The Dark Room(16)

“So we can put him in Berkeley, more or less, for the next four years?”

“He graduated in ’eighty-eight.”

“With honors?”

“It doesn’t say.”

“That means no,” Cain said. “What’d he major in?”

“Political science.”

“And after he left?”

“He went back to London. It says he was a freelance consultant.”

“For what?”

Grassley was reading to himself, maybe following links. Then his voice came back, clear enough for Cain to hear.

“There’s nothing solid. U.K. businesses, is what it sounds like.”

“He was selling his connections,” Cain said. “Access to his dad. That’s not a minor position.”

“Makes sense.”

“Dad was still the ambassador in ’eighty-eight?”

There was more silence while Grassley chased that down.

“He stayed on through Reagan, and Bush reappointed him. Clinton replaced him in ’ninety-three. February 1993.”

“And then Harry had to go look for his first honest job.”

“You’re not a fan.”

“You can hear that, even over the phone?”

“I didn’t hear anything, sir.”

“That’s right,” Cain said. “What’d he do after ’ninety-three?”

“Came home. He got an MBA at Stanford, worked for a couple startups. He got in at the beginning of the bubble. Cashed out in 2001.”

“That’s when he ran for the Board of Supervisors,” Cain said. “There were signs all over town.”

“It says he split with his dad, rebranded himself as a Democrat.”

“Didn’t he have a stint in Congress?”

“Two, or one and a half—he left in the middle of his second, and ran for mayor.”

“Ambitious,” Cain said. “Working his way up.”

“All of them are. You know the type.”

“Sure.”

“What’s he gotten into?” Grassley asked. “I mean—is he some kind of suspect?”

“Nice try,” Cain said. “I’m not biting. See you in ten.”



Cain buzzed into the medical examiner’s suite and met Grassley in the bare-bones waiting room. An intern was spraying Lysol onto the painted concrete walls, then scrubbing the mildew off with a grime-caked rag. Nothing could mask the smell down here, though.

“She’s waiting back there,” Grassley said. “But they want us to suit up first. Respirators, hoods. The whole thing.”

“You’ll be glad for it.”

Grassley followed Cain to the double doors leading from reception into the main examination room. So far, he’d seen three autopsies, each time with Cain at his side. Those bodies had come to the morgue still warm. They’d been at the scenes, had knelt next to the dead and searched their pockets with gloved hands. By the time they got to the morgue, there weren’t any surprises left.

But anything could be waiting inside this casket. Cain paused at the door and looked at his partner. The x-ray was only a hint of what was beneath the lid. Judging by the look on his face, Grassley knew it.

“Let’s do this,” Cain said. “I’ve got to meet Nagata at noon.”



They suited up in a spare office. A pair of Tyvek body suits had been laid out on the desk. Full-face respirators lay nearby. Plastic booties to go over their shoes, thick rubber gloves.

“Nice they got this out for us,” Cain said.

“It was that kid, the one disinfecting the lobby.”

“Suit up,” Cain said. “Bag your feet first, then pull the cuffs tight. Same around your wrists. You want to seal out the air, or you’ll be going to the dry cleaner.”

“You’ve done one like this?”

“I did one twice as old,” Cain said. “They’d buried her in ’fifty-two. It was bad, and she was nearly a skeleton. You get a casket with a good seal, and it locks everything in—unless the gasses blow it open from the inside.”

“That happens—they blow open?”

“Sometimes,” Cain said. “But it didn’t happen to Chris Hanley. His casket’s intact. And it hasn’t had so long to dry out . . . You didn’t eat a big breakfast, did you?”

Grassley glanced at his feet.

“Shit.”

“Come on—you saw the x-ray.”

“I thought it’d just be bones. Just—a whole lot of bones.”

“Coming back up from El Carmelo in the van, what’d you smell?”

“Dirt,” Grassley said. “Wood.”

“It’s got a good seal on it.”

“You think?”

“We’ll see.”



Rachel Levy, the acting medical examiner, was waiting for them in the autopsy suite. The casket was on one of the six tables. Cain’s tamper-evident seal tape circled each end of the wooden box. Dr. Levy nodded to each of them. No one shook hands in here. Two tables over, another autopsy was in progress, an assistant medical examiner elbows-deep. A lab tech stood behind him with a glass specimen jar. As for the cadaver, it was so thoroughly disassembled, Cain could guess neither the sex nor the age.