The Dark Room(55)

“If you want, I can get someone to sit with you,” Cain said. “I could have a female officer come.”

“I’d rather have my mom. Can you do that?”

“I can try,” he said.

But he had no intention of trying. Mona Castelli knew exactly where her daughter was. They had each other’s cell numbers. If they wanted to see each other, they didn’t need him to arrange it.



Fischer waited until the doors closed and the elevator started moving, carrying them down to the lobby.

“The weirdest thing about that—she didn’t start acting even halfway normal until you told her Castelli was dead.”

“Halfway?”

“A quarter, an eighth. Whatever.”

“What do you think she’s on?”

“She’s nineteen, and rich,” Fischer said. “What else do we need to know? She’s probably into things we’ve never even heard of.”

“He bought her the same bracelet,” Cain said. “What do you make of that?”

“Does she know?”

Cain shook his head.

“The picture she gave me—the girl’s cuffed to the bed. They must’ve taken the bracelet off. It’s only in the shots when she’s still dressed.”

“Then as far as Alexa knew,” Fischer said, “her dad took her to a shop and bought her a bracelet. It didn’t mean anything else to her. It was just a present.”

“If she’s telling the truth.”

“You think she’s seen the other pictures?”

“But where?”

“And the part about the handcuffs—”

“I know.”

“—that didn’t sit right,” Fischer finished.

The elevator doors opened and they went across the lobby. The security guard rose from behind his desk to meet them.

“You told her?”

“She knows,” Cain said. He gave the man his card. “If anyone else comes to see her, give me a call. Same if there’s trouble—any sort of trouble.”

“She’s okay?”

“Just give me a call if you see anything.”

“You got it.”

They went under the chandelier and out the front door. The wind was blowing from Market Street, carrying steam from the subway vents. Three stretch limos went past, and then there was a break in traffic. They crossed New Montgomery, headed for Fischer’s car.

“I was saying, about the handcuffs,” Fischer said. “I believed her on the bracelet. I believed the tears. But when she told you about the handcuffs, my bullshit meter spiked.”

“So what do you think?”

She dug her keys from her purse, then checked her watch.

“We better get to the autopsy,” she said. “That’s what I think.”

“I called Grassley and Chun.”

He’d called them from the Petrovics’ bathroom. They’d already heard the news about the mayor, but they needed to know their new assignment. And Grassley, in particular, needed to know the rules. They couldn’t say anything to Fischer about the girl from El Carmelo unless Cain cleared it.

“You’ll like them,” he added.

“If you trust them, I’m fine.”





19


BEFORE HE WENT into the autopsy suite, he stepped into an empty office and closed the door. This time, there was no need for a hazmat suit or a respirator. Castelli was as fresh as they came down here. He dialed Lucy’s number. It was a landline; the only phone in the house was down in the kitchen. It rang eight times and went to voicemail. He told her where he was and that he loved her, then hung up.

She didn’t have a lesson now. She could be in the bath, or asleep upstairs where she couldn’t hear the phone. But his instinct said otherwise. She must have gone out. She was on another one of her tentative explorations out into the world she’d fled.

There was no one Cain could talk to, no one who’d understand how good it felt to see her coming back to life.



“Decedent is a white male, six foot one and a hundred and ninety pounds,” Dr. Levy said into the microphone that hung from the ceiling above the autopsy table.

Yesterday, the mayor had been tanned and muscular. Now he was like spilled candlewax. Pale and shapeless. His head was propped on a wooden block, and when Cain crouched behind him and looked up, he could see the exit wound, Castelli’s scalp peeling outward like the blooming petals of a flower.

Rachel Levy cleared her throat and continued.

“Inspector Gavin L. Cain, of the San Francisco Police Department, has identified the decedent as Mayor Harold J. Castelli—Inspector Cain knew the decedent personally. Decedent was discovered by his wife, Mona A. Castelli, at approximately three o’clock this morning. He was in his home study, on the carpet, with an apparent gunshot wound to his head. I will now begin the surface examination.”

In fact, she’d already done it.

She had done the entire external examination once before, committing nothing to the record until it had been rehearsed. There’d be no mistakes and no surprises. No attorney could trip her under cross-examination, no board of review or interim mayoral commission could question the way she’d handled herself.