The Dark Room(95)

“All right,” she said. “That would be fine.”



He put the box into the backseat, pushed it over, and then climbed in next to it. He took off the lid and set it in the foot well, then leaned over to look in while he put on his gloves. Lester Fennimore must have been a heavy smoker. Twenty years on, and his things still smelled like an ashtray. He pulled out a black fabric bag first, its opening cinched closed with a pull string. He knew what was in it from the weight and the shape, and when he loosened the string and reached into the bag, he wasn’t surprised to be holding a Nikon single lens reflex camera. It was an F3, a film model, and it was fitted with a good lens. He checked the back and turned the gears to advance the frame, but didn’t think there was any film inside. He opened the back and saw that the camera was empty.

There was a photograph of Lester as an eight-or nine-year-old kid. He was standing near a creek. Big smile, bowl-cut hair, a rainbow trout in his hands. There was a diploma from UC Berkeley, rolled up in a cardboard tube. An engraved pewter whiskey flask, but not the one from the blackmail photographs. He found a baseball cap with the name of some high school Cain had never heard of, a pocketknife with a polished teak handle, a Seiko watch that hadn’t ticked in two decades, a little plastic box with half a dozen hand-tied fishing flies, a Zippo lighter engraved L.R.F. in cursive script.

And then, at the bottom, a stack of faux-leather daily planners, each one embossed on the front, in gold leaf, with the year it covered. Cain took them out and looked through them. He had the last decade of Lester Fennimore’s life, his daily schedule from 1988 to 1998.

He took the top book and flipped to June 28, the day Lester was shot. The page was blank. If Lester had any appointments that day, he’d decided not to write them down. Cain began flipping backward. On the twenty-sixth, Lester had gone to an interview at SUN Microsystems, in Santa Clara. He had a dental appointment on June twenty-second, but that was scratched out. Maybe he’d scheduled it before he lost his job, then canceled it to save money. Two days before that, he’d driven down to San Jose for an interview. There wasn’t a company name, but there was an address. Cain got out his phone and looked it up.

The address in Fennimore’s planner had been the corporate headquarters of NavSoft.

Cain set the planner on his knees and looked out the window, tapping his knuckle against the glass as he thought. On June 20, 1998, Harry Castelli was the vice president of NavSoft. Fennimore came down for an interview, but didn’t get the job. There was no way to know if the frat brothers saw each other that day. But eight days later, Fennimore drove back through San Jose in the dark on his way to a rendezvous at Castle Rock State Park. By ten o’clock that night, he was dead, six bullets from Castelli’s Smith and Wesson scattered through him.

Maybe Lester hadn’t gotten the job but while he was inside Castelli’s company, he’d thought of another way to make money. He and Susan were desperate by then. A mortgage and two cars. A toddler to feed. Cain put the books back in the box and then fit the lid over the top. He got out of the backseat and came up to the driver’s door. The sun was getting low now, and these roads were no good in the dark.





35


CAIN CAME UP the steps of the Palisades, balancing Lester Fennimore’s box under his left arm. He paused before he opened the front door, looking through the cut-crystal window at the small crowd gathered in the lobby. He pushed the door open and stepped inside. There were thirty people in the room, most of them in varying degrees of evening attire. Cain spotted the desk clerk. He’d shed his green cardigan in favor of an evening jacket. A waiter came through a door, carrying a tray of champagne flutes above his right shoulder.

“—and then she didn’t leave the house for four years,” a woman was saying. “This—”

“Champagne, sir?”

“Sure.”

Cain took the glass and moved toward the center of the room. There was a single light above the piano. Then Lucy came down the steps. She paused on the landing, looking at the crowd. She wore a simple dress made of black jersey, and she was barefoot. She had tied her hair into a knot at the back of her head, and wore no makeup and no jewelry. The room went still when she appeared, thirty pairs of eyes on her. She nodded at the crowd, and then she came the rest of the way down the steps and crossed to the piano.

“—it was in 2010,” the desk clerk was whispering to a group behind Cain. “At the Royal Albert Hall, in London. That was the last time. Until tonight.”

Lucy pulled out the piano bench, sat down, and ran her fingers silently along the tops of the keys. She had no sheet music, but that didn’t matter. She drew a breath and the crowd went silent, and then she bent toward the keyboard, her eyes closed.

“Liszt,” the desk clerk whispered, when Lucy had made it through the first few bars.

“Oh my god,” an old man breathed, as Lucy took off into a long run of notes, right hand only, her left hand curled in her lap.

And then there was nothing, except for the music.



They ate dinner at a low table set up in front of their fireplace.

“I’m always this way, after,” she said. Their plates were empty now, and Cain was finishing his beer. The waiter had brought a glass of mineral water for her, but she hadn’t touched it.

“What way?”

“Rattled,” she said. “Quiet.”