The Dark Room by Jonathan Moore

Author:Jonathan Moore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

They came in a convoy of separate cars and parked alongside a fireplug on Polk, then hurried across the street in the rain and went up the steps to City Hall. Cain had tried Lucy again on the drive over, but there was still no answer. It had been light outside when he’d called from the morgue, but that was hours ago and now it was dark. There wasn’t much he could do now except steal away whenever he could to call again.

“It’s locked,” Grassley said. He’d turned around, was watching Cain and Fischer as they climbed the last few steps.

“Then knock.”

Grassley pounded on the door with his knuckles. He’d been a patrolman for eight years in Stockton and an SFPD inspector for just a month. He still knew how to knock on a door like a beat cop.

A contract security guard cracked the door, and Grassley glanced back at Fischer.

“Show him your star,” Fischer said.

“What happened to your guys?”

“They were here for Castelli. No need for that now.”

Cain and Grassley held their inspectors’ stars up for the guard to see. He opened the door for them and they stepped inside. They went beneath the rotunda and up the staircase, and found a pair of black-shirted patrolmen leaning against the doors to the mayoral suite. When Cain brought out his inspector’s star, they straightened up.

“How long you been here?” Cain asked.

One cop looked at his partner.

“Since noon?”

“Has anyone tried to get in here?”

“Well—”

“There was a woman. She was the only one.”

“What woman?” Cain asked. “What was her name?”

The officer on the left looked at his partner, who shook his head.

“You didn’t ask her name?” Cain asked. “What’d she look like?”

“Blonde?”

“A dark blonde—almost a brunette.”

“And a gray suit. Expensive.”

“How old?” Cain asked.

“Thirty.”

Cain believed in cop instinct, but he didn’t think either of these men had much of it. If they’d been half awake, they would have gotten her name. Maybe it didn’t make a difference. They’d just described Melissa Montgomery.

“Did she try to talk her way past?” Fischer asked.

“Not after we told her Castelli was dead—then she went off in a hurry.”

“You told her what, exactly?”

“That he ate it—bullet through the head.”

“All right,” Cain said. “Open it up. We need to go in.”

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