The Dark Room(44)

“Hang on,” Cain said. “I need to check something.”

He stepped away from Fischer and the ballistics man, nodded a greeting to Dr. Levy, and knelt next to her at the body bag.

“I’m taking something out of his pocket—a key,” Cain said. “All right?”

“Bring it back. If it’s on the body, it stays on the body until we get to Bryant Street.”

“I’m not even leaving the room.”

Cain reached into Castelli’s right pocket and found the key. He pulled it out and showed it to Dr. Levy, then to Fischer. Then he crossed to the study’s door and put the key in the lock. He twisted it, and the deadbolt slid out. He turned it the same way, another half rotation, and the deadbolt disappeared.

What did that prove?

Castelli could have come into the study, could have locked the door with the key and put it back in his pocket. Then he must have crossed the room to the credenza, where he put down his wallet and phone. After that, he opened a fresh bottle of bourbon and sat down to the serious business of drinking nine-tenths of it. There was just the one glass. But if there’d been someone else in here, a shooter, that person wouldn’t very well have left his glass sitting on the desk.

Cain came back to the body bag and slipped the key into Castelli’s pocket. Kneeling there, he helped position the stiffened body so Rachel Levy’s assistants could zip the bag closed.

“When you do the blood alcohol test, can you determine how much he had to drink?” Cain asked.

“Sure.”

“I mean, you can be pretty precise about it? Whether he drank the whole bottle himself, or if he had company helping him?”

“I can’t do that,” Dr. Levy said. “We don’t know when he started, how fast he was drinking. He’d be metabolizing it while he went.”

“He was with me at seven o’clock,” Cain said. “And he was dead by three. Does that help?”

“A little. I’ll see what I can do,” she said.

She picked up the GSR test and showed it to Cain. The circular fiberglass swab was speckled with tiny blue dots.

Cain stood up.

“Agent Fischer?”

“I see it.”

“Positive gunshot residue,” Dr. Levy said.

Cain nodded and looked around the room. Soon, the CSI team would start bagging everything. They’d load the bags into boxes and haul them off. It would take a moving truck to get it all—the books and the magazines, the rug that had soaked up Castelli’s blood until it was black with it, the sawn-out chunk of old-growth pine that had caught his bullet. The bottles, the tumbler, the contents of the bathroom.

Next to him, Agent Fischer was putting her phone away. She took Cain’s elbow.

“That was the patrolman, next door,” she said. “Mona Castelli’s coming out of it. She can talk to us.”

“All right.”

Cain checked faces in the now crowded room until he recognized the man he wanted. He went to him, a technician from the Crime Scene Investigation unit. Cain wasn’t sure of Sumida’s first name, wasn’t sure they would recognize each other if they passed on the street. They only knew each other from crime scenes.

“Agent Fischer and I have to step next door,” Cain said. “You okay if I leave you in charge?”

“Sure.”

“You know what to do?”

“Bag it and tag it,” Sumida said. “And don’t fuck it up.”

“Good deal.”

He found Fischer waiting for him by the stairs. They went down together, then crossed the foyer and went out. The early afternoon was dark gray, the cold air a relief. He’d been in the study too long. Blood drying on the walls and Castelli, unrefrigerated, on the floor. Mist drifted up Sea Cliff Avenue and sifted through the jasmine flowers that lined the walk next door.

Mona Castelli had gone next door when the ambulance left. The neighbors had taken her in, had walked her to a couch. They’d also let in a patrolman, whose instructions from Cain were straightforward: Watch the widow Castelli. Keep her in sight. And if she tries to take a drink, put a stop to it.

The young officer met them at the front door.

“Sir—ma’am—she’s just waking up.”

“And the people who live here?”

“Sitting outside, to give you space. Make yourself at home, is what the husband said.”

“Did she have anything to drink?”

“Coffee, ten minutes ago.”

“No brandy in it, anything like that?”

“No sir. I saw them make it.”

“All right. Let’s go see her.”

“You want me to wait out front?”

Cain took a better look of the patrolman. A young kid. Nineteen, twenty. But he seemed sharp enough.

“Sit in. You might learn something,” Cain said. “A third witness can’t hurt.”

“Yes, sir.”



The neighbors’ living room wasn’t half as nice as the Castellis’. Cain supposed everything ran on a graduated scale, even the extravagant wealth on Sea Cliff Avenue. They sat down in overstuffed white leather chairs opposite the matching couch where Mona Castelli lay. Her coffee mug was on a glass table next to her. It was still full.

“Have you told Alexa yet?” she asked. “Inspector Cain—have you told my daughter?”