“—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.
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.
“After that time I found the picture?” she said. “I went back and found these.”
She held his wrist with her left hand and put a set of police handcuffs in his palm. She folded his fingers over them. This close, he could smell the perfume at the base of her throat. He thought of the black roses that grew on the northern edge of Golden Gate Park, the flowers rising up from thick tangles of thorns. He took a step back from her and held up the handcuffs so Fischer could see them.
“You’ve had these for ten years?”
“Nine, ten.”
“You’ve used them, handled them?”
She looked around her apartment, the art on the walls, the sculptures on the coffee table and in the windowsills. Finally her eyes settled on the bed.
“What do you think?”
He thought they’d probably seen plenty of use. Which meant Castelli’s fingerprints, if they’d ever been there at all, would have been wiped away years ago.
“How do you know they were his?”
“They were in his study. Hidden.”
“Where?”
“In a cigar box, behind his copy of Thucydides.”
“You went in there—ten years old, we’re talking—because you wanted to read Greek history. You pulled the book down, found a cigar box, and opened it. That’s your story.”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“I went in to toss the room and see what I could find. He was in D.C., not coming back for a month at least. I figured there had to be something interesting in there.”
“Why didn’t you give these to me yesterday?”
“Why didn’t you go swimming with me?” Alexa said. “Because you didn’t trust me. You thought I was trying to trap you.”
“We’re just asking questions,” Fischer said. “But we need answers we can believe. This is important.”
“I know it’s important.” She sat on the end of the bed. Then she fell over onto her side and tucked her knees up close to her chest. “Why would some
one want to kill my dad?”
“You knew about the girl in the picture,” Fischer said. “Did anybody else?”
Alexa nodded. She was crying now, tears running across face and darkening the white sheet.
“Who?”
“I don’t know,” Alexa said. “But he thought so. I know he thought so. There was always something wrong. He was on edge—afraid.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’d be at dinner somewhere. And he’d see a woman who looked like her. He’d watch her pass, and then get really quiet and stop eating. In the car, on the way home, he’d drive in circles and keep checking behind us. But there’d never be anyone there.”
“Did he ever get out his gun?” Cain asked.
“What gun?”
“You never saw him with a gun?”
She shook her head. She pushed off the footboard and swam to the top of the bed, legs kicking. She took a pillow into her arms and another between her knees, clamping onto them.
“Where’s my mom?” she said. “I want my mom.”
“She hasn’t called?” Fischer asked.
“I want my mom!”
“Alexa.”
He could see where this would go if she threw a fit. She’d probably start by ripping her tissue-paper nightgown apart at the seams. Then, with his luck, she’d shatter a mirror and grab for the shards.
Of course, every time he made a bet on this family, he picked the wrong number.
“Alexa.”
“Mr. Cain,” she answered, her voice a glassy calm.
“I want you to take a couple breaths,” he said, but whatever storm he’d thought she’d entered had already dissipated.
Alexa lay still, her face half buried in a pillow.
“I’ve been breathing the whole time,” she said.
“Still,” he said. “Go ahead. Shut your eyes, if you want.”
“I want you to go away, Mr. Cain.”
“I will, if you tell me one thing.”
He didn’t want to waste his important questions here. He didn’t like to ask those until he was holding enough information. Right now, he had nothing, and if he started asking the wrong questions, Alexa would see right through them. He thought of a question that wouldn’t hurt to ask. It would sound like a throwaway, but it wasn’t.
“Did you love your father? Even knowing about the photo and the handcuffs?”
Alexa sat up. The strap of her nightgown had fallen off her shoulder. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, and then her cheek glistened.
“Did I love him?”
“That’s all I want to know.”
“When I was thirteen, he took me to London. Just the two of us. You probably already know he lived there when he was a kid. He showed me their house. The Official Residence, he called it. He took me shopping. I was thirteen, and I thought shopping in London was so glamorous. He bought me a gold bracelet.”
“You still have it?”
“Of course I have it.”
“Can I see it?”
“If I show it to you, will you leave?”
“We’ll go.”
She got up and went behind the dressing screen. She knelt again and opened another drawer. When she came out, she was wearing the bracelet. It glittered from her wrist, a golden honeycomb. Her father had taken her to the Imogene Bass shop, on Victoria Street. He’d bought her the exact bracelet the girl had worn in the photos. Alexa sat at the foot of her bed and wrapped her right hand around her wrist, so that her fingers covered the bracelet. She held it close to her chest. She hadn’t answered his question. Maybe this gesture was as close as she could come.
“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.
“Decedent appears fit and well-nourished, and does not have any external physical deformities. Rigor mortis is fully progressed and the body is cool to the touch, having been in refrigeration since two o’clock this afternoon.”
She pointed to the dark welting of settled blood that discolored his right side.
“Livor mortis is fixed and pronounced on the right side of the body, except over pressure points—his right hip and shoulder took most of his weight,” she said.
Cain stepped between Grassley and Chun. He whispered so that his voice wouldn’t carry to the official autopsy tape.
“We found the body under the desk, curled up on his right side,” he said. “What do you make of the livor mortis?”
“He wasn’t moved,” Chun whispered back. “After he died, he stayed where he fell. The blood settled and made those bruises.”
Cain nodded and looked back at Dr. Levy, who was working up Castelli’s corpse, narrating as she went.
“—his genitalia are normally developed for an adult. He has a two-inch appendectomy scar on his abdomen. He’s wearing a gold band on his left ring finger, and has a two-tone Rolex watch on his right wrist. I’m removing both items and giving them to Inspector Cain, who is present.”
She twisted the ring off his finger, forcing it past his knuckle by wiggling it side to side. Then she unclasped the watch and squeezed the band over his stiffly splayed fingers. She put it into a property bag along with his wedding ring and set it on an empty table alongside the clothes that had been cut off of him.
The Dark Room Page 16
