The Dark Room Read online

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  Acknowledgments

  Sample Chapter from THE POISON ARTIST

  Buy the Book

  About the Author

  Connect with HMH

  Copyright © 2017 by Jonathan Moore

  All rights reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  www.hmhco.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Moore, Jonathan, date, author.

  Title: The dark room / Jonathan Moore.

  Description: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016037230 (print) | LCCN 2016042153 (ebook) | ISBN 9780544784673 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780544784192 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Police—California—San Francisco—Fiction. | Extortion—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Suspense. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction. | Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3613.O56275 D37 2017 (print) | LCC PS3613.O56275 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016037230

  Cover design by Brian Moore

  eISBN 978-0-544-78419-2

  v1.1216

  For my son, Bruce Nathaniel Moore Wang.

  我愛你王小㡣

  1

  IT WAS AFTER midnight, and Cain and his new partner, Grassley, watched as the excavator’s blade went into the hole, emerging seconds later with another load of earth to add to the pile growing next to the grave. On the phone that afternoon, the caretaker of El Carmelo Cemetery had asked if they could do this at night. There were burials scheduled all day, and he didn’t want to upset anyone. The time of day hadn’t made any difference to Cain. Staying up all hours was his business. He just wanted this done.

  After three more scoops with the backhoe, the caretaker rotated the arm out of the way and his assistant jumped down into the hole with a long-handled spade. As he did that, the van from the medical examiner’s office arrived. Its headlights scanned across Cain and Grassley, and then paused over the exhumation. The caretaker’s assistant climbed out of the hole, blinking against the bright light. Then he took the lifting straps from his boss and jumped back into the open grave.

  Cain watched the technicians climb from the van and start up the hill. A man and a woman, young, no more than a few years out of college. Grassley’s phone rang, and he checked the screen before he answered. He looked at Cain and took a few steps back.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and then he paused a while to listen. “No, we’re out at El Carmelo, in Pacific Grove—you know, the Hanley thing?”

  Now Grassley was listening again, pressing his finger into his free ear to dull the excavator’s diesel rumble.

  “He’s right here. Hold on.”

  Grassley handed him the phone.

  “It’s the lieutenant,” he said. “She wants to talk to you.”

  He took the phone, stepping through the long shadows of the headstones toward the cypress trees at the top of the hill, where he would be farther from the excavator’s idling engine.

  “This is Cain,” he said. “What can I do for you, Lieutenant?”

  “Something came up. I need to reassign you.”

  “We’re right in the middle of something.”

  “I wouldn’t pull you off if I had a choice,” she said. “But I don’t. Grassley can take Hanley from here.”

  “We’re two hours south.”

  “That’s not a problem,” the lieutenant said. “You’re—Where exactly are you?”

  “El Carmelo,” he said. “The cemetery.”

  “Hold on, Cain.”

  He knew she was checking her computer, pulling up a map. There was too much noise on the hilltop to hear her keystrokes. In less than twenty seconds she was back to him.

  “There’s a golf course,” she said. “Right next to you. They can set down, pick you up.”

  “They?”

  “The CHP unit.”

  “You’re sending a helicopter?”

  “It’ll be there in ten minutes,” she said.

  “What’s going on?”

  His mind went first to Lucy, but the lieutenant wouldn’t have called about her. She didn’t even know about Lucy.

  “We’ll talk when you get here, face to face. Not over the phone. Now give me Grassley. I need another word with him.”

  He started toward Grassley, then stopped when he saw the hole. He had to try one more time. He cupped his hand over the phone’s mouthpiece, so she’d hear him clearly.

  “I spent three weeks setting this up.”

  “It’s a wild-goose chase, Cain. One that’s been sitting thirty years. I’ve got a problem that’s less than an hour old. Now it’s your problem. Put Grassley on.”

  He came back to Grassley and handed him the phone. It wasn’t any use wondering why the lieutenant was pulling him away. Instead, he walked to the edge of the excavated grave and looked down, shining the flashlight he’d been carrying. The caretaker’s assistant was kneeling on top of the casket. He’d dug trenches along its sides and was reaching down to fasten the lifting straps.

  Three decades underground, the kid wouldn’t weigh much, at least. And from what Cain understood, by the time he’d finally died, there hadn’t been all that much to put in the casket anyway. The assistant climbed out of the hole again and handed the ends of the four straps to his boss.

  Cain checked up the hill and saw Grassley standing under the tree, one finger in his left ear to block the noise as he talked to their lieutenant.

  “Inspector Cain?”

  He turned around, putting his hand up to block the light shining in his face.

  “That’s me.”

  The woman from the ME’s office lowered her light and came around to stand next to him. She leaned over to look down into the hole.

  “You’re riding back with us in the van?” she asked. “We heard something like that.”

  “Not me,” Cain said. “I just got reassigned.”

  He gestured up the hill toward Grassley.

  “He’ll have to go. You or your partner can follow in his car.”

  “Reassigned? It’s two a.m. and we’re—”

  She stopped, following Cain’s eyes to look at the light coming toward them from the north. When the helicopter broke out of the clouds and into clear air, they could hear the whump of its rotors. Cain pointed up the hill toward his partner.

  “That’s Inspector Grassley,” Cain said. “Make sure he gets in the van, that he rides with one of you. He might want to drive back on his own, but don’t let him. We need the chain of custody. You understand. I don’t want any problems later, some defense lawyer picking us apart.”

  “I get it,” the woman said.

  �
��I’ve got to go,” Cain said. He looked back into the hole, shining his light on the casket’s black lid. “Let’s get this one right.”

  He paused on the way down the hill and looked back up at Grassley. They met each other’s eyes and nodded, and that was all. Then he hurried across the access road, toward the long fairway that stretched between the graveyard and Del Monte Boulevard.

  When he reached the golf course and felt the short grass under his feet, he checked the sky to the north and saw that the helicopter was less than a minute away. He took out his cell phone and dialed Lucy’s number.

  “Gavin?”

  “Sorry—I didn’t mean to—I thought I’d get your voicemail.”

  “I was up.”

  He looked at his watch. It was a quarter past two. The grass on the fairway was slick with dew, and he could smell the ocean.

  “You’re okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re feeling sick again,” he said. He could hear it in her voice.

  “It’s not such a big deal,” she said. “Really.”

  “Okay.”

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “Down south, near Monterey. For Hanley.”

  “Hanley?”

  “The video we got, the guy who—”

  “That’s enough,” she said. “I remember. I can’t stomach it right now.”

  “No more,” he said. “I promise.”

  “Are you coming soon?”

  “Something came up,” he said. “They’re sending a helicopter, but I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “You have to hurry?”

  He glanced up at the helicopter, saw it swing around as it lined up for the fairway.

  “I ought to go.”

  “Then call when you can,” she said. “Or better yet, just come.”

  “As soon as I can,” he said.

  “Be careful,” she said. “Gavin, I mean it.”

  “Try and get some sleep.”

  They hung up and he put the phone away. Then the helicopter came in just above the line of trees, and when it was hovering over the fairway, its spotlight lit up. He walked toward the white circle, one hand in the air to call the CHP pilot in.

  2

  IT WAS HIS first time in a helicopter. The SFPD had scrapped its aero division before he’d even joined the force. Now whenever his department needed helicopter support, it called the California Highway Patrol. The agencies were friendly, but arranging anything was a bureaucratic and logistical mess. Which meant that this flight, on short notice at two in the morning, could only have happened if someone far above his lieutenant had stepped in.

  He put on his headset and bent the microphone toward his lips.

  “Where we headed?”

  “Civic Center Plaza,” the pilot said, and Cain had to press his earphones tight to hear her voice over the engine. “I’m supposed to set you down on the lawn at the corner of Polk and Grove.”

  “They tell you what it’s about?”

  She shook her head.

  “I’m just a taxi service tonight. That’s all I know.”

  They were racing above Monterey Bay. Five, six hundred feet up, with wisps of fog between them and the black water. Ahead, he could see Santa Cruz, its lights spread between the bay’s curved shore and the low, silhouetted mountains.

  “What were you doing in the cemetery?” the pilot asked.

  “Exhumation.”

  “Cold case?”

  “That’s right,” Cain said.

  It was no ordinary cold case, but he wasn’t going to explain that now. He hated to be reassigned right at the cusp, a moment before they pried open the lid and found out if they had a case or nothing at all. It wouldn’t wait for him, either. The lieutenant had been clear—Grassley would handle it without him. He was supposed to be good, but he’d been Cain’s partner for only three weeks. Cain hadn’t seen enough to have an opinion either way, and that made him nervous.

  When they reached the northern edge of Monterey Bay, the pilot came up high enough to pass above the Santa Cruz Mountains, and though they were flying toward the city’s gathering orange glow, beneath them, the woods were dark and untouched.

  Twenty-five minutes later, the pilot circled Civic Center Plaza once, and then put the helicopter down on the lawn, slipping easily between two rows of flagpoles. Cain took off his headset and stepped out, closing the door behind him.

  Lieutenant Nagata was waiting for him across the lawn, standing clear of the wind. Behind her, on Polk Street, a yellow cab and a pair of private cars had slowed to a crawl to watch the helicopter.

  Cain straightened his suit and went to his boss.

  “Lieutenant,” he said. “Where are we going?”

  She nodded toward City Hall, which rose into the dark across the street. The gold leaf on the dome glowed against the night. Lieutenant Nagata waited for a car to pass, and then led him across Polk Street. A policeman opened the main door for them, and Nagata led Cain into the building. She stopped beneath the rotunda, at the foot of the grand staircase.

  “He wants to see you alone. Go on up, and when you’re done we’ll talk down here. I’ll introduce you to Karen Fischer.”

  “Who wants to talk to me?”

  “Castelli.”

  He thought about that, what it might mean. He’d never been inside City Hall in the middle of the night. The lamps next to the staircase were lit, and there were a few spotlights farther off, illuminating the bust of Mayor Moscone and the spot of floor where he’d died. He could hear someone pacing in one of the marble-floored galleries above, and he looked around until he spotted the patrolman up there.

  “Karen Fischer—who’s she?”

  “Your contact with the FBI,” Nagata said. “Starting tonight, and until this is over. But go up. He’s waiting, and he’s had a long night already. It’ll just get harder for him from here.”

  It wasn’t like Nagata to show sympathetic concern for anyone holding an elected office. The one exception was the mayor. It almost never came up, but when it did, she could be fierce about it. She owed him her job and paid that debt however she could. With her hand at the small of Cain’s back, she pushed him toward the grand staircase. He climbed up, passed under the ceremonial rotunda, and then nodded to the patrolman who stood between the flags flanking the mayoral suite.

  Cain stepped inside the reception lounge, the red carpet thick underfoot. There was a glass-shaded lamp on the receptionist’s desk, and it was the only source of light after the patrolman closed the door behind him.

  There was no one else in the lobby. Cain wasn’t sure if he was supposed to sit. Maybe in the mayor’s mind it made sense to pull him out of El Carmelo, fly him back into the city, and then make him wait. He crossed through the lobby and found the door to the mayor’s office. He knocked once with the back of his hand, then opened the door.

  Harry Castelli was bent over his phone when Cain stepped in. He glanced up, then cupped his hand over the mouthpiece.

  “He’s here, and I’ll—”

  But Cain couldn’t make out the rest of it.

  The mayor hung up, then pointed at one of the two chairs that faced his desk. Cain pulled one out and sat looking at the man who’d brought him. He was wearing a white dress shirt and a pale blue silk tie. His suit jacket lay atop his desk. His hair was black but must have been dyed because the stubble on his face was all white. His face was fall-down tired. Nothing like the man Cain had seen on TV, leaning with his elbows on a podium in the rotunda, facing a crowd of reporters that pressed all the way down the stairs.

  “You’re Cain—Inspector Cain?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I called your lieutenant and asked for a name.”

  “Okay.”

  “I wanted the best, and that’s why you’re here,” the mayor said. “I see you wondering.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  If this had happened at the beginning of December, Nagata would have p
icked a different inspector. But December had been a hard month, and she didn’t have much choice. A pair of inspectors and the Office of the Medical Examiner had lost control of an investigation, and three of Cain’s closest friends had been killed. By New Year’s Day, he was the most senior man left standing in the Homicide Detail. He was thirty-seven years old.

  The mayor reached halfway across the desk and lifted his suit jacket. There was a manila folder under it. He looked inside, then put it on the desk and weighed it down with his palm. He was wearing a thick gold wedding band. No scratches on it. He must have been in the habit of taking it off whenever he did anything with his hands—or else, there’d always been someone else to do those sorts of things for him. Any kind of real labor.

  The mayor leaned forward. He may have looked exhausted, but when he spoke, his voice was deep, each word a jab.

  “Let’s make one thing absolutely clear.”

  “All right.”

  Castelli took the folder again, holding it up without opening it.

  “I don’t know what this is,” Castelli said. “And I don’t have anything to hide.”

  “Okay.”

  “We’re clear?”

  “I heard you,” Cain said.

  Usually, the first thing a witness said was a lie. This wasn’t starting well for the mayor.

  “This—this thing—it’s bullshit.”

  Cain didn’t answer. He looked at the mayor until the man put down the folder and opened it. There were only a few pages inside. Five, at the most. Cain could see a letter on top, upside down. Its author had conveyed his message in just a few lines. No letterhead, no signature. A nice, clean typeface. Cain didn’t need the mayor to tell him what kind of letter it was.

  “This came today, in the regular mail.”

  “It came today, or it got opened today?”

  “Both—we open all the mail, every day.”

  “Who opened it?” Cain asked. He looked at the mayor’s hands again. “Not you, I’m guessing.”

  “My chief of staff. And then she brought it straight to me.”

  “And she’s—”

  “Melissa Montgomery. She’s giving her statement to the woman from the FBI.”