The Dark Room(23)

“She’s family, almost.”

“Explain that.”

“She was at the house all the time when I was younger,” Alexa said. She was looking at him, winding a lock of her wet hair around her index finger so that the water dripped onto her chest. “She’d pick me up from school, stay over for dinner. Stuff like that.”

“Did she tell you why I want to talk to you?”

“No.”

“Did you ask?”

“I guess I figured—”

She trailed off, glancing at the doorway to the den.

“You figured what?”

“He’s the mayor,” Alexa said. “So there’s always something going on. Is he in trouble?”

“We don’t know,” he answered. “It might be nothing. That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

“What does that mean?”

“There was a letter, someone trying to blackmail him.”

“Blackmail him with what?”

“He says it’s a hoax,” Cain said. “But it has to do with a girl. Something that happened to a girl, in 1985.”

He made sure his voice would carry to the den.

“That was before I was born.”

“I don’t expect you to know anything about it,” Cain said. “And even if it’s a hoax, like he thinks, we have to follow up. The girl was a blonde. Your age, maybe, or a couple years older. A good-looking girl, like Lauren Bacall.”

Without getting off her stool, Alexa leaned to a drawer on the far end of the bar and quietly slid it open. She brought out a pad of stationery and a pencil, her eyes on the doorway to the den.

“How often do you see your father?” he asked. They’d have to keep the rhythm of the conversation going.

“Besides on TV?”

“Face to face.”

“A couple times a month. He’s busy, and so am I.”

She wrote something on the pad and slid it over to him. He glanced at the words—China Beach in 2 hrs—then tore the top sheet from the pad and put it in his pocket. Maybe there was more to this visit than just lifting the lid on their home and seeing the Castellis in their natural habitat.

He started to ask the questions he had to ask. Throwaways that didn’t matter, except to let Mona Castelli hear them.

“In the last couple of weeks, have you seen anyone following you?”

“No.”

“Have you had any conversations with anyone—especially anyone your father knows—that seemed unusual?”

“No.”

“Have you bumped into anyone on the street you hadn’t seen in a long time, maybe just someone who looked familiar?”

“No.”

“Strange phone calls or emails?”

“Nothing like that,” she said. Then she mouthed the words two hours and pointed toward the ocean.

“All right,” he said. “Thank you for your time, Miss Castelli. This is my card. You can call me day or night if you think of something.”





9


HE DROVE FOR five minutes, long enough to put some distance between himself and the Castellis, and then he pulled to the curb and called Grassley.

“Buddy,” he said, when his partner picked up. “You have no idea how much I’ve missed you.”

“You never call me buddy.”

“I should start. How’s it coming?”

“Four hours since we opened the lid,” Grassley whispered, “and they’ve just got them out of the casket. The crime scene guy came, got whatever prints he could inside the lid—it was that guy you like.”

“Sumida?”

“That’s him—Sumida,” Grassley said. “This is taking forever.”

“That’s good.”

It meant they weren’t rushing, that they were documenting everything. The casket wasn’t just a burial. If they’d read it correctly, it was both the murder weapon and the crime scene. Moving her out would destroy it, and then the only record would be the photographs.

“Christopher Hanley, too?” he asked. “They took him out?”

“The longest part was getting them separated. Sorting them out—this bit goes with that body. But now all of her is on one table, all of him on another. More or less.”

“What’s Dr. Levy doing now?”

“She was just getting to the surface examination,” Grassley said. “And then Mrs. Hanley showed up. I don’t know who leaked it, but someone did. She knew about the girl.”

“Shit.”

“What I thought,” Grassley said. “I did my best to get her to calm down, but how’s she going to do that?”

“She isn’t.”

“She wants us to ID him, and that’s it—no autopsy. And wash him. She’s pretty clear on that, she wants him washed. A fresh suit, too.”

“Anything else?”

“A new casket. And so, I said: Lady, sure. Anything. You bring us the new suit and a new casket, and we’ll wash him up and take care of him.”

“Grassley—”

“Now I know. Okay? Dr. Levy took me aside—and I’m not shitting you, she took me by my ear, and she pulled me around a corner—and then she lost her shit.”