Daughter of Ashes, page 4
“How presumptuous, Superintendent.”
Teresa turned to Gardini.
“Giacomo would never have killed his cellmate. Not like that. He has his own rituals, phases to observe—even certain motives, if we really must get down to the specifics.”
Albert looked her up and down.
“Giacomo. So you’re on a first-name basis now? How intimate. If we really must get down to the specifics, you shouldn’t even be here.”
“You were willing to tolerate my presence because you knew you wouldn’t get anywhere with him if you tried to do it yourself. Just like you couldn’t the first time.”
Albert’s expression darkened.
“Careful, Teresa.”
Marini opened his mouth to say something, but Teresa put a placating hand on his arm. It was Gardini who took it upon himself to restore some calm.
“I can’t spare him solitary confinement, Teresa, but at least his tools won’t be taken away. I can guarantee you that, though I know it’s not much.”
“It’s very important, actually. Thank you.”
“That’s unacceptable. We mustn’t reward him,” Lona said.
“It’s not about rewarding him, Doctor Lona,” Teresa snapped. She tried to count to ten, but only made it to three. “Do you know the difference between artists and serial killers? The medium they use to express themselves. They are both visual thinkers, in dialogue with internal images and communicating their own psychic realms. They estrange themselves from reality in order to create something, and only return when it is time to give their creation concrete form—when it is time to act, in other words.”
“Is that what you think?”
“No. But even if I were to cite Jung’s technique of active imagination, the ego and the id, or de Luca’s theories, I don’t suppose it would make any difference to you.”
“Teresa . . .” said Gardini, calling her to order.
She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to collect herself before she continued.
“Look, Giacomo Mainardi is both a killer and an artist, and that’s not something we can ignore, because that’s just what he is. His imagination plays a crucial role. We must allow him to channel his fantasies into more harmless modes of expression. Believe me when I tell you that the psychological phases a serial killer goes through have been proven to be the same as the phases of artistic creation. The aura phase, excitement, seduction, the creative phase, the totemic . . .”
“Oh please, Teresa!”
“And finally the depressive phase, Albert. All of which is to say, if we take his tiles and his tools away, Giacomo will soon be desperate to kill again, to pull a bone out of someone’s body, cut it into seven little pieces, and stick them somewhere other than a mosaic. And he will find a way to do it, whether or not he’s in isolation. He’ll be looking for an opportunity every waking moment of his life, for he needs it to survive just as much as the air he breathes.”
Albert averted his eyes, and in that subtle gesture of concession, Teresa saw her chance to consolidate her point.
“Separating him from his art would cause him anxiety and depression. Chronic stress causes hypertrophy of the amygdala and increased activity in the limbic system. Children who are abused or abandoned have larger amygdalae compared to their peers.”
“Get to the point, Teresa.”
“Oh, I’ll get to the point. What I mean is that the reptilian brain we still share with animals, and which we’ve been carrying around for millions of years, is always ready to pounce, and it would be rather unwise to allow that to happen in a man who needs to kill in order to feel better. It’s like goading a bear, you see? But if we eliminate all sources of stress, the beast will retreat to its den.”
Gardini cleared his throat.
“Great, well, I think we’re all persuaded now that it would be best to let Mainardi have his mosaics.”
Albert would not give her the satisfaction of agreeing.
“Mainardi has confessed to a murder for which we don’t even have a body,” he noted. “Perhaps we should concern ourselves with finding it. Assuming it exists, that is. I’ve dispatched a team to the location he described. They haven’t found anything.”
“Not yet,” Teresa pointed out. “And he did tell us that someone had moved the body. I would suggest we gather the profiles of his previous targets and use those to draw up a possible profile of the latest victim. If someone presented this man to Giacomo as a sacrificial offering, and he accepted their offer, it must mean that the victim fit perfectly with his fantasies—as Giacomo himself has already confirmed. We need to compare the information we have with a list of people who disappeared on the night of May 20, the date Giacomo claims to have committed the murder. It’s already been ten days; any disappearances will have been reported by now.”
Gardini opened his briefcase again and took out a digital planner.
“What about before the twentieth?”
“No. He’s never held anyone captive, and homeless people disgust him. His hunting grounds were always elsewhere.”
“So we should trust a serial killer?”
“When it comes to death, serial killers take matters extremely seriously.”
Albert lit a cigarette and took a deep drag.
“The tale he’s told us just doesn’t hold water. They’re all paranoid delusions, that’s what I think. And this story about being told to kill—do we really believe it?”
Teresa would have loved to strike him with her walking stick.
“It’s been twenty-seven years, and you still don’t realize how much you’re underestimating him?”
Gardini ended the debate.
“In any event, we have no choice but to consider his allegations,” said Gardini, ending the debate. “There is no alternative. If there ever was a body in that location, we’ll find traces of DNA, though it will take time and resources. It was a fallow field outside the city, as I recall.”
“It is quite an extensive area,” Albert confirmed.
They began to discuss the next steps in the investigation. Teresa walked away, motioning at Marini to stay and listen to their conversation. She wasn’t going to be the one to lead the team anyway.
She looked for a sweet in her pocket, then remembered she had done so earlier to no avail. Someday soon, she was going to start asking the same questions over and over again, and making the same gestures, unable to remember that she had already spoken the same words and made the very same movements just moments before. Her mind kept skipping like a broken record.
It was a dangerous game she was trying to play.
She looked at the three men, each of whom—for better or for worse—represented an important part of her personal and professional life.
What better moment, then, to finally reveal the truth that was bound to have people talking about her for a long time? Not that she cared much about that. She would soon forget all about it.
She was just clearing her throat to speak when her fingers brushed against a piece of paper buried in her pocket. She took the note out and unfolded it.
It was a single word, inscribed in nervous handwriting, the letters lopsided and stuck together as if for support, or else thrusting and elbowing against each other. They were written in blood. Teresa pictured Giacomo cutting into his skin, collecting a drop of blood, and using it to write the word out.
She had no idea how the note had ended up in her pocket, though it was definitely meant for her, and she had no doubt about the identity of its author. Yet she still couldn’t remember.
“Are you with us, Superintendent?” said Albert, his tone brimming with irritation.
Teresa looked up. How was she supposed to tell him?
In the only way she could: directly, and without the slightest attempt at conciliation.
“I know where to find at least part of the victim’s body. Or whatever’s left of it.”
6
Twenty-seven years ago
THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR AND Superintendent Lona left the coroner’s office after the conclusion of the postmortem examination.
Teresa watched them walk down the corridor toward the exit, talking as they went, and as soon as they had disappeared behind the swinging doors, she returned to the autopsy room.
At the threshold, she hesitated for a moment. Antonio Parri was still inside, sterilizing the tools he had just been using. The assistant on shift had already left.
They did not know each other well, for although she was always there during crime scene investigations and present at autopsies related to cases she was involved in, she never contributed any questions or comments.
Instead, she observed everything from a distance. She had learned that death was not always black, as classic iconography might suggest, but that it came in many different colors. Not just blood red or bone white, but every shade of yellow, turquoise, and blue, all the way to purple and green when the cause of death was poisoning; or transparent—even luminescent—when it was a case of contamination.
Death released a smell that no industrial product or natural scent could possibly cloak.
Now it lay on the steel autopsy bed, in human form, residing in the victim’s corpse and its deepest recesses like the oily fumes of a ritual sacrifice.
Antonio Parri knew how to read the stiffened lips of the dead, presiding over the mysteries of their viscera like an ancient Egyptian hery seshta.
“Could the cruciform cuts on his legs be hiding bite marks?” Teresa asked without preamble.
“Hello, Inspector Battaglia. I think this is the first time I’ve heard you speak in here.”
He hadn’t even looked up. He must have been aware of her presence from the start.
She took a halting step forward.
“I think there are bite marks down there.”
Parri turned to look at her in silent scrutiny.
Teresa wrung her hands and flushed with discomfort. She knew she must either find the courage to keep talking, or turn around and leave.
“People like him do that kind of thing. They bite.”
Parri’s eyes narrowed, as if to bring her ramblings into focus.
“People like what?”
Teresa surrendered to her nerves and pulled a cigarette out of the wrinkled packet she carried in her pocket, but as soon as she placed it between her lips, she remembered she wasn’t supposed to smoke. She tried to put it back, but her gestures were clumsy, and the cigarette broke. Tobacco spilled onto the floor.
The doctor put another one of his tools away. Teresa was the one who needed dissecting now.
“You’re always one step ahead of your colleagues, yet you never speak. You take notes on everything I say, and on what the others say, too. Are you trying to be top of the class? You’re the only woman on the team. I suppose you feel you constantly need to prove how good you are.” He pointed at her face. “But it must be hard to do, with that bruise on your jaw that you’re trying to cover up with makeup.” He let his eyes linger on the wedding band Teresa wore on her ring finger. He’d already figured out what her story must be—and he wasn’t wrong.
She covered her hand, as if to deny the connection that the coroner’s intuition had led him to make. Her anger was beginning to make her feel uncharacteristically aggressive—though it was herself she despised, not Parri.
“I imagine you must be exhausted too, Doctor, from always having to mask the smell of alcohol with breath mints.”
They stared at each other, both equally incredulous. Parri burst out laughing.
“Is it that bad?”
Teresa couldn’t believe what she had just said.
“I don’t . . . I’m sorry. I’m mortified. I didn’t mean to be so rude.”
“Rude? You only gave as good as you got. Don’t make excuses. They never sound good, and they hardly ever work as one would hope.”
Teresa touched her face. It felt unbearably sore.
“Is it very obvious?”
He played it down.
“No, not really. I’m just used to picking up on these things.” He took a dermatoscope from one of the shelves and returned to the autopsy table. He placed the instrument on the gleaming, scuff-marked surface. “But you should fix the problem and send him off to live somewhere else. Though now you’re going to say I could fix my problem too, if I wanted to—and you would be right.”
Teresa smiled, even though she felt sad.
“If it were that easy, we would have both sorted out our problems already, wouldn’t we?”
“Amen to that. Come on then, take your coat off and come here so we can look for these bite marks you keep going on about. And there’s no need to call me Doctor, by the way; Antonio is just fine.”
Teresa didn’t need asking twice. She got rid of her parka and hung it on the coat rack, then rolled her sleeves up and tucked her hair behind her ears. But she couldn’t bring herself to step any closer.
Parri turned the lamp back on and pointed it at the corpse.
“I noticed you were there during the postmortem. Don’t be afraid to take a closer look next time. Otherwise you’re bound to miss things.”
“It’s not that I’m shy. I just find corpses really gross.”
She realized as soon as she’d spoken that perhaps it wasn’t the most appropriate admission to make to a coroner. It was like telling him she thought he wallowed in filth.
Parri gave her a sideways look.
“Put the gloves on.”
Teresa closed her eyes.
“I’ve been having stomach troubles recently. I’d really rather . . .”
“Put the gloves on.”
Though Parri’s tone was gentle, Teresa knew that this was a conditio sine qua non. If she wanted the coroner’s help, she would have to do this. She slipped on a pair of latex gloves from a box that stood on the tray with all his tools.
“Is this even legal?”
Parri took her hand and placed it over the victim’s chest. Teresa felt the taste of bile rising up her throat and into her mouth. The doctor stared right into her eyes.
“Can you feel it—this unnatural rigidity? That’s what’s scaring you; that’s all. Touching death. But death wants to be touched. It is precious, and it has a complicated back-story to disclose. This body demands justice and begs for compassion. Treat it with respect, if only for the pain that it has endured. Care for it, even. And if you do, it will tell you more than you can imagine.”
Parri let go of her hand, but Teresa didn’t remove it. She kept it there, resting upon the story of the living, breathing human that this corpse used to be. Somewhere in that room, its heart was still beating, enclosed in a ruptured life. Slowly, Teresa’s nausea began to recede.
“Look at the wrists, Teresa. Traces of the glue I was talking about earlier. The killer tied him up, and took the tape off later.”
Teresa studied the marks, etching them into her memory. The glue had caught some dirt, leaving behind the occasional faint streak.
It was the kind of thing she’d read about in textbooks but had never seen in real life. She ran her hands all the way down to the victim’s wrists, then turned them around. When she spoke, she was surprised by her own confidence.
“The killer was organized to a certain extent, but the murder weapon was chosen at random.”
Parri brought out the walking stick from inside an evidence bag.
“Here’s the weapon. Traces of blood, skin, and hair on the handle—almost certainly the victim’s. I managed to isolate a partial fingerprint. The killer may have wiped it down. He would have held it around the tip and struck downward. Three times.”
Teresa could picture him doing it.
“I suspect two of the three blows must have been comparatively weak.”
Parri put his report down.
“That’s right. How did you know?”
Teresa leaned over the corpse again.
“Because he was rehearsing. He’d planned to kill him with his bare hands, then changed his mind and used whatever weapon he happened to find. He was worried he wouldn’t be able to handle him, which explains the use of tape, and the fact that he struck from behind.”
“But he used a blade to make the cuts, and to remove the phalanges.”
“He brought the knife along to mutilate the body—not to kill with.”
“Does it make a difference?”
“It makes a huge difference.”
“And in fact the chest was carved open after death.”
“We’re looking for a young Caucasian male.”
“How can you tell?”
Teresa studied the victim’s face. The loose skin of his cheeks was covered in abrasions.
“Statistically speaking, the older the victims are, the younger the killer tends to be. It’s all about having control over their prey.”
“Victims. You’re using the plural. And earlier you said, ‘People like him.’”
Teresa looked at him.
“There is hesitation written all over this murder, and signs of the perpetrator’s insecurity. It’s likely to be his first, but it certainly won’t be his last.”
The doctor whistled.
“You’d better not sound so sure of yourself when you speak to Superintendent Lona. You’ll give him quite a shock. Could you please lift the right leg up, so we don’t have to turn him over?”
Teresa did so, though it was by no means an easy task.
“Make sure you don’t rotate it, now. He’s got a prosthetic hip. I wouldn’t want it to get stuck.”
Teresa felt like she was sinking under the weight she held in her arms. It was absence of life in its most carnal manifestation—rigid and absolute.
Parri began studying the cruciform cuts through his dermatoscope.
“These cuts are postmortem, too, no doubt about it. No sign of clotting.”
Teresa followed his line of thinking.
“Lona will never listen to me. He’s determined to follow other leads.”
“I have the feeling he might be barking up the wrong tree—don’t you?”
“It would be better if he were right.”
