The Dark Room(59)

“Where’s he keep the liquor?” she asked.

Cain pointed.

“That cabinet.”

Fischer went to it and opened the door. There were eight bottles of bourbon, a dozen other spirits. She started pulling out bottles and handing them to Cain. He set them on the floor. When he came up, she gave him an insulated steel ice bucket with the Palace Hotel’s insignia emblazoned on the lid.

“Here we go,” she said. “We’ve got a safe.”

Grassley came over with the camera and filmed inside the liquor cabinet. When he stepped back, Cain leaned in and looked. At the back of the deep cabinet, there was a hotel-style safe, no higher than a shoebox, but deep enough to hold legal documents without folding them. It had a digital keypad next to its steel handle.

Cain dialed Melissa Montgomery on his cell, and she answered after the first ring.

“Inspector?

“Are you at home?”

“You told me to be here,” she answered. “Where are you?

“Standing in Castelli’s office, looking at the safe in the back of his liquor cabinet.”

There was a long pause. He heard water running, maybe a bathtub filling. Then there was the unmistakable click and grind of a Zippo lighter. She breathed in, then out.

“Eleven sixty-four.”

“That’s the code?”

“The last time I opened it.”

“Which was when?”

“Three months ago,” she said. “Is there anything else, Inspector Cain?”

“Was Castelli left-handed?”

“Yes,” she said, and hung up.

Cain gave Fischer the code and she punched it in. Grassley filmed as she turned the handle and swung the door open.

“All right,” she said. “Safe inventory. You getting this?”

“You don’t have to ask,” Grassley said.

Fischer began to unload the safe, setting each item on the little shelf that had folded down when she opened the liquor cabinet doors. She set out fifteen envelopes, each thick with unbundled cash. Then came life insurance policies, a will, and a scrap of paper marked with Castelli’s scrawl. Cain picked that one up by its corner and studied it. The mayor had listed three Chinatown banks by their addresses. Next to each entry was a date—consecutive days within the last week.

“I can just about guess what these are,” Fischer said. “The only question is whether it’s him and Melissa, or him and Mona.”

Cain looked up. She was setting out five unmarked DVDs, each in a clear plastic jewel case.

“We’ll give them to Computer Forensics,” Cain said. “Unless you want them.”

“You take them,” Fischer said. “We’ll take the cash—we can run the serial numbers. If it’s dirty, and from a known source, we’ll want to know.”

“That’s got to be—what?” Cain said. “A hundred thousand?”

“More,” Fischer said. “I used to work bank robberies. That’s one seventy-five, two hundred.”

“This is a city office. If it’s public money, we should find out before we take it.”

“Call Melissa back,” Fischer said.

Cain redialed, on speaker this time. They listened to the phone ring, five times, six times, before she picked up.

“What now?”

“Castelli’s safe—is that his personal stuff, or is there city property in it?”

“If it’s in the safe, it’s personal. Harry did everything by the book.”

“If we found cash, it’s not the city’s money?”

“I said it’s personal,” Melissa answered. She hung up, and Cain put his phone away. Grassley and Fischer were each watching him.

“Before we hand that off to you, we should get some kind of receipt, I guess.”

Fischer checked her watch.

“There’s a kid in the U.S. attorney’s office, just sitting on his hands,” she said. “I can get him here in an hour with the paperwork.”

Cain looked at the stack of cash on the shelf. Giving it to Fischer felt wrong, but he knew it stood a better chance of disappearing if he gave it to his own department.





21


IT WAS ALMOST midnight and Cain was driving alone, Golden Gate Park just a shadow on his left. He could see the rain on his windshield, the shutter-flashes of electricity from the Muni bus in front of him. He hadn’t heard back from Chun or Grassley, and Lucy still wasn’t picking up the phone. He’d turned on his police scanner, just for the company of the other cops’ voices.

There’d been a holdup at the corner of Geary and Van Ness. Two suspects fleeing on foot, and four units responding. A stabbing at the base of the Bay Bridge, but the victim was sitting up in the ambulance and talking. No need even to alert Homicide Detail.

Cain switched off the scanner. Maybe it was better to listen to the rain. But even without the scanner, his head was buzzing. The CSI teams had taken truckloads of evidence from the house, and nearly all of it would be useless. They’d taken less from Castelli’s City Hall office, and while some of it might help fill in a picture of the man before he died, nothing explained why or how the shots were fired. Useless information was worse than none at all, because he’d waste weeks figuring out if he needed it or not.