The Lost Daughter

by Lucretia Grindle

  She got up and went into the bathroom. Locked the door and ran the taps, both of them, on full, and looked into the mirror, almost expecting to see nothing there.

  * * *

  Forty minutes later when her phone rings, Anna is sitting on one of the beds holding Kristin’s bear. She feels Pallioti’s hand on her elbow as she stands up. He still looks less to her like a policeman than an undertaker. Or a priest. With gold cuff links. And a gray tie, flecked with silver, as if he’s going to a wedding.

  “Remember,” he says. And she nods.

  As if he has to tell her. As if she doesn’t know—have it running like rats through her head—along with all the other little verses from the Book of Hours.

  The best lie is almost the truth. Just trimmed—to change the shadow it throws.

  “Si, sono sola,” she says after she pushes the green button on her phone. “Cèrto, che sono sola, Antonio. Non ti ho mài mentito.”

  Yes, I’m alone. Of course I’m alone. I’ve never lied to you.

  Pallioti is surprised at how untouched her accent is, as if her own language has been sleeping inside her all these years. He watches Anna Carson as she bends her head, holding the phone. As she tells Antonio that she understands. That she’s sorry. That she has thought about what he said, and knows she owes him, and that she will do anything.

  It’s not just her voice. Her face changes, too, and suddenly he realizes he’s seeing Angela Vari. Surfacing like a drowned body. One that has rocked, and chafed, and finally slipped the weights that held it down.

  “What do you want me to do?” she asks. “Just tell me. Just tell me, Antonio, and I’ll do it. I’ll do anything.” She pauses. Then winces, and whispers, “I love you, too.”

  There is a silence. Pallioti feels his heart shrink. He does not need to hear what she says next. He already knows, they all know, what the price will be.

  “Sì. Sì,” Anna Carson says. “Cèrto. I promise. I’ll come. I’ll be there, tomorrow. Alone.”

  * * *

  “I can’t do it. You do know that?”

  It was a question, but didn’t sound like it. Enzo looked at Pallioti and said nothing.

  He was right, of course. They could no more let Anna Carson walk down that farm track than fly. Even if they did believe Antonio would do as he said—send Kristin out of the house, set her free as a bird the second Anna reached the front door. The second, he’d said, that she came close enough to kiss.

  Anna had not been able to ask about Barbara without giving herself away, and Antonio had said nothing about her, one way or the other. Neither Pallioti nor Enzo seriously thought she was an accomplice, but the truth was they didn’t know. Any more than they knew whether she was alive or dead or somewhere in between. Or even there. Technically the same could be said of Kristin. Anna’s request for proof of life had been laughed off. Don’t you trust me, Carina? Antonio had asked.

  In the movies they would creep across the fields by night, have Anna distract him, and with the magical help of the Angels, or some other squad cobbled together and rushed to Ferrara in secret, ambush the farmhouse. Free Barbara Barelli and Kristin and whomever else might be in there without harming a hair on anyone’s head.

  But this was not the movies. It was the overlit hallway of a hotel in Ferrara some twenty miles from a frozen field in the middle of nowhere where an almost certainly armed, definitely angry, possibly crazy, man who had probably killed before at least once was holding one, and more likely two, women hostage in a derelict farmhouse.

  Pallioti sighed. It was the very scenario he had hoped somehow to avoid. Hoped he could twist and turn his way out of. But it was no good. He and Enzo had come to the end, and both of them knew it. The irony was that they would be congratulated. They’d found Kenneth Carson’s wife and his daughter. They’d established contact with the probable abductor, and determined his price. In short they had set the game in motion. Now it was time—and perhaps, to be honest, well past time—for them to step back and let the professionals do their job.

  DIGOS, the special intelligence police, would be alerted. There would be a SWAT team and, because television expected it, and it would cover their asses afterward, a hostage negotiator. There would probably be helicopters. And combat uniforms. And night vision goggles. And stun grenades. And then, just before dawn, there would be silence.

  Followed by a lot of noise. Most of which would be shooting.

  The hall carpet was slightly stained, as if someone had tipped over a room service tray, spilled dregs of coffee, or possibly red wine. Somewhere near the elevator a lightbulb was buzzing. Enzo nodded.

  “Are you going to call Rome directly?” The words felt sticky on his tongue.

  Pallioti gave a sour little smile.

  “Cèrto.” He shrugged, his shoulders jumping under the black coat that was so attached to him it was a second skin. A veritable cashmere pelt. “They’ll know in five minutes anyway.” He began to punch the number. “And insist on taking over. So,” he asked, putting his phone to his ear, “what’s the point in wasting time?”

  * * *

  In the end, Pallioti was able to arrange for them to be there. His clout, it seemed, extended that far.

  Having Anna Carson on site might be necessary in any case, and he had argued that it was inhumane to make Hedwige sit by herself in a hotel room waiting to hear whether Barbara Barelli was dead or alive. Inhumane and not very intelligent. Barring locking her in a cell in the Ferrara Questura—an option the fat man seemed to have considered—it was better to have her on site where they could at least control her. Make certain, for instance, that she was not using the hotel switchboard—Pallioti had politely but firmly confiscated her cell phone—to wake any number of Barbara’s legal colleagues, or the local television correspondents. The fat man had made his humming sound, and Pallioti suspected it was the logic of this argument rather than any appeal to the human heart that triumphed.

  “We get in, we get out. We get it done before anyone knows it’s happened. Then it never did,” he announced.

  That was how it was going to work. The farmhouse would be taken just before first light. Even Kenneth Carson would not know what was going on until shortly after breakfast, when his wife and daughter were returned to him. The happy family reunited. As for himself and Enzo, they would be observers only. Privileged to answer the questions asked of them, then shut up and step back and watch how it was done in the big, wide, real world.

  Hearing that, Pallioti had barely suppressed a snort. Holding his tongue had been too much to ask.

  “Well, old friend,” he’d snapped, “in that case let’s just avoid justice, and hope it all runs ticktock, like clockwork. Let’s hope there’s nothing nasty. No little corrections. No salt sprinkled in the wounds.”

  “Don’t be petulant, Sandro,” his friend had replied. “It doesn’t suit you.”

  * * *

  Anna and Hedwige now had their own rooms. Pallioti had been given some sort of penthouse apartment on the roof, either because of the sheer impressiveness of his credentials or the cut of his suit. Enzo figured it was fifty-fifty either way, but was leaning toward the latter. The more banal truth was they probably just had nowhere else to stick him. The hotel wasn’t as big as it looked and there seemed to be some sort of mini-convention going on. When they finally went downstairs, the bar was so crowded that Pallioti took one look at it, shied like a nervous horse, and announced he was taking a walk. Enzo watched him through the glass doors. A freezing fog had lowered over the city. The fur coats scurried back and forth. Pallioti passed through the castle floodlights, black as a crow, and disappeared toward the cathedral.

  Enzo had not been tempted to join him. He couldn’t in any case. Someone had to keep an eye on Anna Carson. There was, after all, no guarantee that Antonio Tomaselli wouldn’t decide not to wait until domani, but would simply come to Ferrara and fetch her. That he hadn’t sensed a trap and would move first. He might have some trouble finding her, but
he wouldn’t have much. Especially if she called Kristin’s phone and left a message telling him where she was.

  The thought turned Enzo toward the elevator, and made him fidget on the ride up. He’d checked on Hedwige an hour earlier. She had ordered dinner and said she just wanted to watch TV. Propped against the headboard with the remote in her hand, the meal untouched on the desk, she’d looked at him with a vacant stare that suggested she wouldn’t be seeing much of anything, except the movies that ran in her own head. He’d opened his mouth to say he was sure everything would be fine, then had thought better of it and backed quietly out of the room. Now he stopped outside Anna’s door and listened. Then he raised his hand.

  Anna heard the knock. It didn’t occur to her for a moment that it was anyone but Enzo Saenz.

  She had thought she wanted to be alone, and was surprised to find out she didn’t. When she opened the door, he stood with his hands dug into his pockets. She had seen him without his leather jacket last night, but he looked more like himself with it on. As if it was attached to him, the way some people’s sunglasses were attached to them. Propped on their heads even when it was raining or dark. She undid the chain, then stood back to let him in.

  As she did, she caught a glimpse of herself in the big mirror over the hotel dresser. Ferrara’s damp had turned her hair curly again and the dye had made not only it, but her eyes, a different color. Darker. Greener. For the first time in thirty years, an older version of Angela looked back at her.

  “Have you called him? You might as well tell me.”

  Enzo had taken her BlackBerry, but there was a perfectly good landline sitting on the desk. Pallioti had ordered the switchboard to block outgoing calls, but you never knew. Everyone was open to persuasion. Anna shook her head. It was pointless to admit she’d thought about it.

  “Where do you get them?” she asked suddenly. “Your eyes? I’ve never seen that color before. From your mother?”

  “Father.”

  Enzo turned to the window, pulling the heavy curtains that were already closed tighter, then pulled at the edges, overlapping them as if he was afraid the fog might creep in like a vampire.

  “Your nose, too?”

  He nodded, his back still to her.

  “Are they going to kill him?”

  Enzo’s hands stopped moving. The words felt like bubbles of glass. She hadn’t meant to let them out.

  “No,” Enzo said. “Not unless he forces them to. They’re not the BR. They don’t carry out executions. All they want to do is get Kristin out.”

  “And Barbara.”

  “Yes, and Barbara. If she’s there.”

  “She’s there.”

  He turned around.

  “How do you know? Did he say something? Something you didn’t tell us? Think. It’s important. It could—”

  “Save people’s lives?” She smiled, looking up at him from where she sat on the bed. “Are you telling me my speaking up could save someone’s life? Is that what you mean?”

  “No,” he said. “No. I’m sorry.”

  “Antonio didn’t say anything,” she said a second later. “About Barbara. I just know. I don’t want him to die,” she added. “I never wanted anyone to die.”

  “No one will die,” Enzo said. “We aren’t Brigate Rosse.” She looked at him. “This is different, I promise.”

  Her bark of laughter was sharp and unexpected.

  “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

  Wednesday, February 10

  It was half past three in the morning. Darkness hung across the fields and rose from the bend of the stream. Shreds of fog wavered at the edge of the headlights as they crept up the road.

  They had passed barricades as soon as they left the larger two-lane highway—a series of sawhorses bearing the neon logos of an electricity company, and highway signs announcing NIGHT WORK ROAD CLOSED, and pointing toward a detour and apologizing for any inconvenience. There was even a number to call in case of complaints. Pallioti imagined an ancient black phone perched on an unmanned desk somewhere in the bowels of Rome ringing unanswered into the dark.

  The men who waved them through wore overalls and jackets bearing the same logo, their faces barely visible under the hard hats, the earpieces they muttered into almost certainly not connected to a work crew. Or at least not the sort one might expect. A helicopter flyby had taken place a half hour earlier. It had been calculated that they could risk one, and was generally agreed it had been worth it. There were no lights visible in the farmhouse, but the infrared picked up bodies. Three of them in separate rooms. Two upstairs, one down. Which meant Barbara Barelli was alive. They already knew she was there. Casts had been taken just before midnight from the verge of the road. The tracks matched her tires.

  Half a mile inside the barricades, Pallioti left his car as instructed. Then he, Enzo, Anna, and Hedwige were ushered into an electricity van. It rumbled down the road for five minutes before stopping. When the door opened, the man who climbed in did not introduce himself. He shook hands with Pallioti and Enzo, nodded at the two women, then moved to a control panel with a series of screens on it, and flipped a switch. A picture faded in, blurry and greened. They could see the house, its bottom row of windows shuttered, the top ones staring down onto the empty yard. A single tree stood to one side, its naked branches resting on the roof of the long, low building to the left. The man tapped it with his finger.

  “Here,” he said. “The barn. That’s where we assume the cars are. From the plans we were able to get ahold of—they date back twenty years to when it was last lived in—there’s no access from the house. So unless he’s busted a hole in the wall, Tomaselli will have to come out the front door if he tries to get to a vehicle.”

  “What about the back?”

  The man nodded at Pallioti and flipped another switch, bringing up a second screen that showed the back of the house.

  “There’s a door into what we assume is still the kitchen,” he said. “There’s no record of any work being done, so unless he’s turned himself into a master builder, the plans we have are basically good. The stairs run up from the kitchen. The front door leads to an entryway between the two main rooms, kitchen right, sitting room left. We’re guessing the women are upstairs. So we go in both doors at once. Three men each. Assuming the downstairs body is Tomaselli, the back team goes straight up and gets the women out, while the front team subdues our friend. Or vice versa.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter much. We have someone on the roof of the barn. Another two guys on the hill in front of the house, and two more below the berm of the stream behind.” He turned around. “So it should be neat and clean. Everyone’s getting into place about now. It’s a little tricky because there’s not much cover, but believe me, these guys know what they’re doing. Give us a half hour, ladies,” he added, smiling at Hedwige and Anna, “and we’ll have your loved ones safe and sound.”

  He stood, gave a little bow, and ducked out the back of the truck. The driver slid from the front and took his place at the screens. Hedwige moved over beside him, mesmerized by the wavering green images that made the farmhouse and the tree and the barn look as though they were in outer space, or part of one of those villages flooded by reservoirs. As if water or sci-fi goo swirled around them instead of air. Pallioti followed the man out the door. A moment later Enzo Saenz followed him.

  It was refreshingly cold after the stuffy interiors of the car and the van. Pallioti was standing on the narrow road. Ahead of them two more vans were pulled up, both bearing the power company’s logo. Enzo wondered if they used it for all of these situations, or if they had others. Plumbing companies, or perhaps pest removal firms. He hoped there was a power line around here somewhere, in case anyone did come by. Or at least an underground cable.

  Pallioti shivered inside his coat, flexed his gloved hands, and started down the road, heading for what was obviously the command vehicle. Enzo started to follow, then thought better of it, and tur
ned back and opened the van door.

  Hedwige was still sitting beside the driver, watching the screens intently, as if she could pull Barbara out of the house by sheer willpower. Anna sat on the hard bench that ran along the opposite side. She glanced at Enzo as he sidled past to bend between Hedwige and the driver, watching the screen over their shoulders. All at once the pictures flared—the yard, the farmhouse, and the twisted outline of the tree jumping like startled animals.

  A swarm of dark figures, ant men, appeared from nowhere, running. Then, as the second team hit the back door of the farmhouse, the front door burst open. A man pushed a girl out. He had one arm around her neck. With his other hand, he held a gun to her head.

  “Antonio.”

  Enzo heard the whisper behind him. At the same moment Hedwige started, gripping his arm. On the other screen, Barbara Barelli was being hustled out the back of the house, held by both arms and half dragged toward the edge of the picture. The front team of ant men had stopped dead and were backing toward the tree. As the man’s mouth moved, shouting something at them, Enzo felt a blast of cold air. He spun around. The van door was open and Anna Carson was gone.

  At first he couldn’t find her. He looked left, right, up, and down the road. Then Enzo let his eyes sweep over the rutted darkness of the overgrown field that stretched toward the farm. She was already halfway across it, running hard. He leapt the irrigation ditch he had almost driven into the day before. Enzo was fit and twenty years younger, but Angela was fast.

  She felt her blood pumping. Felt her heart and arms, her back and legs in every stride. The earth was frozen and stubbled. Her feet hit cracked ice, imprinted frost, but she kept her eyes ahead, focused on the fading dark. In the thrumming of her breath, she heard it over and over, and over again—Antonio, Antonio, Antonio—and knew she was running the race of her life.