“I was trying to find it. I told you, I need more time!”
Santini scrutinized him. Dante knew that Santini’s instincts were telling him not to believe him, but, whether or not he was involved, what Dante was telling him was exactly what someone like him would most want to hear.
“Had you ever been to Captain Rovere’s home before?” asked Santini.
“No.”
“We have ways of knowing if you’re lying to us, Torre.”
“Why should I lie to you? Do you think I planted the bomb?”
“Well, then, who did plant it, in your opinion?”
Dante held his breath. This was it. “The Father. The man who kidnapped me.”
This time there was a burst of murmuring. Santini whirled around to shut them up, but Dante understood that he was just hogging the spotlight. Santini liked having an audience. “Have you found another whistle, Torre?” Santini asked.
“There was only one.”
“Right. I was forgetting. Yours was the only one. And why would the man who kidnapped you want to kill Captain Rovere?”
Dante felt the way he had when he was twenty and he had bet all the money he had to pay his hotel bill at the roulette wheel on the terrace of a casino in Bad Gastein. It had been a bold bet: everything on red. And now he was doing the same thing. “Because he’s afraid of me. Because he knew that sooner or later Rovere was going to believe me.”
Back at the casino in Austria, Dante had been forced to run for it in the middle of the night without paying his hotel bill, leaving his suitcase full of clothes behind him. This time his luck was better. Santini’s shoulders sagged a quarter of an inch, and Dante knew he’d won. “I see.”
Santini asked him a few other routine questions—if he’d seen anyone, if he’d heard anything—then got to his feet. Dante put the cherry on top of the cake: he extended his bad hand and pulled on the hem of Santini’s jacket. The lieutenant pulled free with a disgusted yank, but he pretended not to notice.
“You do believe me, don’t you?” he asked pathetically. “You’ll investigate the Father?”
Santini turned his back on him and addressed one of the uniformed officers. When the officer stuck his head in, Dante saw that it was Alberti. He forced himself not to give him a wink.
“Bring him some water and something to eat,” said Santini. “Let’s show him we’re not animals.” Then he left.
Alberti came over, acting solicitous. “What can I get you, Signor Torre? Would you like an espresso?”
Dante’s expression changed. “Don’t you dare. A tea is all I need. And cigarettes, for Christ’s sake. I’ve been going through nicotine cold turkey, and I feel like I’m dying.”
Astonished at the sudden transformation—Dante had seemed crushed and exhausted to him—Alberti brought him a lukewarm cup of tea, a packet of cookies from the vending machines, and an unfiltered cigarette.
An hour later, after Dante’s handcuffs had been removed, Minutillo arrived.
The lawyer demanded to be allowed to speak to his client without witnesses and shut the French doors in the policemen’s faces.
“How are you?” he asked once they were alone.
“You can imagine.” Dante, who couldn’t be sure no one was eavesdropping, spoke in a low voice. “Santini convinced himself that I’m not a danger to him. For now.”
“Why would you be a danger to him?”
“Maybe he’s involved.”
“With the Father?”
“Rovere was convinced that someone was helping the Father. And he explicitly said not to trust De Angelis.” He lit the cigarette that Minutillo had brought him.
“Why should he or Santini want to help a murderer?”
“I don’t have any idea.” Dante puffed out a smoke ring. “If you’d asked me that question six hours ago, I would have said that it was nonsense. But after the bomb . . .”
“The two things might not be connected.”
“And I kidnapped myself, I suppose.”
“Don’t dismiss the possibility out of hand, Dante.”
Dante shook his head. “Did you get rid of the stuff in my hotel room?”
“Of course. That’s why I took so long to get here. As soon as I heard that they’d picked you up, I hurried over to the hotel. And just in the nick of time, I’d say. While I was on my way out, I saw what looked like a group of plainclothes detectives on their way in.”
“Probably from the CIS. Who alerted you?”
“I have friends on the inside there. And so do you. More friends than Santini does.”
Dante put on his sarcastic grin. “That doesn’t take much. I’m about to do something disgusting, Roberto. Let me apologize in advance, but keep up your end in this.” Then, in a loud voice, he added: “I don’t feel too good. I’m . . .” He bugged out his eyes, lurched forward, and vomited tea and cookies onto Minutillo’s shoes. And with the tea and cookies came up the thing that had been caused him stomach cramps until that moment. A little blue plastic rectangle. A USB flash drive.
“Oh, my God,” yelled Minutillo, jumping theatrically to his feet.
“I’m so sorry! Hold on, let me help you!” Dante exclaimed, clumsily pretending to try to clean off the lawyer’s shoes with a paper napkin. He skillfully grabbed the flash drive with the napkin and balled it up.
“Hold on, let me do it,” said Minutillo, taking the napkin from him and using it to wipe himself off. While he was bent over, he whispered into his ear, “What’s in it?”
“It was in Rovere’s jacket. I hope it’s something useful. Otherwise he would have left it in the office with his computer.”
“Understood,” murmured Minutillo, anything but pleased. Then, in a loud voice, he said, “I’m going to rinse off in the bathroom.”
Dante looked hard at him. “Good idea.”
Minutillo headed off with the dirty napkin in one hand, held out in plain view. As Dante had guessed, no one even thought of examining it to see what it held.
2
While Dante waited to be allowed to leave police headquarters, if possible before anyone could notice that his testimony didn’t entirely add up, and as Minutillo headed toward his law office feeling as though he were carrying a hand grenade in his pocket instead of a flash drive, Colomba was spending the day in the third-floor room in the general hospital under the effects of tranquilizers and painkillers. The mix kept the crisis at bay, muffled the memories, and made time pass quickly. At 4 p.m. the nurse removed the IV, and immediately afterward a familiar figure strode through the door with a bouquet of flowers in his hand. It was De Angelis. A short while earlier, he’d been interviewed and photographed with the flowers. He’d explained to the press that he was paying a courtesy call to a courageous policewoman. Colomba turned her face to look out the window. She could see the trees on the hospital grounds. Without drugs, her head was beginning to throb.
De Angelis dropped the flowers on the table. He dragged a chair over next to the bed and sat down. “How are you feeling, Deputy Captain?” he asked.
“That’s none of your business,” Colomba replied in a low voice. Her throat was scarred by the scalding smoke. “And I don’t think you care anyway.”
“I know that you were very fond of Captain Rovere, Deputy Captain Caselli,” the judge said calmly. “And I can imagine just how upset you are now. I want to tell you that I’m sorry about what happened, too. I’ve had opportunities to appreciate his skills. He was a great cop.” Colomba didn’t move and said nothing. De Angelis went on, unruffled. “And I’m sorry to be here bothering you now. But it’s essential that the two of us come to an understanding immediately.”
Colomba didn’t say a thing.
“The last time we met, it didn’t go all that well, Deputy Captain,” De Angelis continued. “But that doesn’t mean that things can’t change. That we can’t help each other out.”
“What do you want?”
“We just want to catch whoever killed Captain Rovere.”
Colomba snapped around and saw stars. “And do you think I don’t?”
“That’s why I’m here. We already know that you’ve worked in a, shall we say”—he flashed a brief smile—“clandestine fashion on Luca Maugeri’s kidnapping. In search of a theory that is somewhat different from the one being pursued by my office.”
“So what if I did?”
“It’s a certainty, it’s not a question,” said the judge, displaying a hint of toughness. “And while previously it was just a venial sin, one you could get away with, with just a slap on the wrist, things have changed now, Deputy Captain. I have to know whether you think Captain Rovere’s death is connected to your investigation.”
De Angelis’s words sounded eminently reasonable, and Colomba felt them pressing against her will, more fragile than ever at that moment. But Rovere hadn’t trusted De Angelis, and that mistrust had been his last will and testament. “I don’t know,” she replied. “How could I possibly know?”
“Don’t trifle with me, Deputy Captain. If you happen to have stumbled upon some evidence that points to a, shall we say, alternative theory concerning the kidnapping of Luca Maugeri, that might be a sufficient reason for an unbalanced kidnapper and murderer to try to stop the investigation. Especially if Captain Rovere was encouraging you in the investigations. Or was actually the original cause of them.”
“Are you talking about the Father?”
“I’m talking about anything that can help me to identify those responsible for the bombing. There are six dead besides Captain Rovere, you know? And two people seriously injured.”
“I doubt you’d believe me.”
“Try me. And as for your own personal culpability, however irregular it may have been, I’ll be glad to declare that your investigation was undertaken with the authorization of my office.”
He’s already throwing Santini under the bus, Colomba thought to herself. Maugeri has been in jail for a week, and he still hasn’t confessed. De Angelis hasn’t come up with any further evidence against him. He’s starting to get scared he might have arrested the wrong man. Had she been certain that that was the case, she would have told him everything, but once again she took Rovere’s suspicions as her own.
“I haven’t found anything.”
“I see. And what did you do with the information you asked Lieutenant Infanti to get for you?”
Colomba decided she needed to get some new friends. And, without knowing it, she clung to the same version as Dante. “Signor Torre wanted to examine similar cases, hoping to find some matches. Unfortunately, he didn’t find any.”
“If he hadn’t found anything, why were you meeting with Rovere?”
“Just a courtesy call.”
De Angelis took off his heavy black-framed eyeglasses, cleaned the lenses with his tie, and put them back on. “So you have no suspicions, however vague? Not just about the kidnapper known as the Father. Anything Captain Rovere might have mentioned to you.”
“He wasn’t expecting to be killed. That much I can guarantee.” To conceal her tears, Colomba once again turned her head to look out the window.
De Angelis grabbed her chin and turned her face toward him. “I came here to offer you my friendship. I’m asking you to accept it.”
Colomba leveled her eyes into the judge’s. Her eyes seemed those of an alien, with the green of the iris standing out against the reddened corneas. De Angelis’s eyes were two opaque mirrors behind his tinted lenses, from which it was impossible to gather the slightest trace of what he was thinking. “Don’t you ever touch me again,” she said to him. “Or I won’t be able to answer for what happens next.”
The magistrate withdrew his hand. “And . . .”
“I have nothing else to say to you.”
De Angelis stood up. “You’ve made your choice, Caselli.”
On his way out, he pretended to bump into the table. The flowers tumbled off and hit the floor.
3
It was as if De Angelis’s visit had unblocked the logjam. In the two hours that followed, Colomba didn’t have a minute alone. First her mother showed up, anxious to be consoled; then came the couple of friends whose dinner party she’d missed the night she’d gone up to the mountain meadows to see Lucia Maugeri’s corpse and whom she hadn’t spoken to since. When they asked her if she needed anything, she asked them to go to her apartment and pick up a change of clothes, since her mother had already said she was too upset to do it.
Another visitor to the hospital was Alberti, clearly ill at ease in this unaccustomed role. He was in plain clothes, and his Abercrombie sweatshirt and jeans made him look even more like an overgrown high school student. Colomba was happy to see him, even if the press of activity was exhausting her.
Alberti handed her a small package. She opened it and found it contained an MP3 player. Not exactly a brand-new model, but still in working order. “You’re crazy, I can’t accept this,” she told him. “I know how much you make.”
He blushed. “Actually, it’s contraband, and to start with it’s just a cheap Chinese gadget. The gift is what’s inside.”
Colomba looked at the MP3 player, in surprise. She was having a hard time focusing, what with the medicine and the blow to her head. “So what’s in it?”
“Music. That I composed. Emotional electronica. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Nicolas Jaar . . . I take my inspiration from him.”
Colomba didn’t have the faintest idea of what Alberti was talking about. “I think I stopped back at the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but thanks anyway. I didn’t know you were a composer.”
“For now it’s just a hobby. If you don’t like my pieces, just delete them and put in whatever you prefer.” He hesitated. “I saw Signor Torre today.”
Colomba lost the smile and grabbed Alberti by his arm. “How is he?”
He lowered his voice. “He says that it was his kidnapper who did it. That he’s taken thousands of children. If you don’t mind my saying so, he seemed kind of out of his mind.”
“Who was questioning him?”
“Santini. But he didn’t believe him. And frankly, it wouldn’t have been easy.”
“How did Dante justify his statements?”
“He didn’t. That’s why Santini laughed in his face. I felt sorry for him.”
Colomba shut her eyes for a second, overwhelmed. They’d grilled Dante and he had kept quiet, even at the cost of looking like a fool. He didn’t trust them any more than she did. “Where is he now?”
“Still at police headquarters, though his lawyer is raising holy hell. I think the magistrates are going to release him soon. They don’t have any justification for holding on to him, do they?”
Alberti’s gaze was practically imploring. “He has nothing to hide,” said Colomba.
“I never doubted it for a second, Deputy Captain. I like him, even if he is a real bear. He’s had a lot of bad luck in his life.”
“What’s known about the explosion?”
“The Forensic Squad is still investigating the site.”
“Was anyone seen going in? Have they found anything?”
“Deputy Captain . . . if anything’s come out, I’m the last person they’re likely to tell. I’m just a penguin in a patrol car.”
Colomba realized that he had a point. “If you do find anything out, please let me know.”
“Sure. Well, I’ll be going. You should get some rest now.”
“Thanks.”
But Colomba’s head was too full of thoughts for her to get to sleep. Every time she tried, she instantly started to see the flickering flame being lit in the darkness of Rovere’s apartment, she heard the crackling of fire that was so similar to the flames that had consumed the restaurant in Paris. And she was suddenly transported back nine months in time, and the whispering shadows whirled through her head again. She woke up and went back to sleep at least three times, until she finally gave up and convinced the doctor not to give her any more tranquilizers. In the IV the
y gave her before dinner, there were only antibiotics and painkillers to relieve her headaches, at least enough so she could think straight. Her grief over Rovere’s death continued to surface in her consciousness, however hard she struggled to keep it at bay. She still found it difficult to believe that she had lost him. She remembered him from the early years in Palermo, one of the few ranking officials to go out onto the street with his officers when something happened. As a deputy captain, she had asked if she could go over to the marshals service, but Rovere had insisted on taking her with him to the Drug Enforcement Division. He believed that a woman could work better undercover, and he had been right. For two years, Colomba had been variously drug buyer, junkie, and dealer, and no had ever suspected that she was actually a cop. Then her face had become too well known, and she had been moved over to street crime—the first woman to work regularly with the Hawks—the whole time with Rovere following her progress from a distance and supporting her against the sexist officials who had tried to minimize her achievements.
Colomba had lost her father when she was just a girl; it had been a heart attack. She’d always been attracted to powerful men, and to some extent they were clearly father figures to her. Frequently they’d disappointed her, the way her boyfriends had when they’d been unable to keep up with her in the many sudden changes in her career. Rovere had never failed her; he’d always been there. At a discreet distance—there had never been any expressions of emotional attachment in their relationship, no socializing except for a few dinners together before Elena had fallen sick—but unswervingly. Then he’d betrayed her in that way. Or had she actually started it?
With the lucidity made possible to her by her worsening fever, it occurred to Colomba that perhaps she had been the first to break their bond, when she had decided to quit, and she had done so without revealing the truth about her condition to him. Her panic attacks, her fears. But had that been enough to justify what Rovere had done next, the way he had used her as a pawn in his chess match against the Father?
Kill the Father Page 27
