The Dark Room(41)

“No note,” Nagata said from the other side of the room. “His phone. His wallet, too.”

He came around the desk to the credenza, where Nagata was standing in front of a shallow marble bowl. Castelli’s phone and wallet lay there. Nagata reached down and picked up the phone, moving her thumb over the button to turn it on.

“Stop,” Cain said.

“There could be a note—maybe something in his last emails.”

“So we call the Computer Forensics Unit and leave it for them.”

He pointed to the bowl, but Nagata didn’t put the phone down. She wasn’t like Chun or Grassley. She hadn’t made lieutenant because she was a good investigator. She’d worked on Castelli’s campaign, had helped him get the police union’s endorsement. He’d returned the favor. Simple as that, but now all her future promotions were dead under a desk.

“Picture yourself on the witness stand,” Cain said. “The lawyer’s leaning over the rail, right in your face. He knows you were Castelli’s friend. He knows you used the phone. He’s just asked your credentials as a computer expert. What do you say?”

She put the phone back in the bowl.

“Forget it—we’ll leave it for CFU.”

“Good,” Cain said. “They’ll give us a printout and a report. They’re usually pretty quick.”

He picked up the wallet and flipped through it. It was thin. Two credit cards and a driver’s license. No cash and no receipts.

There was a sound from downstairs, the front door clicking open. Footsteps, and voices from the entry hall.

“Who’s that?” Cain asked.

“No idea.”

Cain went to the window behind the desk. Both the curtains and the exposed rectangle of glass were flecked with blood. He looked down to the driveway. A black town car was parked behind the ambulance, and a patrol car was blocking the end of the driveway. A sedan, brown in the streetlight but maybe maroon by day, was parked across the street.

“Who else did you call?”

“The people who needed to know,” Nagata said.

“Come on,” Cain said, going for the door. “The whole house could be a crime scene, and your VIPs are about to trash it.”



They regrouped outside the front door, a loose circle of five. Agent Fischer stood next to Cain, and on her right was the chief of police, using a handkerchief to mop the rain from his bald head. Next to him was Katherine Greenberg. Until today, she’d been the president of the board of supervisors. By lunchtime, she’d be sworn in as mayor. Cain tried to read Nagata’s face but couldn’t.

“He’s dead?” Greenberg asked Cain. “Inspector—you saw him?”

“He’s dead.”

“I heard it was a suicide?”

“He shot himself,” Nagata said. “The gun’s—”

“He’s been shot,” Cain said. “We don’t know which gun shot him. It’s too early to say he shot himself. Right now, we can’t even say it was a bullet that killed him.”

“You’re saying this could be a murder?” Greenberg asked.

“Until we complete the investigation, it could be anything. You know about the letter and the photos?”

“Chief Larson briefed me.”

“In the car, on the way over—that was the first time I told her,” the chief said to Cain. The chief had never spoken a word to Cain, and now here he was, squeezing his hands together and explaining himself. “Not before this morning.”

“The letter’s a complication we can’t ignore,” Cain said. He looked at Agent Fischer and she nodded back at him: Go on. “And we can’t investigate this in the normal course.”

“What are you telling me?” Greenberg asked.

Her hair was held in a neat bun by a tortoiseshell clip, and she wore a hint of makeup. The rain beaded and glistened like amber on her beige overcoat. Of the five people crowded around the front door’s entry light, she was the only one who looked halfway awake, who had dressed properly for the weather. Was she quick about getting ready, or was she already awake when the call came? It might not mean anything if she’d been up, but then again, it might be everything.

“I’m requesting a special assignment to investigate this death,” Cain said. “Agent Fischer and I can run it, and we’ll bring in a pair of inspectors from SFPD—Grassley and Chun. We’re an independent team with no oversight from you, from the SFPD, or the FBI. We don’t report anything to anybody until we’re done. Or until we’re about to kick down a door.”

“Kick down a door?”

“Make an arrest,” Fischer said. “And he’s right—we need to be independent.”

“This is for political cover?” Greenberg asked. “I don’t go for that. That was Castelli’s way.”

“It’s not political cover,” Cain said. “It’s tactical. It’s necessary, in a thing like this.”

“I’m not sure I follow you.”

“He’s being polite,” Fischer said. No one here signed her paychecks. “He means until we know who wrote the letter, our suspects include any of Castelli’s enemies. And anyone who stood to benefit from his death. We don’t want those people looking over our shoulder.”