The Dark Room(65)

MacDowell lived on Seadrift Avenue, out near the end of a private peninsula. Cain stopped at the security booth and rolled down his window. He leaned out to hand the guard his inspector’s star, but the man raised the gate and waved him through. He drove up the peninsula, a low spit of sand just feet above the surf, scanning the street numbers. Most of the houses here were designed to take up the entire buildable space of their lots, pressed too close together for Cain to see the ocean beyond. There were sprawling low bungalows built of redwood, and columned concrete monstrosities, and stucco houses in the Spanish style, with tiered tile roofs and ironwork on the upstairs balconies.

The house where MacDowell lived was a modern box, built of unvarnished wood and glass. There was a detached garage, and above that a guest apartment.

Cain pulled into the driveway and checked his phone for messages, then got out and looked around. The garage had a rolling door with five square windows set in it. He went up to the middle one and cupped his hands around his eyes to look inside. There was nothing but a tool bench, though he could tell from the stains on the concrete floor that usually there were two cars here.

Around the side of the garage there was a wooden staircase that led to a little deck with a view over the roof of the main house out to the beach. He stood a moment with his hands on the rail, wondering how a retired cop found his way to a place like this. It wasn’t the main house, but the view was probably better. The waves broke in a long line down the beach, the water here unsettled and broken by currents.

“The right time of year, you can see whales out there.”

There was a rocking chair in the far corner of the deck, up against the apartment wall, and in it there was an old man who was much smaller than he once had been. His back was bent and his skin hung off him in wrinkled folds where the flesh beneath it had evaporated. There was a blanket folded on his lap and a cup of coffee on the small table next to him. He had been so still, and tucked so far back into the corner, that Cain hadn’t noticed him. The waitress at the Western had said John MacDowell moved in with family, but that was probably too strong a term. He was just a guest passing through. This was his next to last stop.

“Gray whales, I guess,” the man said. “Going north in the winter and south in the summer.”

“I didn’t see you there.”

“I try to keep out of the way,” the man said. “I try to blend.”

Cain took out his badge again and handed it over. The man looked at it and gave it back.

“You’re Inspector MacDowell?”

“Retired,” he said. “Obviously.”

“Gavin Cain.”

They shook hands and MacDowell slowly stood up.

“We might as well go inside,” he said. He picked up his mug in a hand that looked like it was made of knotted wood. “If you came to talk about one of my old cases, we’ll want to be out of this wind.”

He opened the French doors and they stepped into the apartment’s main room. It was polished and spare. There was a glass-topped coffee table with a piece of sun-silvered driftwood in the middle of it. A pair of low white couches on either side of the table. The kitchen had a sit-in dining nook at a bay window that looked out at the ocean. Everything smelled of lemon oil and fresh laundry.

The man saw Cain’s gaze and shook his head.

“I’m learning Spanish from my daughter’s housekeeper,” he said. “People say old dogs and new tricks, and all that. I don’t disagree—but I’ve got to talk to somebody, don’t I?”

“Sure you do.”

“Which case did you want to talk about?”

“It’s not an old case,” Cain said. “Not exactly.”

He looked around the room again. There was no television, no radio. There were no bookshelves. There weren’t even any magazines on the coffee table. Maybe all those things were in the bedroom, but Cain didn’t think so. He’d found the old man sitting on the porch, staring at the waves. It was all he had to do unless it was a cleaning day.

“What is it, then?”

“Do you have time?” Cain asked. “I mean—you’re not busy today?”

“Are you kidding me?”

“If you take a ride with me, I’ll buy you lunch. You can show me around your old neighborhood.”

“My old neighborhood,” MacDowell said. “Not where I lived, but where I patrolled.”

“You remember it?”

“The Richmond?” He set his blanket on the counter and poured his coffee down the sink. “I put in my twenty on patrol, took a week off, and put in another twenty-five as an inspector. Both tours in the Richmond. From the beach, east to Divisadero—sixty-five blocks long and twenty-two wide. I could tell you stories.”

“That’s what I want,” Cain said. “Stories. What about lunch at the Western?”

“I’ll get my coat.”



Coming back across the bridge, the city growing in front of them, MacDowell sat up a little straighter. He hadn’t spoken since they’d gotten onto the freeway.

“I’d come down more if I still had a car,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Every day, maybe,” he said. “This is my town.”

“Who took the car?”

“My daughter. Her husband.”