“Castelli’s safe—is that his personal stuff, or is there city property in it?”
“If it’s in the safe, it’s personal. Harry did everything by the book.”
“If we found cash, it’s not the city’s money?”
“I said it’s personal,” Melissa answered. She hung up, and Cain put his phone away. Grassley and Fischer were each watching him.
“Before we hand that off to you, we should get some kind of receipt, I guess.”
Fischer checked her watch.
“There’s a kid in the U.S. attorney’s office, just sitting on his hands,” she said. “I can get him here in an hour with the paperwork.”
Cain looked at the stack of cash on the shelf. Giving it to Fischer felt wrong, but he knew it stood a better chance of disappearing if he gave it to his own department.
21
IT WAS ALMOST midnight and Cain was driving alone, Golden Gate Park just a shadow on his left. He could see the rain on his windshield, the shutter-flashes of electricity from the Muni bus in front of him. He hadn’t heard back from Chun or Grassley, and Lucy still wasn’t picking up the phone. He’d turned on his police scanner, just for the company of the other cops’ voices.
There’d been a holdup at the corner of Geary and Van Ness. Two suspects fleeing on foot, and four units responding. A stabbing at the base of the Bay Bridge, but the victim was sitting up in the ambulance and talking. No need even to alert Homicide Detail.
Cain switched off the scanner. Maybe it was better to listen to the rain. But even without the scanner, his head was buzzing. The CSI teams had taken truckloads of evidence from the house, and nearly all of it would be useless. They’d taken less from Castelli’s City Hall office, and while some of it might help fill in a picture of the man before he died, nothing explained why or how the shots were fired. Useless information was worse than none at all, because he’d waste weeks figuring out if he needed it or not.
Cain knew he was at an impasse until he could look at the lab results.
Tonight, at 850 Bryant, he’d gone around the building to lean on the forensic lab chiefs. Only the ballistics crew had been cooperative, Dr. Revchuk and his two interns promising a striation report within three days. But otherwise, he’d gotten nothing. No reduction in the waiting times, no bump ahead in line. Six weeks for the toxicology, which had to go to a CHP lab in Sacramento. That put them into March. Three weeks for fingerprints, and nearly the same for DNA. No one could even give him an estimate on the document analysis.
Standing next to his car in Lucy’s driveway, listening to the hood tick as it cooled off, he looked up at the front of the house, scanning for lights inside. Nothing, except the faintest glow from the living room. He smelled the air and caught a hint of wood smoke, and then he understood.
He went up the steps and put his key in the lock. There was a shadow on the doormat, and that stopped him from going any farther. He touched the object with his foot but couldn’t identify it in the dark. He clicked on his flashlight and crouched.
She’d left a pair of tennis shoes on the doormat. Women’s shoes, size six. He’d seen them in her closet but never on her feet. Now, in the LED glare of his light, he saw why she’d left them outside: they were caked with mud. In the mud were broken leaves and blades of cut grass. He stepped inside and closed the door after himself, then leaned against it with one hand while he took off his own shoes so that he wouldn’t wake her.
He found her asleep in an overstuffed chair in front of the fireplace. Her head on the armrest, one palm under her cheek. Legs curled up onto the cushion, and half her body beneath a tartan blanket. He tiptoed upstairs and knelt at the safe to put his gun away. Then he came back downstairs, socked feet silent on the wood floors.
The fire she’d built was mostly burned down to embers, piled high around the andirons and casting their shadows out into the room. He sat on the carpet in front of her and used the poker to stir up the flames. He looked around for another log to put on, but there was nothing. She’d burned through all the wood she’d found, and the fire in front of him was the last of it. She must have used that afternoon’s edition of theExaminer as tinder, but she’d saved the front section. It was on the floor next to her chair, and even in the soft light he had no trouble reading the headline.
SUICIDE!
CASTELLI TAKES OWN LIFE