The Dark Room(12)

“And after the burial?”

“I didn’t go. I was supposed to drive the hearse that day. But I got my brother-in-law to do it. And then I took Marianne and Beatrice, and put them in the other car, and we left.”

“Why did you run?”

“I couldn’t do it again. Not after what I saw, what I overheard. But if I stopped taking the money—the next time, it’d be me. Or it’d be my wife. My little girl. I knew too much.”

“What do you want the police to do?”

Fonteroy looked up, focused his eyes into the camera. The next words he spoke, he pronounced very carefully.

“You need to dig up Christopher Hanley. They buried him July 17, 1985, in El Carmelo. That’s down the coast from the city. A good spot, by the ocean. I could only wish for a place like that. And once you open the lid, you’ll understand.”

“Who were the men, the ones paying you?”

Fonteroy shook his head.

“I don’t know.”

“Mr. Fonteroy—you can’t hold anything back. It’s too late for that.”

“I never knew their names. But if the police go to El Carmelo, they’ll understand. They’ve got tools now. Tests that weren’t around back then. Maybe they can put it together.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Turn off the camera. I’m done. Either they’ll figure it out or they won’t. But we’re done. Okay?”





The screen went to snow.



Cain turned the TV off. He rewound the tape, then took it from the camcorder and locked it in the file cabinet. He finished his coffee and put the paper cup in the trash. He looked at his watch. If he hurried, he might make it to Lucy before she woke.





5


SHE OWNED A row house on Twenty-Second Avenue, a block north of Golden Gate Park. He climbed the steps from the sidewalk and stood on the tiny porch to look through the predawn rain to the crowns of the eucalyptus trees on the other side of Fulton Street. When the wind came from that direction, Lucy’s entire home had the clean, medicinal smell of the trees. But when it blew from the north, the house seemed like it was alone on a mountaintop. Wrapped in clouds and cut off from everything. They could stay in her upstairs bed all day and listen to the foghorn beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. There was nothing empty about that low note as long as he was with her.

He let himself in, took off his shoes, and went upstairs. The bedroom door was open, and he tiptoed past it. There were two boxes of his things in the hall. To reach the bathroom, he had to step around them. Lucy hadn’t said anything yet, but he kept expecting her to bring it up, to ask when he was going to move the rest. He showered, then went to Lucy’s bed wearing one of her towels around his waist.

“Hey,” she said.

“Sorry.”

She moved toward him when he dropped the towel and got under the covers.

“You’re all wet,” she said. “Shit, Gavin.”

He started to pull away, but she followed him.

“I don’t care,” she said. “Hold me.”

He put his arm around her and tucked his knees into the bend of her legs, so that the length of his body followed hers. She pressed her back into his chest. Her T-shirt had been through the wash so many times, it was as thin as tissue paper. Warmth radiated through the cotton.

“My first lesson’s at eight,” she said. “That’s just three hours.”

Once her lessons started, he wouldn’t be able to sleep. But that didn’t matter.

“This is just a little nap. I’ve got to go to Menlo Park early enough to be back by noon.”

“Then let’s go to sleep,” she said. “Quick.”

“Okay.”



He woke, briefly, when Lucy left the bed. She crossed the room wearing nothing but her old high school T-shirt. As she disappeared into the hall, he wanted to lift himself and follow her. But he was asleep again before she started her shower.



The doorbell woke him the second time. Her first student had arrived. He heard their voices back and forth, the mother greeting Lucy and then saying goodbye to her daughter. The student was a little girl. Her voice, coming up from the lower floor as they crossed through the length of the house, sounded like the warbling of a small bird. He listened to them go into the music room that overlooked the garden.

When Lucy was teaching a new piece, she’d usually play it first so that her student could listen and watch. Cain sat up when she started, looking across the bed to the window. There were raindrops on the glass, backlit by a gray sky. Beneath him, Lucy hit the first eight or nine notes. He tried to think of the name of the piece. She’d been teaching it to several of her students lately, but before that, she’d played it for him. Just the two of them in the music room. Her wineglass was perched on the piano’s lid, the water in it trembling with each note. They’d left the bay windows open a crack, and the wind had pushed in, carrying a fine mist of fog and the scent of lavender from the garden.

He got out of her bed, wrapping her towel around himself again and listening as she played. It was a calm thing, this song. The first time he’d heard it, he’d imagined Lucy on a tiny island, playing the song as the moon came in and out from behind the cover of slow-drifting clouds. The water around her was dappled with shadow, and then, suddenly, lit silver-white. The image fit her well. She needed an island like that, a place of refuge where she was cut off from everything but the weather and the heavens. Maybe she’d already built it in her mind, and when she looked out her living room windows, she didn’t see the street or the cars parked on it. She saw the dark water. The moon lighting a path across its rippling surface, inviting her to walk to the opposite shore.