The Dark Room(48)

“Did you get up and look around?”

“We sat another minute,” she said. “And then we went to bed. We didn’t think about it until we woke up—”

“—and saw the morgue van and the patrol cars,” Roger finished.

Cain looked at Fischer. The Petrovics were as solid as eyewitnesses came. They’d had some wine, sure, but they could pin their story to actual times based on a measurable event. Now he and Fischer knew when the shots were fired. But Officer Combs suspected they knew something else. He might be a kid, but Cain had learned when to trust a cop’s intuition. He bet Fischer had too.

She turned back to the Petrovics.

“Before you went to bed,” she asked, “did you see anyone come out of the Castellis’ house?”

“No,” Roger said.

“A strange car in the driveway, or parked out front?”

Roger looked at his wife, and she shook her head.

“How about lights going on or off?” Fischer asked.

“Other sounds from the house, maybe,” Cain added. “Something besides gunshots.”

“None we noticed,” Roger said.

“Upstairs, we have blinds on the windows,” Dana said. “Double-paned glass. In the bedroom, we wouldn’t have noticed anything—but, tell them, Roger. What we were talking about.”

Roger Petrovic nodded.

“We didn’t see anything. But I can tell you when the doors opened and closed—the Castellis’ doors, I mean. You’re probably supposed to get a subpoena. A search warrant. But I can show you now, and we can paper it later.”

“What are you talking about?” Cain asked.

“Get me my laptop, hon.”

Dana slid off her chair and went away, and Roger turned back to them.

“You’ve heard of Watchmen Alarm?”

Sure he had. Watchmen Alarm stickers were plastered on windows and doorways all over the nicer parts of town. Neat metal signs in well-kept lawns. Sleek white SUVs, the side panels painted with the Watchmen shield, rolled through the avenues.

“That’s us,” Roger said. “I started it thirty years ago. The old story—a garage in Palo Alto, a trip to Fry’s, and a dream.”

“And my teaching salary,” Dana said, coming back from the study with a computer. “Don’t forget that.”

“The Castellis are clients?”

Roger reached out to take the laptop from Dana. She sat next to him.

“After the election,” Roger said. “They’d been with another company, but Mona wanted an upgrade. Top of the line. Door and window sensors, in-room motion detectors, outside cameras, motion lights—and remote monitoring.”

“You’re talking about monitoring system activity,” Fischer said. “Tracking the sensors from your central office.”

“The Watchmen,” Roger said, and now Cain recognized his voice from the radio spots. “We have an eye everything.”

“You keep a log?”

“Show them, Roger,” Dana said. She looked at them. “We downloaded it from the server today, while Mona was sleeping.”

Roger turned his laptop so Cain and Fischer could see the screen, then moved his stool to their side of the bar.

“Here it is, top row,” he said. “Mona Castelli went out yesterday evening, right?”

“To a fundraiser in Monterey,” Cain said.

“So this is her, leaving.”

Roger used his finger to underline the first entry in a spreadsheet labeled Recent Activity—Last 250 Events. The top row said, Front Door—Opened—7:02 p.m. The next row down read, System Armed (M.C.)—7:03 p.m.

“She stepped outside just after seven,” Cain said. “That’s when her car came. The next entry, she sets the alarm, right?”

“That’s it.”

“What’s the M.C. stand for?”

“Mona Castelli—they’ve got an app on their phones, each of them. It’s part of the package. They can arm or disarm the house from anywhere. But if the system interacts with a phone, it knows who it’s dealing with. And keeps it in the log.”

Cain pictured Mona Castelli, getting ready to go out.

Here she is, 7:02 p.m., waiting inside the house. Pacing around, a martini in her hand. Through the window, she sees the car rolling up. She puts on her jacket and grabs her purse. Sets the drink on the table by the door and goes out to the front porch, phone in hand. The door clicks shut behind her; she swipes her phone as she walks to the car. She arms the system as her driver gets out and helps her into the backseat. She either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that she’s leaving a record.

It all fit with what he’d heard. He looked at the next two entries.

Front Door—Opened—10:35 p.m.

System Disarmed (H.C.)—10:36 p.m.

“Why did Castelli open the door first, and then turn off the alarm?” Fischer asked. “How would that work?”

“Maybe he didn’t know it was armed,” Roger said.

“Castelli’s initials are on the log—if he disarmed the alarm from the control panel and not his phone, how does the system know it was him?”

“It’s got a thumbprint reader. It couldn’t have been anyone but him.”