The Dark Room(53)

Patricia gave a nervous laugh, so short it came out like a cough. She looked at Fischer, her eyes wide, the pupils bigger than they ought to be. Then she picked up her charcoal and began to sketch again, refining the work she’d done earlier on Alexa’s legs.

Whatever they’d taken—MDMA, ketamine—didn’t seem to interfere with this girl’s ability to draw.

“Why’d you come, Cain?”

Alexa was tracing a tiny circle on the wooden floor with her fingernail. She’d spoken without lifting her head or breaking her pose. He wasn’t sure whether to look at her or out the window. He’d already told her once to get dressed and didn’t think repeating himself was going to make a difference.

“Your father’s dead,” he said. “He died last night.”

Alexa’s fingernail stopped midway through its circle.

“How?”

“We haven’t done the autopsy, but it looks like a gunshot. A thirty-eight.”

Patricia tried to put her charcoal pencil on the easel’s shelf. She fumbled it and it fell to the floor and rolled under the bed.

“I should—maybe I should go?”

“Maybe so,” Fischer said.

The young woman threw a few things into her canvas purse. Fischer followed her to the door and opened it.

“I’ll call you later?” she said, over her shoulder.

Alexa hadn’t moved from her pose and didn’t answer. Fischer closed the door on the other girl’s back, then turned the deadbolt. When Cain looked back, Alexa was sitting up. She swung her legs to the floor, then leaned down to get the sheet. She put it over her shoulders and wrapped the sides across her chest.

“When? And what happened?”

“It happened sometime last night,” Cain said. Right now there was no reason to be more specific. Telling her what he knew would only give her a liar’s guide if she needed one. “I got the call at four this morning. As for who did it, we don’t know.”

“Somebody killed my dad?”

“We don’t know.”

“Where was he?”

“In his study, at home—your mom came home from Monterey and found him this morning. She called us.”

Alexa stared at her toes. The nails were painted a shade of red so dark it could have been obsidian. Cain looked around the apartment. There was a little kitchen, all stainless steel and blond wood. A well-stocked shelf of liquor, but most of the bottles were full. The walls, which were covered in textured black silk, displayed her work. He recognized Patricia in two of the paintings. There was a young man in two others. In one, he was sitting on the rocks on China Beach, his hand shielding his eyes from the low sun so that his face was just a shadow. You could see Castelli’s house on the cliffs in the background, could see the winding stairway that worked down from the top. The kid had to be Alexa’s boyfriend. She’d caught the details of his body so precisely, she couldn’t possibly have been looking at him from any distance. In the other painting, he was on the Murphy bed in this apartment, his pose not much different from the one Alexa had been holding for her friend.

“He’s really—This is serious?”

“Yes,” Fischer said. “This is serious.”

“But who?”

“We don’t know,” Cain said. “Did he try calling you last night?”

“No.”

“What about your boyfriend? Where was he?”

“What boyfriend?”

Cain nodded to the paintings.

“Him?” she said. “He’s just a guy I paint. I used to sleep with him sometimes, but not in a while. I don’t know what you call that in your world. I’d forget him, but he’s still on the wall. The only thing he was any good at was sitting still.”

“Your phone was turned on last night?”

“It’s always on.”

“And you were here?”

“With Patricia—go to the drafting table and take a look.”

Half a dozen charcoal sketches lay on the drafting table. Patricia was in two of them, Alexa’s style fast and fluid, somehow catching movement in a single frame. The rest were of Alexa, who wore her nudity like a piece of draped silk. She lay on the bed; she sat on a stool with her legs crossed and her hair piled atop her head. She knelt in front of a stone bowl and washed her hair.

“You were here all night?” Cain asked.

“And all day today,” Alexa said. “This—what happened to my dad—do you think it has to do with what we talked about? About the girl in the picture?”

“Whatever you haven’t already told me, now would be a good time. It could help us find out what happened.”

She stood, still holding the sheet around herself. A three-paneled dressing screen blocked one corner of the room. Rice paper and painted dragons. When she stepped behind it and dropped the sheet, he could see her nude silhouette against the thin paper. She knelt, and a drawer slid open. He had no idea what she might be taking out of it. To his left, Fischer’s hand tucked inside her jacket and unsnapped her holster. There was nothing showy about it; she was just being careful. He could get used to working with her.

Alexa came back from behind the screen wearing a gray nightgown. It looked like it was made of wet crepe paper. Something in her right hand flashed steel when she passed under the tracked halogen spotlights.