The Dark Room

by Jonathan Moore

  My instructions were to deliver this to you upon my client’s death, which condition has recently occurred. My duty to him is discharged, and I have none to you.

  It had been addressed to the SFPD Homicide Detail, and Cain had been the one to open it.

  On the screen, John Fonteroy was staring at the camera. His breath whistled around the oxygen tubes in his nostrils.

  “Did anyone coerce you?”

  “No—I don’t have to do this. I have the right to remain silent. I can die, silently. But I don’t want to. I want to speak.”

  “Are you taking medications—pain medications—anything clouding your thoughts?”

  “I won’t have them until we’re done here. They won’t help, though. They won’t stop what’s happening.”

  “Did I tell you what to say?”

  “You asked me not to say your name, and I won’t. But you didn’t tell me what I should say—you told me not to do this at all.”

  “By making this statement, you could be prosecuted. I told you that. You understand that.”

  “Yes.”

  “How long do you have to live?”

  “Too long,” he said. “Days. Maybe even a week.”

  The assistant district attorney had paused the tape here the third time they’d watched it together. He’d asked Cain if he understood what she was doing, this twang-voiced midwestern lawyer. Cain had shaken his head, and the ADA explained it. She was trying to do them a favor. Her client was going to die, and she wanted to stay invisible. But she knew there would come a day when a judge or a jury had to see it, that this would have to be admitted into evidence. So she was laying the best foundation she could set down to overcome a hearsay objection. It might not work. All the rules of evidence cut against her. But her client hadn’t left her much to work with.

  “Why are you making this statement, Mr. Fonteroy?”

  “I’m afraid of Hell.”

  Fonteroy looked into the camera, and Cain felt the old man’s fear. Hell wasn’t waiting for him; he was already in it. It was creeping up on him, hiding in every shadow. It was pumping through the tubes and into the port on his chest, yawning at him through the lens of the camera he was facing. He’d been feeling it consume him since 1985.

  “Tell them what they need to know.”

  “I had a wife,” Fonteroy said. “And a little girl. I didn’t think much, when I started taking the money. It was for them, is what I told myself. I was doing it for them.”

  “You have to explain. Who was giving you money, and why?”

  “They’d been looking for someone like me. They knocked on my door in ’eighty-one. Christmastime. I had something they wanted, and they were ready to pay. And—”

  He glanced up at the IV above him and then, longingly, at the cup of water. He began to reach for it but stopped. It occurred to Cain, now, that the cup must have seemed very far away. That it must have been so heavy for him. The act of reaching—of holding on to it and bringing the straw to his dry lips—so burdensome. The combination of its proximity and its impossibility must have been maddening.

  “And what?”

  It took ten seconds for Fonteroy to turn back to the camera. Another five before he was focused again.

  “And I was a coward,” Fonteroy said. “So I said yes. Maybe anybody would’ve done it. I don’t know. I just know I did.”

  “What did you have to do for the money?”

  “Look the other way.”

  “When?”

  “When they wanted me to. It’d be before a funeral but after the wake. When the coffin’s getting sealed and no one sees inside it again.”

  “That’s all?”

  “I took the money, and I didn’t look.”

  “But one time, John, you saw.”

  The man swallowed, and it made a dry sound, like rocks grinding against each other. His eyes shifted again to the cup of water.

  “It was the Hanley kid, Christopher Hanley. The last visitation had just ended. They were waiting when I brought him into the back. They told me to step outside.”

  “Did you do it?”

  “I took the money—I took it, and I did what they told me.”

  “But you saw something.”

  “I saw through the back window—only a little.”

  “But you saw. It’s not something you heard about. Not a hunch you had. You saw.”

  Fonteroy nodded, or tried to.

  “I didn’t know what they’d been doing. What they were doing with the coffins. No clue, until that day, when I decided to look. I swear to God, ma’am—until then, I didn’t know.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Nothing. I should have tried to stop it, but I didn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “I was scared of them. You see a thing like that, and you find out what kind of man you really are. That’s what I’ve been living with since.”

  “And after the burial?”

  “I didn’t go. I was supposed to drive the hearse that day. But I got my brother-in-law to do it. And then I took Marianne and Beatrice, and put them in the other car, and we left.”

  “Why did you run?”

  “I couldn’t do it again. Not after what I saw, what I overheard. But if I stopped taking the money—the next time, it’d be me. Or it’d be my wife. My little girl. I knew too much.”

  “What do you want the police to do?”

  Fonteroy looked up, focused his eyes into the camera. The next words he spoke, he pronounced very carefully.

  “You need to dig up Christopher Hanley. They buried him July 17, 1985, in El Carmelo. That’s down the coast from the city. A good spot, by the ocean. I could only wish for a place like that. And once you open the lid, you’ll understand.”

  “Who were the men, the ones paying you?”

  Fonteroy shook his head.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Mr. Fonteroy—you can’t hold anything back. It’s too late for that.”

  “I never knew their names. But if the police go to El Carmelo, they’ll understand. They’ve got tools now. Tests that weren’t around back then. Maybe they can put it together.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Turn off the camera. I’m done. Either they’ll figure it out or they won’t. But we’re done. Okay?”

  The screen went to snow.

  Cain turned the TV off. He rewound the tape, then took it from the camcorder and locked it in the file cabinet. He finished his coffee and put the paper cup in the trash. He looked at his watch. If he hurried, he might make it to Lucy before she woke.

  5

  SHE OWNED A row house on Twenty-Second Avenue, a block north of Golden Gate Park. He climbed the steps from the sidewalk and stood on the tiny porch to look through the predawn rain to the crowns of the eucalyptus trees on the other side of Fulton Street. When the wind came from that direction, Lucy’s entire home had the clean, medicinal smell of the trees. But when it blew from the north, the house seemed like it was alone on a mountaintop. Wrapped in clouds and cut off from everything. They could stay in her upstairs bed all day and listen to the foghorn beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. There was nothing empty about that low note as long as he was with her.

  He let himself in, took off his shoes, and went upstairs. The bedroom door was open, and he tiptoed past it. There were two boxes of his things in the hall. To reach the bathroom, he had to step around them. Lucy hadn’t said anything yet, but he kept expecting her to bring it up, to ask when he was going to move the rest. He showered, then went to Lucy’s bed wearing one of her towels around his waist.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Sorry.”

  She moved toward him when he dropped the towel and got under the covers.

  “You’re all wet,” she said. “Shit, Gavin.”

  He started to pull away, but she followed him.

  “I don’t care,” she said. “Hold me.”

  He put his arm around her and tucked his knees into
the bend of her legs, so that the length of his body followed hers. She pressed her back into his chest. Her T-shirt had been through the wash so many times, it was as thin as tissue paper. Warmth radiated through the cotton.

  “My first lesson’s at eight,” she said. “That’s just three hours.”

  Once her lessons started, he wouldn’t be able to sleep. But that didn’t matter.

  “This is just a little nap. I’ve got to go to Menlo Park early enough to be back by noon.”

  “Then let’s go to sleep,” she said. “Quick.”

  “Okay.”

  He woke, briefly, when Lucy left the bed. She crossed the room wearing nothing but her old high school T-shirt. As she disappeared into the hall, he wanted to lift himself and follow her. But he was asleep again before she started her shower.

  The doorbell woke him the second time. Her first student had arrived. He heard their voices back and forth, the mother greeting Lucy and then saying goodbye to her daughter. The student was a little girl. Her voice, coming up from the lower floor as they crossed through the length of the house, sounded like the warbling of a small bird. He listened to them go into the music room that overlooked the garden.

  When Lucy was teaching a new piece, she’d usually play it first so that her student could listen and watch. Cain sat up when she started, looking across the bed to the window. There were raindrops on the glass, backlit by a gray sky. Beneath him, Lucy hit the first eight or nine notes. He tried to think of the name of the piece. She’d been teaching it to several of her students lately, but before that, she’d played it for him. Just the two of them in the music room. Her wineglass was perched on the piano’s lid, the water in it trembling with each note. They’d left the bay windows open a crack, and the wind had pushed in, carrying a fine mist of fog and the scent of lavender from the garden.

  He got out of her bed, wrapping her towel around himself again and listening as she played. It was a calm thing, this song. The first time he’d heard it, he’d imagined Lucy on a tiny island, playing the song as the moon came in and out from behind the cover of slow-drifting clouds. The water around her was dappled with shadow, and then, suddenly, lit silver-white. The image fit her well. She needed an island like that, a place of refuge where she was cut off from everything but the weather and the heavens. Maybe she’d already built it in her mind, and when she looked out her living room windows, she didn’t see the street or the cars parked on it. She saw the dark water. The moon lighting a path across its rippling surface, inviting her to walk to the opposite shore.

  When he turned off the shower and went to the empty guest room to dress, he could hear the piano again. Now the student was playing. The notes were correct, but the timing was off. She wasn’t used to the piece yet, this little girl. The song stopped and he heard Lucy’s voice. They talked back and forth, and there was a bit of laughter. The student began to play again, and Cain stood in front of the closet and picked a tie. There were only two to choose from, so it was easy. He strapped on his shoulder holster and then knelt at the little safe. He punched in the code and took out his gun, then closed the door. Lucy hadn’t asked him to buy the safe, but when he’d brought it one day, she looked at it and understood. If he wasn’t wearing his gun, he’d have to lock it up. There were children in and out of this house, something they needed to get used to.

  He holstered the gun, then stood and put on his suit jacket. He headed down the stairs, and when she heard him, she broke away from the lesson. They met in the entry hall. She reached up to his shoulder, then kissed the corner of his mouth.

  “The thing last night, with the helicopter?” she whispered.

  “It’s still going on,” he said. “It’s why I’m going to Menlo Park—Matt Redding can help me find somebody, maybe.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “For me it is,” he said. From the music room, Lucy’s student stopped after the first five or six bars and then started from the beginning. “It’s not going so well for the mayor.”

  “Is this even a murder case?”

  “I don’t know. Someone’s trying to blackmail him, and we want to know who.”

  “Will it be in the paper?”

  “They’re trying to keep it out,” Cain said. “We’ll see how that goes. Either way I’ll tell you.”

  “I’d like that.”

  He looked again toward the music room. The little girl was getting it this time. It wasn’t the calm moonlight that Lucy could find in the piece, but Cain could tell that the girl sensed it there, that she was trying to catch it. And now he remembered the song’s name.

  “It’s that Debussy piece, the one you played for me,” Cain said. “Clair de lune, right?”

  She took both his lapels and pulled him to her.

  “You’re good.”

  “You should get back to her. Tell her she’s getting it.”

  “I should,” she whispered. “I’ll play something else for you, tonight.”

  “I might be late coming back.”

  “You’re always late,” Lucy said. “But I’m always here.”

  He put his hands on her waist and held her close before he went out. She followed him to the door but no further. She hadn’t left this house in more than four years.

  Matt Redding’s office was a garage off Johnston Lane in Menlo Park. He had three desks and a dozen computers. Having perfected what he’d sought to build, he spent most of his time waiting to be bought out. The last time he’d spoken with Cain, five companies were courting him. He was giving demonstrations, taking limo rides down to Mountain View. He spent his free time on websites specializing in Caribbean real estate. Once, while they were sitting outside a courtroom before Redding testified, he’d asked Cain what he’d do if he owned an island. What if there was a settlement on it? Would he relocate the villagers, or let them stay?

  That was the thing about Redding: In a year, he might be worth a hundred million dollars. Or nothing. The last time they’d met, he needed Cain to pay for lunch.

  Cain pushed open the door and stepped inside. Redding was at his desk, but came around from behind it to shake his hand.

  “I got your text,” he said. “Did I answer it? I forget.”

  “I figured I’d just come anyway.”

  “Sit down,” Redding said. “Show me what you have.”

  They sat at a beige couch that Redding had probably found on a curb somewhere. Cain slid the coffee table closer and set the folder on it. He took out the pictures and handed them to Redding.

  “I’m trying to find this woman,” Cain said.

  Redding went through the photographs. He spent a minute or more with each one.

  “What do you know about her?”

  “Nothing,” Cain said. “She’s in these pictures. That’s it.”

  “Is she dead?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Okay,” Redding said. He had to have known there was more to it than that. “We’ve got three shots of her, three different angles. That’s good. What about the rest of it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The rooms, the stuff on the night table. You want me to run it?”

  “You can do that?”

  Cain had used Redding twice, and both times it had been to run down faces. He hadn’t realized the program went past that.

  “We’ll see.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “I’ve got to scan the photos, upload them. I might touch a couple of these up, get rid of the distortions. So, figure thirty minutes.”

  “You want a cup of coffee? Some breakfast?”

  “If you’re buying.”

  Cain walked through Menlo Park’s small downtown strip until he found a coffee bar. He ordered an espresso and sat at a table in the corner. He’d mentioned Matt Redding’s name to Lucy this morning. It had come out naturally, no warning of any sort to precede it. He’d been so tired he’d forgotten his usual caution. But if it affected her, he hadn’t seen it.


  And he’d been noticing things lately. Small indications. This morning, for instance, there’d been a bar of handmade soap in her shower. It was the kind they sold at the farmer’s market in the Inner Sunset. Maybe someone had brought it to her as a gift—one of her students, or one of their mothers. But that was an intimate gift for a piano teacher, and he didn’t think Lucy’s grocery delivery service covered the farmer’s market. She couldn’t have ordered it online, because she had no computer and no cell phone. An Internet connection would be a window, one that commanded landscapes she had chosen not to see.

  That left open another possibility: she might be going out. Putting on shoes, getting a coat if it was raining. He couldn’t imagine what that would cost her. The strength she must be calling upon to take her fear and carry it with her out the front door. It stung a little that she hadn’t told him. But maybe she was saving it. Maybe she didn’t want to get him excited until she was sure she could sustain the outings.

  He set the bag with Redding’s sandwich on the desk and handed him a paper cup of coffee.

  “Anything?”

  Redding took the lid off the coffee and brought it close to his face to smell it.

  “No luck on the woman,” he said. “But I think I know why. All you’ve got is the pictures, right? You don’t know when they were taken?”

  “No idea.”

  “They’re thirty years old, and she’s dead.”

  “Explain that.”

  “If she died in 1985, she wouldn’t have a footprint on the Internet. I can’t find what’s not there.”

  Cain reached to the desk and turned the first photograph around so that he could study it. There was nothing that explicitly dated the photo, other than the fact that it was probably shot on black-and-white film. The woman could be walking on the street today. She wasn’t wearing jewelry or makeup, and her hair was pulled into a messy ponytail. There was nothing about her that announced itself as any particular decade.