The Dark Room(94)

“I’m not going to ask about anything but Lester,” Cain said. “Can I come up to the porch?”

She leaned back into the cabin and he heard her set something down. Then she came out, empty-handed, and closed the door behind her. There were a few wooden chairs at one end of the porch and she sat in one, pulling the gloves from her pocket and setting them on her knee. Cain came up the steps and took the other chair, angling it so that he could sit facing her. He had a notebook and pen with him but didn’t take them out.

“I saw the investigator’s notes, from 1998,” Cain said. “You and Lester had a daughter?”

“Cari.”

“Now she’s what—twenty-one, twenty-two?”

“Twenty-two. She’s at Humboldt State.”

“She was two when Lester was killed,” Cain said. “And he’d just lost his job?”

“That’s right. I wasn’t working either.”

“So things weren’t easy.”

“Desperate would be a good word. You’ve got a toddler. You have a mortgage. Two car payments to make.”

“What did he do—before he lost his job, what did he do?”

“He was a software engineer.”

“So he was looking for jobs in Silicon Valley?”

“That’s right.”

“Did he say where?”

“Everywhere.”

“He had a bachelor’s in computer science from Cal, isn’t that right?”

“That’s right.”

“Is that where you met him?”

She shook her head.

“We met after college.”

“Did you know anything about his friends in college? His frat brothers?”

“I knew he was in a fraternity. He had the tattoo.”

“Did he tell you about it?”

“No.”

“Did you ask?”

“I guess I might have.”

“But what? He changed the subject? Went silent?”

“That’s right.”

“What about the burn on his ear and the scar on his throat?”

“There was a fire in his dorm,” Susan said. “He was asleep when it started. He made it out, but some of the other kids didn’t.”

“That’s what he told you?”

She nodded.

“He spoke in a whisper—is that right?”

“He said—” She paused and looked at her lap, her eyebrows pressing toward each other. “He was stumbling down a staircase. There was smoke. He fell and he hit something and crushed his throat. That was just a story? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“I don’t know.”

“What crime scene was it, where you found the gun? Or can’t you say?”

“It made the paper this week. I can tell you that,” Cain said. He watched her face for recognition, but when there wasn’t any, he moved on. “When Lester was shot, he was in a red Cadillac Eldorado. Had he always been an Eldorado man?”

Now Susan smiled, some memory lighting upon her face.

“I made fun of him for that. I couldn’t decide what he looked like more, driving those cars of his—a retiree, headed down to the VFW for steak night? Or was it a pimp? He hated that, me making fun of him. He’d always had Eldorados. His grandfather gave him one when he turned sixteen.”

“So he had one in college.”

“That’s right.”

“Was Lester a good man?”

“I thought so at the time. As far as husbands go, as far as fathers go, I didn’t have anything to compare him to.”

“And later?”

“Later on, the comparison didn’t help him.”

“Do you still have any pictures of him?”

“I’ve got one box. It’s in a box of his things. I kept it for Cari, in case she ever wanted to know about her dad. She looked through it, but she never kept anything. She latched on to Malcolm when I married him.”

“Where’s Malcolm now?”

“He had a heart attack, ten years ago. He was older than me.”

“The box with Lester’s things—may I look through it?”

“What are you looking for?”

“I don’t know,” Cain said, honestly.

“I’ll give it to you,” she said. “You can keep it. But then I need to get back to work.”

She went into the cabin, and he sat looking at the gardening tools lined up by the door. Maybe she was just growing hothouse tomatoes back there, selling them at farmers’ markets for a little cash on the side. Maybe Malcolm had left her with enough money to put Cari Fennimore through Humboldt State. He’d told her that he was only here to ask questions about Lester. Prying into her greenhouse wasn’t part of the deal.

She came out holding a cardboard file box. She set it on the porch rail, next to the steps.

“I forgot your name,” she said. “Mr. Detective.”

“It’s Cain,” he said. He came over and handed her his card. “Gavin Cain. If I find something, and we know what happened to Lester, do you want me to come and tell you?”

She took her time thinking about that. Lester must not have stacked up well against Malcolm at all.