The Dark Room(85)

When she had a browser window open, he pulled out one of the guest chairs and sat.

“What now?” Fischer asked.

“We need to figure out if the British have a national missing persons clearinghouse,” Cain said.

Fischer did a search and the first link on the results page was what they wanted. The clearinghouse was called the U.K. Missing Persons Bureau. They didn’t bother searching the database of photographs. If she had been in it, Matt Redding would have found her. Instead, Fischer found a general email address.

“I think we should just attach the one photograph,” she said. “The first one. I’d rather hold back the rest.”

“So would I.”

“And I’m giving them your phone number. The body’s in your custody, so they should call you.”

“That’s fine.”

She typed for a moment, then let him read the message. Then she attached a scanned copy of the photograph and pressed send.



By two o’clock, a dull thump was growing in Cain’s head.

“I’ll get lunch,” Fischer said. “Nothing special. But I know a good place.”

“I don’t know.”

“You need it, Cain,” she said. “You mind walking?”

“That’s fine.”

They took the elevator down and went out into the early afternoon. He followed Fischer to a French-style brasserie on the edge of Hayes Valley. It was packed and looked expensive, and Cain thought they’d have to wait for a table. Most of the Saturday-afternoon crowd in the converted corner house didn’t seem to be here on any kind of business. It wasn’t the sort of place Cain would have picked, and he was already turning to go, but then Fischer took his wrist and began leading them through the restaurant.

A waitress said hello, calling Fischer by her first name. Another waitress caught the swinging kitchen door and held it open for them.

The back of the restaurant was all stainless steel and flashes of flame from the line of chefs de partie. Fischer led them across the room, toward a massive man kneeling in front of a wooden case of Louvois grand cru champagne. He was holding a bottle up to the light, studying its label.

“Michael.”

He stood up and turned around, a single fluid motion, easy in spite of his bulk because everything on him was muscle. He took her hand and kissed her cheek, then nodded toward Cain.

“This is Gavin Cain,” she said. “The inspector I told you about.”

“Mr. Cain.”

He held out his hand and Cain shook it. It was like holding hands with a bench vise.

“This is Michael,” Fischer said. “My fiancé.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“Can we sit at the kitchen table?” Fischer asked. “I told Cain I’d get him lunch.”



The kitchen table was wedged between a pair of high wine storage racks. The table itself was an old sherry cask, and there were no seats. They stood on either side of it, and Fischer’s fiancé served them. He offered them wine, and they turned it down and took water instead. Cain took the glass and held it against his forehead.

“I wanted to bring you somewhere nice,” Fischer said. “I don’t want you to feel like I left you hanging.”

“Hanging how?”

“I’ve got to be in D.C. tomorrow morning. I’m on a redeye tonight.”

“You can’t get out of it?”

“I tried.”

“It doesn’t have to do with our case?”

“If it did, I’d tell you. But it’s nothing to do with us. It’s about our office’s budget.”

“It’s bullshit, is what you’re saying.”

“The purest, uncut strain of bullshit,” Fischer said. “Which you can get only in D.C. I’ll be back on Tuesday.”

Michael brought them a loaf of bread and a saucer of olive oil to dip it in. Cain watched him go back to the kitchen, watched him come up behind one of the apprentice chefs and look over the kid’s shoulder.

“He’s your fiancé but you don’t live together?” Cain asked. “You didn’t bring anyone else to Yerba Buena.”

“Our relationship is a little bit complicated,” Fischer said. “But it makes sense to us.”

“What about Castelli?” Cain said. “Does that make sense?”

“I don’t know.”

“Before the autopsy, we were sitting in my office. I told you my theory of the case,” Cain said. “But I had to stop short.”

“You think someone killed him, but you can’t prove it because he was alone in the house,” Fischer said.

Cain nodded. He looked at the bread and the olive oil and watched the line of chefs. It all looked wonderful, but he had no appetite.

“He was locked in the study,” Cain said. “GSR on his right hand, his own thirty-eight next to him. And then there’s everything we got from the alarm company.”

“So maybe he shot himself,” Fischer said. “That doesn’t mean we’re not still looking for someone. The blackmailer’s out there, and he tried to close us down last night.”

“Say the last set of pictures showed him raping a girl—a girl we found buried alive, with his baby inside her. Say that’s true.”