The Dark Room(42)

“Now, come on,” Chief Lawson said. But Greenberg stopped him with a hand on his chest.

“She’s right. Inspector Cain, too. I wasn’t a Castelli fan, and lately neither were you. We can’t put our hands on this.”

Chief Lawson shook his head but didn’t respond.

“I think we’re done here,” Greenberg said. “I’ll leave it to you and Agent Fischer. The chief and I are going to be busy today. And I’m sure Lieutenant Nagata has other business.”

“Thank you,” Cain said. “Your Honor.”

Greenberg shook her head.

“I don’t take the oath until ten o’clock,” she said. “This is your investigation. But the city’s resources are yours—the ME’s office, the labs. If you need warm bodies to knock on doors—”

“I’ll get what I need.”

She reached to shake his hand, then seemed to change her mind. Instead, she went back down the stone-lined path. She and the chief had come in his car, and now his driver was opening the rear doors for them. Nagata went to her own car without saying another word to anyone.

Cain supposed she might come back to the Homicide Detail at least once, to clean out her desk. She wasn’t the best lieutenant he’d ever had, but there could be worse. At least she knew her limitations. He put that out of his mind and turned to Fischer.

“Your bosses will be okay with this?”

“Yeah.”

“Who called you?” Cain said. “Nagata?”

“That’s right.”

“I was worried she’d try to keep it in-house.”

“She seemed reluctant,” Fischer said. “I guess I know why.”

“You got gloves and shoe covers?”

Fischer patted her purse.

“Let’s go—I’d like to look the room over before the CSI stampede. If that’s okay.”





15


BACK IN THE study, he brought Fischer to look at the mayor where he lay beneath the desk. She got down close to him, her knees in the same imprints Cain had left five minutes ago in the rug’s deep pile. She felt Castelli’s jugular and tested the movement of his jaw. She pulled out a penlight and began to search under the desk.

Cain went to the far wall of the study.

There was a door he hadn’t noticed on his first brief look around the room. With a light push, one of the hardwood panels slid sideways, opening to a private bathroom. Fischer leaned around the desk at the sound.

“Nice,” she said.

She went back to what she’d been doing, and Cain stepped into Castelli’s private bathroom. Marble tile, silk wallpaper with a fleur-de-lis print. Everything made of metal was gold plated. The faucet fixtures, the wall lamps. Even the toilet’s flush handle. He knelt and opened the cabinet under the sink. Cleaning supplies in a plastic bucket, a big bottle of bleach. Rolls of tissue paper. Folded washcloths in a wicker basket. He closed the cabinet and stood. The mirror behind the basin swung out on hidden hinges. Castelli must have had another medicine cabinet in his master bedroom—he wouldn’t hide the spare key to his study in a room that could only be accessed from the study. So this was his second medicine cabinet, maybe a more private one.

Cain looked through the medications. Viagra and Ambien. Wellbutrin. Tramadol. He checked that last one with his phone—a painkiller, some kind of lightweight opiate. None of the pill bottles had Castelli’s name or any kind of prescription information. He might have been buying them online. One of those pharmacies from Canada, from Tijuana. That made sense. A man with Castelli’s ambitions might not want to walk into his doctor’s office and describe the symptoms that would lead to any of these prescriptions.

“Inspector Cain?” He leaned out of the bathroom. Agent Fischer was still half under the desk. “Come here a minute.”

He went over, stepping around the mess on the rug until he was kneeling next to her. She hadn’t moved the gun, but she was leaning close to it. Even with the track lights on, it was far enough under the desk to be in the shadows. She lit it up with her flashlight.

“What am I looking at?” Cain asked.

The gun lay on its side, and they were looking down its blue-black barrel. The rifling looked worn down, and he thought again about how old it must have been.

“Look at the cylinder, the chamber just to the right of the barrel.”

He looked and saw it.

“It’s empty,” he said. There were flat-nosed, metal-jacketed bullets in the other three visible chambers. The view into the bottom chamber was blocked by the trigger assembly, the view into the top was blocked by the barrel.

“That’s a double-action S and W,” Fischer said. “So if he shot himself, there’d be an empty shell in the chamber under the firing pin. The cylinder wouldn’t rotate unless he pulled the trigger again. So the empty chamber on the right, that’s something else.”

“The gun was fired twice, is what you’re saying.”

“You keep a revolver?”

“Just an automatic.”

“But still—when you fire a round, what do you do? Walk around one short?” Fischer asked. “Or do you reload?”

“I reload.”

“If he kept this gun sitting in a drawer, he wouldn’t leave an empty chamber. What’s the point of that?”