dumpster at the other end, but aside from that there was nothing but fire escapes and boarded windows. Madison’s heartbeat was slowing down after the run and the adrenaline was already kicking in: there were no hiding places before them, which could only mean that the runner had managed to break into one of the buildings. Soft steps behind her told her that Brown and Spencer had joined them.
A dank, earthy smell permeated the alley and occasionally a puff of white steam was released by a grid a few feet above their heads – somewhere on the other side of the building an Asian restaurant was serving lunch, and the air was thick with garlic and spices.
They were about a third of the way up the alley when they saw it: a broken pane on a door, big enough for a person to squeeze through.
‘What is this place?’ Spencer whispered.
‘Warehouse,’ Brown replied. ‘Been empty for years.’
Well, Madison thought, at least he didn’t run into the restaurant. She bent and looked into the darkness behind the broken pane: nothing but a murky glow.
‘No time like the present,’ Brown said, then unholstered his weapon and edged himself into the opening.
Brown and Madison had worked together in the Homicide Unit for just over two years, since she had joined it, and he had never lost the chance to be on point – one of those times, early in their partnership, it had almost cost him his life. She reached out to stop him and go first, but he was already inside.
The small room was dim, with paint coming off the walls, and it stank of dead rat. The only light came from narrow horizontal windows way up near the ceiling. Whatever had been stored here was long gone and the place had been taken over by the gods of dust. Even the sounds from the street only a few yards away didn’t seem to reach it.
An open door in the corner led to a cavernous space and in the distance, somewhere in the heart of the building, metal clanked against metal. As the detectives went deeper into the warehouse four thin beams from their flashlights crossed and parted on the concrete.
Spencer pointed. Someone had been coming and going and had left a number of tracks on the floor.
Madison examined her surroundings: it might have been the middle of the day outside, but inside the empty warehouse the world existed in a state of perennial, gritty dusk. Time had stopped the day the workers had left, and it wasn’t by chance that the young man had ended up in that alley and found that broken pane. He had intentionally gone back there. The notion that this desolate, abandoned building might be somebody’s safe place was more than a little troubling.
Madison’s train of thought was interrupted because they had reached the other side. The only way forward was through a single door, and a stairway that led to the floor above. Natural light flooded in through frosted windows. They put away their flashlights and peeked: the tall shaft that went all the way up to the building’s roof was deserted.
Madison and Brown started climbing the metal stairs, with Spencer and Dunne bringing up the rear. Their weapons were unholstered and pointing at the ground. Let him come easy, Madison pleaded silently, let him come without fuss. Behind them and back in the alley Madison heard the crackle of police radios.
Let him come easy.
They reached the landing and something moved beyond the door into the main room. Madison made sure she took the first step inside and her piece was half raised.
‘Seattle Police Department,’ she said, loud and clear. ‘Come on out now.’
Spencer and Dunne were on her left, Brown on her right. Madison’s eyes were slowly adjusting to the gloom when a timid cough rang out from the other side of the room.
‘It’s okay,’ a soft voice said from inside the dimness. ‘It’s okay.’ Feet shuffled towards them and a woman appeared with her gloved hands raised. ‘It’s okay,’ she repeated.
She was wearing layer upon layer of clothing, and her graying hair was shorn close to the scalp. And then it hit them: the scent of stale sweat and unwashed human beings. The woman’s skin was flushed pink and her bright blue eyes were the only points of light. Even bundled up, as she was, she was tiny compared to the detectives. Madison instinctively put her Glock away and tied the safety strip. She raised her hands so that the woman could see them, so that she could see she meant her no harm.
‘Where is he, ma’am?’ Madison said.
‘He’s a good boy,’ the woman said.
I’m sure he is.
‘Where is he?’ Madison repeated. She was aware that the others had lowered their pieces but had not put them away.
‘Come,’ the woman said, and she turned.
They followed her into a room that a long time ago had been an open-plan office – some desks and chairs were still piled in the middle, some had been broken up, and Madison could see the evidence of small fires that had been lit to keep out the worst of the cold. They crossed the wide room all the way to the opposite side of the building.
‘Oh boy,’ Dunne whispered.
The group had huddled against the far wall and created a kind of fort with the discarded furniture, the sort a child might make out of sofa cushions. Ten maybe twelve figures reclined and sat on the vinyl flooring; some were bundled up in clothing, others wore cheap shelter blankets wrapped around their shoulders. They all looked at the detectives with fearful, startled eyes. Someone had pushed discarded food wrappers, empty bottles and beakers into a corner in an attempt at tidying up.
The woman pointed and, behind an upturned table, the young man they had followed lay with his arms around his knees, rolled up into a ball and covered with an old coat. His eyes were squeezed shut. I don’t see you, you don’t see me.
There were loud steps behind them and four uniformed officers flanked the detectives. The two groups eyed each other.
‘Tommy, is that you, man?’ one of the officers said, and headed straight for a shape sitting against the wall.
At first, bundled up as they were, Madison couldn’t even tell their gender, let alone their age.
‘I haven’t seen you around in months,’ the officer continued, crouching next to the man. ‘Where have you been?’
‘On holiday,’ the man croaked, and he chuckled. ‘On the Riviera.’
‘Who got hurt?’ Brown asked the patrol officer next to him.
‘Scott Clarke from Downtown, broken collarbone. He was checking out a public disturbance call and his student officer took his eyes off the ball for a second. Told us enough before going to the Emergency Room, though, and he,’ the officer pointed at the young runner on the ground, ‘didn’t do anything except look scared and scamper when his pal went nuts.’
‘It’s okay,’ the woman said to no one in particular.
No, Madison thought, it’s really not.
Chapter 3
Madison edged herself out of the broken door and was grateful for the rush of fresh air. She had been a uniformed officer in the downtown precinct at the beginning of her career in the Seattle PD, and she was familiar with the drill. Fifty percent of the day-to-day calls the patrol officers in the warehouse dealt with were more social work than policing. Someone had already called the Mobile Crisis Unit, and they would come and help with temporary accommodation and whatever ongoing medical treatment each homeless person might need. Her own field-training officer, Monica Vincent, had known the name of every down-and-out on her beat, their histories and their conditions, and Madison was glad that at least one of the police officers at the scene had been able to put a name to a face.
At the time, Officer Monica Vincent had been everything Madison had wanted to be as a cop. She was capable, kind and compassionate; she had chosen to stay downtown, chosen to deal – day in and day out – with the realities of homelessness, shelters, mental illness and the plight of the conveniently forgotten. It was an unremitting tide of misery, and the joys it brought were subtle and elusive. After a while Madison had moved on, but the front-line work was still there – if anything, the front line had become visible at almost every corner.
Only a few minutes from the warehouse, Kobe Terrace stretched its green walkways over a hill with a view of the city. Monica Vincent had taken Madison there the first day they were working together. It was March and the cherry trees were in bloom, heavy with pale pink petals on their curved branches. Madison had gone back at least once every year to sit under those trees. As they left the alley she looked up, but a few buildings were in the way – and it was too early in the season, anyway. It felt as if winter had decided to dig in and bring its friends. Madison made a mental note to call Monica that night; she couldn’t remember the last time they had spoken.
‘No rest for the wicked,’ Spencer said to the group, tucking his portable radio back in his inside pocket. ‘The boss wants us all back, asap.’
‘Do we have time to go back and pick up our lunch from Grand Central?’ Dunne asked him.
‘Sure, the boss said to take the scenic route and stop to pick up wildflowers too.’
Their boss, Lieutenant Fynn, was in charge of the Homicide Unit, and when he said, ASAP, he meant, Teleport yourselves back to the precinct this instant.
*
They drove, barely stopping for red lights, and once there, they found Fynn angry enough to chew glass.
‘Go wait for me in the conference room, if you please,’ he said, the last words clearly meant to reassure them they were not the reason for his foul mood.
Madison was glad of a couple of minutes’ reprieve as she was still metabolizing what she had seen in the warehouse. She looked around the conference room – a pale green, spartan space which would never win any prizes from Martha Stewart. It seemed that the whole shift was sitting around the table: Detectives Spencer and Dunne, Kelly and Rosario, and Brown and herself.
Spencer and Dunne spoke quietly among themselves, and Dunne let out a snigger like a teenager before class. He was Irish red and the complete opposite of Spencer, who was second-generation Japanese and the calm core at the center of their long partnership. Both men had welcomed Madison into the team when she had joined just over two years earlier; since then they had been through enough that she considered them more than good friends, and when Dunne had got married, three months previously, Madison had been the only woman at his bachelor party.
Detective Chris Kelly studied his nails and scowled at the world in general: he was not a friend, any kind of friend, and never had been. Madison and Kelly worked together because they had to, but it was painful for both. Their dislike had been immediate and had not improved on further acquaintance: at first Madison thought that Kelly might be an old-style cop who was wary of newbies, but had soon realized that he was merely a bully with a streak of aggression a mile wide and the social skills of a skunk.
As an unfortunate consequence of their mutual loathing she had not had a chance to exchange more than a few words with Tony Rosario, Kelly’s partner, and had no idea what kind of person he was – aside from the fact that he was mostly mute, often on medical leave, and his usual color seemed to be an unearthly pallor. He was leaning back in his chair now, utterly still, with his eyes closed; Madison was relieved to see his chest rise and fall.
Brown passed her a bottle of water and she nodded thanks. Madison’s partner, Detective Sergeant Kevin Brown, had been the shining light of her time in Homicide. He ran a hand through his ginger-silver hair, pushed up his glasses and looked over the front page of the Seattle Times, spread on the table. He was in his early fifties – twenty years older than Madison – and liked to get his news on paper. She could take a thousand Kellys as long as she had one Brown.
The door opened and Lieutenant Fynn hurried inside, followed by four detectives from another precinct Madison had never met, two investigators from the Crime Scene Unit, and a tall dark man in an immaculate suit who drew the gaze of all the police officers in the room.
‘Let me get straight to it,’ Fynn said as they took their seats. ‘I presume you all know each other. If you don’t – quite frankly – I don’t care, let’s deal with that later, right now time is of the essence. I need to have an answer for the Chief within the hour. Mr Quinn . . .’
The tall man looked around the room and Madison noted that two of the detectives from the other precinct were giving him the classic cop stare that is supposed to make regular people break into a sweat and trip over their feet. Nathan Quinn was not a regular person, and he ignored them. His voice was quiet because he knew he didn’t have to shout.
‘In case we haven’t met before, my name is Nathan Quinn and I work for the US Attorney for the Western District of Washington.’
Quinn had been a criminal defense attorney for many years before taking up this latest post, and chances were the detectives who were looking daggers at him had met him in court and come out the worse for it. Madison knew the feeling. Quinn had been lethal when he was working for the defense and had made many enemies.
‘I was contacted this morning by the Office of the Governor regarding a situation in Colville County,’ Quinn said.
Fynn sighed at the blank stares around the table. ‘Anyone who can find me Colville County on the map gets a cookie,’ he said.
‘Somewhere northeast?’ Dunne ventured.
‘Somewhere northeast,’ Fynn conceded.
‘Between Stevens and Pend Oreille County, squashed against Canada,’ Brown said softly, to save the day.
‘Teacher’s pet,’ Dunne whispered.
Quinn continued: ‘Colville is a small – very small – county in a mountainous area with more deer than people, and their law enforcement is not equipped to deal with the present situation. Generally a case could be turned over to the State Police or the County Sheriff, but in this particular instance they need the skills represented by the people in this room. The State Police are up to their necks and cannot take the time needed to deal with it properly.’
‘And we can?’ Kelly said.
‘Deal with what exactly?’ Brown asked.
‘Murder,’ Quinn replied. ‘The first murder ever recorded in Colville County.’
There was silence around the table. The first murder ever. Madison found it almost impossible to get her mind around that simple point. How could it be possible? The statistics for Seattle were what they were, and still they were better than many other larger urban areas in the country. More deer than people, she thought, that figures.
‘They need help,’ Quinn said simply. ‘They need a team of Homicide investigators to support their local force, and they need a crime scene officer with extensive experience of murder scenes to examine their evidence and help them collect, preserve and analyze.’
‘How many do they have working it?’ Spencer asked.
‘The whole force,’ Quinn replied. ‘That is to say, one person. One full-time police officer, two part-time.’
Seattle, Madison knew, had over one thousand officers.
‘I need volunteers, people,’ Fynn said before Quinn’s words could sink in, ‘and I need them fast. Because you’re going to have to leave tomorrow morning, early – before the crime scene is blown away to all hell.’
‘The Eastern District has Spokane and Yakima,’ said one of the detectives Madison hadn’t met before – a skinny man with eyes like a bloodhound. ‘They have police departments. It’s their district. Why don’t they help out?’
‘Yes, they have departments. And yes, they deal with major crimes,’ Fynn said.
Madison knew that Spokane had a pretty healthy crime rate – in many ways higher than Seattle, which had three times the population.
‘But,’ Fynn continued, ‘right now Spokane PD has got its hands full and cannot offer the necessary support. There’s no point in sending somebody over to Colville County next month when they need warm bodies on the ground tomorrow. The next time, it might be Spokane’s or Yakima’s turn.’
It was Brown who picked up on that particular turn of phrase. ‘The next
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Sweet After Death
Valentina Giambanco
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