The Dark Room

by Jonathan Moore

  Castelli turned from the window. He’d been looking down on the rows of spot-lit flags in Civic Center Plaza. Or maybe he’d just been looking at his reflection in the dark glass.

  “You wanted to see me?”

  “The better question is, didn’t you want to see me?” Cain said. “Why the fuck didn’t you call the second you got them?”

  Castelli went to his desk, pulled the chair back, and sat down. He took a gold pen from its wooden stand and rolled it back and forth between his fingers. That tic again, always needing to handle something. His fingerprints must have been on everything in the room lower than the ceiling.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You think I got something?”

  “Bullshit,” Cain said. “You got elected to Congress. Twice. You can lie better than that.”

  “You bother my wife, harass my daughter. You bust into my office at night, without an appointment, and call me a liar.”

  Castelli swiveled his chair and opened the liquor cabinet, then came back around holding a fresh bottle of bourbon and a pair of crystal snifters.

  “Call me a liar to my face—that’s nerve. I actually like that. This time you’ll have a drink with me. You can’t say no. And honestly, Cain, I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.”

  He brought a nickel-plated folding knife from his desk drawer and used the blade to slice the red wax seal around the top of the bottle. He set the knife down, pulled the cork from the bottle, and poured an inch of bourbon into each of the snifters. He slid one of them across the desk and pointed at the empty chair.

  “Sit,” he said. “Drink that. And tell me what’s going on.”

  Cain picked up the glass but didn’t sit. He lowered his nose to the snifter’s narrow opening and smelled the good bourbon inside, and then he stepped around the desk, pulled the wastepaper bin out, and poured the drink on top of Castelli’s trash. He set the empty glass on the desk blotter. The mayor started to rise, but Cain kept him in his chair with a hand on his chest.

  “Who was she?” he asked.

  “The girl in the pictures?”

  “Who else?”

  “I don’t know,” Castelli said. There was no one he could call, no help to come running. But he was calm and in control, even with Cain’s hand pushing him down. “I told you that already.”

  “What’s in the next four pictures?”

  Castelli rolled backward in his chair until there was a foot of distance between them. He took his bourbon and drank it, then began turning the empty glass in his fingers, his wedding band clicking against its thin crystal side.

  “That’s what you think I’m hiding?” Castelli asked. “The pictures?”

  “I’m out there, digging up your secrets. One of the things I hear is you’ve got the pictures. You try and bury something, it doesn’t always stay down.”

  He was expecting more of a reaction, but the mayor didn’t even look up from his glass.

  “Is that all?” Castelli asked.

  “When was the first time you saw those shots?”

  “Last night.”

  “You never had another set of prints?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You’re going to sit here and tell me you never saw her until a day ago.”

  “I’ve been telling you that,” Castelli said. He poured another inch of bourbon and drank it, then wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “I’m going to keep telling you until you get it.”

  “If you hadn’t already gotten the next set of pictures, why would I get an anonymous note saying you did?”

  “You got a note like that?”

  Cain handed Castelli his phone. He’d taken a shot of the note and had it on the screen. The mayor held the phone close, and Cain took a bet with himself that he would pour a third drink. Instead, after the mayor handed the phone back, he corked the bottle and returned it to his liquor cabinet.

  “I assume it crossed your mind he’s got an agenda,” Castelli said.

  “Everybody in this thing has an agenda.”

  “Helping you catch him isn’t part of his.”

  “I follow the leads I get.”

  “That’s a nice idea, but it’s not what you’re doing. You’re just doing what he wants.”

  “And what exactly do you think I should be doing? Since clearly you know best.”

  “The letter I got . . . what’s he want?” Castelli leaned back in his chair. “Easy. He’s fucking with me, so I won’t think straight. But at the same time, he’s telling me there’s a way out. Pull the trigger, he says. Take the quick exit—bang! It isn’t blackmail because he doesn’t want money. It’s just straight coercion. Isn’t that right?”

  Cain nodded.

  “And if I call his bluff? If I won’t even blink?” Castelli asked. He pointed at Cain with the glass in his hand. “Then he’s got to turn up the pressure.”

  “Okay.”

  “What’s the easiest way for him to do that? Look at you, shoving in here. Pushing me around, dumping out my whiskey like it’s water from the tap. You’re doing exactly what he wants. He’s playing you—What’s so funny?”

  Cain was already walking to the door. He put his hand on the knob but turned to the mayor before he left.

  “Assuming all I had was the note?” Cain asked. “I’d think you’re right. But it’s not all I’ve got.”

  “If you want to threaten me, you’ve got to be specific,” the mayor said. “Maybe it means I’m not a smart guy. But I don’t jump at shadows.”

  “I’m just calling bullshit,” Cain said. He let go of the door and took a step back toward Castelli. “I don’t care if you find that threatening or not. You’ve seen that girl. We both know it.”

  The mayor had no answer. He stared at Cain from behind the rim of his empty snifter, which he turned and turned in his cupped hands.

  “If you don’t want to tell it to me, then call Agent Fischer and tell her,” Cain said. “Or have that kid do it, what’s-his-name.”

  “Who?”

  “That intern you had, who called them the first time. Jacobs? Jackson?”

  One name was from a list of the mayor’s staff that Cain had seen at the first meeting in the federal building. The other, he’d just made up.

  “Jackson,” Castelli said. The name from the list. If the mayor was grabbing at hints like that, it could only mean one thing. He didn’t know who’d called the FBI.

  Cain nodded and stepped out. This time, Melissa Montgomery wasn’t there. The reception area was as empty as he’d left it.

  12

  SMOOTHING THINGS OVER with Nagata was easier than he’d expected, and he had Grassley to thank for it. He’d come out of the mayor’s office and down the steps to the rotunda, but Karen Fischer wasn’t anywhere in sight. The FBI agent who’d let them in was making rounds in the farther reaches of the building; Cain could hear his steady footfalls echoing down the marble hallways and amplifying in the vast dome above.

  He stood near one of the lamps that flanked the staircase and called his lieutenant.

  “What happened—and where are you?”

  “With Fischer, at City Hall.”

  “How is it she walks out of a meeting with me and ends up with you at City Hall, and I only hear about it an hour later?”

  “That was my fault,” Cain said. “I ran into her before I came up, told her what I needed to do, and she wanted to come with me. It was heat of the moment, but I should’ve called you.”

  “What do you mean, ‘heat of the moment’? What’s going on?”

  He gave her the story he’d told Fischer about finding a note on his windshield, then chasing its author through the Western Addition. He didn’t mention his meetings with Mona and Alexa Castelli, or the photograph that Alexa had given him. The note was safe because Castelli already knew about it. Cain had been careful about what information he’d shared so far, but he was going to need to sit down soon and work it through. There were too many threads in
the story he was telling, and if he looked away for too long, they’d tangle.

  “What did he say when you showed him the note?” Nagata asked. “Did he have the next set?”

  “He said I was being played.”

  “And you thought what?”

  “That he’s got it right—someone’s putting pressure on him.”

  “You believed him.”

  “Maybe he’s smarter than he looks.”

  “So there’s hope for you,” Nagata said. “He can make a career in the department, you know. When he takes an interest in someone.”

  “I’m not sure he’s taken that kind of interest in me.”

  There was silence while Nagata considered something. Cain looked around the darkened rotunda but didn’t see Fischer. The only sound was the FBI agent, pacing the perimeter. Fischer must have taken Melissa Montgomery into an empty office, or back into the Board of Supervisors’ Chambers. Then Nagata was back on the line.

  “I hate to do this to you—I put you on Castelli, told you to bear down like it was the only thing that mattered.”

  “It’s not?”

  “I need you to help Grassley.”

  “What’s he got into?”

  “He called a minute ago,” she said. “And asked for you. He’s headed to the morgue, that exhumation job. Dr. Levy wants to see him. There was a second body—you heard that yet?”

  “In the casket?” Cain asked. “A second body?”

  “It’s a woman—she was buried alive.”

  “Did they ID her?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Nagata said. “They had the x-ray since this morning, but nobody told me anything until now. Do you see the pattern?”

  “Lieutenant—”

  “Forget it, Cain. I want you there. Whatever Dr. Levy’s got to say, you have to hear it. We can keep the mayor out of the news, if we’re lucky. But this one will get out, and when it does, we need a senior inspector standing out front.”

  Of course, Cain thought. How it plays on the evening news is her biggest concern.

  “I’ll be there,” he said. “I’m on my way.”

  “You can handle both?”

  “Easy.”

  “We’ll talk tomorrow,” she said. “I understand how it is. You have to go wherever the investigation leads. But I don’t like being left out of the loop.”

  “Understood, Lieutenant.”

  He hung up and looked around again. Fischer was coming down the staircase to meet him.

  They waited until they were outside, across Polk Street from City Hall. There was a burned-out streetlight there, and they stood in the column of darkness beneath it and looked back to the mayor’s lighted windows above the entry portico.

  “What’d she say?” Cain asked.

  “That he told her to call. That she did it with his permission. I raked her back and forth, and she didn’t budge.”

  “Then she’s lying,” Cain said. “Castelli, too. He didn’t tell her to call, and he doesn’t know who did. I threw him a line and he reached for it. He thinks it was some kid named Jackson.”

  A shadow passed across the windows on the other side of the street. The mayor was pacing up there. If he had Melissa Montgomery with him, what would they be talking about? Each kept secrets from the other, but they probably shared a few too.

  Mona Castelli certainly believed that.

  “What do you think it means?” Fischer asked. “That she’d call without telling him.”

  “It could be anything—she knew he wouldn’t call it in himself and wanted to protect him. She saw the pictures and got scared.”

  “Jealous, maybe,” Fischer said. “You see them in the room together, you can’t help but think there’s something underneath. Not just a boss and his employee.”

  “Or she’s angry—she sees those pictures and she starts thinking, ‘What kind of man gets himself into a thing like this?’ ”

  “Then we show up and take him by surprise,” Fischer said. “He’s seen the letter too, so he knows why we’re there. He knows that right away, but he doesn’t know who called. He plays it like he was waiting for us, like he asked someone to call. He’s got to, because what else is he going to say?”

  “And what’s that say about him?” Cain asked. “That he didn’t call.”

  “He knows who the girl is, and what happened to her.”

  His phone began to vibrate, and he looked at the screen. Grassley. He put it away without answering it. He’d see Grassley face to face in five minutes, when he got to the morgue.

  “You need a ride back to your office?” he asked. “I’m headed past it.”

  “I can walk,” she said. “It’s a block and a half.”

  There were voices coming from the main autopsy suite, three or four people in a back-and-forth murmur, words he couldn’t make out over the high-pitched whine of an oscillating autopsy saw. He went into the back office and found a Tyvek suit laid out, still damp inside from the sweat of the last person who’d worn it.

  When he was dressed and had wiped menthol cream under his nostrils, he tightened the respirator mask and went into the suite. Grassley and Dr. Levy were at a center table with the girl’s corpse laid out in front of them. To their right, another team was cutting in to a whale of a man who looked as though he’d jumped from a high roof.

  “Inspector Cain,” Dr. Levy said. “I’ll back up and start over.”

  He stepped next to Grassley and looked down at the corpse. Dr. Levy had cut her open with a Y-incision that went through her sternum and down as far as her pubic bone.

  “Your Jane Doe is a Caucasian female. A blonde. She stood five eight and would have weighed a hundred and twenty pounds, give or take five. She was healthy until she died—no chronic diseases, no obvious history of malnourishment. A twenty-year-old girl, nothing wrong with her at all.”

  “How are you guessing the age?”

  “Dental x-rays,” Dr. Levy said. “Her wisdom teeth were erupting. They would’ve just started bothering her.”

  “I had mine out at twenty-five,” Cain said.

  “That’s the back end of the range,” Dr. Levy answered. “The front end is seventeen. But in this girl, the pubic symphysis—the bone connecting the two sides of her pelvis, right above her vulva—it had a nice, billowy surface. That means she was an adult, but a very young one. Done growing, but not growing old.”

  “Okay.”

  “What I mean is, twenty’s an estimate. But it’s a good estimate. I could be off by two or three years.”

  “Then she was twenty,” Cain said. “Give or take.”

  “I did what I could, but her internal organs were fused together—inside, she looked like black tar. That’s what thirty years underground will do. A good casket, but no embalming. There’s not enough left of her lungs and airways to say if she died of asphyxiation. Her heart’s not giving anything up, either.”

  “Can you say how she died?”

  “What we’ve got are the scratches inside the casket lid, the matching splinters under her fingernails—and nothing else. No broken bones, no obvious cuts or stab wounds, no bullets showing up on the x-rays.”

  Grassley was taking notes on a spiral-bound pad, writing as fast as he could to catch everything Dr. Levy said.

  “What about toxicology?” Cain asked.

  “It’ll take a month, maybe two,” Dr. Levy answered. She went to the back wall and selected a pair of forceps the size of kitchen tongs, then came back. “You know we have to send it out. Any kind of lab work, we have to send out.”

  “I may not have a month.”

  “Then you may want to look at getting a private source. What we have, in this office, is a two-month backlog. We’ve already called in all our favors.”

  She leaned over the corpse and used the forceps to pull back the skin and underlying tissue at the young woman’s pelvis. The skin was leathery, the muscles underneath black and shrunken. Dr. Levy took a scalpel from the table and used the blunt side of its
blade to gingerly pry open a slit she’d previously cut.

  “This is her uterus,” Dr. Levy said.

  Cain came a little closer and tried to make it out. It all looked the same to him, an undifferentiated mass of dark tissue. He’d stood in this room often enough to know his way around the inside of a cadaver. But not one like this.

  “She was pregnant,” Levy said, gesturing to a pea-size lump. “I’d say she was eight weeks along. Not much more than that.”

  “Would she have shown?” Cain asked.

  He’d stepped back from the table. To his right, the assistant medical examiner had finally put away her oscillating saw. Now the only noise came from the hooded ventilation fans above each table.

  “Probably not,” Dr. Levy said.

  “Was there anything else?” he asked.

  “The rest can go in my report,” Dr. Levy said. “I just wanted to show you this. I’ll preserve the fetus—freeze it, for whatever that’s worth now.”

  “We’ll get DNA?” Grassley asked, the first thing he’d said since Cain had arrived.

  “It’ll be fragmentary, but you’ll get it.”

  Grassley looked at Cain.

  “The father,” he said. “We’ll find out if he’s the father.”

  “Who?” Dr. Levy asked.

  “We’re not there yet,” Cain said. He took Grassley’s elbow. “Thanks for walking us through it, Doctor.”

  “Anytime,” she said. “There’s a box in your office. I set it there an hour ago, before I knew you were coming. You’ll want to pick it up.”

  They weren’t alone until they got into the elevator on the way to the sixth floor.

  “Cain—”

  “If you’d said Harry Castelli, I’d have pulled out my gun and kneecapped you.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Everybody talks,” Cain said. “You say something to Levy in the morgue, and she’ll bring it up at the next homicide roundtable. Or she’ll mention it to her buddy in there, Dr. Braun. Some lab tech overhears, figures it’s worth fifty bucks if he knows a reporter.”

  “Cain—”

  “And everyone down there knows a reporter—some asshole already called Christopher Hanley’s mother and told her what we found in his casket. You think they’ll just sit on this?”