“Probably,” Cain said.
He unwound the string clasp and opened the flap. He tilted the envelope, letting its contents slide out onto the table. There were a dozen black-and-white photographs and a small plastic canister with the negatives. The photographs that had come to Castelli with the blackmail notes were copies. These were the originals. The first print was one he knew well. Carolyn Stone was backed against the brick wall, her hands held up in fear. Cain set it to the side, going quickly through the first eight pictures because he’d seen them all before. The lawyer and the vice president hadn’t seen them, though, and he saw the way they each stepped back when he came to the rape.
“Is this what you were looking for?” Cindy Wang asked.
“It is.”
He turned to the ninth photograph, one he hadn’t seen yet. It must have been taken in the preparation room at the Fonteroy Mortuary. Carolyn Stone was holding herself up, leaning over a steel undertaker’s table. She wore nothing but bruises, and her eyes were half closed. There was fresh blood on her lips. She held her left arm protectively across the front of her stomach.
An open casket waited on the table behind her.
“Jesus,” Fischer said. “They even photographed this.”
Cain turned to the tenth photograph. Three men were manhandling Carolyn into the casket. They wore pantyhose over their heads to hide their faces. Two of them had her arms and shoulders, and a third was struggling with her legs. Her feet were a blur of motion. She had gone in kicking. Cain turned the picture over. The eleventh photograph showed the men pushing the casket lid down. One of Carolyn’s hands was visible through the crack. Part of her face rose into the last light she would ever see, her mouth open in a scream.
In the twelfth photograph, it was all over.
The casket was closed. There was a small metal plaque on the lid, engraved with Christopher Hanley’s name. The dates of his birth and death. Cain turned the photograph over. There was handwriting on the back, in faded pencil.
Harry,
We’ll need to talk about this, and agree on a price. You have a young wife who doesn’t know, and that’s worth something, isn’t it?
If they dig her up, they’ll find out about the baby. And if they find that, they’ll find you.
—L.F.
Cain eased everything back into the envelope and looked up.
“We need to go,” he said to Fischer. “Right now.”
38
Cain’s phone rang as they were getting into Fischer’s car. He answered it, standing on the sidewalk, covering his free ear with his palm so that he could hear over the street noise.
“Inspector Cain? It’s Officer Combs.”
“What’s going on?”
“They’re on the move—both of them. Mona got in a taxi a minute ago, and Officer Aguilar just called me. Alexa did the same.”
“Where are you?”
“At the Palace—but I lost her. I thought she was heading out on foot, but she jumped in a cab before I knew what was happening.”
“All right.”
“She had a bag with her this time. A shopping bag, but I don’t know what was in it.”
Cain hung up and got in the car.
They had to take Ryan Harding back to the federal building, and then they sat in Fischer’s car and looked at the rain in the headlights.
“You knew the photographs would be in there,” Fischer said.
“I guessed it—Castelli didn’t have anything to do with his dad’s snuff videos, and didn’t rape Carolyn Stone. He didn’t know she was an undercover cop. She was just a girl he met in college—his girlfriend, he thought. But his frat brothers must have found out about her, and they killed her.”
“I’m following you so far, but what about Lester Fennimore?”
“He had the pictures—he might have taken some of them, and he might have been in some of them. He had the tattoo. He crawled out of the Grizzly Peak fire and lived, but by 1998 he’d hit hard times. He’d lost his job, and he needed cash. He knew Castelli was in Silicon Valley, raking it in.”
“So he decided to blackmail Castelli, in 1998. That’s what you’re saying. It could be Castelli in the pictures, and that was Fennimore’s angle. You can’t tell it isn’t Castelli—even Melissa Montgomery, who’d slept with him, wasn’t sure.”
“And Fennimore had a wildcard,” Cain said.
“Which was what?”
“He knew Carolyn Stone was pregnant, that it was Castelli’s baby. She probably told him, begging for her life. They didn’t have DNA testing in 1985, but they did in 1998. He would’ve known about it.”
“But why did Mona have the pictures?”
“Because however Fennimore sent the note to Castelli, Mona found it first. She’d just dropped out of Stanford and married him. She was pregnant with Alexa. And she comes home one day and finds this.”