The Dark Room

by Jonathan Moore

  “All right,” Cain said. “Is that a copy?”

  “The FBI’s got the original. This is your copy.”

  Castelli took the top page from the stack and passed it across, closing the folder before Cain could get a good look at the photograph underneath it. Cain took the letter and turned it around.

  Mayor Castelli:

  1 – 2 – 3 – 4!

  All this time, and you’re really surprised? Or are you just feigning it, like everything else? Nothing stays in the dark forever.

  I’ll give you until Friday. Or else: 5 – 6 – 7 – 8. Those go to everybody. Even if they’ve never seen you that way, they’ll recognize you. You didn’t forget 9 – 10 – 11 – 12, did you?

  When it’s dark, you think about her. You imagine what it must have been like. Should your wife start thinking about it too? What about your daughter? Could she be the next Sleeping Girl?

  There’s an easier way out: bang!

  —A FRIEND

  Cain read the note twice, then put it on the desk in front of him. He studied Castelli for a moment. He looked at the note and read through it once more.

  “The numbers—one, two, three, four—those are photographs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Show me.”

  Castelli passed him the folder. Cain put it on the desk’s edge, then flipped the cover back and looked at the first photograph. It was a copy, but a good one. A glossy, full-page print on good photo paper.

  “You sent this out, had it done somewhere?”

  Castelli shook his head.

  “One of my staff—he’s got a photo printer. Here, in the office. Melissa used that.”

  “It was black-and-white to start with, or just after she copied it?”

  “Black-and-white.”

  “It would be,” Cain said, speaking mostly to himself. “Wouldn’t it?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Cain lifted the photograph from the folder and laid it on the desk, sideways, so that they could each lean in and look at it.

  “These distortions,” he said, touching the photo with his fingertip. “Here, and here.”

  “Yeah?”

  “This isn’t digital, unless it’s seriously touched up.”

  “It was shot on film, is what you’re saying.”

  “You get an amateur in a homemade dark room, you see things like that—ripples, bright spots. And it’s easier to develop black and white than color.”

  “You’re a photographer?”

  Cain shook his head.

  “My line of work, I see a lot of photos,” he said. “You know what it tells me, that he didn’t shoot color? He didn’t want to take these out, let someone else see them. He used black-and-white, and developed them at home. Your friend has his own dark room.”

  “He’s not my friend.”

  “That’s not what he thinks,” Cain said. “He’s pretty familiar.”

  “Not to me.”

  “And what about her?” Cain asked, touching the young woman in the photograph. “You know who she is?”

  “All this, it’s bullshit. I told you already. I don’t know anything about this.”

  The mayor stood up and went to the cabinet behind his desk. He opened it, his back to Cain. When he turned around he was holding a bottle of bourbon and a pair of tumblers.

  “Drink?”

  “I’m on duty.”

  “And I’m your boss. Have a drink with me.”

  “I’m on duty, sir.”

  Castelli put one of the tumblers away, then poured three fingers of bourbon into the other. He sat again, putting the open bottle and the glass in front of him. Cain looked back to the picture, let himself go into it. The young woman wore a one-sleeved black dress held together at the front with a jeweled clasp. She held her hands out in front her, her fingers splayed in a gesture of self-defense. He couldn’t read the look on her face. She hadn’t expected the photograph to be taken, and she was afraid. But it wasn’t the camera that frightened her. It was the man holding the camera. She was begging him not to come any closer. That was it—that was the look: she hadn’t given in to full terror yet; she thought she might have a chance.

  She still thought she could beg.

  Behind her was a brick wall. In the middle of it, a padlocked steel door. It might have been a warehouse, the storeroom of a bar. The basement in a forgotten apartment block. It probably hadn’t mattered to her where she was. She just wanted a way out, but there wasn’t one.

  In the left corner of the photograph, someone had used a black marker to write the number 1. There was a loose circle drawn around it.

  “You’ve never seen her?” Cain asked.

  “No.”

  “She look like anyone you know?”

  “No.”

  “Could she be someone’s daughter—a niece, something like that?”

  “I said I’ve never seen her before.”

  “Listen to the question,” Cain said. “I didn’t ask if you’d seen her. I asked if she looks like anyone you know. If she could be related to someone you know. Look at the picture—look at her face, and answer the question.”

  Instead, Castelli took his glass of bourbon and drank half of it. He set it down, topped it off, and then started coughing into the crook of his arm.

  “Mr. Mayor.”

  But he was still coughing, and his face was going crimson. When he finally stopped, he took a tissue from the box at the edge of his desk. He used it to wipe his face and nose.

  “Mr. Mayor,” Cain said. “I need you to look at the picture.”

  “It’s all bullshit—a hoax, whatever you want to call it,” Castelli said. “I told you.”

  “You called me. Not the other way around.”

  “I’m being blackmailed.”

  “Because of something you know?”

  “I don’t know her, and she doesn’t look like anyone I know.”

  “She’s a pretty girl,” Cain said. “I’d remember her if I saw her—wouldn’t you?”

  Castelli looked at him. Then he nodded.

  “Sure,” he said.

  “You’d remember, if you saw her?”

  “I’d probably remember.”

  “Because she’s a knockout, right?”

  The mayor glanced at the photograph. Cain wasn’t sure if he nodded or not.

  “She looks like one of those old film stars,” Cain said. “Lana Turner, maybe.”

  “You got it mixed up,” Castelli said. “It’s Lauren Bacall you’re thinking of. She looks like Bacall.”

  “The Big Sleep—that was her?”

  “Bacall and Bogart,” Castelli said. “Yeah.”

  “One of your favorites?”

  “It was okay.”

  “I meant Bacall.”

  “Bacall?” the mayor asked. He took another drink. “She was before my time.”

  “Way before mine,” Cain said. “But you see her on the screen, and it doesn’t really matter.”

  “Maybe for some guys.”

  Cain took out the next picture and set it on top of the first. This one showed a cluttered bedside table against a water-stained plaster wall. He could just make out the edge of the iron bedframe beside it. At the table’s edge sat an empty tumbler, a lipstick mark kissing its rim. There was a man’s wallet, and a set of house keys. An empty ashtray. There were a dozen white pills in a loose pile, and next to them there was a silver flask, its cap unscrewed. Behind the flask were two pairs of handcuffs. Not the toys they sold in sex shops, but the real things, like the pair strapped to Cain’s belt.

  “Recognize any of this?”

  “No.”

  “Not your keys, not your wallet?”

  “Not mine.”

  “The flask?”

  “I’ve never seen it.”

  “How about the handcuffs?”

  “Come on.”

  “Come on?” Cain asked. “Did we read the same note? The guy who sent it, he’s pretty sure this stuff mean
s something to you. The next ones—the photos he’s holding back—those might mean even more.”

  Castelli took a swallow of his bourbon.

  “Go on,” he said. “Make your point if you’ve got one.”

  “Right now, it’s just you and me. But on Friday, when he sends it out? You’ll be talking to the cameras.”

  “Or you could find him.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do,” Cain said.

  “Arrest him. Lock him away.”

  “I can’t if you don’t cooperate,” Cain said. “So far, everything you’ve told me is bullshit.”

  The mayor stared at him. He glanced at his phone, and Cain thought he might call someone in. Have Cain muscled out of the office, out of City Hall. But then he shook his head. He held his glass close to the green-shaded desk lamp and looked at the glowing bourbon.

  “I’m trying,” Castelli said. “Nothing like this has ever happened to me. I’m not lying to you.”

  “The handcuffs—you own any like that?”

  “Never,” Castelli said. “Not like that, and not any other kind.”

  He set his glass down, then picked it up again. He was nervous about his hands, wanted to keep them busy. When he spoke on TV, he was always gripping the podium. If he didn’t have a podium, then he was holding on to something. A cup of coffee, a rolled-up newspaper. Cain wondered if he’d been a smoker at some point.

  “It’s you and me right now,” Cain said.

  “We’re not into anything like that, is all.”

  Cain nodded. He waited for the mayor to start talking again. Sometimes a man wouldn’t answer a question but would talk to end a silence. This silence stretched for ten seconds, and then Castelli took another sip of bourbon and spoke into his glass.

  “My wife and I, is what I mean. When I say we, I’m talking about me and her. The two of us, we’re not into anything like that.”

  “Okay.”

  Cain could think of half a dozen follow-ups, but this wasn’t the time. The mayor had opened the door a crack, but was ready to close it if Cain started to press. Instead, Cain opened the folder and took out the third picture, putting it on top of the others. Castelli glanced at it, then looked away, picking up his drink. Cain could smell the bourbon fumes in the air between them. Sweet and sharp, like sugar burning in a pan.

  The photograph showed the woman, this time from the knees up. She was still wearing the black cocktail dress. Her back was against the wall, the nightstand at her left hip. She was drinking from the silver flask, her features caught in a painful wince. Her eyes were focused to her right. Someone must have been standing over there, out of the shot. Cain took the photograph and held it up, tilting it toward the light. He took off his glasses and leaned close to look.

  “Did you look at these?” he asked. “All these pictures?”

  “I saw everything in the envelope.”

  “You understood what’s happening here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Cain slipped his glasses back on, then set the photograph with the other two.

  “The pills—they were on the nightstand before. Ten, twelve of them,” he said. He pointed to the empty space where the pills had been in the second picture. “They’d be right here.”

  “Okay.”

  “They made her swallow them,” Cain said. “Don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Any idea what they were, those pills?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You see her eyes, how she’s looking to the right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you think about that?”

  “She was looking at something. Or something caught her eye.”

  “Does she look scared to you?”

  “I guess,” the mayor said.

  “Come on,” Cain said. “We’re cooperating. Right?”

  “She looks pretty scared.”

  “Could someone have had a gun on her?” Cain asked. “Outside the shot?”

  “Inspector—I don’t know what you want me to say. I can’t tell you what’s happening outside these pictures. Not what she saw, or what she thought about it. I don’t know who she is. I don’t know what they paid her to pose for them, what they told her she was doing. Maybe she thought it was nothing—spread for some magazine, get a little cash.”

  “You think it’s staged? That’s what you think?”

  “I don’t know anything,” the mayor said. “Except that it’s got nothing to do with me.”

  “It does now,” Cain said. “Sir.”

  The final photograph in the folder was turned face-down. Cain picked it up.

  “I’m telling you—”

  “You don’t know anything,” Cain said. “Right?”

  “I just want us to be clear.”

  “I heard you the first time.”

  Cain turned the photograph over.

  Now the woman was on the bed. Either she’d taken off the dress herself, or someone had taken it off for her. She lay on her back, her head on a pillow. She wore nothing but a pair of black panties. One knee was bent, so that her left foot was hooked across her right ankle. She’d painted her toenails. The polish looked black, but it was a black-and-white photograph. Cain supposed it could have been any dark color. Her right arm came up past her head, her hand shackled to the bedframe above her. There was no cuff on her left arm, which rested across her chest. If she’d been conscious, it might have been a gesture of modesty, of defense. An attempt to shield herself from the men in the room with her. But she wasn’t conscious. Her eyes were closed, and her lips were slightly parted.

  Cain studied her, and then looked at the nightstand next to her. It had been cleaned off. There was just the empty tumbler, the dark lipstick stain on its rim. He looked back at the woman. He’d seen enough death in the last eight years to guess he wasn’t looking at it right now. It was just a photograph, and a poorly developed one at that. But he could almost see the rise and fall of her chest, could feel the warmth coming off her. She wasn’t dead; he was sure of that. But she wasn’t asleep, either.

  There was no way to gauge how much time had passed between the third photograph and the fourth. Enough to put her in the bed, to clean the room up a bit. They’d stripped off the dress and maybe put a comb through her hair. She’d taken at least twelve of the pills, and she’d had whatever they’d put into the flask. By the time they took the picture, the drugs were working on her.

  3

  CAIN LOOKED UP from the photograph. Castelli was no longer across from him but had gone over to the window. He’d parted the curtains to look down at the street. He stood sideways at the window, his body hidden from the exposed slit of glass. As if someone out there might take a shot at him. Or snap a photograph to run in tomorrow’s paper: Beset by a blackmailer, Mayor Castelli peers from City Hall. The problem was only a few hours old, and it was the middle of the night. But the mayor had to be worrying about leaks. The moment he’d picked up the phone, letting someone other than Melissa Montgomery know about the letter, he’d become vulnerable.

  “When you read the letter, did you have an idea who wrote it?” Cain asked.

  “No.”

  The mayor let the curtains fall back into place. He came back to his desk and stood behind the chair.

  “What about enemies?” Cain asked. “You’ve probably got a few.”

  “Which kind?”

  “There’s more than one kind?”

  “Start with the enemies I see every day. The ones I deal with in public—in the papers and on TV,” Castelli said. “There’s the guys I don’t know for sure, but suspect. And then you’ve got the crackpots I’ve never met at all.”

  “The first two, that could include your friends, your family?”

  “There’d be some.”

  “Can you make a list?”

  “My staff’s working on it.”

  “The FBI asked already?”

  The mayor nodded.

 
; “What about business interests? Not enemies, but people waiting on your decision—building permits, contracts. People who think they’d have a better shot if someone else were behind your desk.”

  “They’re working on that, too.”

  “The FBI is, with your staff.”

  “That’s right.”

  “If they’re doing all that, why am I here?”

  “You’d have to talk to them. To Lieutenant Nagoya.”

  “Nagata.”

  “Nagata, then,” Castelli said. “But I already told them what I think you should be doing: tracking down the girl.”

  “You give me three pictures of a woman and I’m supposed to find her.”

  “You’re supposed to be the best,” Castelli said. “The best guys, they get an assignment and they do it. That’s how it used to be, anyway.”

  Cain let that slide past. He gathered the photographs and put them back into the folder. He read the letter once more before he added it to the stack and closed the cover on it.

  “Everyone’s going to recognize you in the next set of pictures. That’s what your friend says.”

  “I read that.”

  “Have you ever been in that room?” Cain asked. “Do you recognize it?”

  “It could be anywhere—I’ve never seen it.”

  “What’s in the next set of pictures?”

  “How should I know, Cain? It could be anything. Think how easy it is to doctor a picture, to pay someone to do it for you.”

  Cain stood up.

  “Is there anything you want to tell me before I find it out on my own?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing,” Cain said. “Just, now’s your chance.”

  The mayor squeezed the back of his office chair. He turned his head and coughed into his right bicep. Then he sat down and picked up his glass. It was nearly empty.

  “I’ve got nothing else. You should go meet with Nagoya and that girl from the FBI. Take your folder.”

  “Fine,” Cain said.

  He crossed the wide office to the door. When he had his hand on the knob, he turned and looked back at the mayor.