“I met Frank Lee’s pharmacy guy—the professor at UCSF,” Grassley said. “But he didn’t have anything new. Thrallinex wasn’t common, but it wasn’t a unicorn. It’s not like only one doctor in the country prescribed it.”
“So it’s a dead end.”
“That angle, maybe. But maybe something will come of it.”
He knew what Grassley was thinking. At least he hadn’t finished the thought aloud, with Fischer sitting at the table. Thrallinex might still be useful to tie the girl in the casket to the girl in the photo. If her liver samples showed metabolites of the drug, it would be a done deal, in Cain’s mind.
“There’s still the dress. You could work on that.”
“I’m on it,” Grassley said. “I’m swinging past the Academy of Art tonight at eight to talk to one of the fashion instructors there.”
“Until then, come with us,” Cain said.
“We got time to finish?”
“If we start eating and quit talking.”
Grassley pulled Angela Chun’s half-finished platter of linguini over and forked the pasta onto his plate.
They came in a convoy of separate cars and parked alongside a fireplug on Polk, then hurried across the street in the rain and went up the steps to City Hall. Cain had tried Lucy again on the drive over, but there was still no answer. It had been light outside when he’d called from the morgue, but that was hours ago and now it was dark. There wasn’t much he could do now except steal away whenever he could to call again.
“It’s locked,” Grassley said. He’d turned around, was watching Cain and Fischer as they climbed the last few steps.
“Then knock.”
Grassley pounded on the door with his knuckles. He’d been a patrolman for eight years in Stockton and an SFPD inspector for just a month. He still knew how to knock on a door like a beat cop.
A contract security guard cracked the door, and Grassley glanced back at Fischer.
“Show him your star,” Fischer said.
“What happened to your guys?”
“They were here for Castelli. No need for that now.”
Cain and Grassley held their inspectors’ stars up for the guard to see. He opened the door for them and they stepped inside. They went beneath the rotunda and up the staircase, and found a pair of black-shirted patrolmen leaning against the doors to the mayoral suite. When Cain brought out his inspector’s star, they straightened up.
“How long you been here?” Cain asked.
One cop looked at his partner.
“Since noon?”
“Has anyone tried to get in here?”
“Well—”
“There was a woman. She was the only one.”
“What woman?” Cain asked. “What was her name?”
The officer on the left looked at his partner, who shook his head.
“You didn’t ask her name?” Cain asked. “What’d she look like?”
“Blonde?”
“A dark blonde—almost a brunette.”
“And a gray suit. Expensive.”
“How old?” Cain asked.
“Thirty.”
Cain believed in cop instinct, but he didn’t think either of these men had much of it. If they’d been half awake, they would have gotten her name. Maybe it didn’t make a difference. They’d just described Melissa Montgomery.
“Did she try to talk her way past?” Fischer asked.
“Not after we told her Castelli was dead—then she went off in a hurry.”
“You told her what, exactly?”
“That he ate it—bullet through the head.”
“All right,” Cain said. “Open it up. We need to go in.”
They went around Castelli’s office turning on lights. Grassley had the video camera, recording everything. An empty glass sat on the desk’s edge. There was no paperwork in sight, no computer; the mayor must have used a laptop. They came behind the desk chair and Cain rolled it back. He switched on the shaded lamp, and the room took on a green glow.
“What’s that smell?” Grassley asked. “Bourbon?”
“Someone poured it in the trash,” Fischer said. She tapped the wastepaper basket with her foot. “Look.”
“That was me,” Cain said. “Last night.”
Fischer looked around, and he told her the story.
“Get a rise out of him?” she asked.
“Not really.”
Cain reached into the trash and found two empty cans of ginger ale and four lime wedges. There was a wadded napkin inside a can that had once held salted nuts. There were two peanuts left in the can.
“Nice work if you can get it,” Grassley said. “Knock back some cocktails, have a couple peanuts. Run a city.”
“Let’s bag it,” Cain said. “For all we know, someone else drank these before I came.”
The last thing Cain pulled out was a folded piece of ruled notebook paper. It had been at the bottom of the trash, and was soaked with both bourbon and ginger ale. Cain gently unfolded it, taking his time. The edges were soft and stuck together, the paper ready to fall apart. When he had it open, he held it in one palm and pushed up his glasses to look at it.
“Shit,” he said.
There had been handwriting, but the black letters had run into illegible spirals, the ink spreading through the bourbon and separating into the spectrum of colors it held. What was left looked like a dark oil slick. There was one dry spot, on the bottom of the page. It was Harry J. Castelli Jr.’s signature, dated yesterday.