The Dark Room(36)

13


SLIDING HIS KEY into the lock, he heard voices. A man speaking, Lucy laughing. He turned the bolt without making a sound, then rotated the handle and pressed the door carefully open until there was enough of a gap for him to slip inside.

“ . . . we get off the jet,” the man was saying, “and I don’t even know where we are. Montana? Colorado? They put us in a golf cart and drive us from the landing strip up to the house. This paved pathway—and you know those little solar garden lights? Forget those. They’ve got actual candles, in glass globes.”

“But you’ve got no idea?” Lucy asked. “At all?”

“Somewhere in the mountains. The air was cold. You breathe in, and it’s cold and thin, and there’s hint of wood smoke. There were streams nearby, and I could hear them.”

“How big was it?” Lucy asked. “The house they brought you to.”

“You’d think huge, right?” the man said, and by now Cain had placed Matt Redding’s voice. “But it was just a little cabin. A little hunting cabin, somewhere in the mountains. With a landing strip for a twin-engine jet. And they were all waiting for—”

Cain stepped into the dining room, and Matt stopped midsentence and stood. He’d been sitting opposite Lucy at her long walnut table. His glass was empty, and the bottle of wine next to it was half gone. Lucy had a glass of water. Cain looked to her and she answered him by tilting her right palm toward the ceiling. She didn’t know why Matt had come.

“Hey, Matt. What’s going on?” Cain said.

“I came over to see you,” he said. “And I brought you and Lucy a bottle of wine. Only you weren’t here, and I find out she won’t drink wine—”

“She told you why?”

“No, but I’m not stupid—and it’s great, Gavin.”

“Thanks.”

“Really,” Matt said. “You guys are going to be great.”

Cain checked to his left, saw that Lucy was still okay with this. They hadn’t told anyone except her psychiatrist, who still came three times a week. Then, at the shrink’s urging, Cain had found another doctor who was willing to make house calls. But the doctor couldn’t do everything in a house call, and they wanted to be safe. They’d talked about it, and she knew she’d have to do it, but they hadn’t settled on when or where.

In front of him, Matt held out the bottle of wine.

“So, she can’t,” Matt said. “I get that. But you can—unless it’s a solidarity thing.”

“Have some,” Lucy said. “He’s celebrating.”

“You sold the program?” Cain asked.

Matt nodded.

“For the kind of money you expected?”

“North of that,” Matt said. He poured wine into his glass and put the bottle down. “Way north.”

“I’ll get a glass.”



They talked for a while about the places Matt thought he might travel first: the Amalfi Coast, Santorini. Places Cain had never been, but he could picture them: water the color of lazurite, whitewashed houses clinging to the cliffs and catching the last of the day’s sunlight. There was only so much they could say, and they went through it all quickly. Then Cain sat looking at the wine in his half-empty glass.

“You didn’t just come to tell us you’re leaving.”

“I had another look at the photos. Highlighted some things I didn’t think to check the first time, and got a couple hits.” He glanced at Lucy. “It’s okay to talk here?”

“I’m okay if you’re okay,” Lucy said. She took Cain’s hand under the table.

Matt’s backpack was hanging from his chair. He opened it and brought out a tablet computer, setting it on the table between them. He switched it on, then opened a file. It was the first photograph, the girl in the Jean Patou dress, backed against a brick wall with her hands up to ward off the man with the camera. Lucy leaned across to look at it.

“This has to do with the mayor?” she asked.

“I hadn’t told him that,” Cain said. He looked at Matt. “You’ll keep a secret?”

“You know I will.”

“That photo came to Castelli’s office in an envelope. There were three others with it,” Cain said. He took them out of his briefcase and laid them out on the table next to Matt’s tablet. “And there was a note.”

“What does he want?” Lucy asked, when she was finished looking at each of the pictures. “Money?”

“Nothing so simple,” Cain said. “He wants Castelli to end it.”

“End what?”

“His life. With a gun to his head.”

Cain slid his copy of the note from its folder and put it on the table. Lucy read it, then pushed it across to Matt.

“What do you think the other eight show?” he asked, handing the note back.

Cain had some ideas about that. Castelli might be on the bed with the handcuffed, passed-out girl. The final shots might show the girl being stuffed on top of Christopher Hanley and sealed alive inside his casket. Cain couldn’t rule anything out, but he didn’t have enough to start speculating out loud.

“I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”