Daughter of Ashes, page 2
Teresa pulled her notebook out of her shoulder bag. Its charred cover told the tale of its owner’s latest adventure, and of the flames Albert had faced in order to rescue her. Teresa looked up to find the district attorney staring at the notebook’s blackened edges. Perhaps he, too, was thinking what Teresa was thinking: they could have both so easily turned to ash.
She put the notebook back inside her bag.
“Inspector Marini is coming with me. And he will just have to deal with it.”
Albert snapped out of his reverie, a hint of menace back in his face.
“You will follow your orders, Teresa. You will go alone.”
“That’s not the correct procedure.”
Any remaining pretense of formality vanished immediately.
“I don’t give a damn about procedure. Follow your orders.”
“And I don’t give a damn about your whims, Albert. If you want me to go in there, I’ll do it my way. Otherwise you’ll have to find some other fix.”
The district attorney was fuming, but he did not react to her insubordination. Teresa let several moments pass, but no alternative seemed forthcoming. Their clash of wills was another unresolved issue between them, one that Albert was bound to add to her account eventually—but by now Teresa had very little left to lose, and everything to put behind her.
Teresa pulled Marini aside so that they would not be heard.
“Listen carefully. I will do the talking. Try not to look at him, and if you really must, be as neutral as you can.”
Marini glanced over his shoulder. He looked astonished.
“Did I imagine it, or did you just basically tell the district attorney to fuck off?”
“Listen to me!”
“I’m listening.”
“Don’t give him any reason to take an interest in you.”
Inspector Marini lowered his voice.
“You talk about him as if he were some kind of animal . . .”
“He is, and he belongs to a particularly dangerous species. He’s a serial killer, Marini. The fewer opportunities you give him to work you out, the better.”
She made as if to straighten his jacket, though what she was really trying to convey was reassurance. This young man was going to be a father soon. Teresa wanted to protect him, but she also knew that the time for her to pass the torch on was fast approaching.
“Whatever he says, do not show any signs of irritation—or worse, your characteristic horror. He will toy with us, and try to shock us. He will probably attempt to confuse us. People like him are master manipulators. Don’t miss a word he says. This is a priceless learning opportunity. Above all, you must be respectful.”
“Respectful?”
Teresa pulled his jacket hard, as if to tug at his attention.
“When he was conducting his research on criminal personalities, Robert Ressler interviewed countless serial killers on behalf of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit. They were all cruel, deadly psychopaths. Do you know what he wrote about Charles Manson?”
“That he respected him?”
“He wrote that he was fully prepared when he went to see him, and genuinely interested in hearing his story—his real story. He hadn’t gone there to judge him, but to try to understand. Manson appreciated this approach, and opened up to Ressler as he hadn’t done with anyone else before. It is only thanks to that neutral—one might even call it scientific—approach that today, more than forty years on, we can say we have an inkling of how the mind of a killer works.”
Marini looked instinctively at the closed door they were supposed to walk through together.
“And is that what you plan to do now?”
“I’ll do what I’m best at. I’ll listen to his story: the one he decides to tell us, and especially the one he chooses not to tell. Are you ready?”
“No.”
“Let’s go.”
3
Twenty-seven years ago
THE LIPS HAD RETRACTED, exposing gums which glistened with dew. White and turgid, they resembled exotic mushrooms that had sprouted in the night. A blade of grass curled over the man’s open mouth, a droplet hanging from its tip like a tiny lantern illuminating the darkness of the throat. There would be no breath to shake it off before it was ready to fall on its own.
Teresa leaned over the victim, her knees sinking into the waterlogged earth. The scent of spring mixed with the exhaust fumes from the cars passing by just a few meters from the crime scene—a small park in a residential district.
It was eight o’clock on a warm, gloomy morning. The sirocco had blown all night. The city was awake now, and the workers and students on its tree-lined streets all had places to be—but even so, the ambulance and police cars had begun to catch their eyes. The screen that had been put up to shield the old man’s body kept curious onlookers at bay. Every now and then someone would work up the courage to ask what had happened, only to be ushered away by one of the attending officers. The prevailing rumor spoke of a heart attack. But the people who believed this rumor hadn’t seen the body.
Teresa was still crouching down beside it. In this realm dominated by men, she had learned the subtle art of making herself invisible, taking up whatever space was freed up by others’ neglect. In the meantime, she watched and learned, roaming freely where no one else bothered to go.
The photographs had been taken; the coroner had concluded his inspection and was busy filling out forms. Unlike the others, he was perfectly aware of the silent dance Teresa had been performing around the body. Every now and then she would catch him watching her with a grave look in his eyes. He was studying her, measuring her every move, and making no attempt to hide it.
In truth, she was somewhat in awe of Antonio Parri. She’d heard him talking to the public prosecutor and to the superintendent in charge of the investigation in a tone that could be described as brusque, if not downright disrespectful. A lunatic.
Teresa turtled into her shoulders, pulled the collar of her parka up, and shifted her focus back to the body.
It wouldn’t be long before it was removed, so she only had a few minutes left to try and picture its last living moments. They were inscribed in the bones of its fractured skull, laid out like primitive portents for the eyes of the seer—Teresa—who was tasked with interpreting their meaning.
The victim had been found facedown on a grassy flowerbed close to the edge of the road. His walking stick lay beside him, its handle stained with blood. It had already been identified as the likely murder weapon. Teresa pictured the murderer gripping it around the tip and smashing it against the back of the old man’s head until his skull cracked open.
The coroner had turned the body over to reveal a crater in the middle of the victim’s chest, a deep gash in which his purplish heart lay exposed in his rib cage. You had to let your gaze rest there, and you had to breathe in that smell, in order to take the first steps toward understanding the meaning of what had unfolded here.
The man was not wearing any trousers. His shirt and thin cardigan were pulled open like stage curtains, the hems barely covering his underwear. His atrophied legs bore three cruciform incisions.
Swallowing her nausea and her pity, Teresa brought her face close to the victim’s.
The head was tilted sideways, the eyes wide open and already clouded. The mouth was open, too, and rigid, as if the jaw joints had popped. There were no teeth; it was like looking inside a baby’s mouth. She saw faint traces of blood on the tongue and on the mucus membrane.
The killer had removed seven phalanges from the victim’s hands. The police were still looking for them, though Teresa didn’t think they’d find them. The killer must have taken them away. There was bound to be some significance to the mutilation.
Her gaze fell once again on the disfiguring incisions on the man’s legs.
“Battaglia!”
Teresa leapt to her feet like a puppet yanked by a hostile hand.
Albert grabbed her elbow and pulled her away. Ever since he’d been made superintendent, his behavior toward her had become openly aggressive.
“Have you gone mad? That’s a dead body you were about to drape yourself over. That’s evidence.”
“I wasn’t about to . . .”
Teresa fell silent. The public prosecutor was standing behind Albert and staring right at her. Teresa looked down, following Prosecutor Pace’s gaze. The wet grass had stained her jeans around her knees. One of her shoelaces had come undone, and her parka had slipped from her shoulder. She quickly pulled it up. A single lock of dark hair fell across her face, defying her attempts at order.
“I just wanted to take a closer look. Those cuts . . .”
But they’d already stopped listening to her. They were talking to each other now with their backs turned. Once again, Teresa had become invisible, though this because others were choosing not to see her. She should have been used to it by now, but it still stung every time.
Albert was giving the public prosecutor a summary of what they had discovered so far.
“The victim is a local who lives a ten-minute walk away. Giovanni Bordin. Seventy-one years old, retired. His wife is already here.”
Teresa gathered the errant lock in a fresh ponytail and peered past the shielding screen to look for the widow. She was cradling a miniature pinscher in her arms, and sobbing uncontrollably. Her hair still carried the traces of a back comb, but half her head bore the imprint of her pillow.
Albert was still talking when he took one step back and tread on Teresa’s foot. He made no attempt to apologize. “Watch out, Battaglia.” He didn’t even turn around.
“The widow confirms her husband left the house very early, around five-thirty, to take the dog out. He had been using a walking stick after a recent operation, but he had no other notable physical or mental impairments. The dog returned an hour later in a state of anxiety, dragging its leash behind it. Around that same time, someone in the neighborhood came across the body. He must have been killed between five-thirty and six-thirty.”
The prosecutor pointed at the body with the fountain pen she was always holding—whether she was in her office or at the most secluded of crime scenes—but which Teresa had never seen her use. Elvira Pace took all of her notes in her mind, and so far, she had never been caught unprepared.
“We need to figure out where the murder took place, though I would assume not far from here.” She tilted her head. “What happened to the teeth?”
“Dentures. They ended up over there, flung away by the impact on the body, perhaps . . . His neighbors told us he would spend his afternoons at the café on the corner at the end of the road. It seems he had become involved in soccer betting. Maybe he won something at the wrong people’s expense; maybe he was in debt. His wife had no clue any of it was going on.”
Teresa cleared her throat.
“The lacerations on his legs. I think they’re significant.”
Albert and the prosecutor had already started walking toward the magistrate’s car.
Teresa stifled the urge to grab their coats and pull them back. Her arms remained hanging at her sides, but rage whirled in her stomach like a lump she could not digest. She shoved it deep into her belly.
If Albert was determined to stick to more traditional leads, nothing Teresa could say or do would ever dissuade him.
But once he’d exhausted those, he would have little left to go on—for the story imprinted on the victim’s body pointed to a path that led in an altogether different direction.
The moment its owner’s body was lifted from the ground and placed inside a steel box, the pinscher began to howl, even though it couldn’t see what was happening behind the screen.
Teresa picked up the moccasin that had slipped off the victim’s foot and handed it to a couple of officers who were cataloging evidence nearby. The mud coating the sole of the shoe soiled her gloves.
“Take a sample from this.”
She had given the order instinctively, and became suddenly aware of how firm she had sounded. The two officers looked at her as if she’d made a terrible joke but took the shoe anyway.
The poor dog was inconsolable, its barking so shrill it hurt the ears.
Teresa pulled the screen to one side. A newly formed and still nebulous idea prompted her to step toward the dog. She looked inside her shoulder bag for her packet of wet wipes, and pulled one out.
She had no words of consolation to offer the widow.
“May I?”
She examined the dog’s paws. Mud.
She rubbed the wet wipe over the animal’s dark fur several times, then examined the material. It was covered in red smears.
The widow screamed.
Teresa turned around to call for Albert, but couldn’t find him among the officers still working at the scene. No one was paying any attention to her, or to the widow, who was in a state of shock, or to the dog, who was barking hysterically.
No one except Antonio Parri.
4
Today
GIACOMO MAINARDI WAS FIFTY years old, with a lean figure, and shaved, graying hair that gleamed under the fluorescent lights. A hint of what might have been a smile hovered on his lips like a snarl, magnified by a pair of extraordinarily eloquent eyebrows. He would have been able to convey any emotion with just those—irritation, anger, incredulity, wonder, even a kind of amusement. He would have been able to shift the expression on his face from one of seraphic calm to that of an avenging angel, all with the slightest of twitches.
Now those same eyebrows traced a contemptuous arc across his furrowed brow.
“Who’s this?”
He had spoken in a hiss, looking down at his own restless fingers all the while.
Teresa leaned her hands on the back of one of the visitor chairs, but although she was in a lot of pain, she made no move to sit down.
“This is Inspector Massimo Marini. He works with me.”
Mainardi absorbed the information with a blink.
“They did not take my requests seriously. Neither the warden nor that asshole, the district attorney. I recognized him, you know. Is he still torturing you?”
Teresa let her eyes roam over his muscular torso, emphasized by the T-shirt he was wearing. Giacomo had kept up his training all this time. He had nurtured the beast inside.
“I was the one who insisted that Inspector Marini be present.”
“That’s disappointing. You might as well leave now, and take your lapdog with you.”
“Look at me, Giacomo.”
He did, prompted, perhaps, by the vulnerability in her voice, or by their enduring bond.
“I’m a frail old lady. Whatever it is you want from me, I can assure you I won’t be able to do it without the inspector’s assistance. I trust him. Otherwise I would not have brought him in to see you.”
He lowered his gaze back to his work tools.
“Sit, Teresa. Not you, Inspector.”
Teresa sighed as she sat down.
“What’s wrong?” asked the killer.
“It would be quicker to tell you what isn’t wrong.”
Giacomo’s hands paused their work, hovering in place.
“Thank you for getting my tools to me. I know that was your doing.”
“And I know how much they mean to you.”
From the moment they had walked into the meeting room turned workshop, Giacomo Mainardi had not stopped maneuvering colored tiles across the table, using a hammer and tile nippers to sculpt them into his desired shape. The mosaic was beginning to exhibit the features of a face whose final form was still difficult to picture, though the artist’s skill could already be glimpsed in his painstaking workmanship, and in the expert way he brought an ever-changing variety of colors together to craft a face that looked made of real skin. He had been refining his technique for twenty-seven years, and no longer even needed an image to work from. It all came from his mind, which was just as capable of creating aberrations as it was of producing rapturous visions.
Teresa could feel Marini’s eyes upon her. She could imagine his expression—a picture of incredulity mixed with annoyance.
“What did you want to talk to me about, Giacomo?”
Mainardi cut an ivory-colored tile with his clippers and held it up to the light, his expression hungry, his lips wet with saliva. Teresa suddenly felt nauseous. Aberration and ecstasy.
“They’re just pale imitations. Just pale imitations,” she heard him mutter.
“Giacomo, why did you hand yourself in to the police? After you managed to break out . . .”
“After you caught me and had me locked me up. I spent twenty-seven years in a cage because of you.”
Marini flinched. Teresa pretended not to notice, but Giacomo’s eyes were on him like a pointer.
Teresa rested her hand next to the tiles on the table and tried to come up with a quick riposte that might draw his attention back to her. Things hadn’t exactly gone as he’d described, but she didn’t contradict him.
“It’s my job.”
Giacomo went back to his hammering, though he had briefly glanced at her fingers as if they might be able to satiate his hunger.
“I know, and I don’t blame you. It wasn’t an accusation.”
Marini leaned against the table, and one of his clenched fists accidentally brushed against the tiles.
Teresa cursed internally. Giacomo’s expression shifted. It was black now, black like his dilated pupils and his feral excitement. Overcome with tension, Marini had made forbidden contact with the symbols scattered across the table, with those tiles that were so sacred to the killer’s sensibilities.
Teresa pushed Marini’s hand away, but the damage had already been done.
“Leave us alone, Inspector.”
He gave her a puzzled look. He was not aware of the reaction he had so nearly sparked in Giacomo, and which still lurked beneath the surface. “You want me to go?”
“Yes.”
He stood still, his face flushed, and Teresa had no choice but to reluctantly put him in his place.
