If she was reluctant to engage in the drug trade, consequences could be unpleasant. If she refused outright and talked about it, they were likely lethal. Eight months ago the father of an eleven-year-old boy agreed to spill family business and saw his son kidnapped. No ransom note ever arrived. A half-year later the boy’s strangled body turned up in a vat of acid that had failed to complete its job.
Tomorrow would be a new day, but the sun would not make even a rare and momentary visit to this dark place, moving only across the tops of the buildings and a slice of the street.
Natalia began her climb past bags of garbage that cluttered the landings. Doors opened a crack and immediately closed. She caught sight of a cheek, a nose, an eye and little more. On the fourth floor, a large man in sunglasses and a pork pie hat stood guard outside a steel door. A serpent and several skulls frolicked on his enormous biceps.
His desert camouflage trousers contrasted sharply with his hot lime T-shirt. He stepped forward, menacing. This didn’t surprise Natalia. A dead girl in the house would only make the Carabinieri less welcome than usual. The last thing they’d want was her help.
“Get out. This is private business.”
“Sorry, signor. Can’t oblige.” Natalia showed her ID, hand on her gun. He reluctantly let her pass.
She followed an orange and brown rug along the hall and into the living room, occupied by a glass coffee table, gigantic lounge chair and a plaid couch with two slouched men watching Brazil’s footballers beating Mexico on the TV.
In their youth, they had probably been among the tifosi, the crowds at the Stadio San Paolo, jeering at the opposing team to celebrate victory or to incite a brawl to exorcise a defeat. Approaching middle age, they looked on in virtual solitude.
“Sit down,” the lighter man on the couch commanded.
“Where is she?” Natalia asked.
He pointed down the hall. Natalia found the bedroom and pushed open the door. A girl’s room. The girl asleep on her bed. Only she wasn’t asleep.
Tina’s hair, combed and arranged around her shoulders, didn’t quite cover the piece of her skull where it stuck out. Clotted in some places, some strands had been cut away. Her grey cheeks were rouged. Her mother, weeping, sat on the bed holding her daughter’s hand.
Never had Natalia seen a head shot victim so tidy. Usually blood and brains were everywhere. Where was the mess? The soiled clothes? Furniture? Walls? Tina Gracci looked so small, so innocent. Whatever destiny she had dreamed for herself and her unborn child would go unrealized. Unwanted pregnancy? Unwanted girl? What was the story here?
“Signora?”
Tina’s mother looked up, face bleary as Angelina entered in uniform, followed by Dr. Agari. Both quickly took in the scene and stopped.
“I am sorry, signora,” Natalia said, “we have to ask you some questions.”
Angelina took out her notebook. Francesca stood silent, making no move toward the corpse. Which, Natalia knew, meant she surmised suicide.
“You don’t have to tell them anything.” They hadn’t realized Tina’s cousin had entered the room. “She’s lost a daughter. Vultures, that’s what you are.”
“Signor, we need to speak to her in private.”
“Fucking vultures,” he said as his aunt waved him away.
Natalia waited until he retreated, then closed the door.
“I am sorry for your great loss, signora,” Angelina said.
A hard woman, Emelinia Cora Gracci. It was common knowledge she’d passed verbal messages from her jailed husband ordering assassinations and beatings. Both she and her husband had grown up in the Secondigliano underworld.
“Can you tell us what happened?” Angelina said.
“She called me, said she was coming home for a few days.”
“When was that?” Angelina asked.
“Yesterday afternoon.”
“She was living where?” Natalia asked.
“In Santa Lucia, with her fiancé.”
Angelina made a note. “His name?”
“Francesco Matta.”
“Has he been informed?” Natalia asked.
“He’s not in Naples.”
“Where is he?”
“Genoa. On business.”
“Do you have a number for him?”
“No.”
Natalia scanned the room. A pink teddy bear sat on a white vanity table. A poster was taped above the bed. Also taped to the mirror: several photographs of a family wedding and a man dancing with a younger Tina. Natalia recognized a young Loredana. The soccer star had been linked to the crime family once upon a time.
“Can you go over what happened this morning?” Angelina flipped a page.
“She was sleeping. I went to wake her to get ready for work. She kissed me. ‘In a minute, Mama,’ she said. ‘I want to finish my dream.’ I left to pay a bill and stopped for early Mass.”
“What time did you get home?” Angelina asked.
“Just before nine. I put away my groceries, made a couple of calls. Then I went to clean her room and …”
Emelinia started to cry.
“It’s okay, signora,” Angelina said and murmured something Natalia couldn’t hear.
“What time was that?” Natalia said. “When you went to her room?”
“I don’t know. She was on the floor … over there.” She pointed to the far side by the bed. Francesca peered over.
“You picked her up by yourself?” Natalia asked.
She nodded.
“Cleaned the blood?” Natalia said.
“Yes.”
The room was tidy. No evidence of forced entry or a struggle. Then again, Tina’s mother must have mopped up, cleaned her daughter, gotten her into the yellow nightgown and into bed and scrubbed for several hours to remove the stains.
“Is the room otherwise as you found it?” Natalia said.
“Yes.”
“What did you do with the clothes she was wearing?” Angelina asked.
“I took them to the trash.”
Hearing this, Angelina slipped out to have a word with the other officers in the hall to retrieve the garments and shoes.
Natalia tried to appear nonchalant. “What did you do with the gun?”
Signora Gracci didn’t answer.
“Do you know what happened to the gun?” she repeated.
“What gun?”
“The one that shot Tina.”
The mother merely shrugged.
“Do you know where Tina keeps her cell phone?” Angelina asked.
“She has a backpack. It’s probably in the closet.”
The cousin reappeared in the doorway, looking to complain some more.
“Beppe, please,” Tina’s mother implored. “Go and watch TV,” she said and smoothed her daughter’s hair.
Francesca opened her carryall and pulled out a pair of gloves and a pristine lab coat.
“She’s not going to the morgue.” Emelinia blocked her path. “You’re not taking her away.”
“We don’t plan to take her anywhere, signora. But I need to verify the circumstances of your daughter’s death so I can issue a certificate. It is the law. I need to look. It would be better for you if you wait outside. We’ll call you as soon as we’re through.”
Emelinia Gracci made the sign of the cross and kissed her daughter’s lips.
“Oh, Mrs. Gracci,” Francesca said. “Was she right-handed or left-handed?”
“Right-handed. She’s right-handed.”
“Thank you.”
As Emelinia Gracci opened the door to leave, the stadium crowd on TV cheered.
“Some gathering out there.” Francesca pulled on her rubber gloves.
“Graccis and Giulianos,” Natalia said. “Quite a Camorra cocktail party.”
“Corporal Cavatelli, would you take notes?” Francesca asked.
“Certainly.” Angelina took out her miniature recorder and moved closer.
“Dr. Francesca Agari,” the pathologist
said, identifying herself. She then stated the date, time, location and the names of Captain Monte and Corporal Cavatelli. She followed with Tina’s particulars as she gently lifted her hair and studied the wound. “A gunshot to the right temple, exiting in back.”
Francesca signaled for Angelina to turn off the tape. Some blood had pooled on the sheet in a slowly forming halo. “It’s a miracle she didn’t blow her face off,” Francesca said. “I wonder if the slug is in the wall somewhere. Take a look, Angelina, will you? Never mind, I’ll do it.”
She moved to the wall on the far side of the bed, then scanned downward, looking for the hole where the bullet went. She found it at about waist high and knelt for a closer look.
“Suicide?” Angelina asked Dr. Agari who’d gotten up and was looking in her bag for something.
“I can’t give a definitive answer yet, but it’s looking that way, yes.”
“Is there any likelihood she may have been murdered?” Natalia asked. She took Francesca’s place by the wall, clearing away white debris from the opening with a finger. When she was sure no one was paying attention, she poked at it with a pencil, until the shiny metal of a slug was visible when she shone her small flashlight into the channel. She glanced back to make sure she was blocking their view of it.
“Murder?” Francesca said, pondering. “Doubtful, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes.” Natalia breathed a sigh of relief.
Francesca pulled open the dead girl’s cramped hand. Several dark spots were clearly visible along the palm, findings which she reported aloud into the recorder.
“God,” she said. “Terrible. When they’re young, they have no idea that they’re not going to wake up again and find everyone sorry and repentant for whatever wrong they’d done the suicide.”
“Is there a note?” Angelina said.
“If there was, Mama probably disposed of it,” Natalia said and pushed the pencil hard against the slug while manufacturing small noises with her free hand and squeaky boot to cover the sound of the spent bullet clattering down into the hollow space behind the plaster. The slug was entombed in the wall.
Francesca felt along the girl’s body. “Pregnant and showing. In this day and age, I wouldn’t have thought that was a motive for killing oneself. Any idea where the gun might be?”
“Gone missing,” Angelina said.
“Mama again,” Natalia said.
“Why?”
“Why do you think?”
“Oh, of course. The consecrated burial. No high mass and no interment in hallowed ground if her child killed herself.”
“And the baby,” Angelina added.
“Yes. The Church would deny her its rites if it’s suicide, and Tina would be doomed to a long stretch in Purgatory.” Francesca stretched her stiff lower back for a moment. “Maybe after the funeral the gun will reappear?”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Natalia said, back pushing the point of the pencil until it went right through into whatever was on the other side. “Are you almost through?”
“A few minutes more.” Francesca pulled Tina’s hair aside and studied the wound with a magnifying glass. “Interesting,” she said.
“What?” Natalia turned away from the wall.
“Her wound appears consistent with a round from a largish caliber. Heavy for her to fire.”
“There must be an arsenal in this house,” Angelina said. “Do you want me to do a search?” she asked Natalia.
“Not today.”
“I guess she used whatever was at hand. Okay, the crucial test next. Gunpowder residue.” Francesca lined up her materials. “There’s a green folder in my bag, Angelina, with a blank death certificate in it. Would you mind?”
“Not at all.”
“Trouble is,” Natalia said, “we rule it a suicide, and Tina Gracci is denied her final rites.”
“I know,” Francesca said, as she initiated the test for the presence of expended gunpowder on Tina’s hands. “It would be a shame. But suicide it may be.”
“Angelina,” Natalia said, “you have a nice touch with the woman—talk to her—see if you can get any sense of what happened here.”
“Yes, Captain.” Angelina put the certificate on the bed and stepped out.
“Francesca, I need you to delay your ruling until the girl is buried, or I’ll never get the weapon.”
“Would twenty-four hours do?” Francesca peeled off her gloves.
“It will have to. Thanks.” Natalia willed herself not to show the overwhelming relief surging through her.
“I might manage that, but only if the residue test is positive. Otherwise, I’ll be compelled to conduct a full autopsy, and my preliminary call will be homicide. You know the drill.”
“Yes.”
Francesca leaned over Tina’s right hand with a magnifier. “Positive. She’s recently fired a revolver, poor child.”
“Good work, doc.”
“Any luck excavating for the slug?”
“Not much. It punched right through to the adjoining room.”
“It’s there?”
“We’re gonna take a look.”
Angelina returned, and the officers proceeded to the room adjacent to Tina’s. Images of Jesus suffering on his cross were mounted on each wall. They were outnumbered only by photos of Graccis jammed on the bureau.
Signora Gracci’s matrimonial bed abutted her daughter’s wall.
“A museum piece,” Angelina said, running her hands over the elaborate carving.
They each took a post and dragged the bed a few inches from the wall. Natalia squeezed in and pretended to do a search.
“Nothing here.”
“That’s too bad,” Angelina said. “The walls are thick. Not like the shit they put up these days. We’d need a sledge to get through there. Worth a try?”
“Maybe,” Natalia said. “Not today. Mama’s traumatized as it is.”
They reported their lack of findings to Francesca.
“Well, let me know if you find it. Though I suppose it’s less crucial as we have the positive residue test. Still, it’s odd. No note, no bullet, no gun.”
Francesca packed up and left, and Emelinia Gracci returned to her daughter’s side. Beppe could be heard arguing with one of his cousins. Natalia asked Angelina to wait for her in the hall.
Emelinia stroked her daughter’s face. It sounded like she was singing a lullaby. She’d birthed this child. Raised her. Loved her in her own fashion.
“Signora,” she said. “Excuse me. If your child is to have a church funeral, I must have the gun no later than the day after tomorrow.”
“What are you insinuating?” The grieving mother had given way to the madrina.
“Absolutely nothing,” Natalia said. “I’m stating hard facts. You need to hear them again?”
“No.”
“Then we have an understanding?”
The woman nodded.
“Okay. You must see to your daughter’s immediate burial.”
“Three days from now, si.”
“No. Tomorrow. No later than tomorrow. Or you will not be able to have what you wish for her.”
“Tomorrow,” the woman said, hand to her face, concerned. “But out-of-town relatives are coming, some by train.”
“Tell them to take an express. Tomorrow is all the time there is. There is no more. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“And the day after tomorrow, you will see me again. I will be back for the gun.”
Silence.
“Say you understand.”
“I understand,” Signora Gracci replied mechanically.
“Good,” Natalia said. “Good.”
Out on the street, she didn’t call Pino on her mobile, not entrusting their conversation to remote transmission. She needed a landline and drove to the rail station on the way back to Casanova to find a pay phone. Pino answered on the first ring. From the tremor in his voice she knew he had already heard.
“She is, isn
’t she?” he said.
“Yes. Early this morning. Pino? Are you there? Are you okay?”
A nun rushed past dragging an old leather suitcase. Natalia spotted a colleague undercover. He took off after the nun, making sure one of the dozens of lowlifes didn’t try something before the good sister was safely aboard her train. He’d be back in minutes, and he’d wonder what she was doing there.
“Pino. I can’t stay on the phone here.”
“It’s my fault. I should have done something to save her.”
“Like what? You’re all powerful? The girl was a mess. A moth headed to a flame. She was carrying a child. A very selfish thing she did.”
“If I’d secured my gun …”
“She didn’t need your gun. Her parents place is an armory by all accounts. For Christ’s sake, she had her own arsenal. I don’t know why she took your piece. To get back at you probably. For not loving her enough.”
“I should have never gotten involved.”
“It’s too late now, Pino. It’s over.”
“When is the funeral?”
“Tomorrow. Promise me you won’t go. The one thing you mustn’t do is attend the funeral.”
“I need to.”
“No, you don’t, and you won’t. They see you there? It could get the family wondering.”
“I don’t know.”
“I do. You will not go.”
“Maybe I should turn myself in.”
“You won’t do that either.”
“But the gun, my prints are on it. They’ll find it. Forensics will tie the bullet to the Glock and me. I’m done.”
“No bullet’s been recovered, and we’ll have the gun shortly. Hopefully, Francesca will quietly rule it a suicide right after the funeral, and it will all be over.”
“Not for me, Nat,” he said. “Not ever.”
“Look, the kid wasn’t yours, was it?”
“Of course not.”
“It’s sad. Without a doubt. But life goes on.”
“So hard, Natalia. It doesn’t sound like you.”
A Few Drops of Blood Page 20
