“Ask me: Why 1985, Matt?”
“Why 1985?”
“First, the dress. It’s a Jean Patou design. You heard of him?”
“Is that even a real question?” Cain asked. “Come on.”
“Patou, he died in 1936. But in the mideighties, a couture house in Paris started licensing his designs. You know that word—couture?”
Cain looked up at him, then turned back to the photo.
“Thin ice, Redding,” he said. “Go on.”
“Look at her. At the dress.”
Redding took the third photograph and set it alongside the first. Now Cain had one shot of the woman backed against a brick wall, her hands held up in a gesture of panic. Next to it, in the third image, she stood against the nightstand, pain and fear on her face as she drank from the flask. Her dress was striking, though not as much as she was. It had a full-length sleeve on the right arm but didn’t even cover her left shoulder. To balance that asymmetry, there was a half-train coming down the left, hanging past the back of her knee. The hem on the right side didn’t reach the halfway point of her thigh. The dress was wrapped around her, the fabric gathered and held in place with a jeweled pin above her hip.
“It looks black in the photograph,” Redding said, “but it might’ve been green. See?”
He swiveled his computer screen so that Cain could see the website he’d been studying. It was a couture resale store, and the dress Redding had found was exactly what the woman was wearing. Cain could order it right now if he had sixteen thousand dollars.
“If they’re still selling them,” Cain said, “we can’t be sure of the year.”
“That’s not all, or I wouldn’t be sure.”
Redding lifted the second picture from the folder, the one showing the nightstand and its contents. He tapped the pile of pills.
“This is your crack in the door—enough to get your foot in, maybe,” Redding said. “You ever heard of benzyldiomide?”
Cain shook his head.
“Me neither, until fifteen minutes ago. How about Thrallinex?”
“Never heard of it,” Cain said. “What was it?”
“The trade name, here in the U.S. It came in five- and ten-milligram tablets. These are the tens.”
Redding passed the photograph up to Cain so that he could take a closer look at the pills. They were elongated ovals, pale white even in the underexposed image. Each one had a break-line indentation across the middle so they could be split into half-doses by hand. And along the edge, each pill bore the same imprint, but it was impossible for him to make out. He didn’t understand how Redding’s algorithm actually worked, how it could take such small details from a blurry image and produce accurate search results.
“Thrallinex went off the market almost as soon as it came on,” Redding said. “It got approval in Europe, then here. But five months later—I’m talking October 1985—they withdrew it worldwide.”
“They?”
“The manufacturer,” Redding said. He looked at a sticky note on the edge of his desk. “Raab and Weisskopf AG. A German company.”
“I’ve never heard of that, either.”
“It didn’t outlive the lawsuit.”
“What was it for?”
“It caused acute liver failure. Also, some kind of skin thing.”
“Not the lawsuit, the pill—what was it supposed to do?”
“It was a hypnotic. And a muscle relaxant.”
“Like Valium?”
“More like Rohypnol,” Redding said. “But you should talk to a doctor. That’s not my expertise.”
Cain looked at his watch. He’d be able to talk to a doctor in about forty-five minutes, if he didn’t hit any traffic on the way back.
“Is there anything else?”
“The keys, here on the nightstand?”
“Don’t tell me you know what they fit.”
“Not all of them,” Redding said. “But the one on top—the long one—that’s the ignition to a 1984 Cadillac Eldorado.”
“You’re sure about that?”
Redding nodded toward the bank of linked computers on the back wall.
“They’re sure,” he said. “So I’d swear to it. Hand on a Bible.”
“You’ve got three reference points tying it down,” Cain said. “So either the photos were taken in the eighties, or someone hired a Hollywood prop coordinator to make sure everything fits.”
“Pretty much.”
“All right,” Cain said. “I’ve got to get back.”
Redding stood and reached across the desk to shake his hand.
“Maybe I’ll get to testify again?”
“We’ll see,” Cain said. “I don’t know where this one’s going.”
“The first one, that was a good time.”
“Not for everyone.”
Cain slid the photographs back into the folder, then put it under his left arm.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Redding said.
“It’s okay.”
He walked Cain to the door.
“Seriously, Gavin. I didn’t—”
“I said it’s all right,” Cain said. “And she’s doing a lot better now.”
“Both of you—you’re okay?”
“More than,” Cain said.
Redding opened the door.
“Give me a call if you get anything else I can run,” he said to Cain. “We’ll find her.”
6
CAIN STOPPED AT a light on Santa Cruz Avenue, put his phone on his knee, and began to dictate a note to himself. This didn’t require any real precision. He just spoke in a free flow of thoughts.
Thrallinex. Benzyldiomide.
Redding thought the drug was the key, and he might be right. In an hour, the ME could tell Cain how it compared to a hypnotic like Rohypnol, what a dozen pills would have done to the girl. Then there was the dress. When it came to high-end fashion, he had no idea where to begin. He’d been wearing the same suit three days running, and knew switching ties and shirts wasn’t fooling anyone. But every problem had an entrance. Maybe a clerk in one of the shops around Union Square could point him in the right direction.
The ’84 Cadillac Eldorado was something he might be able to work with, though. No one had to register a dress. Pills got passed hand to hand. But cops knew how to find cars.
As he was driving past the airport, his phone rang. He picked it up on speaker, without looking at the screen to see the caller.
“This is Inspector Cain,” he said.
“And this is your partner,” Grassley answered. “Where are you?”
“Twenty minutes south. They open the casket yet?”
“We’re waiting on the ME.”
“You in the morgue, or the office?”
“Morgue—you’re gonna be here for it?”
“That’s the plan.”
“We start in fifteen minutes. That’s why I called. If you’re not here, I’ll make them wait.”
“Good,” Cain said. “Hey, Grassley?”
“Yeah?”
“Think you could borrow a computer?” Cain asked. “I need you to look something up.”
“Hang on,” Grassley said, and then he must have put the phone on mute. Cain drove in silence, watched a mile tick past on the odometer. Grassley came back. “I got a Web browser. What do you want?”
“Harry Castelli,” Cain said. “Where he was thirty years ago. What he was doing from ’eighty-five to ’eighty-six.”
“This have to do with that thing you can’t talk about?”
“Yeah.”
“You gonna keep me hanging?”
“For now,” Cain said. “Until I convince Nagata to bring you in.”
“All right,” Grassley said. “I got his Wikipedia page.”
“Anything about the eighties?”
“Hold on. It’s loading.”
Now Grassley was mumbling as he scanned through the page. Cain pulled into the left lane and accelerated to pass a corporate shuttl
e bus. Then Grassley was back.
“I got it, right here,” he said. “ ’Eighty-one to ’eighty-four, he was living with his parents in London. His dad—”
“Was the ambassador, right? I remember that now.”
“—a Reagan appointee, yeah,” Grassley said. “But in ’eighty-four, Harry came back for college. At Cal.”
“So we can put him in Berkeley, more or less, for the next four years?”
“He graduated in ’eighty-eight.”
“With honors?”
“It doesn’t say.”
“That means no,” Cain said. “What’d he major in?”
“Political science.”
“And after he left?”
“He went back to London. It says he was a freelance consultant.”
“For what?”
Grassley was reading to himself, maybe following links. Then his voice came back, clear enough for Cain to hear.
“There’s nothing solid. U.K. businesses, is what it sounds like.”
“He was selling his connections,” Cain said. “Access to his dad. That’s not a minor position.”
“Makes sense.”
“Dad was still the ambassador in ’eighty-eight?”
There was more silence while Grassley chased that down.
“He stayed on through Reagan, and Bush reappointed him. Clinton replaced him in ’ninety-three. February 1993.”
“And then Harry had to go look for his first honest job.”
“You’re not a fan.”
“You can hear that, even over the phone?”
“I didn’t hear anything, sir.”
“That’s right,” Cain said. “What’d he do after ’ninety-three?”
“Came home. He got an MBA at Stanford, worked for a couple startups. He got in at the beginning of the bubble. Cashed out in 2001.”
“That’s when he ran for the Board of Supervisors,” Cain said. “There were signs all over town.”
“It says he split with his dad, rebranded himself as a Democrat.”
“Didn’t he have a stint in Congress?”
“Two, or one and a half—he left in the middle of his second, and ran for mayor.”
“Ambitious,” Cain said. “Working his way up.”
“All of them are. You know the type.”
“Sure.”
“What’s he gotten into?” Grassley asked. “I mean—is he some kind of suspect?”
“Nice try,” Cain said. “I’m not biting. See you in ten.”
Cain buzzed into the medical examiner’s suite and met Grassley in the bare-bones waiting room. An intern was spraying Lysol onto the painted concrete walls, then scrubbing the mildew off with a grime-caked rag. Nothing could mask the smell down here, though.
“She’s waiting back there,” Grassley said. “But they want us to suit up first. Respirators, hoods. The whole thing.”
“You’ll be glad for it.”
Grassley followed Cain to the double doors leading from reception into the main examination room. So far, he’d seen three autopsies, each time with Cain at his side. Those bodies had come to the morgue still warm. They’d been at the scenes, had knelt next to the dead and searched their pockets with gloved hands. By the time they got to the morgue, there weren’t any surprises left.
But anything could be waiting inside this casket. Cain paused at the door and looked at his partner. The x-ray was only a hint of what was beneath the lid. Judging by the look on his face, Grassley knew it.
“Let’s do this,” Cain said. “I’ve got to meet Nagata at noon.”
They suited up in a spare office. A pair of Tyvek body suits had been laid out on the desk. Full-face respirators lay nearby. Plastic booties to go over their shoes, thick rubber gloves.
“Nice they got this out for us,” Cain said.
“It was that kid, the one disinfecting the lobby.”
“Suit up,” Cain said. “Bag your feet first, then pull the cuffs tight. Same around your wrists. You want to seal out the air, or you’ll be going to the dry cleaner.”
“You’ve done one like this?”
“I did one twice as old,” Cain said. “They’d buried her in ’fifty-two. It was bad, and she was nearly a skeleton. You get a casket with a good seal, and it locks everything in—unless the gasses blow it open from the inside.”
“That happens—they blow open?”
“Sometimes,” Cain said. “But it didn’t happen to Chris Hanley. His casket’s intact. And it hasn’t had so long to dry out . . . You didn’t eat a big breakfast, did you?”
Grassley glanced at his feet.
“Shit.”
“Come on—you saw the x-ray.”
“I thought it’d just be bones. Just—a whole lot of bones.”
“Coming back up from El Carmelo in the van, what’d you smell?”
“Dirt,” Grassley said. “Wood.”
“It’s got a good seal on it.”
“You think?”
“We’ll see.”
Rachel Levy, the acting medical examiner, was waiting for them in the autopsy suite. The casket was on one of the six tables. Cain’s tamper-evident seal tape circled each end of the wooden box. Dr. Levy nodded to each of them. No one shook hands in here. Two tables over, another autopsy was in progress, an assistant medical examiner elbows-deep. A lab tech stood behind him with a glass specimen jar. As for the cadaver, it was so thoroughly disassembled, Cain could guess neither the sex nor the age.
“I watched John Fonteroy’s video,” Dr. Levy said. Cain turned back to her. She was gathering her curly hair into a tight bun. Her face shield lay on an empty table nearby. “You ever see anything like it?”
“Not even close,” Cain said. He handed her the face shield when she was finished with her hair.
“Maybe you should talk to some of the old guys,” Dr. Levy said. “The ones who worked homicide in the eighties. Fonteroy’s place was on Geary. Find some guys who worked that neighborhood, and maybe one of them will know something.”
“Are there any left?” Cain asked.
“I wouldn’t know,” Dr. Levy said. She’d been brought in from Seattle after the last medical examiner had been dismissed for compromising a case. A month in, she was still learning her way around the office and didn’t even know the current crop of inspectors, let alone the retirees. “It’s just a thought.”
“Not a bad one,” Cain said. “You saw the x-ray?”
“Ten minutes ago.”
“How hard will it be, opening this?”
Dr. Levy turned to the assistant medical examiner and the technician helping him.
“Jim—you guys got a casket key collection?”
Jim didn’t look up from the chest cavity. He was using a metal probe, maybe tracing a bullet’s trajectory.
“By the wash station,” he said. “Third drawer down, green plastic pencil box.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll get it,” Cain said. He looked at Grassley. “Double-check that camera. Make sure it’s rolling, the battery has enough juice.”
“Bring her the pliers,” Jim said, still concentrating on the problem in front of him. “Same drawer. Thing looks rusted all to hell.”
The drawer had come off its slide tracks, and he had to kneel down and jiggle it to coax it open. The pencil box was beneath a pair of short-handled bolt cutters—useful, Cain supposed, if a body came wrapped in padlocked chains. There was a ring of assorted handcuff keys, a scatter of pliers and vise grips. Cain grabbed a couple sets of pliers and the green box.
When he came back, Dr. Levy was using a wet rag to wipe the dirt from a small metal protrusion at the foot of the casket. He put the box and the pliers on the edge of the table.
“You rolling?” he asked Grassley.
“We’re on.”
“Dr. Levy,” Cain said. “It’s your show.”
She took a pair of pliers and gripped the rusted knob. Cain watched as she flexed her arms and strained against the plie
rs’ rubber grips. She let go, clamped on at a different angle, and tried again. The knob, which was no bigger than a half-inch hex nut, didn’t budge.
“All right,” Dr. Levy said. She brought her face shield up and looked at Cain. “I hate this—it’s like asking my husband when I can’t open a jar. Do you mind?”
“It’s nothing.”
He stepped up and took the pliers from Dr. Levy.
“What is it?” he asked. “What do I do?”
“It covers the casket lock—protects it from corrosion, we hope. Either it’ll unscrew counterclockwise, or it’s got a rubber gasket and just pushes on. So grab on hard and twist it, and give it a yank at the same time.”
“Okay.”
Cain fit the pliers over the rusted metal. He found a good hold and then put both his hands on the pliers’ handles. He clamped down and began to twist, but the cap disintegrated beneath the force of his grip. It fell away in dust and flakes of oxidized metal.
“Or you could just break everything,” Dr. Levy said. “That’s another way to do it.”
“Sorry.”
Cain used the pliers to tap at the last pieces of the cap, and they fell off. He’d uncovered a screw-threaded throat that came out of the casket wall. In the middle of this, there was a hexagonal hole, and he could see the green patina of bronze. He set the pliers down and stepped back so that Dr. Levy could look at it.
“Maybe we’re in luck,” she said.
She opened the pencil box. Inside it were half a dozen bronze and steel casket keys. They reminded Cain of miniature engine cranks, the kind of things you might have used to start a Model-T. Dr. Levy sorted through them until she found one she liked. She fit it into the lock and put her weight on it, and it began to turn. Grease-starved gears groaned inside the casket walls, and then the lid rose a few millimeters. There was a long hiss, as if Dr. Levy had given a slow twist to a soda bottle’s cap.
“The smell of success,” Jim said.
“Jesus,” Grassley coughed.
“Inspector?” Dr. Levy asked. “Would you like to remove your seals?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Cain said. “You getting this, Grassley?”
“I’m getting it. You don’t have to ask.”
Cain found the edges of his seals and inspected them. He turned to the camera.
The Dark Room Page 5
