The Dark Room(30)

“All right,” she said. “If there’s nothing else we can do.”





11


ON THE WALK back down the hill to Fillmore Street, he asked Angela Chun how she’d known. He’d seen the man briefly from the back, and then they were running and the only thing that had mattered was the chase. Now he couldn’t even say for sure the color of the man’s hair. He’d been tall and fast, and that was all Cain knew.

“It wasn’t anything, really,” she was saying. “It was just the way he looked at me and then looked away.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“If there’d been shots fired, if he’d been hit by that truck while we were chasing him, we’d have to face a board of inquiry. What would you have said then?”

“He ran.”

“But you knew it was him before he ran.”

“I knew,” she said.

They reached the bottom of the hill and turned onto Fillmore. She didn’t say anything else until they’d gone half a block. Then she stopped, next to Cain’s car, and touched his elbow to turn him.

“He didn’t look at me the way a man looks at me. Even if it’s just for a second—a half second—most men do it. They don’t even know it, maybe, but they do. It’s like an appraisal, their eyes flicking up and down. It looks like a blink, but it’s not.”

They started walking again, the Western’s yellow-lit sign blinking in front of them like the marquee at an old playhouse.

“And what did he do, if it wasn’t that?” Cain asked.

“The opposite of it—maybe what we do, on the receiving end. He curled up inside himself. He turned sideways and tried to slide by. You think I could explain that to a board of inquiry?”

“They’re usually a bunch of old men, those boards.”

“Then I guess it’s good we didn’t shoot him,” she said. “But you believe me?”

“Sure,” Cain said. “He ran. Did you get a look at him at all?”

“Not really.”

“Young?” Cain asked. “He ran like he was young.”

“Nineteen, twenty. White. Shortish hair.”

“What else?”

“He was tall—but you saw that. What do you think, six foot three?”

“At least.”

“I could sit next to him on BART for an hour and not know it was him.”

“He must be working for somebody,” Cain said. “Don’t you think?”

“Why?”

“Not many kids that age give a shit about the mayor. And anyway, this is about something that happened in 1985. If he was alive back then, he was in diapers. So he’s working for somebody.”

They reached the Western. He opened the door for her and they went back inside.



At six thirty, he gave the waitress his credit card and watched Grassley walk out with Chun. When the waitress came back, she slid into the booth opposite him.

“I asked around,” she said.

“Anything?”

He’d asked her to get him the names of any retired cops who’d worked out of the Richmond station.

“John MacDowell’s the guy you want, but he’s not here.”

“You got a number?”

“He doesn’t have a phone,” she said. She handed him a slip of paper. “Next best thing—I found out where he lives.”

“You should be cop.”

“Maybe it rubs off.”

The address was north of the city, in Stinson Beach. That wasn’t the first place he’d go looking for a retired homicide inspector. The SRO hotels in the Tenderloin would be a good start for the ones who’d washed out badly. Not-quite-beachfront Florida condos if they’d hung on to their marriages and guarded their pensions.

Stinson Beach, though. That was another financial planet.

“How’s he a regular?” Cain asked. “He’s all the way up there.”

“It’s been a couple years. He used to be a regular. He moved in with family, is what I heard.”

“How old is he?”

“Last I saw, plenty.”

“All right,” he said. He put the paper in his pocket. “This is a huge help.”

“It’s nothing,” she answered. “When you work at the Western, that’s just how it goes.”



This time, he got to the Burton Building a few minutes early. Instead of going in, he leaned against the side of his car and called Karen Fischer.

“Inspector Cain?”

“Are you sitting with my lieutenant?”

“She’s here, but I stepped out.”

“You tell her it was me?”

“No.”

He’d read her the right way, this FBI agent. She had good instincts.

“I’m out front. Can you meet me?”

“What is this?”

“I want to tell you something, and I don’t want it going straight to the mayor.”

“Give me one minute to get down.”

He hung up and went around to the front of the building. Fischer came through the glass doors soon after, paused long enough to contemplate the rain, and then walked into it to join Cain. She folded her arms together beneath the lapels of her suit jacket.