Daughter of Ashes, page 14
“I’ve drawn up a profile.”
“Just the one?”
“I think he must be around twenty-five years old.”
“Now I’m curious. You did tell me you thought he must be young, but how can you be so precise? Assuming any of this makes sense, of course.”
“Of course it makes sense. Violent fantasies will first manifest during adolescence. Statistics tell us that it takes an average of eight to ten years before such fantasies manifest as criminal acts. Hence the rule of thumb that the older the victim is, the younger the killer is likely to be: he needs to practice on frailer subjects first—as they will be relatively helpless, and easier to control.”
“Any other maxims?”
“Well, since you ask: different perpetrators with similar personalities will commit similar crimes.”
“Very impressive.”
“Look, I know you don’t believe me.”
“Oh, really? Give me that goddamned glass.”
“I think the killer has been off work for several months now. He’s been placed on leave, or he’s taken a holiday, or he might have been fired. If he’s a student at university, then he must be falling behind in his studies. His attendance is erratic, and his grades are poor.”
At last Parri looked interested.
“Why?”
Teresa picked her words carefully.
“He is completely focused on the hunt; there’s no room for anything else. He wants nothing else.”
Parri dropped his head onto the counter, and kept it there.
“He used surgical tape on the first victim; I was going to tell you in the meeting.” He seemed to remember something all of a sudden, and glanced at his watch, wiping his hand over his face. “The meeting with Pace and Lona . . . That was meant to be an hour ago.”
“Where can one source that kind of tape?”
“We’ll have to wait for the latest test results to find out.”
Teresa pulled a phone card from her pocket and pointed at the booth outside the toilet.
“Call Doctor Pace’s office and apologize. Arrange another meeting as soon as possible.”
“Must I?”
“You must.”
Teresa popped the nuts into her mouth and nearly gagged. She spat them back out onto a napkin.
Antonio Parri looked at her as if his long-held theory had finally been confirmed.
“You’re pregnant. That’s why you’ve stopped smoking.”
21
Today
THE CAR CAME TO a stop outside, its headlights shining onto the window. Marini became a black figure silhouetted against the glass.
“They’re here.”
He kept his back to her until the headlights went off and the quiet neighborhood echoed with the thud of car doors banging shut. Two thumps, one for each of the new arrivals. Only then did Marini turn to look at Teresa.
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
She had been expecting the question, almost felt it taking shape between them—so heavy was the atmosphere now. Marini was offering her one final escape route, ready to cover for her and come up with excuses for de Carli and Parisi, but the time for lies was well and truly over: illness can deprive you of many things, and particularly of the strength to run away.
Teresa was about to reveal all of her weakness and surrender to these young men who would measure what remained of her authority, of that credibility she had always enjoyed but which would be of no use to her in this final stretch of life. Widening her circle of intimacy was not something she normally did, as it was usually other people who welcomed her into their own, but now that the spell was broken, the illusion that she could always be the one to decide who she was and how much she would reveal had been shattered forever, with no way of putting the pieces back together. All she could do was accept the inevitable risk that comes with showing others who we truly are.
“Let them in, Marini.”
Teresa remained sitting down, all her burdens still with her, back straight despite the aches, walking stick clasped in her hands and planted on the floor, as if to make the reality of her situation as clear as possible. Once upon a time, she might have thought of it as the sword of an aging warrior queen; now she wasn’t even a policewoman anymore.
“I’ve never used the feminine ‘policewoman’ before—just ‘superintendent.’”
The words came out in a murmur. Marini crouched in front of her.
“I’m one of those who’s always called you just that.” He smiled, feeling perhaps unsure if he should apologize, or if she had in fact been pleased.
There was a knock on the door, but neither of them took much notice.
“And I never corrected any of you. But I do wonder now . . . Maybe I should have done so. Maybe it was important.”
“Important for you?”
Teresa shrugged and looked away, beyond the walls and beyond time. She looked into the past.
“For all the women who came after me. I was one of the first. I’ve had men serve under me who weren’t particularly glad to be there. I suppose I felt the need to shout: ‘I’ve taken what used to be yours alone.’ And ‘superintendent’ seemed to tell my story better.”
He touched her hands, which were still clasped around her walking stick.
“Then that’s that. That’s the way it should be.”
“For whom?”
“For you.”
“My time is over, Marini. You can tell from this sort of thing, too—which isn’t exactly trivial, is it?”
He straightened up.
“Oh no, not this again!”
“You know you’re allowed to swear sometimes, don’t you?”
“It’s not fucking over!” he yelled.
Teresa fell back onto the cushions, arms spread wide, a laugh bubbling in her chest.
“Finally!”
Another knock. This time Marini went to open the door.
“Try to be gentle with them.”
“I will.”
“Anyway, it’s not the first time I’ve sworn, you know.”
“Let’s hope it’s not the last, either.”
De Carli and Parisi walked in.
“Have we interrupted an argument? Do go on; it sounds like fun.”
Teresa propped herself up on her elbow.
“Marini was practicing how to swear.”
“Why do you all think I’m such a goody two-shoes?”
“Because you are,” they chorused.
Teresa took advantage of the carefree moment.
“Take a seat, boys.”
They each grabbed a chair and sat down, a little tentatively.
“Is this about the investigation?” asked de Carli.
“It’s about the team. Me and you.”
“That doesn’t sound too good.”
She couldn’t blame him for thinking that.
“I’ve probably had my fair share of melodrama, but never in front of an audience, so I’ll cut right to the chase.” She sat up straight, and muttered: “I have dementia.”
They all stared at each other, motionless, in a state of immobility that offered a glimpse of their thoughts slowly crystallizing into shock.
De Carli cleared his throat.
“Did you say you’ve got influenza?”
“I have Alzheimer’s!”
“Oh!”
They lowered their eyes, but not Marini: he was ready to carry the full weight of this with Teresa. She saw him wince, as if to say, Is this what you call being gentle? He had a point.
“It’s bad, isn’t it? I’m sorry to spring it on you like this, but I wouldn’t know how else to do it.”
Parisi was the first to react.
“I thought you said you had ‘hortensia.’ Which wouldn’t be so bad. Something about the ‘intelligentsia’ would have been fine, too, come to think of it.”
Teresa burst out laughing, and the others followed suit. Marini got to his feet.
“They would both make sense in connection with Superintendent Battaglia. Or should we say Madam Superintendent? Anyway, I’m going to make some coffee.”
It was as good a way as any of giving de Carli and Parisi some space. Everyone deserved to have whatever time they needed to come to terms—and to blows—with the truth.
But that turned out to be unnecessary. Her boys—her boys—moved her to tears by demonstrating the strength she had nurtured within them. They didn’t ask her about her illness. It would have been pointless. Perhaps they’d already known; perhaps they’d worked it out. What did it matter now?
“Madam Superintendent? Who came up with that?”
“It’s just a couple of extra syllables, de Carli.”
“Thank you, Parisi, I don’t know what we’d do without your insights.”
Teresa spoke again, her words drawing them closer.
“It just occurred to me that the terms we choose have the power to forge new paths. But I’m late to the party, as is often the case. I’m not a superintendent anymore, and no ‘madam’ superintendent, either.”
Parisi stood up. Like her, he, too, seemed to find it difficult to sit still when everything around them was falling apart faster than they could keep up.
“Does that mean you’re leaving us?”
“I will never leave you.”
“But what about work?”
“I can’t continue.”
De Carli slapped his hands against his knees.
“So you’re ditching us!”
“I’m not ditching you. I’m quitting my job.”
“It’s the same thing. We’ll always be on your side. You should be on ours.”
Teresa relinquished her remaining fear. She had to let go of some of her love, too, if she wanted to free them.
“I would put you at risk, and I would put potential victims at risk, too, when the whole point is that I’m supposed to protect them. I want to be present for as long as possible, and that means that everything needs to change; I can’t just keep living the way I used to.”
“Before long the violets will bloom by the crumbling wall,” Georg Trakl had written. That was what she hoped for, if not for her present then at least for the future she was handing over to these young men. Her team, this team—they were her family. A family that could sometimes be problematic, and was certainly atypical, but also reliably tight-knit and supportive. She would always be part of it: she would survive in their memories, in their shared experiences, in the lessons she had taught them.
“This chapter of my life is over, boys. The sooner we all accept that, the sooner we’ll be able to find a place from which to start anew.”
Had she really said that? Did she really believe it? Even she didn’t know. All Teresa wanted was to soothe the quivering anguish she could feel radiating from their bodies, and erase the confusion in their faces, which were flushed with the effort it took to suppress their emotions. They were afraid. Whether for her or for themselves, she did not know, but once again it fell to Teresa to guide them. So she armed herself with that matter-of-fact tone with which she usually tackled complications.
“Listen to me. This is important. You need to dig deeper into this case.”
De Carli buried his face in his hands.
“I can’t believe it! Are you really going to talk about the case at a time like this?”
“Yes. And so should you, if you want to spare me any further heartache, and if you truly want to help me. Got it?”
No one replied. Perhaps she was expecting too much too soon. That night, in this house, they had suffered a loss, and they were still grieving for it. But Teresa was still alive and breathing, and she would continue to do what she was best at until her last lucid moment.
“A serial killer uses symbols and rituals to paint an ideal tableau, but in this instance, someone else was also involved—and lo and behold, the killer’s signature changed. Why? Why the tooth? For the first time ever, Giacomo did not just use tiles he chiseled himself. There must be a significance to that. Something must have changed in the story he’s been writing in blood for nearly thirty years now.”
Marini came in with a tray of coffee for everyone. He had been listening to the conversation from the kitchen.
“He’s been in prison for twenty-seven years. Maybe that’s what changed him.”
“A picture of tranquillity, yes, but in his fantasies, he’s never stopped killing.”
Teresa took her cup of coffee and a bag of artificial sweetener. There was no way she was sleeping tonight anyway.
“From his point of view, he’s told us everything we need to know.”
“He’s toying with us, Superintendent.”
“True. But he’s given us a great help. He could have easily said nothing at all.”
“When will you stop defending him?”
“Sometimes we need to defend the Beast, too, Marini, and try to remember the child that every monster once was. I’m showing you an alternative perspective on the facts.”
De Carli quickly downed the coffee Parisi had turned down with a shake of his head.
“Why did he help us, though? What’s your read on it?”
Teresa had been wondering the same ever since it had all begun again.
“Some kind of twisted gamble? A yearning for vindication? A hypertrophic ego?” She looked down at the cup cradled in her hands. The spoon made a brief clinking sound. “An attempt to recompose the past, perhaps. A past I, too, was once part of.”
“So this is how you leave us, with a riddle to solve?”
“I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be right here whenever you need me.”
“It’s not the same.”
Teresa put her cup down.
“I’m afraid we’re going to have to get used to it whether we like it or not, de Carli.”
Parisi had been the only one who hadn’t said another word, standing with his back against the wall and his arms crossed over his chest.
The ensuing silence drew Teresa’s gaze to him. He’d been watching her throughout. And they’d both just had the same thought.
“Are you going to tell them now, Superintendent?”
Marini snapped.
“Tell us what, exactly? I think I’ve had enough announcements for one evening.”
Teresa already knew she would have to calm him down. He was far too protective to take the news with any kind of equanimity.
“A few days ago, I asked Parisi to make some private inquiries. We will need a little more time to hear the full results.”
Those few words were enough to transform Marini’s expression.
“When you say private, I assume you mean unofficial.”
“Let’s just call it a preliminary investigation.”
“On whom?”
Leaning on her walking stick, Teresa stood up and went to the window to stare into the night. The answer burned inside her; she let it out, a breath of fire into the shadows.
“On Blanca. She’s not who she says she is.”
22
Twenty-seven years ago
ON THE PAGES OF a calendar hidden in one of the drawers in her office at home, Teresa had mapped out her future in red felt-tip pen.
It had been a long time since that calendar had seen any daylight, so long that she could picture the red ink gradually fading away.
Once upon a time, those dates had sung of her triumphs, but what had once been an ode to victory had since faded into a torturous lament.
The superintendents’ exam was imminent, but Teresa hadn’t registered yet. She was nearly thirty-two; if she let another year go by, she would lose the opportunity forever.
She didn’t feel ready. She would never feel ready. Her doubts increasingly felt like certainties. She did not believe herself capable of managing a team, of leading an investigation. She wasn’t even capable of making her voice heard, of sounding authoritative. Sometimes she even doubted the effectiveness of the empirical methods she’d been testing out in the field.
And now there was the baby to think about, too. The new life growing inside of her was filling spaces that had been previously empty, and had already begun to change her, to smooth out her sharpest edges—those same edges she so desperately needed if she was to make her way in the world.
So much fear, and so much wonder. She was so nervous she could hardly breathe.
She had to protect her son and look after him; she had to tell his father about him, or else keep them apart forever. She had to run away, or stay and try—in vain, for she knew nothing would change—to bring the old Sebastiano back.
But maybe that “before” she thought she could return to had never existed in the first place. Maybe it had all been an illusion, and the evil in him had emerged from the heat of their marital bed even as she dreamed of a new dawn that would never arrive.
She was about to become a mother, but she also wanted to be a superintendent. She would have to rethink her daily routines, figure out how to welcome a baby into her life while she also worked on the report she intended to submit to Pace, with or without Albert’s support. She needed to find a way to write about mutilated bones just as new bones were beginning to form in the dark, floating depths of her womb.
And what if this baby grew up to be like his father, with no light in his eyes? What if every time she touched him, her skin resurfaced the bruises she’d suffered, so that she couldn’t help but keep the child at arm’s length and deny him her love?
Teresa had to master her thoughts as she did her nausea, even though they sometimes merged into the same tangled mess.
She placed her palm on her belly, cupping her hand as if to bear a weight, or cradle it.
Soon she would be a single woman, and a single mother, with no family to stand with her. This was the moment to gather her courage.
All she had to do was take that first step out the door. A few more steps, one foot in front of the other, and she would finally be able to say she was “elsewhere,” the past already behind her.
She picked up the handset and dialed a number from memory. Lavinia picked up after a couple of rings. Teresa didn’t even give her friend the chance to offer the usual greetings.
“I need to see you, Lavinia. Could you come over, please?”
