“So he was kidnapped sometime between 2011 and 2013, unless we’re completely off track. We can check the missing-children reports.”
“There’s no point,” said Dante.
“How do you know that?”
Dante heaved a sigh. “This is my area of expertise, don’t you remember? There were roughly one hundred fifty minors reported missing in those three years, but there were very few actual children among them, and everyone remembers their names. In most of the cases, moreover, it was one of the parents who took their child out of the country.”
“Well, couldn’t it be one of those cases?”
“The age and the face don’t match up. No matter how much they might have changed.”
“Have you seen all the pictures?”
“Of course I have.”
From the apartment house behind them came the sound of breaking glass and two male voices arguing in Arabic. I’ll read all about that in the newspaper tomorrow, Colomba thought bitterly to herself. “So you’re suggesting it would be a kid that nobody thinks of as having been kidnapped?” she asked, after a minute. “And how could that be?”
“Consider my case.”
“They assumed you were dead.”
“Bingo.”
“And you’re saying he did the same thing with the boy we saw in the video?”
“Why not? They’ll think that Luca’s dead, too, sooner or later, unless we find something. That his father murdered him and buried him in the woods.”
Just a few days ago Colomba would have dismissed that hypothesis as implausible. Now she would have laid odds on it as the likely explanation. And why not, after all? If someone was crazy enough to be a serial kidnapper of children, he was certainly likely to have an equally deranged plan for making ends meet. “A child that everyone assumes is dead but whose corpse has never been found . . . I can’t think of such a case anytime recently.”
“Not necessarily a murder. It could have been a car crash. A car that wound up at the bottom of a river would work just as well.”
“There must be quite a list,” said Colomba.
“Up until 1994, at least a hundred children died in car crashes every year in Italy; the number might be a little lower nowadays, with seat belts and car seats required by law, but we don’t have any reliable statistics.”
“Because if we did, you’d know about them, right?”
“Sorry if I’m good at my job . . . Then there are the cases of children drowning at sea or falling into some fucking crevice or ravine in the mountains. But in most cases, the body is found.”
“We’d need to get records from the highway patrol, the national park rangers . . . It’s a hell of a lot of work.”
“Don’t you have a central database?”
“We only just got one recently for murders.”
Dante blew out his cheeks in exasperation. “I’m amazed you still occasionally arrest people. Can you ask Rovere?”
“No. He’s decided that he no longer requires our assistance.”
Dante stopped short, just as he was about to light another cigarette. “When were you planning on telling me that?”
“Why, what’s it change for you?” Colomba barked, angry at being caught in the wrong.
“I never trusted him. And I trust him even less now that he’s cut us out of the investigation.”
“He says that he’s worried about me.”
“Bullshit. He cares about you, but that’s not what’s driving him. He has other motives, it’s just that I can’t seem to figure them out. That’s why I’m worried.”
I’m starting to see things the same way, Colomba thought, but she kept it to herself. Instead, she shrugged her shoulders; even Dante couldn’t see her. “But he’s not the only person I can ask. Let’s head back to the city. Tonight I’m planning to drink so many of those cocktails of yours that I won’t know my own name.”
17
Colomba had one other source of information, and that was Lieutenant Carmine Infanti, who seemed even unhappier to receive a phone call from her than he had been to see her anywhere near the car containing Montanari’s corpse. He could certainly have refused to help her, but he was accustomed to taking orders from her and he still respected her, and those factors pushed him in the opposite direction. After ending the conversation with her, he started reaching out to contacts, asking for favors and promising others in exchange. An unexpected source of assistance came from the Italian National Clearinghouse on Traffic Safety, which had recently completed a detailed study on the deaths of minors over the previous five years, and also from an old carabiniere friend who’d climbed the ranks and was now a senior officer.
He took a whole day to gather a sufficient quantity of data, and during that day Colomba actually drank very little, while Dante smoked constantly, staring up at the ceiling of his room where he’d taped up the photos taken of the video of the child. He listened to music at such high volume that for the first time, the hotel management complained.
They talked little, as if each of them were processing what they’d discovered in their own way, and the only news for Colomba was a phone call from the police personnel office, asking her to come in as soon as possible. The person on the phone was polite, but Colomba had no doubt that this was just the first step toward a definitive dismissal from the force. It might have been the fact that she’d kicked Santini in the face, or else maybe Anzelmo had reported her presence at the search of the local health clinic, but it was inevitable in any case that sooner or later her extracurricular activities would start to come out. She wondered whether it had been a direct action on the part of the chief of police, as Rovere had feared. To ward off her nervousness, after making Dante promise not to leave the suite, she went home to get a change of clothes and sort through her mail. The book lying abandoned on the armrest of her chair threw her into a terrible depression. She didn’t know whether she missed her old life or was just regretting the time she’d spent living like a hermit while a monster was at large, harvesting children. To drive the sadness away, she got into her tracksuit and gym shoes and went for a run along the Tiber embankment, at sunset for once, sweating out bad dreams and stress. When she got back, she saw that she’d missed Infanti’s call to her cell phone. She called him back, and they agreed to meet at the end of the second shift.
At eight that evening she swung by to get Dante and dragged him off with her, ignoring his protests, to the Momart Restaurant Café in the Nomentana district, which had a nice outdoor patio for smokers. That meant Dante wouldn’t be forced to wait in the car.
Infanti was already there with a beer on the table in front of him, and he stood up to greet them. “We’ve already met,” he said to Dante.
“Did you find the condom in the end?” Dante asked him, sarcastically.
“Have you heard of pretrial secrecy, by any chance?”
Dante smirked. “So you didn’t find it.”
They sat down at the outdoor table, and Dante ordered his usual Moscow Mule, while Colomba asked for a mineral water. She’d felt out of shape on her run, and she decided it was time to lead a healthier life than she had been lately. It was a pleasant evening; Dante decided for the millionth time that the weather in Rome was one of the few good reasons he stubbornly continued to live there.
Colomba and Infanti exchanged a few conversational gambits about nothing at all while Dante explained in maniacal detail to the waitress exactly how the cocktail ought to be made. Then Colomba nonchalantly asked about Rovere.
“I haven’t seen much of him lately,” Infanti said cautiously. “But he seems sort of down.”
“Down how?”
“Unshaven, rumpled clothes. Do you remember what he was like after his wife died?”
“Not really; most of the time I was in the hospital. But I get what you’re talking about.”
“Yesterday he didn’t come out of his office, and he didn’t answer the phone either. Today he skipped the meeting with the chief of police
. . . the chief went off on him because he said Rovere had been avoiding him for the past week. Maybe he needs a vacation.”
Colomba mulled over the information. If what Infanti was saying was true, Rovere and the police chief hadn’t met in the past few days. The decision to cut her out of the investigation had been Rovere’s alone and once again reinforced Dante’s view and his suspicions.
“Rovere is a widower?” asked Dante.
Infanti nodded. “It’s been a year. His wife, Elena, had a grim struggle before dying.”
“Any children?” Dante inquired.
“No.” Infanti opened his bag and pulled out a laptop to change the topic. He didn’t like talking about his boss in front of a stranger, especially one who seemed morbidly interested. “I have what you asked for, Colomba.”
“You found everything?”
“All the fatal car crashes and all the murders involving minors. As far as the murders are concerned, I’m sure I have them all. It’s forty or so.”
“Forty-three,” Dante corrected him.
Infanti nodded. “Yes, that’s right. Well done.” He opened the computer, which started up with a whoosh. “When it comes to the crashes, I doubt I have absolutely everything. But I did the best I could.”
“Do the reports include the state of the corpse?”
“Not always, but once again . . .”
“You did the best you could,” Colomba finished his sentence for him. “I know you did, thanks.”
Infanti inserted a flash drive that was so beat up it was basically held together with Scotch tape. “I transferred everything into Excel. There are 312 files,” he said, pointing to the screen. “I’ll make a copy for you.”
Dante peeked over his shoulder. “There are no pictures,” he mumbled with the cocktail straw between his teeth.
“No pictures of the corpses?” asked Infanti, clearly irritated. He was doing his best to put up with Dante, but it was obviously a struggle.
“Pictures of the victims before they became corpses.”
“We don’t have them in our systems, and you won’t find them in the systems of the police agencies. At most, I could find pictures of the accidents, through the highway patrol.”
“We’ll just have to ask the families for them,” said Dante.
Infanti was stunned. “You are joking, aren’t you?”
“Yes, it’s just my twisted sense of humor.”
Infanti turned to Colomba. “Could you explain why you want pictures of dead children?”
She shrugged her shoulders uneasily. “We’re doing some research.”
“What kind of research?”
“Don’t ask.”
“No, I’m going to ask, and I want an answer. All I need is for any one of those people you call to complain, and it’ll come out that I helped you. Why don’t you tell me what I’m getting into here.”
Colomba sighed. “I can’t.”
Infanti grimaced unhappily. He’d assumed he was helping his old superior officer, who had always displayed uncommon competence and confidence during the three years they’d worked together. But the woman he was looking at now was just a shadow of the one he remembered. Depressed, off balance, with something eating at her from within. He realized he’d made a mistake. “I’m sorry, Colomba, I’ve changed my mind.”
Dante lunged forward and plucked the flash drive out of the slot. The computer emitted a discontented pling. “Too late.”
Infanti grabbed his arm and jerked him closer; he snarled at him: “How dare you, piece of shit?”
Dante said nothing but kept his fist clenched, with his treasure firmly grasped in it. Violence was such an alien experience to him that his customary reaction to the aggressivity of alpha males or domineering individuals was to retreat into himself. Except for the two or three times in the past when he had simply lost control and gotten into trouble with the law.
“Give it,” said Infanti, applying pressure.
Dante continued to oppose passive resistance, without looking the other man in the eyes. He felt extremely uncomfortable.
“Let him go, Carmine,” said Colomba. “Don’t be a fool.”
“Tell him to give me back my flash drive.”
“Let go of him, Lieutenant.”
The tone of voice belonged to the old Colomba, and suddenly Infanti released Dante, dropping his eyes as he did. “This is about the child up at the mountain meadows, isn’t it? You’re fixated on that kid.”
“None of your fucking business.”
Dante unbuttoned his shirt sleeves to examine the red marks on his skin. “That’s going to leave a bruise,” he muttered, displaying his usual sense of humor. No one paid him any mind.
Infanti pointed at him. “Was he the one who got you into this fucked-up case? What kind of ideas did he put into your head?”
“Nobody put any ideas into my head.”
“Then why are you investigating where you shouldn’t be? And without the magistrate’s authorization?”
“Lower your voice, everyone’s looking at us,” said Colomba.
It was true. The adjoining tables were occupied mostly by college students, and many of them had turned to stare at them. They all assumed it was a family quarrel or some fight over a cheating spouse. Him, her, and the other man. In the informed opinion of all the onlookers, neither of the two men was worthy of dating Colomba. One of them was skeletal and foppishly bizarre in appearance; the other one was a diminutive fireplug with a pug nose. The athletic woman sitting across from them could certainly aspire to better, and many of the male onlookers would have been more than happy to volunteer.
“Tell me what you’re hoping to discover all by yourself, working with this halfwit?” Infanti continued in a slightly lower voice.
“Hey,” Dante protested.
“You’re turning nasty, Carmine. Let me get the check.”
“No, no, I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said angrily, tossing a ten-euro note on the table and getting to his feet. “I couldn’t wait for you to come back from leave. I never believed what everyone else was saying.”
Colomba narrowed her eyes, and once again Infanti realized he couldn’t withstand that green gaze that had darkened in response to his angry reaction and was now pure emerald. “Why, what were they saying?”
“Forget about it.”
“What were they saying, Lieutenant?”
Infanti hesitated for a fraction of a second. “That you left your mind in Paris. And now I have to admit that it’s true.”
Paris? wondered Dante. Is that where whatever happened to her happened? He started reviewing in his mind the things that had happened north of the Alps in the recent past.
“You can go now,” Colomba retorted in an icy voice.
“I’m really sorry for you,” said Infanti, slipping his computer into his bag and turning to leave. “But maybe it really would be better for you to find another line of work.”
“What an asshole,” Dante commented once Infanti was gone. But he kept thinking: Paris . . . Paris . . .
Colomba shook her head. “No. If I were in his shoes, I’d have behaved the same way. Before long, someone is going to ask me to explain just what I think I’m doing. We don’t have much time.”
“I’d figured that part out,” said Dante absentmindedly.
Colomba made a face as she realized the direction Dante’s thoughts were going in. “Well, have you got it?”
Dante blinked. “Got what?”
“I see the gears turning in there.”
Dante tried to crack his sarcastic grin, but it failed him because at that moment an idea had surfaced in his mind. “How long have you been on leave?”
“Including time in hospital, convalescence, and leave? Almost nine months as of this date.” Colomba gestured to the waiter and, when he came over, asked for a beer.
Dante froze. The images of devastation that had been reprised obsessively on all the news broadcasts a year ago spun through his mind. “I didn�
�t know that there were Italian policemen there, too,” he murmured.
“Just one. Me.” Now her eyes had turned even darker, like an open sea. “The inquiry cleared me, but I know: those deaths, those people who were injured, it was all my fault.”
18
Even though Dante had understood just what burden Colomba was carrying with her, he was desperate to hear her version. But he’d have to wait till they got back to the hotel, because she wasn’t about to tell her story in the middle of a crowd.
They took seats on the balcony outside the room, where Dante could smoke, with the lights turned off and the awnings drawn for added security. In the dim light left by the lamps down in the courtyard that filtered though the bars of the railing, Colomba felt sufficiently certain that Dante wouldn’t be able to read her face and detect emotions she didn’t particularly want to share.
“A year ago we got a tip,” she began, “that a multiple killer was hiding out in France. His name was Emilio Bellomo.”
“I know. People talked about it.”
“Just let me tell the story my own way, because it’s hard enough as it is.”
“Sorry.”
“Bellomo had been convicted of two murders, a number of robberies, and attempted murders for pay.”
“Versatile.”
“He did it all for the money. He’d been on the run for three years, and the last tip that had come in on him dated back about seven months, when he’d jumped out of his car at a carabinieri checkpoint and escaped on foot. The carabinieri cousins, as they were known, had opened fire, but he’d managed to get away. They thought he’d been wounded, but he hadn’t gone to any local hospital, which meant he must have administered his own medical care, or else he’d found a willing physician. Because he’d committed his first murder in Rome, our district attorney’s office had first shot at the investigation. We found out where he was because one of his old accomplices, Fabrizio Pinna, ratted him out. Bellomo had stayed with Pinna to recuperate after the firefight with the carabinieri and clearly trusted him enough to tell him that he was planning to go to Paris to stay with his girlfriend.”
Kill the Father Page 21
