“Then what do you think he’s doing here?”
“I don’t know. But I’ve come to realize that I don’t care. My job here is done.”
Colomba ground her teeth, even as they were chattering with the cold. “That’s easy for you to say.”
“You should have done the same thing. A long time ago.” An officer handed Santini the Glock in a clear plastic bag. “Is this yours?” he asked Colomba.
“No, it’s his,” Colomba replied. “It’s what he used to shoot us. Do a gunshot residue test on his hand, and you’ll see.”
Santini turned to look at the German, his wounds covered with bandages from the first aid given him by a couple of officers. His foot kept oozing blood in spite of the fact that it was completely wrapped in gauze. “Did you hear what they just said? Is it true that you were trying to kill them?”
“I don’t have any idea who these people are,” the German whispered. “They attacked me.”
Santini asked for the man’s ID. Piero Frabetti, he read. “And just what were you doing down here, Signor Frabetti?”
“Taking a walk.”
“At night?”
“Please . . . I’m not well. Could you cut me loose, please?” His hands and legs were still bound with the packing tape.
“Maybe later,” said Santini. “Where the fuck is that ambulance?” he shouted.
“It’s coming, ten minutes,” replied the lieutenant from the CIS who was accompanying him, the one who spoke the northern dialect. “There was a major accident on the county road, and all the mobile ER units are busy.”
“What a fucked-up city this is,” Santini muttered. “Take Caselli away, with her friend. Straight back to Rome, okay?”
“All right. What about him?” he asked, pointing at the German.
“Hand him over to the Cremona colleagues. They’ll figure things out.”
The lieutenant issued appropriate instructions. Colomba was shivering with cold and anger. “Santini . . . the proof of what we’ve been telling you is in the lake!” she shouted. “Just reel in that winch! There’s a fifty-five-gallon drum attached to it!”
“And what’s in the drum, the Father?” laughed Santini.
“It would take you five fucking minutes—”
“That’s five minutes too long. Ciao, Caselli.”
He turned his back on the prisoners and walked over to the lakeshore, lighting a cigarette as he went. His stomach hurt, and all he wanted was to do was get some sleep. But before that a shower, and even before that a glass of something strong. Maybe more than one.
“Are they really going to leave it all here?” Dante asked, bewildered, while the officers were pushing them toward the squad cars at the edge of the trees.
“They’ll put guards on the area and wait for the magistrate to arrive from Cremona,” Colomba explained. “At that point he’ll have the barrel pulled up. Maybe.”
“And what will they do with it?”
“It’ll be taken to the forensic squad’s laboratory and opened up.”
“It’ll disappear during the trip,” Dante pointed out. “Or from the laboratory. And too much time will go by. We need to haul it up now, CC. Before the Father realizes he needs to get rid of all evidence. Which means the children . . .”
“Dante . . . we tried . . .”
Dante looked around feverishly, and his gaze landed on Santini. How had he managed to miss him until now? “We still have one chance,” he said, jutting his chin in Santini’s direction.
“That’s enough talking, you two,” one of the cops escorting them warned them.
“Oh, go fuck yourself, penguin,” Colomba retorted, and her voice vibrated with an authority so profound that the cop fell silent. Then she told Dante, “Santini is on De Angelis’s side.”
“But he’s not on the Father’s side,” said Dante frantically.
“Why do you think that?”
“Just look at him. Look at his bowed shoulders, his hands in his pockets. If he was happy with the way things are going, he’d be pounding his chest like a gorilla. Instead he’s in a state of crisis. He knows something’s wrong.” In a loud voice, he added, “Isn’t it true that you’ve figured it out, Santini? Something’s wrong. And you’re wondering whether someone might not be leading you around by the nose!”
Santini didn’t turn around, but Colomba saw his back stiffen. The policemen who were holding Dante jerked him toward the path to the edge of the trees. He put up resistance, and a third officer came over to help his colleagues lift him physically off the ground.
“Maybe you don’t even like children, Deputy Chief Santini!” Dante went on shouting. “But one day, when you discover that Luca Maugeri and Ruggero Palladino died in a cage, you’re not going to be able to sleep at night! Because that will have been your fault. Because you didn’t have the courage to act according to your conscience.”
Santini swung around, tight-faced. “Who is Ruggero Palladino?”
The policemen stopped to let their superior officer talk to the prisoners.
“Another boy who was taken by the Father,” Dante replied. “Just like me. With the help of that man tied up on the ground. And I believe there are others waiting to be freed, though I can’t be positive of that fact.”
“Your kidnapper has been dead for twenty-five years, Torre. You’re delirious,” Santini said. But once again Colomba noticed that he lacked the brutal certainty he’d once had. Dante was right; Santini was in a crisis state.
“Then why did the German try to kill us?”
“I don’t know what happened here.”
Dante smiled. “But you do know that the German is dangerous, since you didn’t even have his hands cut loose. And if we’re right about him, there’s a chance that we’re right about the children. That’s what you’re thinking.”
“No, I’m just thinking I want to be done with this whole mess,” said Santini. His voice was uncharacteristically soft and distant.
“And you can be done with it. In the best way imaginable. Have the fuel drum recovered and opened.”
Colomba had remained silent to keep from interrupting the communication between the two men. But at that point she could no longer resist. “I know what it means to carry a sense of guilt with you, Santini. I just hope for your sake that it never happens to you, not for something like this.”
Santini was about to come up with an answer, but he said nothing because he suddenly caught a glimpse of himself reflected in the eyes of his men. A middle-aged policeman in a trench coat too light for the chilly weather that night, a man his younger colleagues regarded with fear because of his rages and tongue-lashings and whom his older colleagues shunned because they distrusted him. And he realized they were right, because there are all kinds of cops, but the worst kind is the cop who just doesn’t care anymore. He didn’t care whether they caught the right guy or the wrong one, he didn’t care if someone got hurt or died, if the person he sent behind bars was innocent or guilty. Because the only important thing was to archive the case file and not have complications, to “go along to get along,” as his mother liked to say. As a boy he used to dream of being the star of one of those scenes you see in the movies, where the cop gets a round of applause from his partners for having done something heroic, standing there bathed in an angelic light, but that character had slowly vanished from his imagination, transformed instead into a drab gray functionary who always knew which side of the table he ought to sit at, who to blame and who to praise. But now he realized that he didn’t even care about that anymore, he didn’t give a damn about his career. He felt used up and old, hopeless. “You know what you’re asking me to do, don’t you?” he asked.
“Yes. To do the right thing. How long has it been since you tried it?” Colomba replied.
Santini shut his eyes for a moment; then he turned toward the officers who were searching the truck. “Does any of you know how to use that fucking winch?”
The lieutenant from the north grabbed San
tini by the sleeve. “Could I talk to you for a second, sir?”
Santini shook free. “No, you can’t. Well? Is anyone going to answer me, or do I have to do it all myself?”
An officer on the truck raised his hand. “I do. My father taught me, on a construction site.”
“That’s what I wanted, the story of your life . . . Run the winch, and reel in whatever’s attached to the end of that cable.”
“Yes, sir,” said the officer.
“What about them, sir?” asked the policeman who was holding Colomba.
“Let them wait.”
The cop who had raised his hand hoisted himself up onto the deck of the truck and started the winch. The cable tautened and rose; the sound of the motor rose in pitch as if it were under strain, until Colomba was afraid it might be about to seize up. Then the cable started slowly reeling in, hauling its load as it did. The policeman at the controls really did know what he was doing, because he slowed the motor every time he heard it laboring. The other officers were standing around in a semicircle, watching, talking in low voices, intrigued and filled with anticipation. The cable reeled in for about thirty feet; then it stopped.
“It must have snagged on something,” shouted the policeman running the winch.
Santini shook his head in resignation. “Put on your gloves!” he shouted.
“What?” asked the lieutenant from the north.
“All of you, put on your gloves and haul on that fucking cable. Get moving. Except for you,” he added, speaking to the men guarding the prisoners.
“We’re not going to run away, Santini,” said Colomba.
“I’m not interested in taking the risk. Whatever turns out to be in your drum, I’m taking you back to Rome, on foot if necessary.”
The officers lined up along the cable and grabbed it, jerking and lifting until the drum came unsnagged with a jerk. The men let go of the cable, and a few of them even clapped their hands with satisfaction.
So I got my applause after all, Santini thought to himself, almost amused.
One of the officers closest to the lake put his fingers in his mouth and emitted a shrill whistle when the water began to splash. “Something’s starting to surface!” he shouted in his excitement.
The man at the controls slowed the motor, and the barrel, encrusted with algae and mud, slowly slid out of the water, across the beach, and onto the grass, until it came to a halt a few yards from the lake’s edge. The winch was turned off, and two officers freed it from the hooks, spattering their uniforms with mud as they did so.
“Do you have anything to open it with?” asked Santini.
“Use the jaws of life,” Colomba replied. “There’s one on the truck.”
Santini gave the order to find it, and the officer who had operated the winch hoisted it off the truck and dragged it over to the drum. It was like a giant pair of pliers connected to a portable air compressor. Rescue crews used such devices to cut through the metal of crashed cars and free the passengers trapped inside.
Meanwhile, an ambulance had finally appeared at the entrance to the dirt road, and two paramedics in reflective jackets pulled a collapsible stretcher out of the back. The lieutenant from the north went over to them and guided them back to the German, who was quickly examined and strapped onto the gurney. Dante couldn’t take his eyes off him. Even now that he knew who he was, or at least who he wasn’t, the man exercised a morbid fascination on him, like a nightmare made flesh, even stronger than the spell cast by the plastic drum that had finally emerged from the water. The paramedics used a scalpel to cut the tape off his ankles and wrists; then the lieutenant handcuffed the German to the gurney by one wrist and one ankle, just to be safe. In spite of his age and his injuries, there was something about him he found unsettling, and the paramedics clearly felt the same way, seeing that they said nothing about the handcuffing, even though they could have been counted upon to object loudly under normal circumstances. To cuff the German’s ankle, the lieutenant had to lift his pants leg, revealing a tattoo on his shin. It depicted a small blue bird that vaguely resembled the Twitter logo; the color had faded over the years.
For Dante, seeing it was like an insect bite that puffed up rapidly, turning into a painful swollen lymph node: all of it inside his head. “That’s not possible,” he murmured. But it added up, it held the whole story together. My God . . . that could be the explanation, he thought.
In the meantime, the policeman carrying the jaws of life approached the drum. He turned on the air compressor and tested the jack, which opened and closed, huffing and puffing like the hand of a robot in an old movie.
Santini went over and inspected the drum by the light of his Maglite. He realized that he was still in time to turn back. He realized that he could still reverse his decision.
“Should I go ahead?” the officer asked timidly.
Santini nodded. “Yes. And watch out for what’s inside.”
“This is it, Dante,” Colomba announced.
But he wasn’t listening: he was bent over on his knees, shaking.
“Dante?” said Colomba, trying to get closer to him but held back by the cop. “Let go of me! Can’t you see he’s not well?”
But Dante wasn’t unwell. And when he did look up, Colomba realized that he was laughing so hard he was about to choke. Hysterical laughter that he couldn’t hold in. “God, Colomba. The bluebird, 1989, don’t you understand? It all fits together.”
“What all fits together? And let go of me!” she snapped at the officer.
“An urban legend. I was held prisoner by an urban legend. No, wait. I wasn’t a prisoner. I was an artichoke.”
“You’re delirious, Dante.”
“No, I’m not . . .” and he laughed again.
Colomba started to ask him other questions, but her voice was drowned out by the sound of the jaws of life lacerating the plastic drum, producing a large tear at the top. A tremendous stench of rotten eggs spread into the air. The policeman took a step backward in disgust, but without letting go of the hydraulic pliers. He gave the tool one last twist, spilling the fetid contents of the barrel onto the grass. It was a dense, light brown liquid, which seethed on contact with the ground.
“What is this shit?” asked Santini, clamping his handkerchief to his nose. Then he fell silent, because at the center of the stinking puddle he’d spotted something unmistakable, the white of a human jawbone.
25
There were nineteen barrels in the lake, and they were all recovered over the course of a day by the police dive team and subsequently examined by the Cremona forensic squad with the support of their colleagues from the LABANOF (Laboratory of Forensic Anthropology and Odontology) in Milan. Every one of them contained a mixture of sulfuric acid and human remains, though before they could determine the exact number of victims it would be necessary to await the results of the DNA tests; in fact, the acid had left only a few scraps of the bodies that had been immersed in it: mostly teeth, but also fragments of larger bones, kidney stones, prosthetic implants, and traces of fat. The victims’ ages ranged from seventeen to sixty; they’d been killed at least twenty-five years ago, and their corpses had been dismembered.
In the meantime, Santini had been forced to give up his plan to take his prisoners back to Rome, because in the wake of the macabre discovery they’d been claimed by the head of the district attorney’s office in Cremona, Angela Spinelli, an energetic woman in her early sixties with a short fuse; she’d been alerted to the situation by a call from Curcio, who knew her from the old days, long before they had both gone gray. De Angelis kicked up a tremendous fuss, but to no avail: Colomba and Dante were to be left in custody of the local police, to ensure that the Lombard judicial investigators could be afforded easy access to them. Or to Colomba, at least, because the minute he was marched through the front door of police headquarters, Dante went into an extended fit that Colomba assumed was at least partly faked, though quite convincingly, with head butts to the walls and lots of
broken glass. He was promptly sedated and admitted to the neurological ward of the municipal hospital. There he was held under police guard, declared unfit for questioning, and confined to observation and bed rest.
The burden of the interrogations thus fell to Colomba, who did her best to persuade Spinelli and her team about just where the corpses had come from. At first, she was pretty unsuccessful. Her story of long-ago military kidnappers, and of ties to first the bombing in Paris and later Rovere’s death, aroused a great deal of skepticism, especially in view of the fact that she was facing charges of being a dangerous psychopathic bomber herself. In her high-security cell, during the short intervals between one interview and the next, Colomba kept wondering what Dante had been talking about with his “artichokes” and “bluebirds”; that is, assuming the words meant anything at all. And she wondered if the answers to those questions would do anything to help her persuade her audience. Probably not, considering Dante’s usual thinking processes. Although her situation as a suspect neither improved nor worsened, the German’s was plummeting drastically.
The investigators discovered almost immediately that his ID was fake, that he had gunshot residue on his hands, and that a partial fingerprint was also found on one of the Glock shells, proof that he’d loaded it himself and hadn’t just found it by accident, if there were anyone willing to believe that explanation in the first place. The German had refused to provide his true identity or offer explanations of any kind, and he’d remained silent, at first in the hospital and subsequently in the prison infirmary. His fingerprints weren’t on file, his photo wasn’t found in the archive, no relatives had called to inquire about him: a Mr. Nobody, even though he did show a vague resemblance to the identikit Dante had helped put together at the time of his liberation, which was still in the court’s files.
Exactly what he’d done, aside from ruining Colomba’s dive, began to become clear when his clothing was examined and the investigators found traces of the DNA of a young Roman man and woman who had been found with their throats cut in their apartment: Jorge and his girlfriend. The German’s status was therefore officially upgraded to murder suspect and his detention transformed from temporary detainment to full-blown arrest. His new investigatory file was added to the others. Colomba, too, was transferred to the local house of detention, in defiance of Counselor Minutillo’s strong and lively objections. Minutillo had flown up from Rome with a demand for her release. Colomba was placed in the special security wing of the prison, among child molesters and corrupt policemen, and she fell asleep instantly without a thought for her unpleasant company. While she was sleeping, the Rome Mobile Squad tracked down the German’s nondescript apartment and found, in their search of the place, six false passports from a variety of countries for six different identities. One of those names led the police to a garage in the Tiburtina neighborhood, where they found stacks of unlabeled pharmaceuticals in noncommercial packaging. How had the German procured them, and what were they for? Questioned on that point, the man simply stared at the ceiling.
Kill the Father Page 42
