by Grace Brophy
Below, Rita Minelli lay supine on the stone floor, her head pillowed on the first step, her eyes closed, the body recumbent as though already laid to rest. Her flared black wool skirt, which had been pushed up to mid-thigh, modestly covered her genitals. Black stockings and lace panties were pulled down about her ankles, emphasizing the winter whiteness of her calves and thighs. A pair of black, spike-heeled pumps was solidly attached to her feet, the needlelike toes pointing upward as if in supplication. Her upper garment, a black wool cape, was still buttoned at the neck and showed no sign of disturbance. However she had died, there had been little bleeding. Only a small smear of dried blood, no more than three inches in diameter, was evident on the outer edge of the bottom altar step. “A tableau vivant,” Cenni uttered, more to himself than to Batori, who was standing behind him.
“D’accordo!” Batori replied as though Cenni had been speaking to him. “The murderer certainly tried to create the appearance of rape, but not very successfully.”
“Is her position and clothing exactly as you found them?”
“No one told me it was your case, Alex, or I would have followed standard procedure,” Batori responded defensively, picking up the implied criticism in Cenni’s question. “The call came from Fulvio Russo’s office. But she’s as close as possible to the way I found her,” he said, finally answering the question. “Forensics took pictures before I got here.”
“How did she die?” Cenni asked, this time less aggressively.
“Until I do the autopsy it’s just conjecture. Right now, I would say a sharp blow to the back of the cranium, just above the right ear. Not much doubt of it! There was no external bleeding, but when I get her on the table I’m sure I’ll find extensive intercranial injury.”
Cenni interrupted. “No external bleeding! Isn’t that blood?” he asked, pointing to the brown stain on the edge of the step.
“I found a small cut on her right temple, Alex, and a slight bruising of the forehead, hidden by her hair. Probably incurred when she fell. The cut bled only slightly. No, I’m sure the blow to the back of her head killed her. Perhaps not immediately, but it definitely rendered her unconscious. I can give you more positive answers after the autopsy.”
“Am I to assume then, that the murderer hit her on the back of the head, rolled her over, and raped her while she was unconscious, possibly dead? And where’s the murder weapon?” he asked, not waiting for a response to his first question.
“We have it here, Dottore,” the more assured of the two forensic investigators replied, holding up an object that was packaged and sealed in clear plastic.
Cenni frowned. “I would have preferred it if you had left the crime scene as you found it until I arrived. But no matter,” he said, shaking off his irritation. “Tell me about the weapon.” He extended his hand to receive the package.
He could see through the wrapping that he’d been handed a statue of the Virgin, some eighteen inches high, mounted on a heavy base. The electric blue of the robe and the garishly painted face showed through the plastic. The newspapers will have a field day with this one, he thought. AMERICANA ASSASSINATA DALLA VERGINE was sure to be one of the headlines.
“How do you know it’s the murder weapon?”
“The base is white plaster. It’s cracked, recently from the look of it. And Dottor Batori found a paint chip in the victim’s hair,” he added defensively, nodding toward the pathologist. “He also told us that the base is heavy enough to have caused the damage to the cranium. We found the statue lying two feet from the body. It’s the weapon.”
“That’s correct, Alex,” chimed in Batori. “But I’ll compare the bruising on the cranium to the size of the base for confirmation. It’ll be in the postmortem report.”
Cenni realized from the resentful expressions on their faces that he was out of order. He had some sympathy for the three civil servants. They had been called in by Fulvio Russo, Assisi’s commissario, to do a job and had followed his instructions. It’s not their responsibility to figure out territorial politics, Cenni acknowledged to himself.
“Mi dispiace, a few more questions and I can get you all out of here,” he said civilly. “You have a lot of followup work to do today and tomorrow’s Easter. You’ll want to get home to your families.”
Inspector Ottaviani watched in admiration as the tension dissolved. A mi dispiace here, a few smiles there, and we’re all friends again, she thought. The commissario had a reputation in police circles for charming his subordinates into line and his superiors into agreement. Some of her fellow officers, all women, claimed that a single Cenni smile could elicit a confession of homicide from a pursesnatcher. What mattered to those who worked for him though, was that the apologies and the smiles were sincere. Viewing an uncontaminated crime scene before the medical examiner and the forensic investigators went to work was an article of faith for Cenni, but his reputation for fairness was well founded. He would hold his fire for the person responsible. God help that ass, Russo! Elena thought with some pleasure.
Cenni said, “Marcello, what can you tell me about the time of death? It would appear that rigor is established.”
“When I arrived at a little after nine, rigor had completely set in. Death occurred at least twelve to fourteen hours before then, I’d say, probably earlier. Estimating time of death from body temperature and degree of rigor is always tricky, you know that, Alex. It’s always best to have other evidence for corroboration. Sergeant Antolini tells us that the victim was first missed at seven last night. There’s a sign posted out front that the cemetery gates are locked at five in the winter, so we can probably assume she was dead before five. And if not before five, then definitely before seven, when her family reported her missing.”
Cenni groaned inwardly. Typical Batori! Estimating time of death from a sign on the cemetery gates and an unsubstantiated comment from an unidentified witness. He said aloud, to no one in particular, and again sharply, “Is this true? Had Minelli been missing since seven last night?”
Sergeant Antolini grimaced, glancing over at Batori with some grievance, before breaking the silence. “Not exactly, Commissario. No one in her family reported her missing. They didn’t even know she was dead until Commissario Russo telephoned them shortly after the body was found. What I actually said to Dottor Batori was that Count Casati told Commissario Russo that the family had expected Signora Minelli to accompany them to the Good Friday procession at seven and to join them later for dinner. She never showed up, but they said they weren’t concerned.” Cenni noticed the emphasis on said. “They’d heard she was one of the processionists, so the family wasn’t surprised when she didn’t join them.” So there! was written all over her face.
“The family knows then that she’s dead and how she died?” Cenni asked.
“I believe that Commissario Russo informed the family of the circumstances of her death,” Antolini replied.
Another of his rules broken, Elena thought to herself. The family will be well supplied with alibis before we get to them.
“What about a handbag? I don’t see one.”
The technicians and Batori turned in tandem to look at the sergeant. Her turn again!
“The woman who found the body—Signora Orlic—she brought it back to the station with her. Said she was afraid someone would take it and she’d get the blame. Commissario Russo locked it in his desk.”
“I think we can wrap up here,” Cenni announced gruffly. “When can I have the exhibits and forensic report?”
“On Monday,” the senior technician replied. “Late Monday,” he amended, looking at the other technician to be sure they were in agreement.
“I’ll do the autopsy Monday morning. You can have my report by the end of the day,” Batori piped up, not waiting to be asked. Worried that I might ask him to work on Easter, Cenni surmised.
“Good. I’ll see your reports on Monday, no later than five,” Cenni emphasized, dismissing the technicians with a nod.
He turned
to the sergeant, his demeanor and voice noticeably softening, or so it seemed to Elena.
“Sergeant Antolini, you can send the attendants up to remove the body. Let’s section off this area of the cemetery, this tier and the one below. If any of the families want to leave flowers they can give them to your officers. If they have complaints, they can call my office. I’d like a key to the side gate and to the vault if you have an extra,” he said, still addressing the sergeant. “If not please have them made.”
And then to Batori, “Scusi, Marcello, I cut you off earlier. You were saying that appearance and reality might be at odds here. I tend to agree. Is there any evidence beyond the disarrangement of her clothing to suggest rape? Bruising of the genitalia, body fluids?”
“Nothing from a cursory examination, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t rape or intended rape. The rapist may have been scared off. Again, the postmortem will tell us more.” Batori lowered his voice, either in respect for the dead or because he didn’t want the others to hear. “One thing for sure, Alex. She’s pregnant. Two months, possibly more.”
5
CENNI TOOK A deep breath and then exhaled, releasing some of the tension that had been building since he’d first received the questore’s call. The others had gone below to make arrangements for removal of the body and he was alone. Even the sun had retreated, taking with it its little bit of warmth. He shivered, more from the austere beauty of the crypt than from the cold. It had none of the baroque ornamentation that decorated many Umbrian gravesites, no little tokens of family affection: pictures of the deceased covered with heavy plastic to protect them from the elements, statuettes of patron saints, terra cotta figurines of the Virgin holding the baby Jesus. There were no amulets warding off Satan and no flowers, wilted or fresh, filling the exquisitely carved stone vases.
He had a policeman’s superstitious belief, borne out in recent years by forensic science, that the murderer invariably leaves his signature at the crime scene. But apart from the body of Rita Minelli, the prima facie evidence of murder, there was little in the Casati vault to identify her killer. Rough impregnable stone, the sole building element of the vault, was not likely to yield clear fingerprints. Until a few days ago, the weather had been unseasonably warm; then the temperature had dipped to below zero Celsius, and the crusted earth surrounding the vault was too hard for footsteps to make an imprint. A light dusting of snow had covered Assisi in the early morning hours, but the snow had not begun to fall until after midnight, long after Rita Minelli had died, and it had melted quickly. The vault itself was surprisingly clean of debris, only a few decayed leaves and the omnipresent blessings of pigeon droppings. He surmised that the vault was swept regularly, and he made a note to find out when it had been cleaned last. He looked down, finally, at the dead body, drawing a second deep breath.
The fastidious disarrangement of the clothing was an artifice. Batori had found no bruising of the external genitalia or semen in the vestibule of the vagina in his preliminary examination, and in Cenni’s view, it was doubtful that the medical examiner would find anything additional to establish rape when he had Minelli on the table. Victims of rape do not go silently to their graves. Their last moments of suffering and fear are imprinted on their faces. Rita Minelli’s face reflected quiet repose.
He thought of his father, who had died in his sleep of a stroke without uttering a sigh. His was the peaceful death that people pray for, yet his mother had found him at seven in the morning lying next to her in bed, his face frozen into a grimace of pain. The undertaker had tried unsuccessfully to rearrange the twisted features into the gentle lines they had loved.
The blinds were drawn and three candles were burning on the library table set against the wall when he and Renato had gone into their parents’ bedroom to view their father’s body. Alex had trouble adjusting his eyes to the dim light, and as he left the room he tripped on a footstool that his mother kept near the bed. He giggled and his brother, who always had a sense of occasion, kicked him in the shins to keep him quiet. He didn’t feel any guilt, however. The person lying there, dressed in his father’s best gray suit, face contorted by suffering, bore no resemblance to the man who had kissed and hugged him the previous evening.
However Rita Minelli had died, it had been with neither fear nor suffering, of that Alex was certain. It was possible, of course, that she had been struck down from behind and then raped while unconscious or dead. Necrophilia was not unheard of in Italy and Minelli had died in a cemetery. The case most often cited in police circles was that of the gravedigger who had begun by touching corpses to achieve sexual arousal and had ended by having sex with hundreds of women before he buried them. The most recent case had occurred more than fifteen years earlier, somewhere in the Veneto, and had involved necrophilia after disinterment. The corpse of a fifteen-year-old girl had been dug up and violated just a few days after her burial. Neither culprit had engaged in necrophilic homicide, however, which as Cenni knew from the literature was rare, despite the attention given to it by the press and to its notorious practitioners, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Citizen X, all of whom had achieved sexual satisfaction by mutilating their victims after killing them. At the least, if sexual sadism were involved in Minelli’s death, Cenni would have expected to see bite marks on the body.
He put on a pair of gloves before kneeling to examine the corpse. Batori could be careless and might have missed something. He checked the upper torso and neck for signs of bruising or bite marks. There were none, but there was a long black strand of hair or fiber caught in her left earring. He removed it gently, taking care not to tear it. It was black like Minelli’s hair, and perhaps Batori had thought it was just that, but the texture, even to the naked eye, was closer to animal hair. There was a small knot at the end of the fiber, possibly a piece of fringe from a scarf, Cenni thought, as he placed it carefully in one of the small envelopes that he carried. He’d have to warn Batori to look for similar fibers when he did the postmortem.
He examined her clothes carefully, hoping to find more of the same fibers. Under her cape she was dressed for a liaison. Ecru lace see-through blouse, matching camisole, scanty silk panties, and garter belt, all designed for enticement, hardly appropriate for visiting a cemetery on a cold March day, particularly on Good Friday, he thought. Had she planned to meet her lover in the vault? Possibly he was a married man? It was a gruesome and uncomfortable place for a sexual encounter, but late on a winter’s evening they would have found privacy. Assisi was the proverbial small town despite the millions of tourists who visited it annually. The permanent residents were few and they knew each other’s secrets, and they talked. He suspected that in Assisi the cemetery was one of the few places where a couple could meet clandestinely.
The tidiness of it all was baffling. The skirt pushed up to the hips, yet carefully arranged to cover the dead woman’s genitals. Minelli had been wearing a garter belt underneath her panties. If rape were intended, why had the rapist taken the time to roll down Minelli’s stockings. A leg fetish, perhaps, yet nothing else at the crime scene suggested a sexual ritual. The choice of murder weapon was likewise baffling. It was doubtful that the murderer would have brought such a weapon with him. The idea was outlandish and the statue of the Virgin would have been difficult to conceal. Looking around him at the Cimabue reproduction and the pristine and expensive stone vases, Cenni wondered how anything so commonplace could have found its way into this memorial to taste and money.
After fifteen years with the police, he’d learned to trust his instincts. He was sure that the rape scene was a staged diversion to mislead the police and was just as sure that a woman had created it. Just then he heard the voices of Elena and the mortuary attendants in the background. They were returning to remove the body. He took one more look at Rita Minelli before standing. Was Batori right, he wondered? Had she known about the baby? Had she been happy? He hoped so.
Alex Cenni was different from many of his colleagues and, at times, regret
ted it. The years of viewing battered and mutilated bodies had dulled his colleagues’ stolid imaginations and, in some cases, their souls, allowing them to view murder victims with detachment. The worst of them, those he actively avoided, treated the dead with disdain, even with brutality. But after fifteen years with the Polizia di Stato, thirteen of them investigating homicides, Cenni still felt the burden of recognition of the dead. They were his teammates from the football fields, the waiters who brought him coffee in the cafés, the neighbors who greeted him on the streets. And because he still harbored a residue of Italian chauvinism, women and children created the greatest burden. Five years ago, he had done what few Italian men do voluntarily: He had gone to see a psychiatrist, a friend from his university years in Bologna. He was concerned about the personal attachment he felt to each new victim. His friend, the Freudian, had focused on Chiara.
Alex had met Chiara in his first year at the University of Bologna, in the registrar’s office. They were each heading for the same line at the same time. He’d jumped over a trashcan trying to get there first and had landed on his knees. She had laughed uproariously, peals of delight that invited everyone within hearing distance to join in.
“Perhaps you should add Western Civility to your roster,” she’d said jokingly, offering him a hand to help him stand. After that they became inseparable. At the end of their first year of law school, they’d shocked their parents and even some of their friends by living together. They’d planned to marry after receiving their law degrees.
But those years of happiness also coincided with the era of kidnappings. Everyone who was anyone in Italy had been vulnerable. On the right or left, it didn’t seem to matter. Sometimes the kidnappers wanted money, sometimes they wanted to draw attention to their causes, and sometimes they weren’t sure what they wanted. Some of the victims survived and returned home, some came home minus body parts, and some never came home. Chiara was one of the latter. Her kidnappers were never caught nor was her body recovered. Her parents both died within a few months of her disappearance. Her father, a judge sitting on Italy’s highest court, had died from the effects of the heart attack he’d suffered after opening a package containing his only child’s right index finger, her mother, by suicide, a few months later.
