He put the note on the table in front of Fischer, then looked through the four photographs. Each had a circled number in the lower right corner. And in each, the girl was still handcuffed to the bed. She was unconscious throughout the series. Maybe that was a good thing. Cain could see her face in each shot: eyes closed and mouth slack.
The difference this time was that now she was completely nude. Her panties hung from the bed’s iron foot post. And there was someone else in the shot—a white man, tall and well muscled. Dark hair, neatly cut. But he never gave his face to the camera. It was just his naked backside as he lay on top of her, as he knelt between her thighs and held her ankles off to either side.
“Jesus,” Cain said. He looked at Fischer. She was studying the first shot he’d handed her. Melissa was staring at the surface of her coffee, not looking at the pictures at all. Her lips were pressed together, her mouth a small, tight line.
There was one identifying mark. The man had a tattoo across his right shoulder blade. It was hard to make out, except in the last shot. Cain finished looking at it and put it on the stack in front of Fischer.
The man had been inked with three Greek letters.
“Is that Harry Castelli?” Cain asked, tilting his head so he could catch Melissa’s downturned eyes.
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve seen him naked?”
“Inspector Cain—”
“Have you or haven’t you?” Fischer said. “We’ll find out one way or another.”
“Harry and I—we—it was just sometimes. Okay? And we’d stopped, more than a year ago.”
“Is that him?”
“If it is, they’re old pictures. This man’s young. But Harry’s—”
She stopped and brought her coffee up. She took a careful sip and then put it back down.
“But what?” Cain said. “You were about to say something else.”
“He’s got a tattoo like that.”
The room seemed to go quiet, but Cain knew it was just his mind pulling into focus. He looked from Fischer to Melissa Montgomery. They were both staring at the photographs on the table. He picked them up and slid them back into the envelope, along with the second letter.
“Let me have that,” Cain said. “The note he wrote to you.”
Melissa gave it to him.
Last night, Castelli had wanted to see him again. Something had changed the mayor’s mind—the letter, and the photos? When he’d written this, there wasn’t much time left. He’d be dead at midnight. Had he known, because he planned it? This could be a half-finished confession. He needs to know, Castelli had said, but know what? Was he saying that he did it? Or had he wanted to meet Cain so that he could say something entirely different?
“Where are you going to be?” Cain asked. “Tonight, all next week.”
“At home.”
“Where’s that?”
“Noe Valley.”
She gave him an address on Cesar Chavez. A row house, broken up into apartments. She lived there with a roommate, a girlfriend from college. But she’d spent most of the last eight years in Castelli’s orbit.
“Don’t go anywhere,” Cain said. “I’ll need you in town.”
“Okay.”
“He means that,” Fischer said. “We’ll be calling on you. When we do, we’ll need you right away.”
“Where would I go?”
She said that, and Cain watched her shrink into herself. She must understand that it was over. Not just her job, but her entire life up to that point. Everything she’d worked for, dead.
18
CAIN AND FISCHER stood at the security desk in Alexa’s lobby while the doorman, Bruno, scowled at their badges. An FBI shield, an SFPD gold star. They’d already explained they were here to see the mayor’s daughter on a family matter. Bruno should have rolled over right away; any other guard in the city would have. Instead, he’d asked to see a warrant, and then, when they admitted they didn’t have one, he told them to state their business or leave.
“We already told you,” Fischer said.
“What family matter?” the guard said. “I’ll ring up and tell her what it is. She’ll tell me if she wants to talk to you.”
Cain leaned over the desk and touched the man’s computer screen.
“Is this hooked up to the Internet?”
“Yeah—so?”
“Do a search for Castelli. See what comes up.”
The guard’s frown said he wasn’t buying it. But he took the mouse and started clicking. He typed a word and entered it. Cain watched the screen’s reflection in his glasses, watched the man’s eyes flick back and forth as he read three lines of text. He didn’t need to finish the article.
“Shit,” the guard said. “Oh, shit.”
“A whole world of it,” Cain answered.
“This is for real?”
“Check another site if you don’t believe it.”
“She’s on four—I haven’t seen her in or out today, so she’s probably in there. I’ll send you up. You need a card to work the elevator.”
They heard music from behind Alexa Castelli’s door. A cello concerto—Vivaldi, if Cain had to guess. It wasn’t what he’d expected, didn’t fit his picture of Alexa, which tilted darker and edgier. But he remembered the blood-soaked shelves in Castelli’s study, which had borne the weight of a thousand years of history. Those hadn’t fit in his model either. The Castellis weren’t as predictable as he’d like them to be.
He knocked, and a few moments later the music switched off. The door opened as far as the chain would let it.