by Grace Brophy
Still no signs of Rita’s “Gianni.” The parish in New York had provided a list of visiting priests over a period of three months, nine in all. Elena was still checking them out. And then the interviews. Paola Casati crying down his front. Nice kid! And that shit Montoni, playing at politics to get attention. The girl that he’d murdered was worth a thousand of his kind. Montoni would walk on that one, and from all the other mishaps in his life, so long as his family had power and money. Not a thing Alex could do about it, other than to give him an uncomfortable hour or two.
He lay down on his bed fully dressed. Rest his head for a minute . . . then boil some water for pasta. Too tired to eat and too hungry to sleep. Sophie! Something wrong there. Maybe Carlo is right! No! Has to be Fulvio, proven twice over, first by Greci with his reds, greens, and yellows—Christ, the man’s a bore!—and then by the sergeant. Great find that . . . the scarf in the dumpster . . . knot of fringe missing on one end! Send it off to Rome for comparison. Get the thread back from Batori. Questore . . . Batori? He settled his head deeper into the pillow.
Sergeant Antolini . . . good legs . . . lace panties . . . nervy little thing, taking chances like that! Lucky Piero! Always complaining! His eyelids fluttered . . . five more minutes . . . a black snake coiled around her neck . . . looking out a window. Sun-bright hair tied back with a striped ribbon.
He reaches out and recoils. The right hand is a fingerless stump . . . the index finger hanging off by a threaded clot of blood. She turns, and he stares into the face of a child, a delicate oval of perfection with bright glass blue eyes, veined in red. He watches in horror as the veins elongate and become red watery streaks running down the porcelain face onto a white party dress. The child is in his arms—he’s running down a dark cobbled alleyway, his lungs on fire. He hears the wild thumping of her heart and the pounding footfalls behind. Trapped! The child begins to cry, a whimper at first, then louder, insistently—a loud ringing in his ears. It stops, and he sinks back into the soft folds of sleep. It begins again.
He opens his eyes, half-awake, half-asleep, and sees the reflection of the moon against the glass. The time is projected in large red numbers on the ceiling. He shivers in a cold sweat and wipes his brow. It’s after 11:00 and the heat’s gone off. He reaches for the still-ringing phone. “Pronto, si . . . si . . . si, Carlo. Ho capito, domani alle otto.”
15
SERGEANT ANTOLINI WATCHED, half-asleep, as the early morning light played with the shadows on the walls, glinting warmly upon the moss-green coverlet on her bed. She wanted to bask in the warmth and contentment of this state before fully waking but a rising current of excitement quarreled with her languor, urging her to open her eyes fully, to put substance to the half-formed objects of her dreams. And then she remembered yesterday and sat up with a start. The commissario (Alessandro, she murmured) had come out of nowhere to find her rooting through the police dumpster! Half-dressed, too!
The evening before she had arrived home late and gone immediately to her room, refusing the pappardelle con la lepre that her mother insisted on warming up. “I feel a cold coming on,” she had lied, ignoring her mother’s nagging concern. For some fifteen minutes, she struck various poses in front of the closet mirror, her uniform jacket buttoned up to her chin as it had been when he had discovered her in the dumpster. Front, profile, and finally, from the rear. Were the lace edges of her panties discernible through her hose? “Short legs,” she sighed wistfully, but they appeared longer when contrasted against the dark blue police jacket. She colored when she remembered Easter Sunday. Was it only two days ago that she had seriously considered Piero’s proposal that they see each other exclusively? Genine is too particular, she frequently overheard her mother tell friends. Maybe her mother was right. Most of her high school friends were married, or engaged. Twenty-four on her last birthday. She peered anxiously in the mirror looking for lines.
It’s true that she’d been ticked off when Piero didn’t call again after their first date but that was nothing more than wounded pride. With most of the men she dated, she was the one who cried off. She took a small piece of the Easter bunny that was sitting on her dresser and sucked on it. Piero is sweet! Good-looking too, although in a pallid, freckled sort of way. And they had laughed a lot on their first date. She did so love a good laugh. But he talked too much, and always about food or football. On Sunday, she had wanted to pinch him, just to get a word in edgewise. He could stand to lose twenty pounds, and he complains too much. But they did have police work in common, and their nagging mothers. Ugh, two nagging mothers.
She dawdled getting ready for work. In the shower she let the warm needles of spray sooth her body and massage her skin, while she lathered herself gently and relived again the events of the previous day. She repeated every word the commissario had said to her, parsing each phrase for subtle shifts in meaning. She squinted her eyes and could see ever so clearly the half-smile on his face when he’d helped her out of the dumpster. He hadn’t commented when he’d handed over her trousers, and he’d turned his back while she put them on, without being asked. Not many men around who would do that, not Italian men anyway. He was delighted when she had handed him Russo’s scarf. “But please don’t do anything like this again, sergeant,” he’d said gruffly. “We don’t want anything happening to you, now do we?”
In her bedroom, Genine found herself still dawdling. Instead of hastily throwing on her clothes, she paused to look at herself in the mirror again. She seized a hairbrush, pulling it through the tangles of her hair, and began to wonder if instead of pulling it into a simple French braid while she was at work, she should let it hang loose. She ran her fingers through the tangles, releasing the strands, shaking her head to encourage the natural wave. In a sudden burst of self-knowledge, she spoke aloud. “I’m in love,” she cried to the half-eaten marzipan bunny on her dresser, “absurdly, hopelessly in love, and we both know who with.”
But being a practical woman, Genine immediately amended her last thought. Not that she looked practical, not even when dressed in police blue. Fragile—ethereal, some might say, seeing the white gold hair, porcelain complexion, and wide-set blue eyes. Not even her parents, who had watched in horror when she swung from the tops of trees with the best of the neighborhood boys, credited her essential toughness. Genine’s last thought as she double wrapped the gunbelt around her twenty-four-inch waist was that nothing is hopeless, not if you want it badly enough.
16
AN ALARM RANG in Cenni’s head as soon as the call came from reception—Package here for Commissario Cenni from Dottor Batori. Batori loved to talk—to taxi drivers, waiters, strangers on park benches, and particularly to colleagues. He always delivered postmortem reports himself. Cenni practically had to lift him out of his visitor’s chair to get rid of him. He grinned, remembering the time that Batori had hand-delivered the Ronchitti post-mortem. Not even the gastric attack Cenni had faked to get rid of the doctor had worked. Batori had insisted on examining him; “professional courtesy,” he had said. Cenni was registering far too many deviations from the norm to ignore. Yesterday, the delayed postmortem report. Today, a premature burial service— at noon—with the news personally delivered to him by the questore at 8:00 this morning. Two trips in one week to the burbs. Carlo should consider asking for a raise.
The envelope was the usual size, with the usual number of typed sheets inside, but there was one significant difference. The medical examiner normally listed the cause of death at the top, in bold type, followed by the details. For the first time in Cenni’s memory, Batori’s postmortem report began with the details.
A healthy specimen, albeit a dead one. All the major organs had been in good working order; Minelli had taken care of herself. The stomach contents revealed nothing beyond a penchant for eating right: a partially digested apple, suggesting that she had eaten it shortly before her death. Nothing else.
Batori had been right about the child, a fetus of some eight weeks, a girl, blood type AB, an
d normal to all appearance. Cenni sat back for a minute, stopped reading and looked off into space, but quickly shook off his melancholy. He had two deaths to contend with now, and possibly two murders. But the decision to prosecute for two murders was not his to make. It would be made by Antonio Piruli, the investigating judge.
No bruising to the genitalia or the pelvic area; no foreign body fluids present in or on the victim’s body; no foreign pubic or head hairs present in or on the body; no trace evidence (soil, fibers, grass) inconsistent with the environment in which the victim had died. Conclusion: no evidence of rape beyond the outward displacement of her clothing. The Great Equivocator stated unequivocally that it was unlikely that the dead woman had had sex within the past seventy-two hours.
The report then discussed the head wound, which Batori had originally described for public consumption and with great assurance as the probable cause of death. Not any longer! A slight contusion only, causing very little internal bleeding. The victim might have been knocked out for a minute or two, but the blow didn’t kill her. In other words, there was no extensive inter-cranial injury as Batori had claimed on Saturday. The report also stated that the bruising was consistent with her being struck by the statue of the virgin, as evidenced by the paint chips found embedded in her hair. Nothing new there, Cenni thought.
And finally—cause of death—asphyxiation by suffocation, evidenced by petechial hemorrhages in the victim’s eyes, face, lungs, and neck area.
Instrument of Suffocation—unknown.
Time of death—Friday, March 29, between 4:00 PM and 8:00 PM, with a footnote that rigor mortis was fully developed at 9:00 AM on Saturday, March 30.
Cenni flung the report across the room in disgust, as much with himself as with Batori. Petechiae, or tiny purple or red spots on the surface of the skin, are caused by small areas of bleeding underneath it and are often evident to the naked eye. Batori couldn’t have examined the inner surface of Minelli’s eyelids at the cemetery, or he would have noticed the pinlike hemorrhages immediately. And, of course, Cenni hadn’t been there to observe or direct the examination thanks to Russo’s late notification to the questore of Minelli’s murder.
Batori’s rather notorious habit of jumping to premature conclusions had surfaced again. But Cenni had to acknowledge that he was partly at fault. He had noticed two pinlike red spots immediately under Rita’s right eye during his examination and had passed them off as age spots, similar to those his grandmother had on her cheeks. But Minelli had been forty-five, not eighty-eight. He cursed his own carelessness.
The medical examiner’s postmortem findings, assuming they were correct, complicated the investigation considerably. The possibilities were many. Someone might have struck Minelli on the head and then suffocated her. Or, just as possible, the head wound and the suffocation were unrelated. There was no proof that Minelli had been knocked unconscious by the blow to her head. And if she had been knocked unconscious, the blow might have occurred an hour before her death, or thirty minutes, or even one minute. There was no indication in the postmortem report one way or the other.
Three full days had now passed since Minelli’s murder, and Cenni was further from arresting her killer today than he had been on Saturday morning. He had foolishly accepted Batori’s assertion that the statue was the weapon, and he now had to begin again.
Cenni reflected on what he knew of suffocation. Cross transfer of fibers can occur when there’s person-to-person contact; when the fiber is easily shed; and when the pressure and duration of contact are sufficient and the receiving surface is susceptible to transfer. In Minelli’s murder, he knew only that person-to-person contact had occurred. The time it takes to smother a person, particularly if the person doesn’t struggle, is short, no more than a few minutes. As Batori had noted at the end of his report, there was no bruising around the nose or mouth or to Minelli’s hands or arms to indicate a struggle or prolonged contact, which suggested that the deceased might have been knocked out from the blow to the head and then suffocated while she was unconscious or just regaining consciousness. Batori had also noted that he’d found no fibers in the nasal passages or in the lungs, and then annotated his statement by indicating that only the very shortest fiber fragments are easily drawn into the nasal passages or lungs.
Cenni read the remainder of the report aloud, emphasizing, for his own displeasure, each of Batori’s equivocations concerning the black fiber that had been attached to Minelli’s earring, the only obviously foreign fiber found on her body. Probably animal hair, possibly cashmere, based on a cursory examination. And to confuse things even further, Batori went on to state that cashmere is a lengthy fiber, usually loosely woven, concluding, through some inner logic that escaped Cenni, that since no short fibers were found in the victim’s nasal passages or lungs, the weapon of suffocation may have been a fabric made of cashmere (or anything else under the sun, Cenni said to himself). The black fiber, probably animal hair and possibly cashmere, had been sent on to the Forensic Police Lab in Rome for further analysis. Well, that was a godsend anyway. He wouldn’t have to involve Batori in his request for a comparison with the black scarf found by Sergeant Antolini.
Even the time of death was an equivocation; to list the time of death as between 4:00 and 8:00 was sheer cowardice on Batori’s part. The evidence, empirical as well as physical, suggested that Minelli had been killed no earlier than 4:30, when she was last seen in Assisi, and no later than 6:30, when she had agreed to meet John Williams at Il Duomo. Sunset on Good Friday had been at 6:30; she would hardly have stayed in the pitch-black cemetery after that if she were still alive. Batori had made a colossal blunder in deciding prematurely that the cause of death was the blow to Minelli’s head; he was now covering himself by invoking the classic four-hour window for time of death.
Unlikely! May! Might! Probably! Possibly! The medical examiner had given the police nothing concrete. Cenni was angry but he refused to expend energy on what couldn’t be changed. Minelli had been suffocated, in a manner unknown, between the hours of 4:00 and 8:00 on Good Friday. That was what the postmortem concluded and that was what he’d work from, of course, making some necessary amendments of his own. And now, he had a funeral to go to. He grabbed his jacket from the top of the file cabinet where he had tossed it that morning and headed out the door.
17
THE DECISION TO bury Rita on the same day that the autopsy report was delivered had been made without Cenni’s knowledge. According to the questore, Amelia Casati had handled the burial arrangements: the priest and church, the black-edged cards, flowers, death notice, even the bribes. Cenni had no doubt about the bribes. The English violet exuded the perfume of privilege and beneath her litanies of softly spoken my dears, Cenni had detected a will of iron and a self-righteous snobbery. Three times on Saturday, she had referred to her husband as count, and once to herself as countess, although in a clever, self-deprecating way. He wondered if the red-rimmed eyes were a sham. She’d left him with the impression that she thought her American niece a bit common as well as a nuisance.
The excuse offered by the questore for hurrying Minelli into her grave was that Assisi’s mayor (Umberto Casati’s dear friend) wanted to avoid further unpleasantness, which scares away the tourists! Rita’s funeral would be held in the cemetery chapel, which was still officially closed for renovation, and not in her beloved St. Stefano’s. The final insult: She was to be buried among the war veterans and paupers in the lower section of the cemetery. “Not forever,” the questore explained when Cenni had protested. “Just until people forget. The countess is afraid the family vault will become a sideshow.” “More sideshow, more money!” Cenni had countered. The countess was becoming a thorn in his side.
The tolling of the bells began, and Cenni watched as Amelia and Umberto hurriedly approached the chapel, followed by a beggarly procession of relatives and one friend, John Williams. He trailed after the family, escorted by Inspector Staccioli; Assisi’s mayor and its commissario, Fu
lvio Russo, walked last. Sophie Orlic was not among the mourners and neither were any of the Casati servants. He presumed they were at the house preparing the funeral-baked meats. Cenni followed the procession into the church and seated himself in the front pew of the side aisle for a clear view of the mourners, which, as he acknowledged warily, gave the mourners an equally clear view of him.
The coffin, a heavily polished mahogany affair (no money spared!), was covered with a large spray of yellow roses. Some fifteen or more wreaths on tall wire stands crowded the altar, and one heart-shaped bouquet of tiny white bell-shaped flowers (for the child, he assumed), was placed forlornly to the side, adjacent to his pew. He found himself inching away from the bouquet’s overwhelming fragrance, and when he next looked over at the Casati family, Artemesia, sitting alone in the second pew, was smiling at him. She covered her nose with a lace handkerchief and nodded toward the flowers, suggesting through body language that he should do the same.
Paola Casati, seated with her grandparents in the front pew, was dressed simply in a leather jacket and black beret. For most of the mass and funeral service, she stared straight ahead, oblivious to what was happening on the altar. Her grandfather also stared straight ahead, but Cenni saw his lips moving to the Pater Noster. Amelia Casati, her emotions safely hidden behind a lace mantilla, held herself erect throughout the mass, until the very end when the priest stood before the altar and recited the final prayer for the dead.
O God, Whose attribute it is always to have mercy and to spare, we humbly present our prayers to Thee for the soul of Thy servant Rita which Thou has this day called out of this world, beseeching Thee not to deliver it into the hands of the enemy. . . .
