The Dark Room(60)

Cain knew he was at an impasse until he could look at the lab results.

Tonight, at 850 Bryant, he’d gone around the building to lean on the forensic lab chiefs. Only the ballistics crew had been cooperative, Dr. Revchuk and his two interns promising a striation report within three days. But otherwise, he’d gotten nothing. No reduction in the waiting times, no bump ahead in line. Six weeks for the toxicology, which had to go to a CHP lab in Sacramento. That put them into March. Three weeks for fingerprints, and nearly the same for DNA. No one could even give him an estimate on the document analysis.



Standing next to his car in Lucy’s driveway, listening to the hood tick as it cooled off, he looked up at the front of the house, scanning for lights inside. Nothing, except the faintest glow from the living room. He smelled the air and caught a hint of wood smoke, and then he understood.

He went up the steps and put his key in the lock. There was a shadow on the doormat, and that stopped him from going any farther. He touched the object with his foot but couldn’t identify it in the dark. He clicked on his flashlight and crouched.

She’d left a pair of tennis shoes on the doormat. Women’s shoes, size six. He’d seen them in her closet but never on her feet. Now, in the LED glare of his light, he saw why she’d left them outside: they were caked with mud. In the mud were broken leaves and blades of cut grass. He stepped inside and closed the door after himself, then leaned against it with one hand while he took off his own shoes so that he wouldn’t wake her.

He found her asleep in an overstuffed chair in front of the fireplace. Her head on the armrest, one palm under her cheek. Legs curled up onto the cushion, and half her body beneath a tartan blanket. He tiptoed upstairs and knelt at the safe to put his gun away. Then he came back downstairs, socked feet silent on the wood floors.

The fire she’d built was mostly burned down to embers, piled high around the andirons and casting their shadows out into the room. He sat on the carpet in front of her and used the poker to stir up the flames. He looked around for another log to put on, but there was nothing. She’d burned through all the wood she’d found, and the fire in front of him was the last of it. She must have used that afternoon’s edition of theExaminer as tinder, but she’d saved the front section. It was on the floor next to her chair, and even in the soft light he had no trouble reading the headline.



SUICIDE!

CASTELLI TAKES OWN LIFE





It had probably gone to print and been on the stands before Dr. Levy even made her first cut. Cain pulled the paper over and held the front page to the firelight so that he could read the story. There were no official sources; everything was anonymous. But enough people had seen Castelli where he’d fallen that the two reporters were able to paint a clear picture of the scene. They even had two crucial facts that Cain would never have allowed out. The mayor’s hands had field-tested positive for gunshot residue, and Mona Castelli’s hands were clean.

The one thing missing was a reason—not even a guess at one. The Examiner’s reporters hadn’t written a word about the blackmail notes or the photographs. Either they didn’t know about them or they were waiting until they got a little more.

Cain set the paper down and leaned his head back until it rested against Lucy’s shins. After a while, he felt her hand reach out of the blanket and stroke the top of his head. He took her fingers and held them against the side of his neck.

“Should we go up to bed?” he asked. “It’d be more comfortable.”

“All right.”

She didn’t move to get up, though. He turned around to look at her and saw the fire’s glow reflected in her eyes.

“Where’d you find the wood?”

“In the park, under the eucalyptuses. And in the redwood grove,” she said. “Fallen branches—nothing thicker than my wrist. I broke them over my knee and put them in a bag.”

“They must’ve been wet,” Cain said. “All this rain today.”

“I had to use two newspapers to get them going.”

“How long were you out?”

“Four hours,” she said. “Five, maybe. I wasn’t feeling good. I thought a walk would help. I read in the book that I’m supposed to walk. But it was so cold, I thought a fire would be nice.”

“They’ve helped before—the walks, I mean?”

“You knew?”

“I’d guessed.”

“Is it okay?”

He wasn’t sure if she meant the walks or how she hadn’t said anything about them.

“I think it’s great,” Cain said.

“Okay.” She sat up and pulled the blanket around her shoulders like a shawl. “It’ll be cold upstairs—you should’ve seen it down here when the fire was going, when it was really going.”

She started for the stairs and he followed her.

“I’m sorry I missed it—that I was so late.”

“Don’t be,” she said. “I saw the paper so I knew where you were.”

“Still.”

“Did they get it right?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Probably they did.”

Now they were going down the hall. There weren’t any lights, but it didn’t matter. He was close enough behind her that he could feel the warmth coming from beneath her blanket. He undressed at the foot of the bed. Lucy dropped her blanket and then took off her T-shirt, the high school one she usually slept in. She came up to him and he ran his hands gently along her clavicles and down her chest— “Careful, Gavin,” she whispered. She always whispered when they were this close. “I’m sore.”