“I trust you,” he said. “We don’t have to check it just for me.”
“Still,” Fischer said. She began to walk and he followed her. “The coffee’s not the worst. And it’s free.”
They headed down a set of cement steps that he hardly remembered climbing last night, to a path that traversed the back end of the quad.
“How’re you holding up?” she asked him.
“Okay,” he said.
He hadn’t known Grassley well, but he’d liked him. And if this hadn’t happened, they would have come to know each other like brothers. He’d been looking forward to that. Not just to arriving at the point of complete trust, but also to the long road they’d have walked to get there. The years of lunches at the Western; the late-night coffee in Mel’s or at Lori’s. All of it would have been worthwhile.
They reached the cafeteria, and he held the door for Fischer.
“The autopsy’s this morning,” he said. “It’s at nine, and I’d like to go.”
“Of course.”
They were up early, and there was enough time between their coffee and the autopsy to run one other errand. They walked to Fischer’s car, each of them carrying a paper cup, and Cain told her about the girl in the casket. He told her about Fonteroy’s video, and how he and Grassley had followed it to the grave in El Carmelo. He hadn’t meant to share this with her until he had more proof, but now he didn’t have a choice. As of last night, he had no partner.
“You were standing next to the excavator when you got the call from Nagata?” Fischer asked.
“That’s right.”
“And you think the girl in the casket could be the girl in the pictures?”
“We might find that out today, if Henry Newcomb did his job and got a lab.”
“So the very moment you found the girl, but before you could open the casket, you got a call. You got reassigned to the blackmail case,” Fischer said. “We’re supposed to think that’s a coincidence?”
“I don’t know.”
“Of course it’s not.”
“That’s where I am,” Cain said. “But I can’t figure out what it means. Castelli asked Nagata for a name and got me. He wanted the best inspector in the department, and somehow that’s me.”
“Who told him?”
“Nagata.”
They walked through the half-empty parking lot in silence until they reached Fischer’s car. Cain got into the passenger seat.
“We’ll need to think about this,” Fischer said. “We’ll need to think about it very carefully.”
“You think it was her.”
“I’m not saying that.”
“Good,” Cain said. “Because Nagata wouldn’t be in on something like that. It makes no sense. If Castelli had stayed mayor forever, she would’ve been the chief of police. If he’d gone back to Washington, or become governor—no telling where she could’ve gone. But when he died, her star set. If Nagata picked me, it’s because I’ve got the most seniority in Homicide. That’s it.”
“Which is why we need to think,” Fischer said. “Someone wanted SFPD on the blackmail case. That means someone knew that SFPD already had the casket.”
“Maybe we’re looking at it the wrong way,” Cain said. “We’re asking: Why did they want me on the blackmail case? But what if that’s the wrong question?”
“What’s the right one?”
He chose his words carefully, articulating the question for the first time.
“Why did they send the blackmail letter right after I got the exhumation order? Keep in mind, the court’s order was a public document. The minute I got it, anyone keeping an eye out would have known.”
As Fischer drove past the guard booth, Cain leaned over to see if the man inside was awake. He was upright and alert, and his uniform was crisp. Cain tipped him a two-fingered wave, and then they were on the road that wound around the bluffs, snaking toward the west side of the island to reach the bridge on-ramp.
“That’s brilliant,” Fischer said. “That’s the question.”
“You think?”
“They blackmailed Castelli after they knew the body was coming up—because, what if they knew something about the body was going to lead back to him?”
“Then they’d only have a narrow window,” Cain said. “If they made it look like he shot himself right before all that came out—a girl in a casket, buried alive—who’d look twice?”
“We nearly didn’t,” Fischer said. “It almost had us.”
“They had to get the ball rolling before we arrested him, or else they wouldn’t be able to reach him. They weren’t blackmailing him at all. They meant to kill him, and the letter was just cover.”
“But what would be on the body?” Fischer asked. “Thirty years underground, what would connect him?”
He looked over at Fischer. He’d forgotten how much he’d kept back from her.
“She was pregnant.”
“You think it’s his.”
“That’s what we’re going to find out.”
She sped up and steered around the curving ramp until they merged onto the bridge. Then the city was stretched out in front of them, the steep hills and the lights glittering against a dark dawn.
29