Authors: The Sacred Cut
Peroni
frowned. "Why'd she try to lift something from you? If I'd
been running out of that place, you wouldn't have seen me for
dust."
"Maybe
she's a pickpocket."
"It's
possible--"
"They're
not all into dope and prostitution, Gianni. Just the ones you met. I've
dealt with plenty of street muggings too. Some of these kids are professionals
in their own way. They steal out of second nature."
"I
believe you." Peroni didn't look convinced.
"So
tell me again about the CCTV. In the Pantheon."
"Nothing
to tell." Peroni grimaced. "There were four cameras. He'd
done something to each of them. The security guy I talked to didn't know
what. He said it had to be in the control box or something. It wasn't
just a matter of snipping the wires either. If he'd done
that--"
Costa
interrupted him. "The alarm would have gone off."
"Quite."
Peroni pulled on a tie and yanked it roughly around his bull-like neck. "What
are you getting at?"
Some
small certainty was growing in Costa's mind. "Somehow he got into
the place without triggering the alarm. Maybe he'd some keys, we don't
know. He must have talked the woman inside somehow too. He couldn't risk
attacking her in the square, even in weather like this. And he did what he
wanted without triggering the alarm either. Otherwise he wouldn't have
been out of the place by the time we arrived. It took us, what? Ten minutes, no
more, to get from the bar to the Pantheon after we got the call. He had to kill
the woman, undress her, make that mark on her back. That must have taken the
best part of an hour, possibly more."
Peroni
nodded, unsure where this was going. "Maybe he stepped on an alarm or
something after he'd killed her."
"Could
happen, I guess. But what if he got out of there clean, too? What if he locked
everything up carefully behind him and he was just walking away when the bell
started ringing? So he thinks:
Why
? He's not there anymore.
Nothing alive's in there, or at least that's what he thought. He's
disabled the alarms in all the places he needs to. He knows where to walk
without triggering anything. What he doesn't know is some immigrant kid
is hiding inside too, maybe trying to get out of the cold, I don't know. And
this kid saw everything he did. Everything."
"Not
good," Peroni murmured darkly.
Costa
was still flicking through the prints absentmindedly, not really looking at
them. He realized now they were out of order. The developer had processed them
in a rush, mixing them up. Some didn't match the right envelopes.
"So
what would he do?" Costa mused.
Peroni
nodded. "He'd wait outside till we opened the doors. Until whoever
was inside tried to get away. And then he'd kill the kid. Or try to.
Except poor Mauro stepped in front of the bullets instead. And you started
chasing the bastard before he could finish the job. Jesus--"
Costa's
fingers skipped over the prints, stopped over one and pulled it out of the
pack. The photo had slipped into the wrong bunch. It was stacked in the middle
of the series in the bar. So easy to miss.
Mauro
had wound up the zoom to go in close. It was probably the last real photo he
ever took. The girl was almost as tall as Nic Costa, but slightly built, and
wore a dark windcheater and jeans. She was slipping past the portico, just
beginning to run. The shot was taken at an angle. Maybe Mauro was falling
already, struck by the bullets, as he pressed the shutter button, spinning on
his heels as he tried to avoid the deadly fire.
Physically
she looked no more than thirteen or fourteen, with a waif's haircut rough
cropped short into the head. But there was an adult, haunted look in her
pretty, dark face. A chilly mix of terror and determination stared out from her
wide-open eyes, beyond Mauro, straight at the man standing on the steps by the
frozen dolphins, trying to end her life.
Peroni
peered at the photo. "An immigrant kid. Turkish maybe. She won't have
a home. She won't even have a real identity. She isn't going to
come running to us."
Costa
looked at his watch. They had fifteen minutes till the appointment in the Via
Veneto.
"Someone's
got to know her," he said.
Gianni
Peroni sucked through his teeth, still transfixed by the photo and the
vulnerable face gazing back at them. He'd worked vice for years and
understood the inevitable path these kids took from petty street crime to drugs
and prostitution.
"I
can call in some favours, Nic," he said, sounding reluctant. "But
maybe we've got to go places Leo had best not hear about. That OK with
you?"
Costa
glanced at the photo again and the kid's dark, desperate eyes.
"Yeah,"
he murmured. "You bet it's OK."
THE
AMERICAN EMBASSY stood on a steep bend on the Via Veneto, a stiff climb up from
the Piazza Barberini. Here, behind well-guarded iron gates, a small army of
diplomats, paper-pushers, military officers, immigration officials and, for all
Costa knew, professional spooks populated the elegant nineteenth-century
labyrinth of corridors of what had once been the Palazzo Margherita.
Leo
Falcone met them in the waiting room, silent and serious in a grey business
suit. To Costa's surprise, Teresa Lupo was with him, twiddling her
nascent ponytail, a touch scruffy in an old winter jacket and jeans, and not
happy either.
"How
are you, Gianni?" she asked Peroni as they all sat together, waiting.
"I'm
doing just fine," Peroni replied. "No offence, but what the hell
are you doing here?"
"Working,"
she answered gruffly. "If I'm allowed. Do you have a problem with
that?"
He
grunted something that sounded like an apology.
"She's
here because I wanted her here," Falcone interposed. "Whatever
papers these people have, that body still has to be accounted for."
"Told
you," Teresa added. "Just the fucking typist."
"If
that's the way you see it," Falcone murmured, watching a tall man
walk towards them, some papers in his hand. "But let's keep these
arguments to ourselves, please."
The
embassy official introduced himself as Thornton Fielding. He didn't look
like a natural colleague for Agent Leapman. Fielding was diplomatic and
articulate. He wanted their signatures on some nondisclosure papers too.
Falcone
stared at the paperwork. "This is Italy, Mr. Fielding. I'm not in
the habit of signing forms about what I will or won't do in my own
country."
Fielding
didn't even blink. "Technically, Inspector, this is the sovereign
territory of the United States of America. Either you sign these forms or you
don't get to see Agent Leapman." He hesitated. "Personally
I'd find that a damn good reason for
not
signing, but the choice
is yours."
"You
like him too, huh?" Peroni asked.
"He's
just the most fun guy you're ever going to meet," Fielding said
quietly. "Now are you putting your name to these or not?"
When
they were done he made a call from the desk. They watched as Emily Deacon
walked down the corridor towards them.
"Nice
woman," Fielding said. "Don't judge her by the company she
keeps."
Then
he disappeared down the corridor, leaving them to Emily Deacon. They followed
her and watched as she swiped an ID card on the security door to what turned
out to be a large, high-ceilinged office.
Agent
Leapman was seated in a leather executive chair behind a polished walnut desk,
squeezed into a tight white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to display beefy,
powerful arms. Emily Deacon, surely the junior partner in this relationship,
motioned them to a leather sofa, then perched on a chair next to him, demure in
plain brown slacks and a cream shirt. She held a notepad on her lap and could,
Costa thought, have passed as a secretary, were it not for the intent way she
kept shuffling through a pile of papers on the desk, looking as if she knew
every last sheet.
"I
appreciate you coming here." Leapman spoke with no visible emotion as he
played with a remote switch in his hand. The blinds on the window slanted to
block out the security lights outside. A small screen came down from the
ceiling.
"We
had a choice?" Teresa asked.
"Not
really," Leapman replied. "I know I said I wasn't dictating
who could come to this meeting, Falcone, but I rather expected it would be
police only."
Falcone
took a deep breath before answering. "A piece of paper from the Palazzo
Chigi doesn't change Italian law. Miss Lupo has to sign a death
certificate for the woman. She's every right to be here. You can make a
phone call to check if you want."
Leapman
allowed himself a brief glance towards Emily Deacon, one that said,
See, I
told you what they're like
.
"OK,"
he grumbled. "Just remember what the deal is here. This is for you people
only. I don't want to read it in
Il Messaggero
tomorrow morning.
Deacon..."
He
passed over the remote and she hit the button. A photo came on the screen. It
was a building Costa recognized from somewhere, then a series of shots of the
same place, taken from different angles: a rose-coloured temple of some kind,
shot in bright sun, near fountains and water, with a large rotunda dome
supported by open columns.
"It
looks like the Pantheon," Peroni said immediately.
"It
should," she said. "It's the Palace of Fine Arts in San
Francisco. Built for the 1915 International Exhibition. The architect, Maybeck,
was trying to re-create something classically Roman, like an engraving by
Piranesi of some half-ruined temple."
"Nice,"
Peroni answered. "You got a corpse there too?"
She
nodded, surprised perhaps that he got the point so quickly. "Last May. It
was the first, as far as we know."
"Who?"
Falcone asked immediately.
"A
man," she said. "Just a tourist from D.C. In spite of what we saw
today we don't think this is sexual. We could be wrong..."
Leapman
rocked his chair to and fro in disapproval.
"We
just don't know," she continued. "The building is near the
Marina. Pretty safe most of the time, but San Francisco's a city with some
rough parts nearby. The cops wrote it off as street crime. Just one thing,
though."
She
pressed the button and ran through a new series of photos. They were of the
victim, facedown on the rose-coloured stone floor. He was naked from the waist
up. The cord that had been used to strangle him still dug deep into the flesh
at the back of his neck. A rough pattern was cut into his lower back in an
approximation of the shape they'd seen in the Pantheon that morning.
Leapman
cleared his throat, lit a cigarette and said, "He was still practising
then. It took a little while before he got it right. Next."
More
photos, this time of a stumpy circular tower with two galleries at the summit,
pointing up into a clear blue sky.
"Coit
Tower, also San Francisco," Deacon continued. "Three weeks later
they found this when they were opening up for the day. On the floor of the
tower too. Our guy's good with locks."
It
was another corpse. Totally naked this time. A man, facedown, with grey hair. He
was running to fat. Perhaps fifty. The cuts on his back were a little less
ragged. The pattern was larger, running out to the folds of flesh at his waist,
and more distinct: a geometric dance of angles and curves that made a
recognizable image.
"Who
was he?" Falcone demanded.
"Tourist
from New York," Leapman replied. "Traveling alone. He'd been
hanging out in gay bars, which complicated things for a while."
They
could just about make out the withering glance Leapman was casting them across
the room. "That's the trouble with city cops," he continued.
"Narrow minds. They like to jump to quick conclusions. The San Francisco
guys figured they had another dead queer on their books. They didn't even
call us in. We hadn't a clue any of this was starting to happen. Not for
another month."
He
nodded at Emily Deacon. She cued up a shot of a classical building, with a
white colonnaded portico and a rotunda dome, partly in brick. Only the
stars-and-stripes flag fluttering from a pole told them this was not in Italy.
She
took up the story. "Monticello, Charlottesville, Virginia. End of June
now. This was Thomas Jefferson's home, which may or may not be
significant. Jefferson designed it himself. The neoclassical influence probably
comes from his time as ambassador in Paris but you don't need to be an
architect to see where the idea originated."
"Dead
tourist in the hall when they opened up," Leapman interjected
impatiently. The image of a body came up on the screen. "Woman this time,
local, from Virginia. You can imagine the picture."
"Still
nothing sexual?" Falcone asked.
Leapman
shook his head.
"Can
I see the autopsy reports for some of these people?" Teresa Lupo asked.