“Miss Castelli,” Cain said.
He could only see one side of her face, the sweep of her dark hair, and her right eye. The rest of her was behind the door.
“Mr. Cain,” she answered. “I don’t know your friend.”
“Are you dressed?”
“More or less.”
She closed the door enough to unlatch the chain, then opened it to let them in. She wore a clean white bedsheet like a sleeveless gown.
“Come in,” she said.
“This is Special Agent Fischer, with the FBI,” Cain said.
They stepped into her apartment. To the left, there was a living room that doubled as the bedroom. A Murphy bed was folded down. A young woman sat on a stool behind a wooden easel. She was using a loose razor blade to sharpen a charcoal pencil over a wastepaper basket. She turned when they came in. Looking at her half-finished sketch, it was clear that until he’d knocked, Alexa had been on the bed, and she hadn’t been wearing the sheet.
“You need to get something on,” Cain said. “And ask your friend—”
“Patricia.”
“—to leave for a minute.”
“Maybe I want her here,” Alexa said.
“I’ll stay,” the girl said. She set the razor on the easel’s shelf and picked up a sandpaper pad to finish her pencil’s tip. “I don’t mind.”
“Maybe I need her here,” Alexa said, looking at Fischer. “After the last time I talked to Mr. Cain, I’m not comfortable being alone with him.”
She came to the edge of the Murphy bed and looked at them. Then she dropped the sheet. She crawled onto the bed, finding the pose she’d been using for Patricia’s sketch. Face-down, her chin just off the corner of the mattress, one arm hanging so that her fingertip touched the floor.
Patricia gave a nervous laugh, so short it came out like a cough. She looked at Fischer, her eyes wide, the pupils bigger than they ought to be. Then she picked up her charcoal and began to sketch again, refining the work she’d done earlier on Alexa’s legs.
Whatever they’d taken—MDMA, ketamine—didn’t seem to interfere with this girl’s ability to draw.
“Why’d you come, Cain?”
Alexa was tracing a tiny circle on the wooden floor with her fingernail. She’d spoken without lifting her head or breaking her pose. He wasn’t sure whether to look at her or out the window. He’d already told her once to get dressed and didn’t think repeating himself was going to make a difference.
“Your father’s dead,” he said. “He died last night.”
Alexa’s fingernail stopped midway through its circle.
“How?”
“We haven’t done the autopsy, but it looks like a gunshot. A thirty-eight.”
Patricia tried to put her charcoal pencil on the easel’s shelf. She fumbled it and it fell to the floor and rolled under the bed.
“I should—maybe I should go?”
“Maybe so,” Fischer said.
The young woman threw a few things into her canvas purse. Fischer followed her to the door and opened it.
“I’ll call you later?” she said, over her shoulder.
Alexa hadn’t moved from her pose and didn’t answer. Fischer closed the door on the other girl’s back, then turned the deadbolt. When Cain looked back, Alexa was sitting up. She swung her legs to the floor, then leaned down to get the sheet. She put it over her shoulders and wrapped the sides across her chest.
“When? And what happened?”
“It happened sometime last night,” Cain said. Right now there was no reason to be more specific. Telling her what he knew would only give her a liar’s guide if she needed one. “I got the call at four this morning. As for who did it, we don’t know.”
“Somebody killed my dad?”
“We don’t know.”
“Where was he?”
“In his study, at home—your mom came home from Monterey and found him this morning. She called us.”
Alexa stared at her toes. The nails were painted a shade of red so dark it could have been obsidian. Cain looked around the apartment. There was a little kitchen, all stainless steel and blond wood. A well-stocked shelf of liquor, but most of the bottles were full. The walls, which were covered in textured black silk, displayed her work. He recognized Patricia in two of the paintings. There was a young man in two others. In one, he was sitting on the rocks on China Beach, his hand shielding his eyes from the low sun so that his face was just a shadow. You could see Castelli’s house on the cliffs in the background, could see the winding stairway that worked down from the top. The kid had to be Alexa’s boyfriend. She’d caught the details of his body so precisely, she couldn’t possibly have been looking at him from any distance. In the other painting, he was on the Murphy bed in this apartment, his pose not much different from the one Alexa had been holding for her friend.
“He’s really—This is serious?”
“Yes,” Fischer said. “This is serious.”
“But who?”
“We don’t know,” Cain said. “Did he try calling you last night?”
“No.”
“What about your boyfriend? Where was he?”
“What boyfriend?”