“Who does the crime scene belong to, legally?” he asks. “The tank, all of it?”
“The Italian authorities.”
“Do we trust them?”
“No.”
“What about the Americans?”
“You mean the FBI? I don’t trust Rizzio, either. But it’s my duty,” I say, kicking at the dust. “I have to tell him what we found. Then it’s his call to involve the Italians.”
“How long will that take?”
“I don’t know how much independence he has over here. If he’s supposed to call headquarters before he takes a piss, it could be days.”
Sterling takes out his cell phone. “I’ll handle it.”
“What are you doing?”
“Calling Chris.”
The plan is for Sterling and Chris to stake out the witness, Falassi. They will secrete themselves at the mouth of the dirt road and follow him. According to the GPS, it is the only way out of the site. The long evening passes slowly, and there is no sign of Falassi. Chris arrives after dark with a trunk piled with sniper rifles, automatic weapons, and camouflage gear. In a country that bans guns, someone had to commit a crime in order to import all that firepower — hide it in a shipment or pay off a customs official.
“Do those weapons belong to Oryx?”
“Of course not. I tripped over ’em, taking out the trash.”
I leave the surveillance to them and drive back to the abbey, where the embassy switchboard is able to put the call through to Dennis Rizzio at home. As expected, he says that with no jurisdiction, we are bound to turn the crime scene over to the provincial police. It is their responsibility to link the forensic evidence from the vat with the “disappeared.” I explain to Rizzio that since the Commissario has already suppressed evidence during the attack on Giovanni, he might not be the best person to handle this important evidence.
“I’m in contact with the director of the crime lab in Rome. I’ll make sure this stays on track,” Dennis assures me.
Not at all assured, I leave a voice message for Mike Donnato at the Los Angeles field office.
I am not surprised that Sterling and Chris have not returned by morning. Waiting until the Italian police show up to arrest Falassi could easily take all day. From the mirrored armoire in the sweet-pea bedroom I remove Cecilia’s wrap skirt (“When it is this hot, the only thing to wear is linen”), holding it in my hands for a long time, studying the minute stitches along the hem, the hand-sewn buttonholes where the ties pass through, the weave of the oatmeal fabric.
The small arched window is filled with the light of daybreak. I stand there in my underwear and contemplate the vast breathing of everything outside that is alive, while, at the same time, aware of a chill penetrating the soles of my feet from the enduring cold of the inert clay tiles. In some deep place, I have begun to say my good-byes to Cecilia.
I had hoped, when this case began, to find what had been missing from my childhood in the insipid suburbs of Southern California, dominated by a grandfather too angry and narcissistic to even see me, except as an object of scorn. Even so, Cecilia was an unexpected discovery — driven, vibrant, brave, skilled at her profession, a little bit crazy — but fun. The rare kind of person who picks up the burdens; suddenly you don’t have to carry responsibility for everything.
Maybe losing her before loving her is a blessing. Like a caustic substance, the kidnap case has seared those nerve endings away. I reflect on how much easier it is to play the role of law enforcer than that of sister. I don’t know when the pain will start kicking in, but I’m certain Cecilia’s loss will leave nothing of this venture into family; the tentative bonds with Giovanni, and certainly with Nicosa, will dissolve as inevitably as those fragments of life melting in a vat of acid.
As promised, Cecilia’s skirt is cool and light. I wish my guilt in wearing it could be as weightless. Giovanni, eating breakfast in the kitchen, says Nicosa is working in his office.
“Where’s his office?”
“In the tower. Top floor.”
I was not even aware that the twelve-sided bell tower was used for living space. While a five-year-old could pick the lock on the main quarters, no high-tech toy has been unexploited to protect Nicosa’s solitude. Entry is gained with fingerprint recognition or a special bypass code that appears on a screen when you identify yourself through the intercom. A second code is required to pass through the vestibule air lock, where cameras and motion sensors watch every move. An automated voice says in Italian that you have thirty seconds to step inside the glass elevator or an alarm will sound.
As you ascend, you are stunned to realize that you are passing through a vertical museum of Renaissance and prehistoric art. Inside the romantic tower is a secret, world-class private collection. Nicosa has created six stories of gallery space filled with artifacts, statuary, and paintings. There is one whole room of thirteenth-century Sienese Madonnas with gold-leaf haloes — all exactly alike, with the same swanlike faces and slanted eyes — and a steel vault that holds who knows what other priceless treasures.
When the elevator doors open at the top, you stumble into a circular space enclosed by twelve arched windows — three hundred and sixty degrees of mountains and sky. Looking out, you can see nothing in any direction but green fields, slanting olive groves, rustic stone houses, and cypress trees. Towns like balls of dust caught in the spires of distant hills.
Nicosa’s desk is a curving command center of burnished cherry-wood and chrome. There is a seating area of black leather couches, and, of course, a full kitchen, featuring a sleek top-of-the-line Nicosa Family espresso machine. With all those spouts and armatures, it looks like a robot from Mars, and probably costs as much as I make in a month. The refrigerator is stocked. Once you’re up here with the falcons, why leave?
“I can see why you’re not in the market for a new security system.”
“Now you understand.”
The coffee king sets down two small white cups, just as they should be, in their saucers, accompanied by a lemon twist. He is wearing jeans, sandals, and a short-sleeved sport shirt, but he hasn’t shaved. The room is tempered by constant breezes crisscrossing between the windows with the hot breath of baked clay and pine.
“There is something you need to know,” I tell him. “It may concern Cecilia.”
“What is it?”
He sits on a curved leather chair that is as thin as a corn chip. His dark eyes are rheumy and distrustful. I wonder if seeing me in Cecilia’s clothes is upsetting to him, but he doesn’t seem to notice.
“Yesterday I was near Monte San Stefano with my friend, Sterling. We went down a road and found the ruins of an old mill. He’s there now, guarding the site.”
“That’s a very old mill,” Nicosa says.
“You know it?”
He nods. “The original foundation goes back to the Etruscan era. I have a clay pot from there.”
“A man named Marcello Falassi has a place in the ruins. He’s a deliveryman for the Spectra Chemical Company. We saw his van. He confronted us, and he was aggressive, but we were able to leave without incident. While we were there, we found a vat filled with lye. In the lye there were fragments of bones, possibly human. The provincial police are on the way.”
“How do you know they were human? That’s often the way farmers dispose of dead animals.”
“It’s also how the mafias dispose of victims.”
Nicosa starts laughing.
“I didn’t want to believe it, either,” I add quickly. “And maybe it’s not Cecilia; it could be another one of the disappeared—”