Cain dug into the documents, flipping through pages of interview notes and laboratory reports until he came to the autopsy. The first photograph showed Lester Fennimore on the steel table. He lay naked on his back, eyes open in dead surprise. Four gunshot wounds were scattered on the right side of his chest. A fifth bullet had smashed his jaw and come out through his left cheek. Cain turned the page. There was a close-up of Fennimore’s face. He’d probably been a handsome man. Short dark hair and green eyes. There were healed scars on his left ear and on his throat, but they didn’t detract from him overall.
He turned the page. The coroner had turned Fennimore over to photograph his back. There was another bullet wound in his spine. It must have been the last shot, fired after he’d fallen into the steering wheel.
“You get to it?”
“Yeah, I see it,” Cain said.
He was looking at a tattoo on Lester Fennimore’s right shoulder. Each Greek letter was an inch across. The artist had inked them vertically, following the inside edge of Fennimore’s scapula.
Π
Κ
Κ
“He was Pi Kappa Kappa,” Fischer said. “They were frat brothers.”
Cain stared at the dead man’s tattoo. He fumbled for his briefcase, clicked it open, and took out his copy of the blackmailer’s second set of photographs. The man on top of the girl had never shown his face to the camera. There was just his back. Broad shoulders and short, dark hair. The tattoo trailing his shoulder blade. It could have been Castelli; it could have been Lester Fennimore.
“Yesterday, Chun came up with something,” he said. “Fennimore isn’t the only Pi Kappa Kappa who got killed—there were five others in 1989.”
“What?”
He told her about the house on Grizzly Peak Boulevard, the arson and the five bodies that’d been found in the rubble. By now, Chun should have copied Berkeley PD’s murder book on the case. If there was a file on Pi Kappa Kappa, she’d have that, too.
“What do you think?” Cain asked.
From her end of the line, he could hear the whine of the jet’s engines. She thought about it for so long that he thought he’d lost her.
“I think this is bigger than we thought,” she finally said. “It goes deeper than we thought. We need to find that girl.”
“I know it,” Cain said. “I’m working on it.”
He was pretty sure the girl was in a freezer, seven floors beneath him. Henry Newcomb might be able to point the way by tomorrow, and if he did, then he would have to consider coming clean to Fischer about what he’d found.
“What about the money?” he asked. “What’d you find?”
“It was nothing,” Fischer said. “No idea what he meant to do with it, but he’d withdrawn it from his savings account last week. His and Mona’s.”
“What bank?” Cain asked.
There was a pause while Fischer went into her notes.
“Chase, on McAllister and Van Ness. Right across from City Hall.”
“That wasn’t on the list.”
“Which list?”
“In the safe, with the cash—we found a scrap of paper with the names and addresses of banks. But they were all in Chinatown. If he took the cash out of Chase, we still don’t know what the list was for.”
“Maybe it’s where he was going to put it,” Fischer said.
“Either way, we’ll have to give it back to Mona Castelli,” Cain said. “It’s hers unless you’ve got a reason we need to hold on to it.”
“We give it back—there aren’t any grounds for civil forfeiture, and we know the money came out of their joint account. But think what else you want to ask her when we do it,” Fischer said. “I land in an hour.”
“I’ll meet you in her lobby.”
“Fine.”
He hung up and turned back to the report. Lester Fennimore. Shot to death by Castelli’s gun sometime after ten o’clock on June 28, 1998. He was sitting in his red Cadillac Eldorado on the loneliest stretch of Skyline Boulevard in Santa Cruz County. Cain looked at the photographs. The car in the lot, rain puddled up in the tire tracks. A measuring tape in the mud, showing the width of the wheelbase. The driver’s-side window, blood spattered and punctured by the bullet that had gone through Fennimore’s cheek.
An investigator had interviewed Fennimore’s wife. Cain scanned the handwritten notes. They lived in Walnut Creek; their daughter had just turned two. Mrs. Fennimore couldn’t explain what her husband had been doing in Castle Rock State Park, seventy miles from their house. He’d just lost his job. There was nowhere he had to be, no one he had to meet. She’d gone to bed at eight o’clock, and he’d been home. Sitting in the living room, drinking a beer and watching TV. He must have left as soon as she’d gone to sleep and driven south in a hurry. There was no time in the chronology for any detours, for any aimless wandering. He’d arrived in the trailhead parking lot before ten, before the rain. The dirt under the Cadillac was dry. He’d been waiting in the parking lot for his killer. He was there on business secret enough that he’d kept it from his wife.
Cain thought about the leads he’d gotten from Matt Redding.
In one of the first photographs, there’d been a dozen Thrallinex tablets, a lipstick-marked glass, a whiskey flask, and a set of keys, all sitting on a nightstand. One of the keys fit a 1980s model Cadillac Eldorado. Lester Fennimore died in a 1997 Eldorado. Some people were like that with cars. They’d find a model and stick with it, get a new one every few years.
Cain took out the blackmailer’s photograph and looked at the man on top of the girl. He was holding her ankles out, pushing against her as he arched his back and flexed his muscles. He was showing off, performing for the camera. Was that Castelli, or Fennimore? And how many of the men who’d died in the Grizzly Peak house had ΠKK tattooed on their shoulder? Maybe they’d all been there. Taking turns with her, snapping shots of each other. And ever since, Castelli had been trying to bury it.
25
HE STEPPED OUT of the elevator and onto the Palace Hotel’s top floor. Officer Combs had angled one of the overstuffed chairs so that in one glance he could keep tabs on the stairs, the elevator doors, and the hall that led to Room 8064. When he saw Cain, the young cop stood up and gestured down the hall.
“She’s in there?” Cain asked.
“With the daughter, who got here two hours ago,” Combs said. “I recognized her from the paper.”
“Alexa,” Cain said, and Combs nodded. “Have they come out at all?”
“No, sir—not since they’ve been together. But Mrs. Castelli left the room on her own before that, at two o’clock.”
“She talk to you?”
“Just whispered hello—I could barely hear her. Then she called the elevator and went down. I took the stairs and beat her to the lobby. She didn’t see me when she got out.”
“Where’d she go?”
“The bar in the lobby,” Combs said. “The Pied Piper. She sat at the end and had a martini.”
“Anyone talk to her, recognize her?”
“Place was empty. She had her drink alone and got another. I watched her from outside, in the lobby. In the bar, they have a big painting. She stared at that awhile, and drank, and asked for a third. She must’ve brought a plastic cup in her purse. She poured the last drink into it and took it upstairs.”
Cain looked down the hall. He could see the wide double doors of her corner suite, light spilling through the thin gap above the threshold. A room like that must have had a bar. Or Alexa could have brought something from her apartment. It was hard to imagine that she’d gotten all the way through the day on no more than three drinks. He looked back at Combs.
“Did anyone else come to see her?”
“Earlier,” Combs said. He took a notepad from his back pocket and looked at what he’d written. “Right after my shift started. Charles Lum—her estate lawyer. He was on the list.”
“What list?”
“Last night, she gave us a list, peo
ple we could let in.”
“Who was on it?”
“The daughter, Melissa Montgomery, and this guy Lum.”
Mona either suspected or knew that her husband slept with his campaign manager. She could barely get herself to say the other woman’s name. But now that Castelli was in the morgue, Melissa was one of three people allowed in Mona’s room. Maybe she wanted Melissa for the same reason Cain did. She’d known Castelli the best. She had all the answers, right down to the combination that opened his office safe.
“How long was Lum with her?” Cain asked.
“An hour.”
“And then she went straight to the bar?”
“Yes, sir.”
Fischer stepped from the elevator at eight o’clock, the briefcase in her right hand. She nodded a greeting at Combs, then walked with Cain to the suite.
Alexa opened the door, and Cain had never seen her so thoroughly clothed. She wore a long-sleeved black dress, with tiny pearls sewn onto the pale collar. Black tights and patent leather heels. Her hair, still wet from a recent shower, was held back with a simple velvet headband. On her right wrist, she wore the Imogene Bass bracelet her father had given her. She looked like a prim fifth-grader on her way to a funeral, except that she was holding a glass of bourbon.
She looked at Cain for what seemed like a long time, and then turned to speak over her shoulder.
“Mom—it’s Inspector Cain and his friend,” she said. She whispered carefully, as though something behind her was cracked and her voice alone might shatter it. “That woman, Agent Fischer. Should I let them in?”
There was a murmur from inside the room, audible but incomprehensible. Alexa stepped back and opened the door. She brought up her glass and sipped the bourbon, wrinkling her nose when she swallowed.
Cain and Fischer stepped into the room and Alexa closed the door behind them. They were in the sitting room of a two-bedroom suite. A deep blue couch and two matching chairs were arranged to face a fireplace that probably hadn’t seen a burning log since the Harding administration. Mona Castelli lay on the couch, eyes closed, the back of her wrist resting on her forehead. On the coffee table next to her was a bottle of Maker’s Mark and an empty glass.
“I’m sorry to bother you so late,” Fischer said.
“Can’t this wait till morning?” Mona asked. She didn’t open her eyes to speak.
“Inspector Cain and I thought you’d want to have some things from Harry’s office,” Fischer said.
“What things?”
“You knew about his safe?” Fischer asked.
“I don’t know what he had in his office,” Mona said. “I never went there.”
“Not once, the whole time he was mayor?”
“I said I never went,” Mona said. She used her hands against the couch cushions, pushing until she was sitting up.
Fischer sat in the chair nearest Mona’s head. She pushed the bourbon bottle out of the way and set her briefcase on the coffee table but didn’t open it. Mona sat looking at it, her eyes puffy, half focused.
Cain checked behind him.
Alexa stood by the door. She had her bourbon glass in one hand and a cell phone in the other. She was typing a text message with her left thumb. She finished her message and darkened the phone’s screen. When she saw Cain watching her, she finished her drink in one long, easy swallow. Cain wondered who she’d be texting right now. There was Patricia, her nightshade-eyed friend. And there was the kid from the paintings, the one who occasionally slept over, though not often enough for Alexa to call him a boyfriend.
“What things?” Alexa asked. She crossed the room and sat opposite Fischer. “I went to his office. I saw the safe but never inside it.”
“There were insurance policies and a will,” Fischer said. “Also, some cash.”
Before either of the Castellis could answer, Cain reached into his jacket and brought out a thick envelope. He set it on the coffee table. Alexa looked inside it, then pushed it across to her mother.
“Those are the originals,” Cain said. “You’ll want to give them to Mr. Lum. He’ll know what to do with them.”
He’d already made copies of the will and the insurance policies. He wasn’t a lawyer, but he understood the gist. Both policies had two-year suicide riders, but Castelli had bought them ten years ago. Even if he’d put the gun in his mouth and willingly pulled the trigger, there was no bar to a payout. The riders were expired, and the companies would have to get out their checkbooks. The entire estate went to Mona, but she was only the trustee. Alexa was the true beneficiary and would come into everything when Mona died.
Mona looked in the envelope and thumbed weakly through the pages. She looked at Fischer.
“You said something about cash,” she said. “The safe had cash?”
“I’ll get to that,” Fischer said. She put her hand on the briefcase. “But I wanted to ask you—”
“He never said anything about the safe.”
“—if you’ve heard the name Lester Fennimore.”
“Lester,” Mona said. She looked at Alexa, who shook her head. “Lester Fennimore.”
“You’ve heard the name?”
“He was someone Harry knew?” Mona asked.
“Are you saying that, or asking us?”
She combed her fingers through her hair, then rubbed at her eyes. Drunk, hungover, and no makeup on, but it didn’t matter. She looked young. She had a nineteen-year-old daughter, but she was under forty, and she’d had unlimited cash since she was eighteen.
“Asking—saying. I don’t know,” Mona said. “The name sounds familiar.”
“Someone Harry knew?”
“I don’t know—yes. I think.”
On the table, Alexa’s phone lit up with an incoming text. She took it and put it in her lap, screen down. Cain watched her and watched the phone. He waited to see if she’d give some sign. A rise of color in her cheeks, a downward turn of her eyes. But she was too much like her father to reveal anything so easily. She reached across the table and took the bourbon bottle by its neck, then refilled her glass.
“You met him?” Fischer asked.
“Lester Fennimore?” Mona asked. “I don’t think I ever met him. I think Harry might have talked about him.”
“When?”
“That would’ve been years ago—before Alexa was born.”
The way Mona had told it before, Alexa was born more or less nine months after she’d first gone to work for Harry Castelli. Their house—the house she’d moved into after dropping out of Stanford—had been twenty miles from the trailhead at Castle Rock State Park.
“Alexa was born when?” Cain asked.
“December 12, 1998,” Alexa said.
Cain looked at her. She was still holding the phone on her lap, one hand on top of it like it might slip away. He turned back to Mona.
“And after she was born, you never heard about Lester Fennimore again?”
“Not that I remember,” Mona said. “He might’ve said something, but I don’t know. I was busy with a baby.”
“Okay.”
“What’s this have to do with?” Mona asked. “Was it Lester who sent Harry the letter?”
“No,” Fischer said. “It wasn’t Lester. I think we can be pretty sure about that.”
Cain’s phone began to vibrate in his pocket. He slipped it out and looked at the screen. There wasn’t anything Lieutenant Nagata needed from him right now that couldn’t wait. He dropped the phone back into his pocket and let it go on silently ringing.
“Did you ever ask Harry about his tattoo?” Cain asked. “The Pi Kappa Kappa tattoo?”
“It was just something he got in college. A fraternity he joined for a while.”
“Just a while?”
“He quit. He said after a couple years of partying, he finally got to know the guys. And he didn’t like them.”
“What do you mean, he didn’t like them?” Cain asked.
“He said they scared him,” Mona said.
“He said they were bad news.”
Cain caught Fischer’s eyes, and he knew they were both thinking the same thing. Angela Chun’s witness, the doctor up in Marin County, had said something similar. He’d told Chun that the Pi Kappa Kappa brothers had given him the creeps.
“Then why didn’t he get that tattoo removed?” Cain asked. “It’s not like he couldn’t afford it.”
“I don’t know,” Mona said. “I never asked.”
“About that cash,” Fischer said. “Does this room have a safe?”
“In the bedroom.”
“You’ll want to put it in there, probably.”
Fischer laid the briefcase down and opened it. She began lifting out the bundled bills, setting them on the coffee table. The field office in L.A. must have repackaged them after scanning the serial numbers. Now the stacks were held together with color-coded currency straps. There were twenty-two bundles, each holding ten thousand dollars. Fischer closed the briefcase and set it on the floor next to her chair.
“What is that?” Mona asked.
“Two hundred and twenty thousand dollars.”
“And it was Harry’s?”
“He withdrew it from some of your banks last week,” Fischer said. “We don’t know why.”
“Neither do I.”
“These were joint accounts,” Fischer said. “Yours and his. And you’re in the will. So this is yours.”
“Okay.”
Fischer handed Mona a receipt. She must have had it written up by the same federal prosecutor she’d used for the last one.
“I need you to sign this, to acknowledge you received it from me. You can count the money first, if you want. We can wait.”
“I don’t need to count it.”
Fischer gave Mona a pen, and she sat up enough to scrawl a signature across the bottom of the page. Alexa watched from behind the rim of her glass. She had taken her phone and put it behind her.
“You don’t know why he took it out?” Cain asked. “No idea?”
“None.”
He took a piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. He looked at it, reading through the list again, and then looked up. Mona and Alexa were watching him. He handed the sheet to Mona.
The Dark Room Page 21