The Dark Room(86)

“Okay.”

“And somebody knew about it, and sent him pictures and said: I’m going to tell.”

“Okay.”

“And then he shoots himself, because he knows he’s about to get caught. Is that even a crime?”

“What are you asking?”

“I’m asking, if that’s the story and it’s all true, then why would this person go out and kill Grassley, and maybe Chun, and try for me? What did he really do wrong? He threatened to expose a murderer. Castelli couldn’t handle the pressure, so he killed himself. This kid might not have done anything wrong, and he tries to kill three cops?”

“Maybe he was there, the night the pictures were taken.”

“The kid Chun and I saw running up California Street was barely in his twenties,” Cain said. He stepped back and let Michael put shallow bowls of soup on the sherry cask. “In 1985, he hadn’t even been born. Which is another big problem in our theory.”

“So maybe we’ve got our story all wrong, you’re saying.”

“Something doesn’t fit.”

“What do you want to do?”

Cain picked up his spoon and touched it to the soup. He set it back down without tasting the broth. He’d seen plenty of autopsies, had learned to act casually about them afterward. There were inspectors on Homicide Detail who’d go directly from the morgue to MoMo’s, across from the ballpark. They’d order rare New York strips and prove to each other just how undisturbed they were. Cain had done it too. He’d watched bodies disassembled with saws and pruning shears, every organ brought to a produce scale. And not an hour later, he’d eaten lunch.

But this morning he’d seen his partner on the steel table, Chun might not be far behind, and Lucy had spent the better part of last night hiding in a cabinet while a murderer tore her music room apart.

He put the spoon down and picked up a piece of the bread. He tore it in half and dipped it in the soup, then set it on the edge of the bowl. He checked the time and saw that Fischer was watching him. She put down her spoon and pushed the loaf of bread on its cutting board toward him. The look on her face was suddenly very kind, and he wasn’t sure he was ready for that.

“Think of it in terms of physics,” she said.

“I don’t understand.”

“We need to keep running forward so we can catch the guy. But to stay in motion, we need a certain amount of energy.”

“Okay.”

“So eat,” she said. “It’s not disrespecting Grassley. It’s just calories. That’s all this is.”

“Okay.”

He picked up his bread and dipped it back into his soup, and then he ate it.





32


Cain’s phone rang as they were leaving the restaurant. It was an unknown number with an East Bay area code. He answered it, using his left hand to shield the mouthpiece from the wind.

“Inspector Cain?” a man asked.

“Who’s this?”

“Officer Combs,” the man said. “You asked me to call if anyone tried to see Mrs. Castelli, if anything strange happened.”

“Where are you?”

“Back at the Palace Hotel,” Combs said. “She went for a walk, and now she’s in her room. It’s—I don’t know what it was, or what it means. But I figured you’d want to hear this.”

“Sit tight, Combs,” he said. “We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”



They found Officer Combs in his chair outside the top-floor elevator landing. He stood up when the doors parted. For this assignment, and at Cain’s request, he was in plainclothes. They suited him. Putting on the uniform every day wouldn’t be part of his ritual for much longer. There were openings on the Homicide Detail, and Cain needed people he could count on.

They shook hands, and Combs hesitated a moment before putting his hand on Cain’s shoulder.

“I heard about Inspector Grassley,” he said. “And I know Angela. We went through the academy together.”

“We saw her today.”

“She’ll be all right?”

“She’s a fighter,” Cain said. “More than you know.”

“The sonofabitch who did this—”

“I know.”

Cain led them to the main stairs and they went down to the first half-landing. They could still see the elevators, and there was no way anyone could go down the hall to Mona Castelli’s room without them seeing. But their voices wouldn’t carry under her door if they stood down here.

“They came out at noon,” Combs said. “Both of them—the daughter spent the night.”

“Where’d they go?”

“They took the elevator down. We used the stairs and beat them—”

“We?” Fischer asked.

“Officer Aguilar—she was assigned to watch Alexa.”

“Got it.”

“They split up in the lobby—no hugs, no words at all. They just went different ways. Aguilar followed the daughter, and I stuck with Mona.”

“Did she see you?” Cain asked.

“Not then. But she knows who I am, even without the uniform. And that’s important. I’m getting to that.”