Foreign Deceit

by Jeff Carson

  Clean tee-shirts over the pillows seemed a good substitute, so he pulled two out of his pack.

  Pulling it on, he stopped with a jolt and went back in the closet. He pulled the clothes over hard to get an un-obstructed view of the belt and tie rack.

  There were four belts, a missing space, and then four ties. A perfect spot to put the belt John was wearing the night he died. So where did the belt he hung himself with hang?

  Chapter 16 - Thursday

  Wolf had been up for four hours when Lia picked him up at 8 am. He met her outside the gate.

  She shot a couple appraising glances as they walked. “You look better this morning.”

  He had shaved, showered, shampooed the grease mat that was his thick dark brown hair, and put on some fresh clothes. He felt better. Wolf looked at her and smiled. “Thanks.”

  He’d always been confident in his good looks. The saying, or whatever it was, tall, dark, and handsome applied to him. He was six-foot-three, taller than most men he came into contact with, had spiky dark brown hair, a complexion that tanned if the lightbulbs were too bright, dark walnut eyes, thick eyebrows, and a mole on his upper right cheek that women in his life had often referred to as a “beauty mark”…not that he considered himself a heart throb, but he wasn’t an idiot either.

  He stole a glance at Lia, who was walking fast, chin up, chest out, slender athletic body, a tight pony tail of shoulder-length straight brown hair swaying underneath her Caribinieri cap.

  “You look nice this morning too.” He examined her with raised eyebrows, meaning to sound nonchalant, unable to do so with such a truthful statement. He caught a whiff of her lavender scent and cleared his throat, snapping to his senses. “Hey, so, I talked to John’s girlfriend last night, she was home.”

  “And?”

  “She had the name of the guy he was with the night before. I’d like to go talk to him, his name is Matthew and he works at the Merate Observatory. Do you know where that is?”

  “Yes, I do. In fact I’ve been there a few times. For high school…I was in Liceo Scientifico.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “In Italy, you choose your vocation very early in life, and go to school for it. Or, you choose the…how would you call it…the track…”

  “The major? Like in college?”

  “Well,” she said. “it’s much earlier. It starts in high school. But, I guess it is kind of like a major for college. Anyway, I was Scientifico. We studied natural sciences and I went there a couple times for astronomy.”

  “Great. But we have to go back to the morgue first.”

  She gave him a puzzled look as they climbed in the Alfa Romeo cruiser. “Why?”

  “I have to see the belt he hung himself with again.”

  He explained what he saw in the closet the night before.

  “Okay,” Lia said. “Definitely sounds interesting. Do you want to get a coffee before we go over?”

  “Yes. I’ve been thinking about coffee since I woke up, six hours ago.”

  They pulled up to a bustling “Bar” as it was called on the sign. A herd of people were standing up against a ten foot long elbow-height counter, packed three people deep, barking fast orders to the baristas. Lia expertly wove her way to the front of the crowd immediately and got eye contact from one of the men behind the bar.

  “What do you want?” she yelled back at Wolf.

  “Just a…I’ll get what you are having.”

  She whipped her head to the barista. “Due caffe’ e due brioche marmallatta.”

  A few seconds later a familiar thimble of coffee was presented to him with a jam-filled croissant. He took a large bite of the croissant and a small sip of the coffee.

  “Bouna?” She nodded her head to Wolf.

  “Uh, si.”

  He felt the glares of people waiting, impatiently, for the counter top real estate they occupied at the moment. He shoved the rest of the croissant in his mouth and downed the coffee with two hearty sips. She followed his actions, slapped down her cup, went to the unoccupied cash register, laid down some coins and threaded her way out the door. He followed her out, wondering what the hell just happened.

  “Good lord. Felt like my first time all over again,” he mumbled to himself.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, never mind.”

  They continued walking for another few seconds.

  She turned with squinted eyes. “Are you saying that was like your first time having sex?”

  “What? Uh, yeah,” he said. “That’s what I was saying.”

  She looked down and resumed her walking. “So, your first time was that crowded? I don’t understand.”

  “No, more like standing, uncomfortable, and over before I knew what happened.” He looked into the distance at nothing in particular. “Never mind. I very much regret saying that now.”

  She burst into a high pitched natural laugh that magnified his caffeine buzz.

  Wolf turned to Lia as she drove. “So, how the heck do you speak such perfect English?”

  She laughed. “My mother is from New York. She spoke only English to me and my brothers growing up my whole life. It just comes second nature to me. And I also went for two years in college in North Carolina, at Wake Forest.”

  “Aha. Okay, that explains it.”

  “And you and Valerio?” He braced himself as she dove full speed into another traffic circle. “You seem like close friends on the force.”

  “Yes. Valerio is kind of like a brother to me. He grew up with our family. I have three older brothers, and he has a brother, and they were all friends growing up.”

  “Wow. Three brothers? Older brothers?” She nodded. “That must have been rough for you growing up.”

  “You could say that,” she said with a smirk. Then her expression turned serious. “I had to fight for independence from my brothers growing up. Two of them were very protective of me. I hated it. I didn’t need the protection. It was hard.”

  She paused, glancing to the right, then cranked the wheel left, throwing Wolf into a spastic look to his left, then realized she was using another convex mirror.

  She looked at him and laughed softly. “I fought and gained the respect I deserved from my brothers.”

  A heavy silence engulfed them for a minute.

  “So, you feel this job…the colonnello…you aren’t getting the respect you deserve, or the chances you deserve?”

  She glared out the windshield. “Yes. Something like that. Valerio was a friend of the family. He grew up with us. He knows I can handle myself. He knows I’m better than what they think. But it’s also a matter of paying your dues. But the dues are much more expensive for a woman in Italy.”

  Wolf nodded his head. They drove alongside the lake shore once again. Diamond waves glistened in the sun.

  “What do your brothers do? They cops too?”

  “Ehhhhhh,” she exhaled, “let’s see, one is a lawyer in Roma, one is a Caribiniere in Bergamo, and one is Guardia di Finanza.”

  “What’s Guardia di Fananza? Finance guards?”

  “Yes. They are part of the military, kind of like the Caribinieri. They patrol the territorial waters of Italy. Working against smuggling, illegal immigration, that type of thing. Among a lot of other duties.”

  “Okay.”

  “Yes, Luca is my brother in the Guardia. I am most close to him.” Her face melted into a fond smile, then looked to him with a tinge of regret, as if she realized she was just flaunting a toy he didn’t.

  She was, but she didn’t mean anything by it. They drove on in silence.

  Chapter 17

  They were buzzed into the morgue, this time by a female voice. He met the morning pathologist on duty, Bianca. Lia explained the situation, and Bianca left for a few minutes, returning with the bag from the night before.

  Wolf brought the bag into the room where his brother lay, and set it down on the steel table. Lia followed close behind, intrigued. He removed both belt
s and lay them side by side on the table. The brown belt that was found around John’s neck was noticeably longer. The holes still lined up, but the wear marks were at least five inches apart.

  “This brown belt isn’t John’s. It’s from someone with a waist band that is at least five inches bigger.”

  “Yeah, but couldn’t the belt have stretched from him hanging on it?”

  Wolf looked close at the belt. “It’s not stretched at all,” he said. “There’s a thread pattern on the edges, those would be broken with significant stretching. There’s not one broken thread.”

  “Okay, so what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that my brother was found on the ground in his apartment. Not hanging from the ceiling. The chandelier couldn’t hold his weight, there was irrefutable evidence of that. So you tell me which is more likely…

  “One — He borrowed someone else’s belt, or stole it for the purpose of hanging himself, did some cocaine, then hung himself with the belt. He hangs there until he is almost dead, kicks the chair out with a convulsion, which sets off a slow drop of the chandelier…but a perfectly timed drop…because the hanging has to kill him. Otherwise he would have just gotten up later with a bad bruise on his head. So, the chandelier stays hanging, just until he dies, then it falls within time to still bruise him after death. Because, like the pathologist said last night, bruising can occur for only a short period of time after death.

  “Or, scenario two — Someone strangles him with the belt, probably in a fit of rage. In an effort to cover it up, he strings him, or rather, they string him, to the chandelier.”

  “They?” Lia asked.

  “There’s no way one man could hold his dead weight up and string the belt on the chandelier at the same time. It had to have been two people. So, they are trying to cover up the murder with a hanging. They string him up, and all goes wrong when the chandelier won’t hold him. He drops, the chandelier drops. It makes a very loud noise, and they freak out. They lock the door and turn out the lights. Cristina said she went downstairs and saw the lights were off underneath the door. John wouldn’t have hanged himself in the dark. That wouldn’t have made sense. The door was locked from the inside. Keys still in the top lock. So they had to be still in the apartment. They probably freaked out after the loud crash…probably didn’t want to go out the front door in case the neighbors came knocking to see what happened. So they turned off the lights and sat quiet. Then they heard the knock at the door. They had to leave some other way, like out John’s balcony along the rooftop next door. They couldn’t have left out the front door, the door was locked, and his keys were found in the apartment.”

  Lia was staring at him with raised eyebrows.

  He caught her expression and stopped talking.

  “I think that there was another man’s belt found around his neck.” She used a slow controlled voice. “I believe that.”

  “How do you explain that fact? How does he have a heavier man’s belt around his neck?” Wolf asked. “It’s not his belt.”

  She looked at him. “I don’t know.”

  Wolf stared wide eyed at the floor, envisioning the night with perfect clarity. Doubt stabbed his line of thought, and it began to waver, and swirl apart. “We need to go talk to an astronomer.” He walked out of the room.

  They drove in silence for the twenty minute journey south. Wolf stared unblinking out the window. In his mind he was there the night of John’s death. What really happened? Is it conceivable John killed himself? Had he given up on life? He waits to become a mega successful blogger and author, only to end it all after snorting a bit of cocaine?

  What if he actually had given up on life? Maybe his apparent successes to the outsider’s point of view were actually a hollow reminder to John of something John didn’t have in his life. What the hell that could have been, Wolf had no idea.

  Wolf thought about a bitter Colorado mountain winter day in middle school when the school bully, Billy Tranchen, and his three buddies stole his brother John’s winter hat. John had slogged all the way home on foot that day, came in the house, grabbed a hat, went to Billy’s house, knocked on the door, asked his mother for Billy, then beat the crap out of him right there in front of his own mother, took the hat back, and left.

  Wolf had marveled at that story for years to come, and never even spoke about it with him all but one time. John told him, “The guy had it coming.” And that was that. John Wolf was a tough, stubborn, hard nosed son-of-a-bitch, just like himself, and just like their dad.

  Wolf laughed and shook his head, returning to the present moment.

  “Look, David,” she said. “I am sorry. I know it must be so difficult to be going through this right now. I can’t imagine having to go through this with one of my brothers. If you say he didn’t kill himself and doesn’t do drugs, and…he was killed instead…then I believe you. We just have to have some very strong evidence to change the minds of those who have already opened and shut this case.”

  He pursed his lips, “Let’s just go talk to this Matthew guy and see what we can find out.”

  Chapter 18

  The Merate observatory was three buildings and two telescope domes sitting on a small hill. Tall spindly pines and an iron fence topped with Roman spear-heads lined the entire perimeter, which looked to be about five or six acres in area. Dense foliage of all types filled in the property surrounding the structures within.

  The European Union and Italian flag hung limp from the pole next to the wrought iron gate. Lia jerked off the main road in front of a slow approaching truck and leaned out the window to push the button in one move. A small sign said in English, “Osservatorio Astronomico Di Brera - European Astronomical Society.”

  “Pronto?” A male voice crackled through the speaker.

  “Caribinieri, possono parlare per un minuto con il dirretore di l’osservatorio?”

  “Si, ehh, parla inglese?”

  “Yes, I do,” Lia answered.

  “Please pull up to the guest parking lot, and I will meet you outside.” The metallic sounding voice was a well mannered English accent.

  Two lights flashed yellow as the gate swung jerkily open to the inside. Lia waited patiently, then shot through with precise timing to miss the side view mirrors with an inch to spare.

  They parked and got out. Wolf had been studying the foliage of the area, and could only come to the conclusion that nature looked confused. There were palm trees, pine trees with long drooping limbs, stiff spiked trees with red flowers that looked like fruit, large leaved prehistoric looking bushes, pine trees you might see in Colorado, and a variety of exotic looking foliage he’d never seen. The lawn was lush green, full of grasses and thick stemmed wild flowers with tiny yellow and blue bulbs, and was at least a foot tall. One thing was certain, this area got a lot of rain. He noted the haze in the warm, moist air.

  The surrounding area seemed densely populated — corn fields lined with dense pockets of apartment buildings and villas of all sizes, much like the entire whole of northern Italy he’d seen so far. Definitely not the best location for observing stars.

  A tall, lanky man with thick glasses approached with clicking shoes. He was disheveled looking — pants too tight, too high, and one side of his collared golf shirt tucked in. It looked like he just got done using the bathroom and redressed in haste.

  Wolf hoped that wasn’t the case as they shook hands.

  “Hello, I’m Stephen Wembly,” he said with precise Queen’s English and a squint-eyed smile. “I’m the director of the observatory. What can I do the honor of helping you with today?”

  Lia stepped forward and offered her hand. “Hello, we are looking for an astronomer named Matthew Rosenwald who works here.”

  “Oh, yes. Well, he isn’t here. I haven’t seen him all week.”

  “Do you mean, he hasn’t been to work all week?” Wolf asked. “Or you just work at different times?”

  “I mean he hasn’t been in at all.” Deep lines formed on
Wembly’s forehead. “Quite frankly I was wondering if something dreadful had occurred…has something…dreadful occurred? Oh my. Is that why you’re here?”

  “We are very interested in talking with him,” Lia said.

  “Well, we can go inside and I could get his phone number for you if you like?” he said. “He hasn’t been answering for me.”

  “This is the Zeiss one meter telescope, installed in 1926.” They entered the large dome-ceilinged room. “Light pollution for this area is considerable nowadays, but the telescope will still be used for University of Milan students on clear nights. Otherwise the observatory complex is now a leader in x-ray optics development, and ground-based gamma-ray astronomy.”

  The telescope was painted off white and lime green, the paint scheme of a Colorado nineteen fifties house.

  Wembly stood beaming at the telescope for a few seconds, then seemed to snap out of his tour guide mode. “Ah, yes, sorry. This way please. I need to get my cell phone from my office.”

  They followed closely behind Wembly. The rest of the building they were in was not large by any means outside of the main telescope dome room. Wolf counted five offices through the hall, some with open doors — name tags that read like an international phone book. Chang. Izhutin. Rosenwald. Egger. Vlad. Wembly had an office at the end of the hall and around a corner. There looked to be a similar wing in the opposite direction.

  Lia got the number from Wembly and called Matthew.

  “Dr. Rosenwald is our one and only representative from the southern hemisphere here at the observatory,” Wembly told Wolf, rocking on his heels.

  Wolf heard movement from the Vlad office and glanced in that direction. The scientist was kicking the rubber door stop with his heel, trying to shut his door.

  Lia was pointing to her phone with the universal no luck happening with this call facial expression, and Wembly read it.