The Dark Room(17)

“I watched John Fonteroy’s video,” Dr. Levy said. Cain turned back to her. She was gathering her curly hair into a tight bun. Her face shield lay on an empty table nearby. “You ever see anything like it?”

“Not even close,” Cain said. He handed her the face shield when she was finished with her hair.

“Maybe you should talk to some of the old guys,” Dr. Levy said. “The ones who worked homicide in the eighties. Fonteroy’s place was on Geary. Find some guys who worked that neighborhood, and maybe one of them will know something.”

“Are there any left?” Cain asked.

“I wouldn’t know,” Dr. Levy said. She’d been brought in from Seattle after the last medical examiner had been dismissed for compromising a case. A month in, she was still learning her way around the office and didn’t even know the current crop of inspectors, let alone the retirees. “It’s just a thought.”

“Not a bad one,” Cain said. “You saw the x-ray?”

“Ten minutes ago.”

“How hard will it be, opening this?”

Dr. Levy turned to the assistant medical examiner and the technician helping him.

“Jim—you guys got a casket key collection?”

Jim didn’t look up from the chest cavity. He was using a metal probe, maybe tracing a bullet’s trajectory.

“By the wash station,” he said. “Third drawer down, green plastic pencil box.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll get it,” Cain said. He looked at Grassley. “Double-check that camera. Make sure it’s rolling, the battery has enough juice.”

“Bring her the pliers,” Jim said, still concentrating on the problem in front of him. “Same drawer. Thing looks rusted all to hell.”

The drawer had come off its slide tracks, and he had to kneel down and jiggle it to coax it open. The pencil box was beneath a pair of short-handled bolt cutters—useful, Cain supposed, if a body came wrapped in padlocked chains. There was a ring of assorted handcuff keys, a scatter of pliers and vise grips. Cain grabbed a couple sets of pliers and the green box.

When he came back, Dr. Levy was using a wet rag to wipe the dirt from a small metal protrusion at the foot of the casket. He put the box and the pliers on the edge of the table.

“You rolling?” he asked Grassley.

“We’re on.”

“Dr. Levy,” Cain said. “It’s your show.”

She took a pair of pliers and gripped the rusted knob. Cain watched as she flexed her arms and strained against the pliers’ rubber grips. She let go, clamped on at a different angle, and tried again. The knob, which was no bigger than a half-inch hex nut, didn’t budge.

“All right,” Dr. Levy said. She brought her face shield up and looked at Cain. “I hate this—it’s like asking my husband when I can’t open a jar. Do you mind?”

“It’s nothing.”

He stepped up and took the pliers from Dr. Levy.

“What is it?” he asked. “What do I do?”

“It covers the casket lock—protects it from corrosion, we hope. Either it’ll unscrew counterclockwise, or it’s got a rubber gasket and just pushes on. So grab on hard and twist it, and give it a yank at the same time.”

“Okay.”

Cain fit the pliers over the rusted metal. He found a good hold and then put both his hands on the pliers’ handles. He clamped down and began to twist, but the cap disintegrated beneath the force of his grip. It fell away in dust and flakes of oxidized metal.

“Or you could just break everything,” Dr. Levy said. “That’s another way to do it.”

“Sorry.”

Cain used the pliers to tap at the last pieces of the cap, and they fell off. He’d uncovered a screw-threaded throat that came out of the casket wall. In the middle of this, there was a hexagonal hole, and he could see the green patina of bronze. He set the pliers down and stepped back so that Dr. Levy could look at it.

“Maybe we’re in luck,” she said.

She opened the pencil box. Inside it were half a dozen bronze and steel casket keys. They reminded Cain of miniature engine cranks, the kind of things you might have used to start a Model-T. Dr. Levy sorted through them until she found one she liked. She fit it into the lock and put her weight on it, and it began to turn. Grease-starved gears groaned inside the casket walls, and then the lid rose a few millimeters. There was a long hiss, as if Dr. Levy had given a slow twist to a soda bottle’s cap.

“The smell of success,” Jim said.

“Jesus,” Grassley coughed.

“Inspector?” Dr. Levy asked. “Would you like to remove your seals?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Cain said. “You getting this, Grassley?”

“I’m getting it. You don’t have to ask.”

Cain found the edges of his seals and inspected them. He turned to the camera.

“For the record, neither seal’s been touched,” he said. “Zoom in, get that.”

“If anyone had messed with that thing,” Jim said, “it wouldn’t have hissed. That’s a solid casket.”

“Thank you, Jim,” Dr. Levy said. “We’d like a clean tape from here on.”

“I’m just saying.”