The Crocodile (World Noir)

by Maurizio de Giovanni

  Piras nervously twirled a lock of her hair. “All right, Brigadier, listen closely: I’m going to fax you a warrant to search that residence. Give me the complete address so I can fill out the warrant. Get out there and search the place immediately, and report back right away by phone. I don’t want you to waste any time writing up a report. In the meantime, whatever information you dig up on De Falco or anyone else with ties to the family, any strange developments, or anything else, call me immediately. Is that clear?”

  “Certainly, dottoressa. Let me give you the exact address of the house.”

  After hanging up the phone, Piras turned to Lojacono.

  “Well, what do you think of that? This could be the jackpot, no?”

  Lojacono shook his head. “Maybe, maybe not. Maybe in the aftermath of his wife’s death he decided to take a trip somewhere. Or else he killed himself too, and they’re going to find a dead body in the house. Anyway, what matters most right now is that we find out one thing: who was the father of Eleonora’s unborn child? If you think about it, it’s the one piece of the puzzle that’s still missing. This friend of mine, a woman I was talking to last night, opened my eyes to it. If I were out to take revenge for the death of a girl I cared about, who had done to herself what Eleonora did, the first person I’d be eager to settle scores with would be whoever got her pregnant and then abandoned her to her fate.”

  Piras stared at him wide-eyed. “A friend of yours? A woman you were talking to? Who is this? And why on earth would you be talking to other people about such a top-secret investigation?”

  Lojacono raised both palms in a gesture of self-defense. “Hold on, hold on! I didn’t name any names, and my friend is the owner of the trattoria where I have dinner every night. She doesn’t know anything about anything. Still, you have to admit that her suggestion is valid. He’s the only one who’s still missing.”

  Piras thought it over. “As a matter of fact, it’s true. The classmate who told her where to get the abortion, the nurse, the doctor—all of them are basically secondary figures. The chief culprit is still missing—the one who triggered the whole affair. But how can we figure out who he is unless we at least track down De Falco’s father?”

  Just then an officer stuck his head in the door and said, “Forgive me, dottoressa, but there’s someone outside who wants to speak with you. A certain Doctor Rinaldi.”

  The man who walked into the small conference room was a completely different person from the one they’d met a few days earlier. The vast torment filling his reddened eyes might have been the same, but this time his demeanor was humble and confused.

  His face was lined from lack of sleep, a heavy five o’clock shadow darkened his jaw, and his hair was in disarray. He was tieless and a tuft of grey chest hair protruded from his open collar. He looked years older.

  In one hand he held a large green notebook, what looked like a school ledger book. He stood there until Piras waved him to a chair. He drew a deep breath and started talking.

  “Dottoressa, I’ve given a lot of thought to the conversation we had the other day. To tell the truth, I also received a phone call from Signora De Matteis, whom you saw again, from what I gather. She made me . . . helped me to rethink a few things. She made me stop and consider. In a certain sense, I could say that she opened my eyes. And I realized that . . . You know that my son meant everything to me. Everything. Without him, nothing has any meaning for me now: my career, my practice, my work. Nothing. And if in some way I’ve been the cause of this . . . my god, this is madness . . . then I must do something to make amends. I need to try to make amends. To the extent that I can. You see, he wanted to be a doctor, but not the way I’ve done it. He wanted to help others. He talked to me about Africa, about volunteering . . . I can’t allow him just to have died without trying to do something.”

  Lojacono and Piras exchanged a fleeting glance. They understood that the man needed to talk. He went on, addressing them both.

  “I knew Lorusso, but you already know that. When you’re young, you understand, you have a goal in mind and that’s the only thing that matters. I wanted to open my clinic . . . Well, it was perfectly legal, I only did it in a way that anyone who wanted greater secrecy, the absence of any official records . . . Anyway, luckily nothing bad happened as a result.”

  Lojacono murmured through clenched teeth, “Maybe not on the operating table. But afterwards it did.”

  Rinaldi ran his hand through his tousled hair. “Yes, afterwards it did. But I couldn’t know that, could I? What could I know about what my patients did after? I read about the De Falco woman in the newspaper and for weeks I expected to be subpoenaed. I was afraid that they’d find some trace of me, my address, my phone number. Then, as time passed, I forgot about her. Until De Matteis mentioned her name on the phone.”

  Piras broke in, her voice gentle. Lojacono admired her approach, designed to keep Rinaldi from feeling he was on the defensive again.

  “Doctor, no one is interested in putting you on trial here. These are old stories, and right now the last thing we want to do is dig them over. What we need to know, and urgently, is anything you can tell us about Eleonora De Falco. Is there anything you remember about her?”

  Rinaldi had clutched the green ledger book to his chest the whole time he’d been in the conference room. Now he lay it down on the table, opening it more or less midway through.

  “I don’t remember her as a person. You understand, it was in the interests of discretion. I’d talk about anything affecting the clinical picture, symptoms, and tests if necessary, but if there wasn’t anything physiological to discuss then I basically wouldn’t open my mouth. But, to be on the safe side, I jotted down certain basic information in this ledger book. Nothing much: last name, first name, address, and nature of the treatment. Here she is: De Falco, Eleonora, Via dei Cristallini, number sixteen. Dilation and aspiration. In other words, a surgical abortion. Eighth week of pregnancy. From the article in the newspaper I found out that she had a bad infection. Evidently she hadn’t taken the antibiotics I prescribed for her. Nothing odd about that, poor girl; when you’ve made up your mind to die, you’re not likely to take your medicine.”

  Lojacono drilled in, “And you didn’t see her again afterwards? She didn’t come in for a follow-up?”

  Rinaldi shook his head decisively. “No, she didn’t come back. They didn’t usually come back.”

  Piras nodded her head wearily. Rinaldi’s confession added nothing to the information they already possessed.

  All the same, she asked, “And you don’t remember whether, when she came to your clinic, she might have mentioned any names, a next of kin or anything?”

  Rinaldi nodded. “Of course. I always asked for a reference, a contact, in case something went wrong. After all, these were operations performed under anesthesia; I’d never have run the risk of having no one to contact.”

  Lojacono leaned forward, his eyes narrowed to two slits. “What’s the name of the contact that she gave you?”

  Rinaldi checked the ledger. “Masi, Orlando. Care of the administrator of the polytechnic.”

  CHAPTER 63

  The old man becomes the Crocodile.

  Methodically he readies himself, with the curtains drawn, the bedside lamp dimly lighting the room.

  He’s cold, calm, and composed. Every so often a tear drips out from behind the lens and he wipes it away with an abrupt dab.

  He knows that his long wait is about to come to an end. He knows—from under the water’s surface, from his place of hiding, from where he’s watching—that his immense hunger is about to be sated.

  He polishes his shoes. Then he moves on to his trousers, checking the crease, his shirt, his tie, his jacket. He knows that this time there will be no repeat performance, this time things will be different, from start to finish.

  He understands that he no longer has the luxury of time, the way he did with the other killings. That it won’t be enough to lurk in the shallow swamp wa
ters, mixing his own scent with the smell of rot and decay, camouflaging himself in his drab armor, a log among logs, water in the water, vegetation amid vegetation. This time he’ll have to pounce suddenly, clamp his jaws shut on his prey’s throat, and take a single, furious death-dealing bite. This time his jaws won’t have a chance to gnaw quietly, crushing bones as part of his meal.

  And he’ll have to drag his victim into the abyss, on a one-way journey to death, in search of a peace that he has left behind in the impenetrable darkness of his perennial hunger.

  His ravenous hunger has solidified over the years, in the wheeze of an endless death rattle, in the memory of a long-lost tenderness. His hunger has obliterated any and all memories of friendship, sentiment, joy, or love. His hunger is inextinguishable, and it has devoured every feeling in his heart, and in the end, it has actually devoured the heart itself.

  Now he removes the plastic tub from the bottom of the armoire, opens it, and lays a cloth out on the bed. He dismantles his weapon, checks it, cleans it, and oils it.

  The old man is the powerful, implacable jaws; he is the pitiless clawed feet; he is the formidable clamping strength. He is the poison without an antidote.

  The old man is the Crocodile.

  In his icy soul, no winds of human pity blow.

  Because he is the Crocodile.

  Born to kill.

  CHAPTER 64

  That name had been something like an electric shock. Now they had someone to look for, and they had to find him right away. Afternoon had given way to night, and suddenly the clock had started racing at supersonic speed.

  Orlando Masi, care of the administrator of the polytechnic: a message from the past. It seemed to Lojacono as if Eleonora had decided to save an innocent life, one among the many dead that had been murdered on her account: as if she were turning her back, fifteen years after her death, on the vigilante who was distributing rough justice and death sentences according to his own lights.

  It wouldn’t be easy though. A sleepy clerk, irritated at having been caught up in a live police investigation as he was heading out the door for the night, told them after a lengthy search that there was no employee of that name, either current or retired, in the records of the polytechnic’s administrator.

  Piras ran a hand over her face. “Do you think she gave a random name? Just to put one down?”

  Lojacono shook his head vigorously. “No, I’d rule that out. Rinaldi wasn’t a public health facility. All she would have had to do was state that she had no one to contact. No, this is our man; this is the Crocodile’s last victim. The problem is that he could be anywhere after all these years; maybe he only worked here and now he lives somewhere outside of the country. Who the hell knows?”

  Piras had been busy obtaining a warrant to search the De Falco residence. Lojacono’s theory—that the man might have killed himself or left some trace of his destination—struck her as one of the more plausible lines to pursue.

  The phone call from Warrant Officer Giaquinto, in San Gerardo, came in a little before nine o’clock that night. They’d had relatively little trouble getting into the house, where everything was neat and tidy, as if De Falco had just left the place. There was no evidence of preparations for a trip or an extended absence. There was nothing that pointed to the man’s destination, nor was there much clothing missing from his armoire: there were only two empty hangers.

  But they’d really had to do some work to force open the garage door: it was armor-plated and bolted shut from within. Once inside, they’d found what looked like a metalworking shop, with precision instruments and a computer with a high-speed connection. No evidence of any illegal activities, the warrant officer concluded with perfect bureaucratic diction.

  But the man was wrong, Lojacono mused. There was clearly evidence of the Crocodile’s activities. Evidence of a lengthy, painstaking process of preparation, and of a conscientious elimination of any and all traces that might help to find him. He felt certain, and he said so to Piras, that the computer’s hard drive had been removed. The warrant officer confirmed that in fact the computer wouldn’t boot up.

  Lojacono pulled a handful of ballistics reports out of the folder full of documents in front of him. The report on the last murder read:

  EVIDENCE FROM THE MURDER OF RINALDI, DONATO, AND COMPARISON WITH PREVIOUS MURDERS

  The projectile in question is a .22 LR cal. bullet, weighing 2.4 g., diameter 5.6 mm, with six right-hand striations, whose class characteristics are compatible with a Beretta 70 series semi-automatic pistol. There is the presence of typical deformations impressed by the projectile’s passage through a silencing device, as well as the presence of deformations due to traces of smoking and scorching. To establish comparison between this projectile and those previously analyzed, it can clearly be ascertained that in this third case the weapon used was the same one employed in the murders of Lorusso, Mirko, and De Matteis, Giada.

  So that’s what the metalworking tools and the precision instruments were for, thought Lojacono. In Italy, you can always get hold of a handgun, and the same is true for a box of bullets. But a silencer is a whole different thing, not something you can find on the open market. You have to make it yourself.

  The clock was ticking. It was almost ten o’clock already.

  It was Piras who had the inspiration.

  Her eyes opened wide and she said, “Damn me. Why on earth didn’t I think of this before? If she was forced to do this thing on her own, it means that she was no longer in touch with him, that they had broken up. And it explains why afterwards she did what she did. So she wouldn’t have wanted to have any more contact with him, much less with his family, right?”

  Lojacono wasn’t following her. “So?”

  “So she wouldn’t have given his home number, and it is unlikely he would have had a cell phone back then. You know why? Because he was a student. Just an ordinary student, and the best way to get in touch with him was by leaving a message with the administrator.”

  Lojacono lit up. “An engineering student. Who was working hard on classwork and coursework, and who spent all his time at the university. Which is why . . .”

  Piras clapped her hands happily. “The Engineers’ Guild! Immediately!”

  This time, things were anything but straightforward. At the Engineers’ Guild, given the late hour, there was no answer. And when they looked up Orlando Masi on their website, all it listed was the name of the company where he worked.

  “At least Masi hasn’t gone to work in the north of Italy, or abroad somewhere. He’s still right here in the city, and he works for Gallardo Construction, which is one of the region’s largest public-sector construction companies. Or at least that was where he worked the last time he renewed his membership a year ago. We have the phone number, and a nice little message on the answering machine telling us that the offices are open from nine to one in the afternoon, and then again after lunch from three to five. There’s no one in the phone book by that name. That’s all we’ve got.”

  Lojacono nodded. They were both exhausted.

  “Let’s hope we get to him in time. Tomorrow we’ll track down this engineer of ours, and we’ll ask him a question or two about his past.”

  They agreed to meet very early the following morning and start by calling the construction company.

  Neither of them got a wink of sleep, worn-out though they both were.

  CHAPTER 65

  Sweetheart, my darling,

  You know, there are nights that aren’t made for sleeping.

  Not that there’s anxiety, or a fear of not being up to a given challenge or task. It’s simpler than that: it’s that you’re about to get something you’ve wanted for a long time, so it tends to keep you up.

  It’s sort of the way it is for little children the night before Christmas. A mix of fear and anticipation.

  I must have gone over the things I’ll need to do a million times by now. This one is different from the others, because it won’t
be enough to sit still like a good boy and wait for them to come to me, heads down, like little lambs at Easter. This time, I’m going to have to arrange to have the proper time and space, and I’ll have to take concrete steps to gain those opportunities.

  Of course, I could have waited. If I’d patiently monitored, observed, and watched, sooner or later a situation would have arisen that would allow me to act in greater safety and ease. But I have the sensation, and it’s growing stronger all the time, that my chances are about to run out.

  You know, my darling, now I’m in all the newspapers. The Crocodile. Every day they revisit all three murders, word by word, step by step, coming up with ridiculously elaborate theories. They don’t see how simple reality can be, how easy it is to understand what’s happened. What’s happening.

  So the best idea is to get moving and put an end to this thing, the sooner the better.

  Don’t worry though; I’ve still got everything worked out to the last detail. The last thing we want is to let them catch us now, at the last second, right? Just when it’s all about to come to an end. Can you imagine how ironic that would be, my darling, to be caught and locked up before I could finish my work, without being able finally to hold you in my arms? It would be so laughable.

  But it’s going to be different this time. I’ll have to be careful, and I’ll have to be fast.

  I’ve made all the necessary preparations. I’ve rehearsed every act, every movement hundreds of times. I’ve found the place, the situation, the logistics.

  I’ve prepared the tool.

  Two shots. Just to be safe, I’ve loaded three bullets; you always want to have a safety margin. But I’m only going to pull the trigger twice.