Daughter of Ashes, page 7
Marini followed Teresa’s gaze.
“It would be a shame if she gave up because of that, though I suppose it’s not my place to try and dissuade her. You two have become friends over these past few weeks, haven’t you?”
Teresa felt the beginnings of a laugh bubbling inside her chest.
“Are you jealous?”
“It wasn’t easy winning you over, Superintendent. You gave me a rough ride.”
“Who says you’ve won me over?”
Marini gave her a playful nudge with his elbow.
“I know you’re fond of me, deep down.”
Teresa’s smile faltered.
“You know an awful lot, but there’s one thing you still don’t. Listen, Marini . . .”
“Is something up with that girl?” he said, leaning against the balustrade, too. “The way you’ve been looking at her, recently—it’s different.”
“Different?”
“Don’t act surprised. I do know you a little bit by now. You’ve been staring at her as if there’s something about her you can’t quite work out. You used to look at me the same way, too.”
Teresa shrugged.
“I’ve started calling her Blue.”
“Like her hair.”
Teresa pulled her cardigan tight around her shoulders. The dampness of the crypt seemed to be rising through the foundations of the building and seeping through her very pores.
“Blue like the mix of emotions she carries, Marini. She says she dyes her hair indigo because that’s what she feels inside. It’s the only color she can pick out from among the shadows.”
“But of course that explanation isn’t enough to satisfy you.”
“Americans use the word blue to refer to an emotional state of delicate and inexplicable melancholy. Did you know that the blues are named after the blue devils? That’s what they used to call depression and delirium tremens, back in the 1800s.”
“You really care about her.”
“I’m happy I met her.”
“But . . . ? I can hear a ‘but’ in there somewhere.”
“But, she’s blue: from what she’s told me about her life, there seems to be no obvious cause for the melancholy that besets her, and yet it seems it can’t be warded off.”
“From what she’s told me about her life?” Marini shook his head. “Oh, no. Don’t do that again.”
“Do what?”
“Suspect things. And try to save everyone you cross paths with. Maybe Blue is fine the way she is.”
“Maybe, Marini. Maybe.”
“She’s visually impaired. No one would be happy about that, especially not a twenty-year-old.”
Teresa seemed to weigh up his words.
“Do you really think a disability can determine how happy or otherwise a person’s entire existence may be?”
“I would say so.”
“You only think that because you don’t have a disability yourself. That’s why the thought scares you so much.”
“Of course it scares me.”
Teresa stood up a little straighter—or tried to, at least. “Human beings are designed to survive, Marini. Magnificently so. Even the absence of one of the senses, even the loss of a limb, even . . . this. Here I am, barely able to stand, having to relinquish my independence, my self-sufficiency. Here you are, giving me a push up the backside to help me up.”
“Don’t be silly. It wasn’t your backside.”
They were dancing around the real problem. Teresa turned to look at him.
“The spirit replaces what is missing, and fills the void. That’s what’s happened inside of Blue.”
“And inside of you, Superintendent,” he said, stepping away from the balustrade and standing in front of her.
Teresa tapped her walking stick against his leg to nudge him aside, and started making her way back toward Blanca and Smoky.
“You’ve become far too sentimental, Marini.”
He stayed where he was, his back to her.
“You can’t give up now, Superintendent. Don’t say goodbye before it’s time.”
Teresa hesitated, but only for the briefest moment. She tightened her grip on the walking stick.
“It’s never the right time for whoever’s watching, Marini. But someone has to say when enough is enough.”
“Superintendent . . .”
Just then, Blanca called out to them from the far end of the basilica. She had searched the whole perimeter and come right back round to the entrance. Smoky began to bark at a sealed door on the left-hand side of the wall, close to the entrance and to a medieval-era reconstruction of the Holy Sepulchre made from Greek marble. He seemed altogether disinclined to stop barking, despite his human’s best attempts to calm him down.
Teresa and Marini made their way toward them. The director had already rushed over, alarmed by the barking.
“That’s the entrance to the Crypt of the Excavations,” she explained. “But it has been closed to tourists for several months now. It’s the most primitive section of the basilica, containing the northern hall’s surviving mosaic fragment, and the original domus ecclesiae upon which everything else was built. I can assure you that no one could have accessed the mosaics in there.”
The dog barked louder. Blanca crouched down to soothe him, one hand reaching out for Teresa.
“Whatever it is that Smoky can smell, it’s made of blood and bones.”
Teresa looked at the director.
“Open the door.”
10
Twenty-seven years ago
TERESA SET ABOUT ARRANGING the perfect life in the perfect home. She had taken off her T-shirt and her soiled jeans, rolled them up into a ball, and thrown them in the washing machine. She had put away her parka and her boots in the wardrobe by the front door, changed into her kimono, and donned the mask that all defeated creatures wear—the kind that alters your features until you think you no longer know who you truly are.
Dinner was warming up in the oven. On the table, porcelain plates and crystal tumblers—wedding gifts. It had only been a year, but they’d already lost their luster. The kitchen door was shut so that the other rooms of the house would not become contaminated with the smell of food. Sebastiano couldn’t stand it when that happened.
She walked around the house barefoot, checking that everything was in order, more perfect than perfection itself. The study was her refuge. She shared it with Sebastiano, but he was never there, and only used it as a storage space for the books that didn’t fit in the office the university had given him: volumes that had long since fallen out of print, some with so many passages underlined that the pages had creased up; and others completely untouched—unopened, forgotten gifts from equally forgettable colleagues.
The section of the library set aside for Teresa had increasingly come to resemble her husband’s. The manuals on criminal procedure and forensic medicine had gradually been displaced by books on psychopathology and clinical psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and mood disorders, while hidden in the shadows on the lower shelves were volumes in English that had yet to be translated, written by authors Sebastiano regarded as eccentric shamans rather than serious scientists. Teresa crouched down and brushed her fingers against their spines: criminology, a new science based on intricate connections with statistics and psychology, and more a matter of observation than watertight theory. Across the Atlantic, where it had first emerged, it had enjoyed some degree of success, but here it was still mostly unknown. These books had become Teresa’s new bible. She opened one now, a vast, unpublished volume no library in the world would stock, as it was a collection of teaching materials from a training course. There was a dedication on the first page, in English, inscribed with the same vigor the lecturer injected into his classes.
To Teresa,
from a hunter to a huntress.
May the darkness have mercy on you.
R.
Teresa ran her fingers over the words. A huntress of free-falling souls. As she gathered them from the ground where they had crashed and shattered into pieces, Teresa had to believe there was something in a killer’s heart, and in the tribe of Cain, that was still worth saving. Otherwise the darkness would overcome her, too.
She stared at the library, thousands of pages brimming with theories, analyses, data. And conjecture. Right from the start of this latest case, Teresa had argued for the central importance of ritual, and raised the possibility that they might be dealing with a serial murderer. But she had no proof. None of the clues they had found so far was enough to remove all traces of doubt.
Was the killer really motivated by a range of deep-seated and equally deviant psychological mechanisms, or was Teresa detecting patterns in the old man’s murder only because she was so adamant they were there? Maybe Albert was right, and the true motive lay elsewhere.
Maybe.
She sat on the floor, under the soft light of a lamp, and started leafing through various books, dossiers, faxes, and course packets. She laid everything out on the parquet and began combing through the academic correspondence she had kept up over the past few months with criminal investigation units in the United Kingdom and the United States.
Teresa herself could scarcely believe she might be dealing with the kind of textbook case she had been studying for years now. Yet that had been her hunch right from the very start.
She opened her notebook and began to draw up a criminal profile.
Triggering factor? ➔ some specific event has broken the equilibrium and sparked a violent spiral (romantic rejection? eviction? firing?) ANGER—FRUSTRATION—URGE TO KILL
Killer’s age: around 25 (first violent fantasies beginning in adolescence)
Probable paranoid schizophrenia (most common form of psychosis)
Victim: male role model, mature in age (I don’t expect that to change, though the victims may get younger—if not by much—as the killer gains confidence in his abilities)
Body found in exposed, high-risk location. The key question to understanding the killer is the following: what kind of danger does the victim represent?
Her pen paused midair. Teresa had begun to feel a little foolish. Or perhaps she was just too many steps ahead.
The sound of actual footsteps echoed down the corridor.
She turned around, her heart in her throat. There was a shadow blackening the shadows. Teresa scrambled to her feet, stepping over the papers she had spread out on the floor.
“I didn’t hear you come in.”
Sebastiano had already taken his coat off; his wheeled suitcase stood by the door. He had been watching her. He was still watching her.
“You were busy.”
A simple observation? Or a criticism that was the prelude to another argument? Everything he said, every word he uttered, was an enigma to be solved.
He took a few steps toward her, his hands in his pockets, and no evidence of travel weariness to be found on the hard line of his jaw. Not the trace of a beard, not the slightest dent in his starched collar. Only a graying around his temples alluded to his transience. Nothing else. His eyes were pebbles from a riverbed, wet black rock.
“Dinner’s ready, you’ve made it back in time. I’ll go get . . .”
He grabbed her wrist. His thumb caressed the soft skin there, while his other fingers held her in place and measured the ripples of her heartbeat.
“Did you really make it yourself?”
It was no use lying. He would have checked the bins and found the boxes from the deli.
“No, I bought it.”
What would happen now? A perfunctory rebuke, perhaps, or something sterner, accusations, his voice raised, maybe even his hand raised.
Teresa had no idea how things had gotten to this point.
She had not glimpsed the signs of the creature that lived inside of him. Yet there they were: etched into his face, and whenever he cracked his knuckles and clenched his fists. Fists he could turn into punches, and which he once had, leaving a mark on the wardrobe and a bruise on her skin.
Now all that suppressed energy was visible in the fire that reddened his ears, the purpureal tinge of the bulging vein in his neck.
What use were the sharpened scalpels of her accumulated knowledge when Sebastiano was the one who needed dissecting? When faced with his exculpatory defenses, they were merely crude, blunt instruments, powerless to dismantle the falsehoods he told himself.
Sebastiano traced his finger over her jaw, then cupped his hand over her face, leaving it half free and half imprisoned—which was exactly how Teresa felt. She couldn’t tell whether he was about to caress her or tighten his grip. The gesture was embryonic and unspecific, carrying the potential to turn into anything at all, just like the man who stood before her.
It wasn’t the threat of a blow that scared her, so much as the awareness that Sebastiano was practicing the art of torment, sizing up the extent of his dominion.
In that moment, that male hand, like so many other male hands, was shaping a woman’s destiny. And within Teresa, as within countless other women who had been in her position, the urge to flee wrestled with the impulse to attack, to bend that wrist until it broke, and shatter the chain that bound her to Sebastiano. Violence purging violence. But the thought remained as such, and soon the vision faded.
Sebastiano ran his fingers through her hair, his hand brushing her neck where her ponytail had left it bare.
“You know I like it better when you wear your hair down. You know that.”
“It gets in my way at work.”
He twisted a lock around his finger and pulled it loose.
“It’s a good thing you changed your mind about the color. This darker tone makes you look more sophisticated. If you want people to take you seriously, red won’t do; it gives the wrong impression.”
He stepped away from her, as if he’d become irritated at the contact. He sat on the armrest of the couch and undid his tie, sliding the fabric down the palm of his hand like a lion tamer’s whip.
Teresa instinctively tucked the lock behind her ear.
“It’s just a color.”
“And you’re just an inspector.” He rolled up his tie and threw it onto the table. “Were you really going to turn up at the superintendents’ exam with your hair dyed a color that says ‘I’m available’?”
It wasn’t a genuine question. They never were. They were boreholes where Sebastiano placed the explosive seeds of doubt, humiliating her in order to undermine her confidence.
By the time Teresa had realized this, it was already too late. Sebastiano hadn’t always been so transparent. But then something seemed to accelerate inside of him, like a shadow that fed on her fear and insecurity. It was greedy, and it no longer felt the need to hide.
He was just a jealous boyfriend. And how special his jealousy had made her feel.
He was just a jealous and demanding husband, a distinguished professional for whom the human mind seemed to hold no secrets, and who expected his wife to be just as perfect.
And soon that shadow had tightened around her and sucked all the air out from her. It had revealed its true colors: possession, obsession, destruction. Bit by bit, Sebastiano’s mask had crumbled, and she had seen his thirst for violence. Sebastiano didn’t want her love: he wanted her heart, so that he might devour it.
Why have I stayed this long?
Perhaps because the man who stood before her was one of the sons of Cain, and she had to believe—had wanted to believe—that she could save him. He killed her every single day, one piece of her soul at a time. And every single day she would pick up the broken piece and stitch it back on. By sacrificing herself, perhaps she might bring forth his redemption.
“Come here.” Sebastiano patted the couch. “Sit down and give me a hug.”
Teresa acquiesced, her stomach convulsing against the heat of his belly like enemy lines intersecting. She could hear Sebastiano’s breath marking the rhythm of her own. For a brief moment, she really did pull him close, intoxicated by the memory of what they had once been. But the fissures in her soul, pushed nearly to breaking point, creaked loud enough to bring her back to reason. Within seconds, Teresa was back to analyzing every twitch of his muscles and preparing for the worst. The crack had opened; the edges were crumbling.
“Are you still angry?” Sebastiano asked.
Angry. That was all it was, to him.
“No, I’m not angry.”
Anger had nothing to do with it. Anger—and whatever else it was mixed with—belonged to Sebastiano alone.
He pushed her away a little and studied the bruise he’d made, pressing lightly against it.
“I was tired, and you provoked me.”
“Yes.”
She hated herself for the tear that rolled down her cheek.
“Say you’re sorry, Teresa.”
“I’m sorry.”
Sebastiano smiled.
11
Today
THE DIRECTOR OF THE region’s cultural heritage department inserted her key into the bronze door of the crypt, struggling a little with the stiff lock.
“There was a time when there were two basilicas in Aquileia, one in the north and one in the south, erected next to each other above the original domus ecclesiae. We do not know why this was the case, nor what they were for. One theory is that the southern basilica was used for catechumenal purposes. The northern basilica, on the other hand, was used for the synaxis, and reserved exclusively to initiates. In its early days, Christianity was of course very much a mystery cult.”
She seemed to be having second thoughts. The key remained in the lock, unmoving.
“Halfway through the fourth century, the northern hall was demolished, and the Constantinian basilica was built in the southern section. The new temple was consecrated by Bishop Athanasius, who had been exiled from Egypt for excessive orthodoxy. The remains of the mosaic floor of the northern hall slumbered under a blanket of earth for one thousand five hundred years. It was only in 1906 that a team of archaeologists brought them to light and opened this crypt.”
She turned to look at them.
