The Dark Room(52)

“Let me have that,” Cain said. “The note he wrote to you.”

Melissa gave it to him.

Last night, Castelli had wanted to see him again. Something had changed the mayor’s mind—the letter, and the photos? When he’d written this, there wasn’t much time left. He’d be dead at midnight. Had he known, because he planned it? This could be a half-finished confession. He needs to know, Castelli had said, but know what? Was he saying that he did it? Or had he wanted to meet Cain so that he could say something entirely different?

“Where are you going to be?” Cain asked. “Tonight, all next week.”

“At home.”

“Where’s that?”

“Noe Valley.”

She gave him an address on Cesar Chavez. A row house, broken up into apartments. She lived there with a roommate, a girlfriend from college. But she’d spent most of the last eight years in Castelli’s orbit.

“Don’t go anywhere,” Cain said. “I’ll need you in town.”

“Okay.”

“He means that,” Fischer said. “We’ll be calling on you. When we do, we’ll need you right away.”

“Where would I go?”

She said that, and Cain watched her shrink into herself. She must understand that it was over. Not just her job, but her entire life up to that point. Everything she’d worked for, dead.





18


CAIN AND FISCHER stood at the security desk in Alexa’s lobby while the doorman, Bruno, scowled at their badges. An FBI shield, an SFPD gold star. They’d already explained they were here to see the mayor’s daughter on a family matter. Bruno should have rolled over right away; any other guard in the city would have. Instead, he’d asked to see a warrant, and then, when they admitted they didn’t have one, he told them to state their business or leave.

“We already told you,” Fischer said.

“What family matter?” the guard said. “I’ll ring up and tell her what it is. She’ll tell me if she wants to talk to you.”

Cain leaned over the desk and touched the man’s computer screen.

“Is this hooked up to the Internet?”

“Yeah—so?”

“Do a search for Castelli. See what comes up.”

The guard’s frown said he wasn’t buying it. But he took the mouse and started clicking. He typed a word and entered it. Cain watched the screen’s reflection in his glasses, watched the man’s eyes flick back and forth as he read three lines of text. He didn’t need to finish the article.

“Shit,” the guard said. “Oh, shit.”

“A whole world of it,” Cain answered.

“This is for real?”

“Check another site if you don’t believe it.”

“She’s on four—I haven’t seen her in or out today, so she’s probably in there. I’ll send you up. You need a card to work the elevator.”



They heard music from behind Alexa Castelli’s door. A cello concerto—Vivaldi, if Cain had to guess. It wasn’t what he’d expected, didn’t fit his picture of Alexa, which tilted darker and edgier. But he remembered the blood-soaked shelves in Castelli’s study, which had borne the weight of a thousand years of history. Those hadn’t fit in his model either. The Castellis weren’t as predictable as he’d like them to be.

He knocked, and a few moments later the music switched off. The door opened as far as the chain would let it.

“Miss Castelli,” Cain said.

He could only see one side of her face, the sweep of her dark hair, and her right eye. The rest of her was behind the door.

“Mr. Cain,” she answered. “I don’t know your friend.”

“Are you dressed?”

“More or less.”

She closed the door enough to unlatch the chain, then opened it to let them in. She wore a clean white bedsheet like a sleeveless gown.

“Come in,” she said.

“This is Special Agent Fischer, with the FBI,” Cain said.

They stepped into her apartment. To the left, there was a living room that doubled as the bedroom. A Murphy bed was folded down. A young woman sat on a stool behind a wooden easel. She was using a loose razor blade to sharpen a charcoal pencil over a wastepaper basket. She turned when they came in. Looking at her half-finished sketch, it was clear that until he’d knocked, Alexa had been on the bed, and she hadn’t been wearing the sheet.

“You need to get something on,” Cain said. “And ask your friend—”

“Patricia.”

“—to leave for a minute.”

“Maybe I want her here,” Alexa said.

“I’ll stay,” the girl said. She set the razor on the easel’s shelf and picked up a sandpaper pad to finish her pencil’s tip. “I don’t mind.”

“Maybe I need her here,” Alexa said, looking at Fischer. “After the last time I talked to Mr. Cain, I’m not comfortable being alone with him.”

She came to the edge of the Murphy bed and looked at them. Then she dropped the sheet. She crawled onto the bed, finding the pose she’d been using for Patricia’s sketch. Face-down, her chin just off the corner of the mattress, one arm hanging so that her fingertip touched the floor.