“It was her at Castle Rock State Park,” Fischer said. “She shot Fennimore with Castelli’s gun. But why did she hold on to the pictures? Why not destroy them? Or confront her husband, if she thought he’d raped a girl?”
“Because he was on the upswing,” Cain said. “He was getting rich, going places. The pictures were insurance, in case things stopped going so well.”
Fischer had her hands on the wheel. She was looking through the windshield, her eyes flicking back and forth as she sorted through the details. He saw that she agreed with him, that she knew he’d put the facts together the only way they’d fit.
“She knew Christopher Hanley’s name from the plaque on the casket—it was in the photo,” Fischer said. “All she had to do was find the grave and then keep tabs on it—an exhumation order is a public document, so she was watching for that.”
“Which, by now, she could have done online,” Cain said. “She just had to set up an alert on the court’s electronic docket.”
“And when she saw that you got one, it was now or never,” Fischer said. “Carolyn Stone was coming out of the ground, and if Castelli’s DNA was in a database, it’d only be a matter of time before we connected him to her. It would have been the end of him.”
Cain nodded. That was exactly what he thought.
“So she decided to cash out while she was still ahead. Hound him into suicide, and collect.”
“But she must have had an accomplice.”
“We’ll get that out of her when we pick her up,” he said. He thought about it for a moment. If Mona and Alexa were both on the move at the same time, there was one place they’d probably want to go. “Let’s go up to Sea Cliff Avenue.”
Then he did what he always did when he knew he was about to make an arrest. He patted the left side of his jacket, to check his gun.
“Shit.”
“What?”
“Nothing—I left my weapon in Lucy’s hotel. I couldn’t take it to the consulate.”
“Do you want to go get it?”
“There’s no time. Let’s just go.”
They parked down the street and walked up to the house. Upstairs, in the study, the curtains were open and the lights were on. Through the brightly lit windows, they could see see the bookcases along the far wall. They went along the steppingstones, through the herb garden, to reach the front door. Cain was about to knock, but Fischer grabbed his wrist. She pointed at the door, and then, when his eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw why. It wasn’t completely shut. He pushed it with his fingers and it swung open.
They stood looking into the dark entry hall. The house was completely silent, until Cain called into it.
“Mona Castelli?”
They waited for an answer, but there was none.
“Do you smell that?” Fischer asked.
Cain nodded. It was wafting out the front door, now that they’d opened it. Cordite smoke was biting and unmistakable. Fischer drew her gun. She held it in both hands, pointed at the ground.
“Stay behind me,” she whispered.
She stepped into the house and he followed her. They checked in both downstairs bathrooms and the empty kitchen. Then the den and the library. They looked in the sunroom, where Cain had sat with Mona Castelli the first time he’d met her. The silver martini pitcher was still on the glass table.
They came back toward the front of the house and went upstairs. The master bedroom was massive, but everything was in its place. The bed was made. Everything in the closets was either folded or hung. The next bedroom they entered must have been Alexa’s. There was a cherry wood easel, and a mirror on a wooden stand. Nude self-portraits crowded the walls, arranged in a chronological progression. In every portrait, Alexa stood reflected in the mirror, a brush in her right hand as she studied herself. She was patient, observant, and her favorite subject was herself. But looking from one painting to the next, Cain understood something else. She was damaged beyond repair, and had been from the very beginning.
When they backed out of the room, they went down the hall to the study. Cain tried the door and found it unlocked. He pushed it open, and they stood in the doorway looking.
“Oh, shit,” Fischer said.
It was all either of them said for a long moment.
Mona Castelli was on the floor in front of the desk. She had come to her death wearing a white blouse and dark jeans. The blouse was soaked in blood; the bullet had hit the center of her sternum, between her breasts. A perfect heart shot. She might have been dead before she hit the carpet.
The young man who’d shot her hadn’t gone so easily.