The Poison Artist Page 4

  The bartender looked down, put his hands in his pockets. Then he looked back at Caleb.

  “You a cop too?”

  “No.” He held up his hands, palms out. “Honest. I just want to see her again, is all.”

  The bartender took a tumbler off the back wall and poured a finger’s worth of Fernet-Branca into it. He drank it down and wiped the back of his mouth with his sleeve and then refilled the glass with ginger ale from the soda gun.

  “There’s—” He stopped and looked at the door, then turned back to Caleb. “I’ll say this. There’s a certain type of girl. I’m not talking about anyone in particular. Just a type, comes into high-end places like this, orders things like absinthe. Comes in alone, and usually leaves that way. You get me?”

  “Not really.”

  “This type of girl only goes to a certain kind of place. House of Shields is one of them. Across the street, the Pied Piper, is another, but that’s a little big for this type. A little crowded. So it’s not quite right.”

  Caleb looked down at his drink. He ran his fingertip along the rim. She’d probably used this glass before. Her lips had been on it. There was no mark, but as he traced the rim, the cool, smooth crystal, he was sure of it. But he had no idea what the bartender was talking about.

  “What are some others? Other places this type of girl goes?”

  He brought the glass to his lips and took a sip. It was perfect. Delicious and cold, the full force of the herbs tugged out of the spirits by the cold water.

  “You might try Bourbon and Branch. The Bar Drake, half an hour before it closes. Slide. Places like that. You know what I’m talking about?”

  “You’re saying these girls are part of a scene?”

  “If it’s a scene, it’s so new or so deep underground, you’re not going to find anything about it. If it’s got a name, I don’t know it. Girls like that, they just show up sometimes.”

  “Have another drink and put it on my tab.”

  The man poured a dram of the coffee-colored spirit into a clean glass. He left the bottle on the bar.

  “She wouldn’t go to the same place two nights in a row. She—they—might not even go out two nights in a row. You might not see them for a month. So if you’re looking for one of them—I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know what?”

  “Maybe she has to come to you.”

  The man was useless. Caleb wasn’t looking for a kind of girl. He was looking for the one who’d been on the barstool next to him. The bartender hadn’t seen her but wouldn’t just say it.

  “All right.”

  Caleb stood and leaned over the bar and took the ballpoint pen from the chest pocket of the bartender’s shirt. He took his drink off its paper napkin and turned it over so he could write on the dry side:

  Next time, I want to know your name.

  He wrote his cell number and signed his name. There had to be a better way to do this. Something that would make her look for him, that would call her out of the shadows. But this would have to do for now. He folded the napkin into a triangle and took a fifty-dollar bill from his wallet. He handed the note and pen to the bartender.

  “When you see her,” he said. “Give it to her.”

  He finished his drink in one swallow, put the bill behind his glass, and walked out.

  Even then, he didn’t go home.

  He drove through the quiet city, passing the homeless huddled next to their shopping carts near the subway grates on Market Street, and then up Nob Hill, where he idled the car for half an hour just beneath the entry steps to Grace Cathedral, its filigreed stone mullions and tracery and stained-glass windows dark and dripping with mist.

  An antique coupe drifted past, trailing a cloud of steaming exhaust. Its white-walled tires and ghostly smoke-gray side paneling were just a blur through Caleb’s rain-wet windshield. He watched it go. No sounds at all except the rain on the roof and the old coupe’s tires swooshing along the wet pavement.

  Then it was gone and there was just the rain again.

  Caleb wound down to Union Square and circled its empty ice rink, the glittering tree attended by drifting knots of homeless men. And then, ten minutes later, without quite meaning to, he was parked opposite Bridget’s studio on Bush Street. He could see into the alley that ran between her building and the one next to it, the brick walls of each building zigzagged with fire escapes, and the alley itself cluttered with dumpsters. Bridget had four windows on the third floor, two facing Bush Street and two facing the alley and the fire escape.

  They were lit up.

  She would be in there with the space heaters running, her easel standing in the middle of the small room. The canvases would be stacked along one wall and it would be more cluttered than usual now: she’d taken so much from their home. She might have bought a sleeping bag somewhere—there was an Army-Navy store around the block—but even with the heaters running, it would be cold up there. It wouldn’t matter. Bridget carried a fire in her. You could lie down with her in a snowbank and it would be all right.

  He thought about calling her. Even picked up his phone and punched in the password to use the keypad. But then he stopped. If he called her, she might look out the window, and if she did, what would she think? There might be a law against what he was doing. He didn’t know. He just wanted to see her. For a while, he let go of House of Shields and the woman whose name he hadn’t yet learned.

  He just wanted Bridget.

  Wanted to be invited upstairs, to be welcomed into her warmth.

  It was after four a.m. when he left, and nearly five when he got home. He parked his car askew in the garage, watched the door roll down, and then went into the house. He’d forgotten the fire, which had been on all night. At least the living room was warm.

  He poured a last drink and had it on the couch.

  Five

  HE HEARD FOOTSTEPS on the tiles in the main laboratory, a fast pace that came to a stop outside his office. His door was almost closed. A man spoke, not to him. Maybe to one of the secretaries or lab techs working in the main space.

  “He in yet?”

  Caleb had enough time to switch off his computer screen and swivel in his chair to face the door. His secretary poked her head in.

  “Dr. Newcomb’s here. But he hasn’t got much time—he’s got to get back to the medical examiner’s office.”

  A tall man in a hurry, Henry Newcomb opened the door and stepped around Andrea.

  “Caleb—just the guy I needed to see.”

  He swung the door shut, just missing Andrea’s head, and stretched out his open hand. Caleb stood and reached across to shake with him.

  “Henry.”

  “How’s it— Jesus, what happened to you?”

  Caleb fell back into his chair and motioned at the couch opposite the desk. Henry lowered himself into it, his knees higher than his hips.

  “Bridget left,” Caleb said.

  “That was her parting shot?” Henry asked, touching his own forehead.

  “Yeah.”

  “When’d you tell her?”

  “Saturday. It was bad.”

  “I hate to say it—”

  “But you told me so.”

  Henry smiled, but it was a sad smile. There was a long tug of history in the look on his face, a line that led back nearly thirty years.

  “What’s Bridget—thirty? Thirty-one? When Vicki was that age, there was no way I’d have done something like that. No way.”

  “You were right. Bridget was right. But it’s not like it can’t be undone,” Caleb said. “I can fix it.”

  “That’s not the point. The point is to talk to her before you pull shit like that, not after. Jesus, Maddox. But she can tell you that.”

  “If she ever talks to me again.”

  Henry leaned back on the couch and nodded. He gestured at Caleb’s right hand.

  “Don’t tell me you hit her back.”

  “No. Hell, no. I’d never.”

  “You’d n
ever,” Henry said.

  “I’m serious.”

  “You remember the whole thing?”

  “Jesus, Henry. I wasn’t drunk.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

  For a moment, Caleb felt like they were playing chess. Except Henry was the only one who could see all the pieces. Caleb didn’t know what he stood to lose, but he was sure he couldn’t win anything in a game like this.

  “She threw the glass, I left. When I came back, I was locked out. Punched through a window to get in. You know a glass cut when you see one. Come on.”

  He held up his hand and spread his fingers. He’d taken off the bandages to see if the scabs would hold. Henry looked at them and nodded.

  “That was stupid.”

  Caleb let that pass in silence. His work phone rang; he looked at the number.

  “Just the lab techs.”

  “You doing okay? I guess you know how you look.”

  “I had too much to drink last night. I know what you’re thinking, but this wasn’t like that at all. So don’t start—I’ll be all right.”

  “It’s just, you know, I’d hate to see—” Henry stopped and looked up. “You’ve been doing so well, since you met Bridget.”

  “I thought you weren’t going to start.”

  “I’m done. That’s all I’m gonna say.”

  “Okay, then.”

  Henry looked at Caleb’s hand until he put it on his lap, under the desk. Then Henry shifted his long legs and leaned back on the couch.

  “I came looking for you this morning,” Henry said. “We got a problem down at the ME. Got some results back, had us scratching our heads for a couple hours. Then I thought, ‘Mad Dog Maddox can solve this.’”

  Caleb smiled at that, the old name.

  “Mad Dog’s not at the top of his game. But I could use a distraction.”

  “And my side gigs are always fun, right?”

  “Always.”

  “You got time now? I can take you down, lay it out.”

  “Give me a minute. I’ll meet you out front.”

  Henry reached for the door but stopped when Caleb raised his hand.

  “Yeah?”

  “This job, I’ll be getting samples?”

  Henry nodded.

  “I’ll bring the cooler. But let’s get the ice at your place.”

  When Henry was gone and the door was closed, Caleb swiveled back to his computer. He’d been writing a letter to Bridget, writing and rewriting and not getting anywhere. And he’d also been browsing the Internet, reading about underground bars and speakeasies in San Francisco. Places a certain type of girl might go. Places he’d be seeing soon. He’d gotten a lot further with that than with the letter. He emailed the list of bars to himself, deleted the letter, and shut off the computer. If anyone came into his office, he didn’t want his life sitting on the screen. It was starting to get too complicated to explain.

  As he was standing, Andrea opened his door ten inches and looked through the crack.

  “Joanne’s been hunting for you.”

  “I got her message.”

  “There’s a new box of samples in the lab fridge. Patient charts sitting on top of it.”

  “When’d that come in?”

  Andrea shrugged. “I don’t know. Joanne found it. That’s what she wanted to tell you.”

  “UCSF patient charts?”

  “No. From the VA.”

  Now Caleb nodded. He’d contracted with half the hospitals in the Bay Area to deliver sample sets, if they could get them. Because of the population it served, the VA hospital found more volunteers than every other hospital put together. Veterans were prone to volunteer. And they had plenty of what Caleb was studying.

  “Their delivery guy’s been here so many times, he probably just walked right in and stuck it in the fridge,” Caleb said. “Maybe Sandy was on the phone and he didn’t want to bother her. No big deal.”

  “What if we’d missed it? Don’t we need to sign for something?”

  Caleb shook his head. “But we didn’t miss it,” he said. “Look, I gotta go help Henry. Email me if anything comes up.”

  Andrea ducked out. Caleb started around his desk, but then he stopped. He rolled his chair back and knelt on the floor. He’d been nonchalant a second ago, but now it bothered him, this idea of Andrea’s. No one from the outside should be coming into the lab without at least signing in and getting a visitor’s badge. A person who could get in and leave a box of samples in the refrigerator could just as easily slip in and take something away.

  And there were things in this lab that shouldn’t get out.

  He opened a mahogany cabinet under the desk, exposing the refrigerated safe behind the wooden door. From the outside, it looked okay. The steel was still gunmetal black, and unscratched. The digital keypad glowed a soft green. He punched in the combination, heard the electronic bolts withdraw into the door, and then opened the safe. A wash of cold air spilled out. Inside the fluorescent-lit box, everything looked fine. The four sample vials were intact, and the plastic bags that held them still bore red seals with his signature across them.

  Caleb closed the safe and listened to it lock, and then went out to meet Henry.

  “Let’s grab a coffee, kill some time till five o’clock,” Henry said. “Nobody stays late anymore. Not this close to Christmas.”

  “Sure,” Caleb said.

  Henry was going to show him things he shouldn’t see. Better to do that in an empty office.

  They parked on Valencia Street and went into a coffee shop between a used-appliance store and a dive bar. The girl who served them had piercings in her face, hoops and sharp spikes of silver skirting her mouth as if she’d tried to sew it shut. Caleb wondered if it hurt. To lean your head back and let someone run curved needles through your lips. Did she do it to punish herself? Maybe there was pleasure in it too. He stood waiting for his coffee with his hands on the scarred countertop, and his thoughts skipped to Bridget. She’d been crying with her face between her knees, and then she’d exploded when he knelt beside her and put his hand on the back of her neck. He thought of the girl in House of Shields, her cool fingers so light on the nape of his neck that even the memory of it tightened his chest so intensely with a mixture of longing and expectation that it was difficult to breathe. A feeling both wonderful and frightening.

  As if she could step out of any shadow at any moment; as if he might go insane if she didn’t.

  “You coming?”

  “Sorry,” Caleb said. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been staring at his coffee.

  He took it from the counter and followed Henry to the back of the shop, where they sat opposite each other in a pair of overstuffed chairs. Henry leaned forward, his elbows on the small table between them. He looked around the room and studied the other customers. There was a kid wearing headphones, watching something on a laptop. A man with a briefcase next to his chair.

  “You want, we can save it till we get back in the car,” Caleb said.

  Henry leaned a little closer and kept his voice down.

  “We can talk in here. The basics, anyway.” He glanced at the man with the briefcase again, and then looked back to Caleb. “I’m worried our toxicology lab is missing something. Consistently.”

  Caleb shook his head.

  “Marcie Hensleigh’s running it, right? She’s a good scientist. I coauthored a paper with her once.”

  “She’s fantastic,” Henry said. “But so what? A lab’s only as good as the worst tech handling the samples. Or the worst industry rep who calibrates the equipment—”

  Henry lost that thought and leaned across the table.

  “I wish I had you in there,” he said. “You’d get it right.”

  “You know why that wouldn’t work,” Caleb said. “If I got called to the stand.”

  “But I still wish.”

  Henry looked around again. No one was paying attention to them. But he lowered his voice to just a whisper a
nyway.

  “These budget cutbacks. Christ. Our equipment’s all shit. Half’s outdated. A quarter should work but doesn’t. If our office weren’t in the SFPD basement, I’d think someone was breaking in and sabotaging it.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Probably just a lab tech, never got the right training. Or got it and forgot it. That stuff’s delicate.”

  “Obviously. But it leaves me in the same bind, and now I’ve got a problem.”

  “How big?”

  Henry held his hands in the air, three or four feet apart.

  “Big,” he whispered. He looked down. “Maybe.”

  “How many?”

  “Seven, that we know about. Some might’ve just drowned. They all came from the bay. Maybe it’s not that bad.”

  “Lab didn’t find anything? At all?”

  “We found alcohol. Most were too drunk to drive, but not so drunk they’d walk the wrong way off a pier.”

  Caleb looked down at his coffee and tried to put his head into the problem. It was easy to see how good this could be for him. A way to bury himself with work until Bridget either came home or faded away. Until the buzzing neon sign outside House of Shields finally went dark in his head. He tried to think like a scientist, because that was the way back. Careful thought and hard work had always been the way back for him whenever the neat lines in his life started to blur, whenever things that shouldn’t be important grew into the hooks that anchored everything. Even if Henry’s hunch had nothing to it, it would be an all-consuming exercise.

  Instead, he opened his mouth and said, “Any idea where they’d been drinking? The names of the places?”

  Henry nodded, mistaking the question for an attempt to narrow the range of possibilities.

  “We ran that down, but there’s no pattern. Seven bodies—but fifteen, twenty bars. No overlap. The only thing in common is they were all high-end. Upscale. Maybe there’s something for the detectives to follow up on. But from a toxicology standpoint, I don’t see it.”

  Caleb had a couple sips of his coffee.

  “What makes you think there’s a toxin at all?”