“You think that was it?” Grassley asked. “The note?”
“No way to tell. Whatever it was, it’s gone.”
“We should find the pad he wrote it on,” Fischer said. “The notebook—whatever. Maybe there’s an impression on the page underneath.”
“Check for it.”
They started going through the desk drawers, and Fischer found a notebook straight off. The first page had been ripped out.
“Here,” Cain said.
He gave her the bourbon-obliterated page, and she held its left side against the notebook. The uneven edges matched like puzzle pieces. She set the wet paper on the desk and put the notebook under the lamp. The three of them leaned in and looked at the blank page that had been beneath the one Castelli ripped out.
“There’s nothing,” Grassley said. “No imprints—right?”
“Maybe the documents lab,” Cain said. “They could look at it with a microscope.”
“Unless he ripped it out before he wrote on it—then we’ve got nothing,” Fischer said. She turned to Cain. “Melissa Montgomery might’ve been the last person to see him alive. But you’re a close second.”
“I didn’t mean to dissolve his note, if that’s what you’re saying.”
“It’s not what I’m saying,” Fischer said. “I’m just curious about his mood—how’d he seem to you?”
“The same as before,” Cain said. “He didn’t know anything. He hadn’t gotten more photos. This was all a hoax, some guy messing with him.”
“That’s what he told you.”
“And I knew he was lying, but I couldn’t shake him from his story.”
“Was he drunk?” Fischer asked.
“He was drinking,” Cain said. He looked around the office, breathed in the bourbon fumes, and remembered the old man’s growl. “A guy like him, there’s some ground to cover between drinking and drunk.”
Fischer turned around to look at the office. She went over to the curtains and pulled them back, allowing in the dim hum of traffic on Polk Street.
“Where’s he keep the liquor?” she asked.
Cain pointed.
“That cabinet.”
Fischer went to it and opened the door. There were eight bottles of bourbon, a dozen other spirits. She started pulling out bottles and handing them to Cain. He set them on the floor. When he came up, she gave him an insulated steel ice bucket with the Palace Hotel’s insignia emblazoned on the lid.
“Here we go,” she said. “We’ve got a safe.”
Grassley came over with the camera and filmed inside the liquor cabinet. When he stepped back, Cain leaned in and looked. At the back of the deep cabinet, there was a hotel-style safe, no higher than a shoebox, but deep enough to hold legal documents without folding them. It had a digital keypad next to its steel handle.
Cain dialed Melissa Montgomery on his cell, and she answered after the first ring.
“Inspector?
“Are you at home?”
“You told me to be here,” she answered. “Where are you?
“Standing in Castelli’s office, looking at the safe in the back of his liquor cabinet.”
There was a long pause. He heard water running, maybe a bathtub filling. Then there was the unmistakable click and grind of a Zippo lighter. She breathed in, then out.
“Eleven sixty-four.”
“That’s the code?”
“The last time I opened it.”
“Which was when?”
“Three months ago,” she said. “Is there anything else, Inspector Cain?”
“Was Castelli left-handed?”
“Yes,” she said, and hung up.
Cain gave Fischer the code and she punched it in. Grassley filmed as she turned the handle and swung the door open.
“All right,” she said. “Safe inventory. You getting this?”
“You don’t have to ask,” Grassley said.
Fischer began to unload the safe, setting each item on the little shelf that had folded down when she opened the liquor cabinet doors. She set out fifteen envelopes, each thick with unbundled cash. Then came life insurance policies, a will, and a scrap of paper marked with Castelli’s scrawl. Cain picked that one up by its corner and studied it. The mayor had listed three Chinatown banks by their addresses. Next to each entry was a date—consecutive days within the last week.
“I can just about guess what these are,” Fischer said. “The only question is whether it’s him and Melissa, or him and Mona.”
Cain looked up. She was setting out five unmarked DVDs, each in a clear plastic jewel case.
“We’ll give them to Computer Forensics,” Cain said. “Unless you want them.”
“You take them,” Fischer said. “We’ll take the cash—we can run the serial numbers. If it’s dirty, and from a known source, we’ll want to know.”
“That’s got to be—what?” Cain said. “A hundred thousand?”
“More,” Fischer said. “I used to work bank robberies. That’s one seventy-five, two hundred.”
“This is a city office. If it’s public money, we should find out before we take it.”
“Call Melissa back,” Fischer said.
Cain redialed, on speaker this time. They listened to the phone ring, five times, six times, before she picked up.
“What now?”