The Dark Room(33)

“If you want to threaten me, you’ve got to be specific,” the mayor said. “Maybe it means I’m not a smart guy. But I don’t jump at shadows.”

“I’m just calling bullshit,” Cain said. He let go of the door and took a step back toward Castelli. “I don’t care if you find that threatening or not. You’ve seen that girl. We both know it.”

The mayor had no answer. He stared at Cain from behind the rim of his empty snifter, which he turned and turned in his cupped hands.

“If you don’t want to tell it to me, then call Agent Fischer and tell her,” Cain said. “Or have that kid do it, what’s-his-name.”

“Who?”

“That intern you had, who called them the first time. Jacobs? Jackson?”

One name was from a list of the mayor’s staff that Cain had seen at the first meeting in the federal building. The other, he’d just made up.

“Jackson,” Castelli said. The name from the list. If the mayor was grabbing at hints like that, it could only mean one thing. He didn’t know who’d called the FBI.

Cain nodded and stepped out. This time, Melissa Montgomery wasn’t there. The reception area was as empty as he’d left it.





12


SMOOTHING THINGS OVER with Nagata was easier than he’d expected, and he had Grassley to thank for it. He’d come out of the mayor’s office and down the steps to the rotunda, but Karen Fischer wasn’t anywhere in sight. The FBI agent who’d let them in was making rounds in the farther reaches of the building; Cain could hear his steady footfalls echoing down the marble hallways and amplifying in the vast dome above.

He stood near one of the lamps that flanked the staircase and called his lieutenant.

“What happened—and where are you?”

“With Fischer, at City Hall.”

“How is it she walks out of a meeting with me and ends up with you at City Hall, and I only hear about it an hour later?”

“That was my fault,” Cain said. “I ran into her before I came up, told her what I needed to do, and she wanted to come with me. It was heat of the moment, but I should’ve called you.”

“What do you mean, ‘heat of the moment’? What’s going on?”

He gave her the story he’d told Fischer about finding a note on his windshield, then chasing its author through the Western Addition. He didn’t mention his meetings with Mona and Alexa Castelli, or the photograph that Alexa had given him. The note was safe because Castelli already knew about it. Cain had been careful about what information he’d shared so far, but he was going to need to sit down soon and work it through. There were too many threads in the story he was telling, and if he looked away for too long, they’d tangle.

“What did he say when you showed him the note?” Nagata asked. “Did he have the next set?”

“He said I was being played.”

“And you thought what?”

“That he’s got it right—someone’s putting pressure on him.”

“You believed him.”

“Maybe he’s smarter than he looks.”

“So there’s hope for you,” Nagata said. “He can make a career in the department, you know. When he takes an interest in someone.”

“I’m not sure he’s taken that kind of interest in me.”

There was silence while Nagata considered something. Cain looked around the darkened rotunda but didn’t see Fischer. The only sound was the FBI agent, pacing the perimeter. Fischer must have taken Melissa Montgomery into an empty office, or back into the Board of Supervisors’ Chambers. Then Nagata was back on the line.

“I hate to do this to you—I put you on Castelli, told you to bear down like it was the only thing that mattered.”

“It’s not?”

“I need you to help Grassley.”

“What’s he got into?”

“He called a minute ago,” she said. “And asked for you. He’s headed to the morgue, that exhumation job. Dr. Levy wants to see him. There was a second body—you heard that yet?”

“In the casket?” Cain asked. “A second body?”

“It’s a woman—she was buried alive.”

“Did they ID her?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Nagata said. “They had the x-ray since this morning, but nobody told me anything until now. Do you see the pattern?”

“Lieutenant—”

“Forget it, Cain. I want you there. Whatever Dr. Levy’s got to say, you have to hear it. We can keep the mayor out of the news, if we’re lucky. But this one will get out, and when it does, we need a senior inspector standing out front.”

Of course, Cain thought. How it plays on the evening news is her biggest concern.

“I’ll be there,” he said. “I’m on my way.”

“You can handle both?”

“Easy.”

“We’ll talk tomorrow,” she said. “I understand how it is. You have to go wherever the investigation leads. But I don’t like being left out of the loop.”

“Understood, Lieutenant.”

He hung up and looked around again. Fischer was coming down the staircase to meet him.