“What’s your status?”
Combs gave his report in a low whisper. He had just taken over a double shift watching Mona Castelli. Since coming back from the Cathay Orient bank on Saturday afternoon, she hadn’t taken a step outside the hotel’s walls. She’d left her room three times on Sunday, but only to visit the Pied Piper. She drank her martinis and talked to no one. She’d had no visitors except the man who carried in her room service trays. It was early in the afternoon. Her day hadn’t even begun yet, and probably wouldn’t for a few more hours. Mona Castelli didn’t strike Combs as an early riser.
Cain hung up and pocketed his phone.
In front of him, there was a swarm of yellow cabs. A crowd of pedestrians, invisible beneath the protection of their umbrellas, crossed the intersection. He saw the old man among them, slipping through the rain like a knife blade until he disappeared down the escalator of Montgomery Street Station. Cain wondered if there was other business for the man here, or if he’d come only for Carolyn Stone.
He drove west, listening to the wiper blades, trying to put everything together. One fact stood above all the others. When Carolyn Stone died, she was carrying Castelli’s child. She had spoken to her handler in Special Branch right up to the day of her murder. Not once, in over a year of undercover work, had she ever singled out Castelli as a criminal. Most likely, she’d gone to his bed without force.
Maybe it had begun as part of her work. What better way to get close to Castelli than to take him to bed?
It was hard for him to picture Harry Castelli as a young man. Particularly one who might have attracted a woman like Carolyn Stone. Cain only saw the gravel-voiced, bourbon-swilling politician. But Castelli must have been different then. At eighteen, he might have believed the slogans on his own campaign signs.
Harry J. Castelli Sr. was a monster, but it was possible he’d shielded his son from the worst of his inclinations. That wasn’t so unusual. If the ambassador’s crimes had been merely financial, he might have brought his son inside the circle. But this wasn’t simply a matter of cooking the embassy’s books, or using the diplomatic pouch to move black market goods. He’d been trafficking girls and women so they could be raped on film and then disposed of. The ambassador was a man used to keeping secrets. He put on his tailored suits, and carried his calfskin briefcase, and no one around him would have seen the darkness.
But it all came apart in 1985.
A teenaged Harry left London for Berkeley. He’d never lived outside his father’s shadow, and at first, before he pledged Pi Kappa Kappa, he must have felt like the world was awash in light and air. Right away, he met Carolyn Stone. He was eighteen. His head must have ached with the future. Nothing about Carolyn would have struck him as strange. Not the ease of meeting her, not the strength of her immediate interest in him. He was an ambassador’s son; he was rich. He was hardwired to accept every blessing as his destiny. Of course he didn’t understand how extraordinary she was. Of course he didn’t understand how dangerous he was to her.
Cain parked on the street at UCSF and walked up the hill toward the medical center. There was a momentum beneath him now, a groundswell tilting his feet and propelling him. He had put a name to the girl in the casket; he knew why she’d come to San Francisco. The only person he knew who could give him the rest was Angela Chun. If she would wake up, if she could talk to him for ten seconds, she could close the circle.
He went through the main entrance and took the elevator up to the ICU, and stepped out into chaos. There were uniformed cops milling near the duty nurse. He didn’t recognize anyone until Nagata turned around.
“I tried calling you,” she said.
There were black streaks of mascara underneath Nagata’s eyes. Cain looked around the room again and saw three officers in a group huddle. Their arms around each other’s waists, their heads bowed.
“What’s happening?” Cain asked.
“There was a complication—they missed something, in the first surgery. They took her in for a second try. And they botched it.”
“Botched it how?”
“She’s gone, Cain.”
“Just now?”
Nagata nodded, and Cain looked across the hall. The door to Angela’s room stood open. There was no light inside. He walked in and sat in the chair by the empty bed. The room smelled of daisies and roses. No one had thrown away the bouquets yet. He hadn’t asked where she was, and Nagata hadn’t said. Maybe she was still on the operating table. Maybe they’d already zipped her in a bag and taken her down to the morgue. It didn’t matter, because Nagata was right. Angela was gone.
Cain closed his eyes and pressed his thumbs into his temples.
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