The Dark Room(104)

38


Cain’s phone rang as they were getting into Fischer’s car. He answered it, standing on the sidewalk, covering his free ear with his palm so that he could hear over the street noise.

“Inspector Cain? It’s Officer Combs.”

“What’s going on?”

“They’re on the move—both of them. Mona got in a taxi a minute ago, and Officer Aguilar just called me. Alexa did the same.”

“Where are you?”

“At the Palace—but I lost her. I thought she was heading out on foot, but she jumped in a cab before I knew what was happening.”

“All right.”

“She had a bag with her this time. A shopping bag, but I don’t know what was in it.”

Cain hung up and got in the car.



They had to take Ryan Harding back to the federal building, and then they sat in Fischer’s car and looked at the rain in the headlights.

“You knew the photographs would be in there,” Fischer said.

“I guessed it—Castelli didn’t have anything to do with his dad’s snuff videos, and didn’t rape Carolyn Stone. He didn’t know she was an undercover cop. She was just a girl he met in college—his girlfriend, he thought. But his frat brothers must have found out about her, and they killed her.”

“I’m following you so far, but what about Lester Fennimore?”

“He had the pictures—he might have taken some of them, and he might have been in some of them. He had the tattoo. He crawled out of the Grizzly Peak fire and lived, but by 1998 he’d hit hard times. He’d lost his job, and he needed cash. He knew Castelli was in Silicon Valley, raking it in.”

“So he decided to blackmail Castelli, in 1998. That’s what you’re saying. It could be Castelli in the pictures, and that was Fennimore’s angle. You can’t tell it isn’t Castelli—even Melissa Montgomery, who’d slept with him, wasn’t sure.”

“And Fennimore had a wildcard,” Cain said.

“Which was what?”

“He knew Carolyn Stone was pregnant, that it was Castelli’s baby. She probably told him, begging for her life. They didn’t have DNA testing in 1985, but they did in 1998. He would’ve known about it.”

“But why did Mona have the pictures?”

“Because however Fennimore sent the note to Castelli, Mona found it first. She’d just dropped out of Stanford and married him. She was pregnant with Alexa. And she comes home one day and finds this.”

“It was her at Castle Rock State Park,” Fischer said. “She shot Fennimore with Castelli’s gun. But why did she hold on to the pictures? Why not destroy them? Or confront her husband, if she thought he’d raped a girl?”

“Because he was on the upswing,” Cain said. “He was getting rich, going places. The pictures were insurance, in case things stopped going so well.”

Fischer had her hands on the wheel. She was looking through the windshield, her eyes flicking back and forth as she sorted through the details. He saw that she agreed with him, that she knew he’d put the facts together the only way they’d fit.

“She knew Christopher Hanley’s name from the plaque on the casket—it was in the photo,” Fischer said. “All she had to do was find the grave and then keep tabs on it—an exhumation order is a public document, so she was watching for that.”

“Which, by now, she could have done online,” Cain said. “She just had to set up an alert on the court’s electronic docket.”

“And when she saw that you got one, it was now or never,” Fischer said. “Carolyn Stone was coming out of the ground, and if Castelli’s DNA was in a database, it’d only be a matter of time before we connected him to her. It would have been the end of him.”

Cain nodded. That was exactly what he thought.

“So she decided to cash out while she was still ahead. Hound him into suicide, and collect.”

“But she must have had an accomplice.”

“We’ll get that out of her when we pick her up,” he said. He thought about it for a moment. If Mona and Alexa were both on the move at the same time, there was one place they’d probably want to go. “Let’s go up to Sea Cliff Avenue.”

Then he did what he always did when he knew he was about to make an arrest. He patted the left side of his jacket, to check his gun.

“Shit.”

“What?”

“Nothing—I left my weapon in Lucy’s hotel. I couldn’t take it to the consulate.”

“Do you want to go get it?”

“There’s no time. Let’s just go.”



They parked down the street and walked up to the house. Upstairs, in the study, the curtains were open and the lights were on. Through the brightly lit windows, they could see see the bookcases along the far wall. They went along the steppingstones, through the herb garden, to reach the front door. Cain was about to knock, but Fischer grabbed his wrist. She pointed at the door, and then, when his eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw why. It wasn’t completely shut. He pushed it with his fingers and it swung open.

They stood looking into the dark entry hall. The house was completely silent, until Cain called into it.