“No idea. It’s not new—the edges aren’t sharp, and the color’s faded,” she said. “But think about it. It’s a frat tattoo. Who gets one of those except when they’re eighteen and pledging?”
She lifted Castelli’s head and repositioned the block under the back of his neck. She put her left palm on his chin, then covered the back of that hand with her right. She bore down, her elbows straightening as she put her weight into him. As Castelli’s mouth opened, his jaw made a sound like a pencil snapping.
“Powder burns on his palate and tongue,” she said. She was leaning over the mayor, a flashlight positioned against his bloody lower lip. “Entry wound at the anterior of the hard palate. It looks—”
She put out her hand, snapping her fingers. Jim slipped her a pair of inside-diameter calipers. She gave the flashlight to him and he held it for her while she inserted the calipers and dialed the knob on the right to take the entry wound’s measurement.
“—four-tenths of an inch. That’s consistent with a thirty-eight in soft tissue.”
“All right,” Cain said. Where he was standing, he couldn’t see the entry wound at all. But he’d caught a little of the mayor’s shattered grin as Dr. Levy had opened his mouth. “What’s the story with his teeth?”
“The chipping?” Dr. Levy asked. She pulled his bottom lip out, and ran her gloved finger over the broken teeth. “You see that, this kind of suicide. End of a pistol’s barrel has a raised sight. It’ll crack the hell out of your teeth when the gun kicks.”
“The bottom teeth?” Grassley asked. “The sight’s on top.”
“Most of your gun-in-the mouth guys,” she said, “they put it in upside down. What else are they going to do—pull the trigger with their thumbs? So when it kicks, the sight knocks out their bottom teeth.”
Cain stepped back and nodded at the microphone.
“What do you say, Rachel?” he said. “Gut instinct.”
She reached up and turned the microphone off.
“Suicide,” she said. “It’s easy, right? We’ve got gunshot residue on his hands. Powder burns and stippling inside his mouth. The body wasn’t moved, and the door was locked from the inside.”
“Lean down and smell him,” Cain said.
“What?”
“Go on.”
She bent back toward Castelli’s mouth, lowering her paper mask. He watched as she breathed through her nose.
“Whiskey,” she said.
“Kentucky bourbon,” Cain answered. “Single cask, hundred-twenty proof. And this is what—sixteen hours later?”
Dr. Levy shrugged.
“You can’t just accidentally shoot one of those old thirty-eights,” Cain said. “You have to put the hammer back before you pull the trigger, and there’s a hard pull on that.”
“I’ve seen drunk suicides thread smaller needles,” Levy said. “They run hoses from their car exhaust into second-floor windows. They drive a hundred miles to the bridge, park, and walk to the middle of the span. So drunk they shouldn’t be able to stand. But when they’re ready to go, they go.”
“So you’ll put suicide in the report,” Cain said.
“We’ll see what we get back from toxicology. And we haven’t even opened him up yet.”
She held out her hand and Jim Braun gave her an oscillating saw.
20
AT SIX O’clock, Cain was at Lori’s Diner with his three new partners. They were two to a side in a red vinyl booth, plates of pasta and home-style meatloaf on the table between them. Grassley poked at his potatoes. Next to him, Chun scrolled through her phone’s screen. She put it away, then pushed her plate aside.
“Pi Kappa Kappa was a banned fraternity—it got kicked off the Cal campus in 1982, and dissolved nationwide in 1983.”
“What for?” Fischer asked.
“Three sophomore coeds died at a party.”
“Alcohol?”
“And drugs—but it was quaaludes, not Thrallinex,” Chun said. “It might’ve been easier to look the other way back then, but not when there’s three dead girls.”
“He was a freshman in 1984,” Cain said. “Pi Kappa Kappa was already gone.”
“Maybe it was unofficial,” Fischer said. “Unsanctioned.”
“Did you see that online?” Cain asked Chun. “That they went underground?”
“Nothing like that.” She gathered her things and slid from the booth, leaving enough cash on the table to cover her part of the check. “But I might find out tonight—I’m meeting a guy who knew Castelli back then. Says he knew him, anyway.”
“Who?”
“Dennis Herrington—a doctor up in Marin County. We’re meeting for coffee, and I’ll be late if I don’t get going.”
“You’re meeting up there?” Cain asked.
“That’s right.”
“Take Grassley if you want backup,” Cain said.
“They don’t come safer than this guy—he’s a pediatrician,” Chun said. Cain took off his glasses to look at her, and she went on. “All right. Point taken—you never know. But he’ll talk more if it’s just me.”
“Call me when you’re done.”
She nodded.
“I’ll see you in the morning.”
When she was gone, Cain turned to Grassley.
“How about you?”