The Dark Room(57)

“Whiskey,” she said.

“Kentucky bourbon,” Cain answered. “Single cask, hundred-twenty proof. And this is what—sixteen hours later?”

Dr. Levy shrugged.

“You can’t just accidentally shoot one of those old thirty-eights,” Cain said. “You have to put the hammer back before you pull the trigger, and there’s a hard pull on that.”

“I’ve seen drunk suicides thread smaller needles,” Levy said. “They run hoses from their car exhaust into second-floor windows. They drive a hundred miles to the bridge, park, and walk to the middle of the span. So drunk they shouldn’t be able to stand. But when they’re ready to go, they go.”

“So you’ll put suicide in the report,” Cain said.

“We’ll see what we get back from toxicology. And we haven’t even opened him up yet.”

She held out her hand and Jim Braun gave her an oscillating saw.





20


AT SIX O’clock, Cain was at Lori’s Diner with his three new partners. They were two to a side in a red vinyl booth, plates of pasta and home-style meatloaf on the table between them. Grassley poked at his potatoes. Next to him, Chun scrolled through her phone’s screen. She put it away, then pushed her plate aside.

“Pi Kappa Kappa was a banned fraternity—it got kicked off the Cal campus in 1982, and dissolved nationwide in 1983.”

“What for?” Fischer asked.

“Three sophomore coeds died at a party.”

“Alcohol?”

“And drugs—but it was quaaludes, not Thrallinex,” Chun said. “It might’ve been easier to look the other way back then, but not when there’s three dead girls.”

“He was a freshman in 1984,” Cain said. “Pi Kappa Kappa was already gone.”

“Maybe it was unofficial,” Fischer said. “Unsanctioned.”

“Did you see that online?” Cain asked Chun. “That they went underground?”

“Nothing like that.” She gathered her things and slid from the booth, leaving enough cash on the table to cover her part of the check. “But I might find out tonight—I’m meeting a guy who knew Castelli back then. Says he knew him, anyway.”

“Who?”

“Dennis Herrington—a doctor up in Marin County. We’re meeting for coffee, and I’ll be late if I don’t get going.”

“You’re meeting up there?” Cain asked.

“That’s right.”

“Take Grassley if you want backup,” Cain said.

“They don’t come safer than this guy—he’s a pediatrician,” Chun said. Cain took off his glasses to look at her, and she went on. “All right. Point taken—you never know. But he’ll talk more if it’s just me.”

“Call me when you’re done.”

She nodded.

“I’ll see you in the morning.”

When she was gone, Cain turned to Grassley.

“How about you?”

“I met Frank Lee’s pharmacy guy—the professor at UCSF,” Grassley said. “But he didn’t have anything new. Thrallinex wasn’t common, but it wasn’t a unicorn. It’s not like only one doctor in the country prescribed it.”

“So it’s a dead end.”

“That angle, maybe. But maybe something will come of it.”

He knew what Grassley was thinking. At least he hadn’t finished the thought aloud, with Fischer sitting at the table. Thrallinex might still be useful to tie the girl in the casket to the girl in the photo. If her liver samples showed metabolites of the drug, it would be a done deal, in Cain’s mind.

“There’s still the dress. You could work on that.”

“I’m on it,” Grassley said. “I’m swinging past the Academy of Art tonight at eight to talk to one of the fashion instructors there.”

“Until then, come with us,” Cain said.

“We got time to finish?”

“If we start eating and quit talking.”

Grassley pulled Angela Chun’s half-finished platter of linguini over and forked the pasta onto his plate.



They came in a convoy of separate cars and parked alongside a fireplug on Polk, then hurried across the street in the rain and went up the steps to City Hall. Cain had tried Lucy again on the drive over, but there was still no answer. It had been light outside when he’d called from the morgue, but that was hours ago and now it was dark. There wasn’t much he could do now except steal away whenever he could to call again.

“It’s locked,” Grassley said. He’d turned around, was watching Cain and Fischer as they climbed the last few steps.

“Then knock.”

Grassley pounded on the door with his knuckles. He’d been a patrolman for eight years in Stockton and an SFPD inspector for just a month. He still knew how to knock on a door like a beat cop.

A contract security guard cracked the door, and Grassley glanced back at Fischer.

“Show him your star,” Fischer said.

“What happened to your guys?”

“They were here for Castelli. No need for that now.”

Cain and Grassley held their inspectors’ stars up for the guard to see. He opened the door for them and they stepped inside. They went beneath the rotunda and up the staircase, and found a pair of black-shirted patrolmen leaning against the doors to the mayoral suite. When Cain brought out his inspector’s star, they straightened up.