“Does Rovere know?”
“Are you worried about regulations?”
“I’m worried about you. And your career. With everything that’s happened to you . . .” His voice trailed off.
“What’s happened to me and will happen to me is my business and mine alone. Sorry to have to say it.”
“But you’re dragging me into it. If I help you, then I’m responsible, too.”
“You can tell me no. Just stop preaching the sermon.”
A waitress asked Tirelli if he wanted anything, and he ordered a glass of still white wine that came with an enormous bowl of multicolored crackers. He took a sip without a word.
“Well?” asked Colomba, impatiently. “Are you going to help me or not?”
“I’ll help you . . . but this will be the last time unless you give me some valid justification.”
“If I had one, I’d give it to you. Well? Did you find out who examined the boy?”
Tirelli scrutinized her for a few seconds, then he handed her a scrap of paper folded in four. “Girl, don’t make me worry about you, okay?” he said as he got up. He looked at Dante. “And you, try to keep the idiotic pranks to a minimum.”
All Dante had to offer in reply was the noisy slurping of his cocktail through a straw.
4
The doctor whose name appeared on the scrap of paper was called Marco de Michele, and he was an internist at the emergency room of the Sant’Andrea Hospital on Via Cassia in the Grottarossa district.
Even from a distance, Dante knew that this couldn’t be the Father. Too young, about forty. Could he be an accomplice?
When he stepped out to smoke a cigarette with them, Dante kept an eye on every move he made. Haste, weariness, boredom. There was no sign of guilt in his shoulders, no sign of fear, if not the normal amount anyone feels when meeting with a cop.
De Michele said he couldn’t remember any of the children he’d examined for the school program. “Except for the kid who had a bad case of pectus excavatum.”
“Shoemaker’s chest,” explained Dante. “It’s a deformity, a sunken chest, and they call it that because shoemakers worked that way, clutching the shoe against their chest.”
Colomba snorted in annoyance. Sometimes Dante seemed like a walking Wikipedia page. “I’m talking about Luca Maugeri,” she said brusquely.
“The name rings a bell . . .” De Michele’s eyes suddenly snapped open wide. “You mean the boy murdered by his father?”
Dante decided that his astonishment was believable and exchanged a glance with Colomba, who nodded because she’d been thinking the same thing.
“No, this kid just happens to have the same name,” she lied. “Was there more than one doctor for each child?”
“There were three of us, but each one examined a different child at the same time. They took numbers, like at the post office.”
“Was there any medical staff, doctors or nurse practitioners, with them while they were waiting?” asked Dante.
“No. Just RNs, and they didn’t do anything but open the door to let them in, one at a time.” He touched his head, clearly uncomfortable. “Did something happen to the boy? Did someone molest him or . . .”
“The mother received a series of obscene phone calls,” Dante hastily put in.
De Michele smiled. “I’m gay. But I didn’t call the boy’s father either, before you think to ask.”
In the car, caught in the monstrous traffic on Rome’s ring road, Colomba regretted not having a flashing roof light. “Looks like a dead end,” she said.
“He didn’t make the call, but someone did, and they knew about the medical exam.”
“Any of a hundred thousand people.”
“You want to give up?”
“No. Let’s look at Lucia Maugeri’s phone records and see if we can figure out who it was.” Rovere had sent her the phone records along with everything else. “A couple things we can be sure of are that he has no prior convictions and that he wasn’t particularly insistent, otherwise the cops would have picked up on it.”
“If anyone even bothered to check.”
“They must have done the basic minimum amount of work, otherwise the judge would have ripped them a new one at the preliminary hearing.” Forgetting she wasn’t driving a police car, Colomba hammered her foot down on the accelerator to whip around the car ahead of her, breaking the speed limit and then some.
Dante grabbed onto his seat with both hands. “Isn’t De Angelis the judge?”
“He’s the prosecuting magistrate. How can you know everything and still know fucking nothing about criminal procedure?”
“Because it’s boring and I have a lawyer who takes care of those things. Look out, you’re going over the speed limit.”
“Are you going to write me a ticket?”
“No, I just don’t want to throw up in a rental car. That was my credit card we used.”
Colomba passed a truck, brushing it with her rearview mirror.
Dante opened the car window and took a deep breath, filling his lungs. “Has anyone ever told you that you drive like you’re drunk?”
“If you prefer, I can let you out and you can catch a cab.”
Dante considered the possibility. “We’re going in the right direction, CC.”
“Only because we’re heading in the direction you prefer.”
“No. I’m not wrong about this. I couldn’t tell you why, but I do know that it scares me.”
Dante didn’t say another word for the rest of the drive and at dinner practically didn’t eat, just stared into the empty air. He even refused to take the elevator, and Colomba followed him up all fifteen flights of stairs, which he climbed slowly, with an apathetic expression. When they reached the hotel suite, he went straight into his room.
Colomba took off her shoes and followed him, sitting down sideways on the chaise longue. “Do you remember if a doctor of any kind called your family before your kidnapping?”
“Now you believe in a connection?”
“No, but I told you I was going to check everything out, and that’s what I intend to do.”
“No strangers got in touch with my folks in the period prior to my disappearance. At least, that’s what they remembered at the time.”
“Give me Lucia Maugeri’s phone records,” said Colomba.
Dante reached under the bed and tossed her a bundle of stapled sheets of paper. To the vast annoyance of Colomba, who only wished she had the same superpower; he always seemed to find everything without hesitation.
Dante went back to sitting in his fakir’s position at the center of the bed. “Some witnesses have mentioned seeing a strange car outside our apartment building in the days prior to my disappearance, but nothing was ever pinned down, and it could have been a red herring.”
“What about your family doctor?” she asked without looking up.
“He’s dead. Back in my day, though, it was normal to be seen by a doctor at the school clinic. They were waging campaigns against rickets and crabs.”
“Did you grow up on a pirate ship?”
“I just grew up in the far countryside. Why on earth didn’t your colleagues check the numbers?”
“They focused on the day of the murder and any possible repeat phone calls in the preceding days or calls at odd times. They didn’t bother to check all the incoming calls. Do you have any idea how long that would take?”
“Especially if you think it’s not worth the trouble.”
Colomba circled a number on the phone record. “There’s a call from a landline in Rome that first appears in the period the sister mentioned, on a Friday.”
“What time of day?”
“At two thirty in the afternoon. That would match the closing time of the store.”
“See if there are any others.”
Colomba scanned ahead. She was reading only the last number in the column, to work fast. The number from the Friday ended with a 9, and every time she encountered a 9, she s
topped to check. If she’d had the data in digital format, she could have just searched automatically, but Rovere had been able to get only a paper copy. “That number appears again the following Monday. And she made the call.”
“After that, nothing more?”
“No.”
“Too few occurrences to catch the eye of your otherwise very astute colleagues.”
“Exactly.”
Colomba picked up the laptop and checked the number on the white pages site. “It’s not listed.”
“It’s him,” said Dante.
“Don’t get too worked up; these days most phone numbers are unlisted.”
Dante went out onto the terrace and lit a cigarette; Colomba called Rovere and asked him to have the number identified.
The answer came back in minutes, but it was more complicated than she expected. She gestured to Dante, who half-closed the French doors but remained hunched over in the wicker chair with his knees tucked under his chin. “Who is it?”
“Skype,” Colomba replied. “If you subscribe, you can get a local number to call from and to receive calls.”
“But people who are calling you don’t know it.” Dante lit another cigarette. “The Father knows that Lucia Maugeri is worried about Luca’s symptoms of autism. He gets in touch with her and offers to help her. They meet somewhere, and he persuades her to say nothing to anyone and not to use the phone.”
“Or else it’s just someone who wants to save on his phone bill.”
“A physician calling from the clinic? Quite credible. Just imagine for a moment that someone . . . I’m not saying the Father . . . took the Maugeris’ son. Pretending to be a doctor might be a good way to do it.”
Colomba agreed in spite of herself. “She was living with a violent man who refused to hear any talk about his son’s illness,” she said. “It could even have been her idea to meet in some out-of-the-way place. But how did she manage to get away without her husband noticing?”
“How was the husband’s toxicology test?”
“Alcohol and psychotropic drugs. But he had a prescription and took them regularly for stress.”
“Maybe she added a few extra to his beer.”
Colomba was skeptical. “But how would the kidnapper have known all those things about the Maugeris’ son?”
“Once he identifies his prey, he starts gathering information. He spies on them. He had two months after the school medical examination.”
“For now, all we have is a strange phone number. Maybe we could try calling it.”
Dante shook his head. “I just did, five minutes ago. No such number.”
“Next time, tell me. That’s not standard procedure.”
“I was sure that the Father would deactivate the number.”
“Don’t fixate on him.”
“Do you think it’s just a coincidence?”
Colomba shrugged. “You know one of the first things they teach you when you start to do investigations? Not to grab hold of any one theory. Because if you believe in it too strongly, you’ll start to see things that aren’t there.”
Dante lit another cigarette off the butt of the one before it. “They told me the same thing when I escaped from the silo.”
“You know I wasn’t referring to that. While we’re talking about hypotheses, do you think the kidnapper would have met the boy at the clinic?”
“Since I don’t believe this is just some ordinary kidnapper but the Father, I’d say no.”
“A minimal risk in the midst of a crowd. He could pretend to be the loving grampa.”
“No,” Dante said tersely. “He lived on, undisturbed, for twenty-five years after I got away. He wouldn’t have succeeded in doing that if he wasn’t cautious to the point of obsession. And believe me, he’s nothing if not obsessive.”
Colomba shook her head. It was always upsetting to her to hear Dante speaking so confidently about the Father. “I’d still take a look at the surveillance videotapes from the local health clinic.”
Dante turned around, his cigarette at half-staff. “What did you say?”
“There must be some kind of surveillance system in that place,” Colomba explained. “I can ask Rovere to get the tapes for us.”
Dante discarded the cigarette without crushing it out and ran back inside. He grabbed Colomba by her shoulders. “We have to find a way to get into the clinic,” he told her.
She shook free, astonished at his intensity. “Tomorrow morning I’ll try talking to the director again . . .”
“No. Right now,” Dante interrupted her. “Tomorrow morning might be too late.”
“It’s closed right now.”
“Get them to open up, CC. This is important.”
“What on earth do you think could happen?”
Dante told her. Colomba got her phone.
5
The health clinic where the Maugeris’ son had been examined was in a misshapen rectangle of gray cement on Via Nomentana, at the on-ramp to the eastern bypass road. It looked like a child’s play block that had wound up in the oven by mistake, with bubbles and protuberances scattered across the facades in an apparently random fashion. When Dante and Colomba got there around midnight, Alberti’s squad car was already parked out front with the roof lights flashing. He came to meet them, accompanied by his older partner, so fat he barely fit into his uniform and reeking of stale sweat: Colomba understood exactly what kind of cop he was even before shaking hands with him. He smiled and nonchalantly stared at her tits.
“And the doctor?” asked Colomba.
Alberti pointed to him. De Michele was standing next to the car, looking annoyed.
She went over to him and shook hands. “Thanks for coming out.”
“Your colleague told me this was very important. So I have to guess that the child you asked me about doesn’t just happen to have the same name. We’re talking about the boy who was murdered by his father.”
“We’re still not assuming he’s dead.”
“And what do I have to do with it?”
“You? Nothing.”
The night watchman showed up at that moment to open the front entrance, and Colomba went over to the car and tapped on Dante’s window. He’d remained in the car, slumped over in the seat like a collapsing bag.
“We’re all here but you,” she said to him.
“Let’s do it some other time.”
“Tomorrow morning half the executive staff of the national health service are going to be on the phone to Rovere, and they’re going to be hopping mad, so we’re not going to have another chance to set foot in there for the next millennium.”
“You don’t really need me to go in with you.”
“Get out. Don’t make me go all cop on you.”
Dante sighed. “Let’s make it quick, though,” he said. Before leaving the hotel he’d downed a cocktail of pills and drops that would have flattened a horse, but the adrenaline continued to neutralize the effects of the pharmaceuticals. His internal thermometer was at ten, if not above: any higher, and columns of steam would be whistling from his ears. Colomba took his arm, leading him toward the entrance. The watchman opened the door and switched on the lights inside. The fluorescent bulbs in the lobby flicked on in sequence.
De Michele stared at Dante’s ashen face. “Are you all right?”
“No, but just show me the way,” he said in a strangled voice.
“What way?”
“The way the children went with their families.”
De Michele stood there for a moment, baffled, then led them up to the mezzanine lobby. At the far end were the teller windows of the hospital intake office and the information window for the public. They were darkened, and Colomba thought of The Walking Dead, where the survivors of the zombie attack took shelter in abandoned public buildings. Her work had often taken her to strange and sometimes dangerous places, but this one had a fascination all its own.
“This is the way in,” said De Michele, “and you go up to the
second floor, by elevator or else there are stairs.”
“Stairs,” Dante muttered. The lobby looked to him like a gray, airless cavern. Struggling to control his respiration, he practically ran up the stairs, ahead of everyone else. “What next?” he asked, panting. The hallway was a claustrophobic passageway with just one window. The black night outside pressed in against the glass.
“Your colleague’s breathing is quite labored,” De Michele said to Colomba.
“That’s just because he’s happy. Now where to?” she asked.
De Michele pointed to the two doors on opposite sides of the hallway, the walls of which were lined with children’s drawings of bugs and flowers. “This is the school medicine ward; in there are the clinics.” He opened one of the doors, revealing a square room with another door and a line of chairs on each wall. “This is where the children and their families wait to be called.”
“Which clinic did you use?” Dante asked in a barely audible voice.
“Mmm . . . that one.” It was the middle room.
Dante took off at a gallop. He went through the first door, tore through the waiting room, and lunged into the clinic, throwing open the white door. It was a dark box. Dante froze, covered with cold sweat, until the others caught up with him and turned on the light. In the room there was a metal table with two facing chairs, an examination bed, and a screen to undress behind. A door concealed a small bathroom. Dante raised the sash window and took in deep lungfuls of the muggy outside air. The alarm went off immediately.
“Fuck,” said Colomba.
Alberti’s radio beeped. It was his older partner. “Hey, geniuses, did you know the perimeter alarm is turned on?” he said.
Colomba grabbed the radio out of Alberti’s hands. “Tell the night watchman to turn it off.”
“He can’t do it from here, it’s controlled by the Dispatch office.”
“Then call Dispatch. And do it now.”
“Yes ma’am.”
The siren went on howling for another minute. Dante kept both hands pressed to his ears the whole time, miming Edvard Munch’s The Scream. When the sound ceased, he resumed his probing of the room. Behind the table, he sought a position that would allow him to take in both the patient’s chair and the examination bed. From up high, he thought. He looked up and saw the air conditioning vent. So obvious . . . He pointed it out to Colomba. “Dismantle it.”
Kill the Father Page 15
