Daughter of Ashes, page 24
“Only her mother could. Do you really think she’s dead?”
“If she wasn’t swept away in the mudslide, then she must have decided to be as good as dead to her family. Of the two possibilities, the second seems worse to me, though Alice felt otherwise. Sometimes we cling on to illusions. But now I’m wondering: What if she’s right? What if her mother’s still alive? That would mean I failed.”
“No. It would only mean that woman was a liar. A liar who took advantage of a natural disaster to tweak a plan she’d already made, and disappear forever.”
A flash of lightning, followed moments later by the roar of thunder. Teresa counted the seconds in between, just like she used to do when she was little.
“Can an obsession take physical form, Marini?”
“It can happen—as we both know.”
“And it was right in front of our eyes all along: Alice has become an expert at tracking human remains—the best around, in fact—because she wants to bring her mother back.”
“With the power of sheer desperation.”
“Perhaps she can still sense her mother’s living, breathing body beside her—not buried somewhere along the river. Who knows how many times she must have combed through that riverbed with Smoky.”
Marini stepped away from the window.
“She can tell us herself. She’s just arriving now.”
He opened the door before the young woman even had time to start looking for the doorbell.
Alice stepped inside, still wearing her Blanca mask. She seemed to sniff his presence out.
“Perfect timing, Inspector. Thank you.”
Smoky weaved his way through their legs, tail wagging. As soon as he spotted Teresa, he started barking and skipped toward her.
She ruffled his fur and petted him until he’d settled down.
The young woman took off her jacket and backpack.
“There’s a storm about to break.”
“You’ve made it just in time.”
“I left as soon as you called me. It sounded urgent. What’s going on? More remains to search for? Or is it a body this time?”
“Sit down, Alice.”
The girl did as she was told. She chose the armchair and sat still with her hands squeezed between her knees, the smile plastered on her face crumbling as she struggled to maintain composure. She had heard the name Teresa had used. Her real name. She blushed.
“Who told you?”
“I had begun to suspect something. There was too much mystery. You never talked about yourself. And you never turned around when I called you Blanca.” Teresa smiled at the memory. She’d briefly wondered whether the girl was deaf as well as blind. “You kept ignoring the forms you needed to fill in order to work with the police—even though you were so eager to join the force. What could possibly have held you back, if not some secret you couldn’t reveal?”
The girl lowered her head, wilting like a flower under Teresa’s gaze.
“Hey. It’s all right.”
She did not reply.
“I know why you did it, Alice.”
“I lied to you.”
“We all lie. Every day. Sometimes with words, sometimes with kisses and unspoken thoughts.”
“But I did it to you.”
“I remember your story.”
The girl lifted her head back up.
“Really?”
“I never forgot it.”
Alice’s eyes filled with tears.
She quickly wiped them off with her arm, then started rummaging inside her backpack. Her fingers ran over its contents as if they could read each item’s name inscribed on its surface. She picked out a bundle of photographs held together with blue ribbon, and shakily offered it to Teresa.
“My father always took lots of pictures of me after Mom was gone. They weren’t for me, obviously. They were for him. He says that in these ones, there’s a mysterious woman standing somewhere in the background behind me. He says she’s in disguise, but it’s definitely her.”
Her mother—or an unshakable obsession with her absence.
Teresa took the bundle, untied the ribbon, and studied the images. Marini came to stand behind her so that he could take a look, too. Teresa went through them all once, then again.
“Have you ever shown these to anyone else?”
“No.”
She must have been too scared to hear the truth.
The girl couldn’t stop wringing her hands. Smoky must have sensed her distress, for he leapt up next to her on the armchair and started licking her face.
“Is she there?”
Teresa had to choose the lesser of two evils, however crushing it would be: the truth.
“No, she isn’t.”
There was nobody standing behind little Alice—only the world and all its colors, all those shapes she couldn’t see, and a father who had decided to lie to her out of love.
That physical distance Teresa had glimpsed between father and daughter was occupied by falsehoods. It was possible that Alice had sensed she was being deceived, but had chosen to believe him anyway. The alternative was to succumb to the gnawing suspicion that her father might have started lying to her even sooner, back when her mother’s disappearance could still have been solved, but which—thanks in part to him—had remained a mystery.
Teresa got up, went toward her, and wearily lowered herself onto her knees, opening her arms wide just in time for Alice to fall into her embrace.
Teresa absorbed Alice’s tears as if the young woman were the brave but frightened little girl Teresa had met ten years before. She comforted her with the words a mother would have used with her child—a mother who had decided to stay rather than run away.
When the tears stopped falling, Teresa pulled away from their embrace, got a tissue from Marini, and patted Alice’s face dry.
Alice clung to Teresa’s sweater.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Teresa tucked Alice’s blue locks behind her ears.
“We’re not angry at you. None of us are—right, Marini?”
“That’s right.”
“But I have to be honest with you, Alice: although I think I know the reason why you’ve sought me out, I can’t give you what you’ve been hoping for. I will never be able to find your mother. I couldn’t find her ten years ago, and I can’t find her now. And you know exactly why.”
Alice took Teresa’s hand in hers. Her last tear fell onto Teresa’s palm.
“I’m not asking for any promises, but please don’t tell me it can never happen.”
Someone rang the doorbell, then started banging on the door. Teresa and Marini looked at each other. They had recognized the voice calling Teresa’s name.
“What could he possibly want now?”
They went to open the door together.
They found Albert Lona standing before them, soaking wet and visibly distressed. Behind him stood Antonio Parri, who looked like he’d been crying.
44
Twenty-seven years ago
You must maintain a safe distance, Teresa. Don’t slow the rhythm of your steps, but don’t let yourself be swallowed up by his story, either. Or by him.
R.
The warning in Robert’s latest fax echoed inside Teresa’s mind.
Her mentor had sensed her unease more clearly than she had, that unsettling tremor coursing through her body. His mind had seen just how far she had gone.
He hadn’t used the word killer because he realized that Teresa saw something else in him.
She had dug into that young man’s life, so deep that she could hear his heart beating in the darkness. She could almost see it, flesh and blood battling to survive, to carry the breath of life all the way into those depths.
No matter how many victims he’d left in his wake, he himself was the first victim—though in what way exactly, she hadn’t yet been able to work out.
She had just scrunched the fax into a ball and thrown it in the bin when Lorenzi walked into the office.
“We have some news on the suspect. He wasn’t lying. His mother . . .”
Albert, who’d been following behind him, shoved Lorenzi aside and took the conversation over.
“Giacomo Mainardi. Born out of wedlock, father unknown. Rejected by his stepfather, too, who refused to give him his surname.” He sat on the edge of the desk. “Mainardi’s mother died three months ago. I suppose you’ll be pleased to hear that all your theories have been confirmed.”
If he could have spoken in a growl, he would have. Teresa took the dossier from Lorenzi’s hands.
The man who had raised Giacomo Mainardi, and whom Mainardi called “father,” had worked at the time as a sales representative, traveling across Italy and Switzerland. It was in Switzerland that he met the woman he’d eventually left his wife and Giacomo for. One day, out of the blue, he simply didn’t come home.
Teresa skimmed through the file but didn’t find what she was looking for.
“Does the stepfather still live in Switzerland?”
“We’re looking into that now. He seems to have left there, too. His most recent partner says she hasn’t heard anything from him in at least two months.”
Teresa could scarcely believe it.
“And she didn’t report him missing? It’s not that easy to disappear.”
“No report. The man had done the same with his first wife and was an unrepentant libertine, whose behavior was facilitated by the nature of his job. He was rarely home. They argued constantly, and had broken up several times before. He always did the same thing. He held a separate bank account, keeping only the bare minimum of funds in the joint family account. But even those transfers stopped after he disappeared. The woman describes him as a controlling partner and father, but says he was never physically violent with her or their two kids. Our inquiries seem to confirm she is telling the truth.”
“Those kids are his. Giacomo was another man’s son. That changes things, and quite drastically, too. Anyway, there’s more to abuse than physical violence. Can we access his personal account? Check for any recent activity?”
“Yes, but it’ll take time and patience. We’re dealing with a Swiss bank. We’ll need an international rogatory. We’ve already alerted the gendarmerie. All we can do now is wait.”
But they were running out of time.
“Albert, the profile we’ve drawn up suggests that the killer is likely to go after men much older than he is as a way of punishing his own father figure. So it’s not just a matter of opportunity.”
“Yes, we get it, thank you. It’s not exactly rocket science.”
Teresa leapt to her feet.
“If the killer really is Giacomo, then it’s his stepfather he’s trying to murder—don’t you see? The man is in danger.”
Albert’s expression curled into a grimace of disgust. “Do you realize you keep calling him by his first name?”
“So what?”
His face relaxed, the trace of a smile playing on his lips as it always did right before he was about to strike. He smirked.
“So, Teresa, you just can’t bear to stay away from violent men, can you?”
She vaguely noticed Lorenzi flinch behind Albert, looking mortified. She couldn’t even react.
The phone on Teresa’s desk started ringing, and Albert was quick to answer. He muttered something to the caller, then hung up.
“The widow of the third victim wants to talk to us. Someone’s bringing her upstairs. Are you still with us, Teresa?”
She was standing with her arms hanging by her sides. She pulled herself together only when the widow walked into the room, accompanied by an officer. The woman was clutching a shopping bag tight against her chest. She looked pale and haggard; her bloodshot eyes indicated both that she had not slept, and that she found being awake utterly unbearable.
Teresa walked toward her and offered her the chair she had been sitting on, helping the woman lower herself onto it.
The widow clasped Teresa’s hand.
“It was horrible. That look.”
“What do you mean, ma’am?”
“That young man who came to see me at home. I’ve already told this officer here about it.”
“Would you mind telling us, too?”
“He rang the doorbell. He looked familiar, though I couldn’t quite place him. I still can’t. I opened the door anyway; there were people outside, the neighbors were mowing their lawns. I asked him what I could do for him. He told me he’d found this on the pavement and wanted to return it to me.” She handed Teresa the shopping bag. “I told him thank you, but inside I was so afraid I thought I would die, and I just wanted him to go away. He couldn’t possibly have found it on the pavement. And even if he had, how could he have known to return it to me?”
Teresa exchanged a worried look with Albert and opened the bag, a wave of dread coursing through her and leaving goosebumps in its wake.
It was a cap. A dark blue cap made of synthetic fabric and lined with leather.
The woman burst into tears.
“It’s Filippo’s. He was wearing it the day he was killed. He was wearing it when he left the house and never came back.”
Teresa closed the bag shut without touching its contents, and handed it over to Lorenzi.
“Have this cataloged and analyzed for fingerprints.”
She turned back toward the woman.
“I’m going to show you a photograph now. You need to tell me whether or not you recognize the man in it. If you have any doubts at all, please don’t be afraid to say so.”
She took the picture of Giacomo Mainardi out of the file and placed it in front of her.
The woman screamed, covering her eyes with her hands.
“It’s him! It’s him!”
Albert signaled to the officer to come and look after her, then took Teresa aside.
“Tell me what I need to do.”
She glared at him with every ounce of contempt she could muster, but when you were in a race against death, there was no time even for hate.
“This is typical behavior. I’m not surprised. I would expect the killer to show up at the cemetery, too.”
“At the cemetery?”
“The first victim has already been interred, and tomorrow will be the three-month anniversary of his mother’s death—which, incidentally, falls on the same day he killed the first victim, the sixteenth day of the month. If you ask me, I think he’ll visit the grave to see if he can relive the experience.”
“His mother’s grave?”
“No, Albert. The first victim’s grave.”
“Are you thinking of a surveillance camera? You know better than I do that we don’t have the resources for that. Nor do we have any men to spare.”
“Bullshit. And you might not have any men—but you have a woman.”
45
Today
ANTONIO PARRI HAD BEEN crying. Teresa took note of this fact with a rush of anxiety. She had seen him like that only once before, and would have preferred to never think of that day again. Albert stood beside him, deathly pale.
“What’s happened to you?”
The two men kept exchanging looks, silently daring each other forward. What a strange pair they make, Teresa thought. They often sized each other up from a distance, trading menacing growls that never escalated into proper clashes. The fact that they had both come rushing to her house was a bad sign. She felt her apprehension grow.
“So?”
It was Albert who managed to say the words the other couldn’t.
“Giacomo Mainardi has escaped from the hospital. He knocked out the nurse who was supposed to change his dressing, stole his uniform, and climbed out of the window. The officer stationed at the door says he didn’t hear a thing. Another nurse discovered what happened when she noticed that her colleague hadn’t yet emerged. Mainardi had all the time in the world to walk across the hospital gardens and leave the premises. We are looking for him now, but I wanted to make sure you knew.”
Teresa stared at him, lost for words. Marini stepped toward the district attorney.
“Do you think he might be coming here?”
Teresa managed to find her voice somehow.
“No. It would be foolish of him to do so, and he is anything but that.”
Albert looked at Parri again, then back at Teresa.
“That’s not the only reason we’re here, Teresa.”
So he’d been the one burdened with the task, whatever it may be. Why not Antonio? Why did her friend’s mouth seem to be sealed shut?
“Antonio?” she said. “Whatever it is, just tell me.”
When he finally lifted his eyes and looked at her, Teresa understood that someone must have died.
“I’ve finished analyzing the tiles that were retrieved in the basilica along with your tooth.”
“And?”
His voice was so hoarse that it didn’t even sound like his own.
“They’ve been cut from the victim’s breastbone. The tissue is spongy and highly vascularized, rich in red bone marrow. Fairly typical. One of the tiles is made from the victim’s xiphoid process—the lower tip of the sternum.”
Teresa turned to look for a chair. Marini, who was holding her elbow, grabbed one for her, and she fell onto it like a dead weight. A marionette cut off from its strings.
After twenty-seven years, Giacomo had finally taken what he had so desperately yearned for, kill after kill. The perfect tiles. The perfect death. The final revenge on pain.
I have a hole in place of a heart, he’d said. After all this time, he’d finally claimed a sternum—an echo of the misshapen one he had been born with, and which had cursed his entire existence. Teresa wondered why he hadn’t done it sooner, why he’d always kept his distance from that particular bone even though he liked to cut his victim’s chests open. Perhaps he was scared of it. Perhaps it was too powerful a symbol for him to handle.
After so many years, Giacomo must have felt ready. All his previous attempts had prepared him for this moment, leading him to that cathartic, horrifying, liberating thrust.
