The Dark Room(68)

“I don’t know,” MacDowell said. “Both, maybe. First the one, and then after the drugs wore off, she knew enough not to talk.”

“What’d you think?”

“What else was there to think?” MacDowell asked. “She’d had a close call. She was lucky. We figure she jumped out of a moving car, took off down the street.”

But Cain knew she hadn’t come from a moving car. She’d come from the funeral home. One of her captors must have turned his back just long enough for her to grab something. There would have been plenty of blades in a mortuary’s back room. If the men hadn’t chased her down and dragged her back, hadn’t shot her down on the sidewalk, then she must have known how to use the scalpel. MacDowell had said it was bloody.

“What happened to her?” Cain asked. “You must’ve kept tabs.”

“Middle of the night, she got up and walked out of UCSF. Nothing but a hospital gown. An EMT out front saw her go but didn’t think to stop her. I was so pissed, I would’ve charged him with something if I could’ve. Negligence. Criminal stupidity.”

“And that was that.”

“That’s right,” MacDowell said. “Case closed.”

“You canvassed the area?”

“Sure, but no one saw where she came from. That’s why we figured a car. One second there’s nothing, and the next second, there’s a naked woman running to the alley.”

Cain looked back toward the vacant storefront. Maybe she’d jumped out of a moving car. But it was also possible she’d come sprinting out the front door of the funeral home. The years didn’t match up, but the story fit too well.

“In ’eighty-nine, what was that?” Cain asked. He pointed out the back window. “It wasn’t Fonteroy’s anymore. That closed in ’eighty-five.”

“After Fonteroy took off, it was empty awhile, and then it was the Eternity Chapel. Another funeral parlor—because what else was the landlord going to do with it? Once a place gets set up for that, that’s it.”

“Who ran it?”

“I don’t know—I never had any trouble with him.”

“But you knew Fonteroy.”

“Guy had a record as long as your arm. Fonteroy wasn’t even his real name. It was Finnegan. He used to drive getaway cars on bank jobs. He trained as an undertaker at San Quentin. We used to roll past in the seventies and drop in, just to make sure he was still straight.”

Cain tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, thinking it through. If someone had been looking for a funeral director willing to take cash and look the other way, Fonteroy was the obvious choice. If he’d been in San Quentin for bank jobs, he’d have a reputation. But if MacDowell’s nude woman in 1989 had anything to do with the funeral home, then maybe Fonteroy’s disappearance hadn’t stopped the casket program. Maybe it only slowed it down for a few months, until Eternity Chapel moved in.

“This is why you wanted to talk to me?” MacDowell asked. “Fonteroy?”

“I’ll tell you over lunch,” he said. “But on the way, I’ve got to make a call.”

He turned off the flashers and started driving again, debating whether to call Chun or Grassley. Chun was better at digging up records, but she was busier. Grassley just had the dress. Cain dialed Grassley and put the call on speaker.

“Cain?”

“You somewhere you can talk?”

“I’m in Union Square—”

“I thought you were seeing the fashion professor at the Academy of Art.”

“I wrapped that up, and she told me to go talk to someone at Britex—this fabric store at Geary and Stockton. It’s complicated.”

“Is it a lead, or a goose chase? Because I got something else for you to work on.”

“Let me go in here and see what I can learn.”

“All right,” Cain said. “When you wrap that up, see what you can find out about Eternity Chapel.”

“What’s Eternity Chapel?”

“What Fonteroy’s turned into—the landlord rented the building to another funeral home after Fonteroy took off. I want the name of the proprietor.”

“How do I find that?”

“However you want,” Cain answered. Maybe he should have called Chun after all. “If it was me, I’d start by finding out who owned the building. Then you ask for a copy of the lease. Or you could check the mortuary licenses. The tax records. Take your pick.”

“You got it.”

Cain hung up and looked at MacDowell. The old man was watching through the windshield, hands on his knees.

“Green partner?”

“Pretty much.”

“Either they catch on in the first year, or they don’t.”

“He’ll do okay.”

He turned on Fillmore and parked down the street from the Western. When he got out, he realized he was in the same parking spot he’d had when Castelli’s blackmailer left a note on his windshield. He turned around, checking the area. There were a pair of bent-back women, MacDowell’s age or older. One of them was pushing a collapsible grocery cart. MacDowell was on the sidewalk, watching him.

“Someone following you?”

“You never know.”