Left to Vanish

by Blake Pierce

  “I don’t have a problem with you, Agent Paige.” This was actually true. Adele sometimes felt uneasy around the other agent, but from everything she knew, Paige was a capable crime-solver.

  Sophie snorted. “Why?”

  Adele hesitated, shrugging. “I felt like you could bring something to the case.”

  “Foucault said it was because you think I’m old. Like the victims.”

  Adele winced. “I didn’t say that.”

  “That’s what Foucault said.” Paige turned back to her phone now, scowling as she scrolled through the coroner’s initial report.

  Adele sighed, returning her attention to her laptop and settling in for a long flight, pressed tight against the iciest of shoulders. The pictures showed the means of murder. But if they wanted to nab this guy before he murdered again, she needed to see the crime scene itself.

  What sort of killer avoided security systems, crept into a guesthouse to strangle a wealthy woman? A clever man, for one. A vicious man. A strong one—to be able to choke life from a body. What else, though? What specific sort of sickness had motivated the bastard?

  She supposed she’d have to wait and see the scene of the crime before reaching a conclusion.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Adele whistled softly as the taxi pulled up the driveway, through the enormous estate’s open gateway. Ahead, in the nighttime glow, the mansion cast against the outline of Milan seemed a looming, regal thing. Her eyes darted from the open terrace on the third floor, to the metal mesh of the tennis court next to the natural pond-shaped private pool. The trees themselves, scattered throughout the estate, looked a hundred years old.

  The trip from the Malpensa Airport had reminded her of Agent Christopher Leoni again. She’d been tempted to call, but once more had held back. Everyone was in danger when near her. Everyone she felt a fondness toward was inevitably put in harm’s way. Which, she supposed, was why having Agent Paige along, despite the scalding glances and scornful looks, was a blessing in disguise.

  The taxi driver pulled past the two officers guarding the gateway. Adele flashed her credentials through the open window and said, “DGSI with Interpol,” and the Italian police waved her through.

  As they trundled slowly up the long drive toward the giant mansion and its smaller guesthouse, Adele felt a rising sense of anticipation.

  Her stomach twisted and for a moment she frowned, glancing off out the window and watching the neat rows of small conifers pass by. She shifted uncomfortably, putting a hand to her stomach and pressing against the odd, nearly painful sensation.

  Sophie Paige didn’t even glance over, preferring to bark directives at their driver. As they neared the old mansion and the location of the second victim’s home, Adele realized with a start what she was feeling.

  Stage fright.

  She blinked in surprise. It had been years since she’d faced this particular demon before stepping onto a crime scene. Anxiety, fear, worry all came as part of the job, but this sensation now had only been an issue when she’d first started at the DGSI.

  But the nearer they got to the roundabout at the end of the drive, the more her stomach twisted and churned. She kept her hand against her abdomen, pressing as if to hold back the rising tide of unease. She could feel her breaths coming in quick patterns and consciously forced herself to inhale for four seconds, hold it for four, then exhale for four more.

  The vehicle skidded to a halt, and by the guesthouse Adele spotted more Italian police lingering on the steps, or moving in and out of the smaller home.

  “You coming?” Paige grunted, one leg already through her open door.

  Adele inhaled once more, this time holding the breath and feeling the twisting, unnerving sensation spread. What was happening?

  An image flashed across her mind.

  The crumpled, frail form of her old mentor, lying in a pool of crimson across from a red leather chair near a cooled fireplace. She shivered, closing and opening her eyes like the lens on a camera.

  She’d known Robert’s death had affected her. But this was her first case back on the job. She couldn’t fall apart, not now. A little bit of unease, a little bit of nervousness was bound to happen. She tried not to let the frustration show and pushed open her own side of the taxi and slid out onto the cobblestone drive.

  “Coming,” she murmured, taking a breath of cool evening air outside Milan.

  Sophie Paige was already striding purposefully across the drive, toward the guesthouse and the gathered polizia. Adele adjusted her sleeves, brushing a length of blonde hair behind one ear, and then followed close behind, inhaling four seconds, holding, exhaling four seconds as she walked.

  “Agent Paige,” said a voice from the doorway of the guesthouse. “And Agent Sharp, I presume?”

  A rail thin man with a bony face and spectacles was standing in the door, looking down at his phone and then glancing up at each of them in turn as if comparing them to some picture.

  “Agent Mariano,” Paige called, taking the lead as Adele tried to catch up.

  “Yes, glad to meet you,” the ghoulish-looking man said, his French discernible, but clouded by a thick Italian accent.

  Paige wrinkled her nose and came to a halt at the base of the stairs in front of the small guesthouse. A couple of polizia moved past her, hefting twin forensic bags and murmuring beneath their breaths.

  Adele’s Italian wasn’t up to scratch, but she caught a couple of words. “…Blind spot…” and “… tonight…”

  The two forensic investigators moved toward the main mansion, still muttering and ignoring the French agents entirely.

  Agent Mariano tapped a bony finger against his pale lips, still outlined in the open doorway as he was and cleared his throat. “Signora Paige,” he said, glancing from his phone to the older woman once more. “I was told you’d be arriving an hour—”

  “Agent,” Sophie interrupted.

  “Mi scusi?”

  “Agent Paige is fine, Agent Mariano,” she said, testily. “And yes, our flight was briefly delayed.”

  “Apologies,” Adele added over Sophie’s shoulder.

  The older woman ignored this input and said, still gruff, “What do we know about the victim?”

  Mariano raised a crooked eyebrow, stretching his pale skin in strange ways, but then crossed his thin arms across his bony chest and, still standing upright in the doorway, he said, “Signora Gianna Calvetti was on the board of directors for L&L Italia.”

  “What’s that?” Adele asked.

  The ghoulish-faced man’s gaze shifted slowly like a strand of moonlight in a graveyard, moving from Paige to Adele. “How you say… manufacturing. Industry manufacturing.”

  “An Italian manufacturing company?” Adele said, her own voice shaky in her ears, her stomach still twisting. She fought the urge to flinch, though, and through tight teeth, pressed. “So if she was on the board of directors of this company, might that have played in the motives of the killing?”

  The Italian agent blinked once, thick eyelids falling over bulging eyes. “Possible.”

  Paige cleared her throat, stepping forward and, perhaps coincidentally, directly in front of Adele, regaining Mariano’s line of sight. “I can’t help but notice the security cameras,” Paige said, waving a hand toward the mansion and then toward a couple of fixtures Adele had also spotted on the encircling wall behind the guesthouse. “Do we have the film?”

  “Si. However, nothing was caught. The killer avoided security cameras. State-of-the-art security system, too. Not a cheap one. And yet, the murderer was careful to avoid them entirely.”

  Adele frowned, glancing back at the mansion, toward the lenses on the gates. She clicked her tongue, and then, allowing Sophie to stand in front of her regardless, she said, “Maybe that’s why he chose the guesthouse. There are no blind spots leading up to the mansion, but over here…”

  “Yes,” Paige interrupted. “I was going to say the same thing. Over here, there seems to be less securit
y.”

  “Indeed,” replied the Italian. He stepped back, extending an arm toward the open hall. “The deed was done just here. The house-cleaners found the body and called it in—just against the wall. Obviously, the corpse is now at the morgue, but, see what you will, my French colleagues.”

  The man continued gesturing with a wave toward the hall and Adele stepped past Paige and moved up the stairs first. Sidling along Agent Mariano, she caught a whiff of what smelled like moth balls and urinal kegs.

  She winced, but then peered along the small, cramped hallway. No sign of blood, no sign of any murder. Just an empty hall with cheap wallpaper.

  “Just there?” Adele asked, picturing the crime scene photos in her mind.

  Again, her stomach twisted and again she breathed slowly, waiting for the Italian’s response. Paige waited on the drive, watching from the base of the stairs.

  “Si, signora. Just there. No cameras inside the guesthouse, though.”

  Adele glanced back, wrinkling her nose at another whiff of mothballs. The middle-aged, pallid Italian watched her from thick-lidded eyes.

  “The killer did his homework,” she said.

  “Si.”

  “He knew about the security system. Knew the cameras. Means he cased the joint before.”

  Mariano nodded once, his head above his black suit bobbing like a pale buoy in dark water. “We have discussed such possibilities with Signora Calvetti’s eldest daughter.” He nodded toward the mansion. “She is still answering questions up at the house.”

  Adele looked back, then glanced at Paige. She held the older agent’s hostile gaze for a moment and said, “Think we should talk to her next?”

  Paige’s tongue probed the inside of her cheek, but then she nodded stiffly.

  “Say, signoras, er agents,” Mariano amended at another look from Paige. “Is this true what I hear—a serial killer?”

  Adele began to answer, but Paige interrupted. “We can’t confirm or deny at this point. We’re looking into all possibilities.”

  “But there was another murder. In London, no?”

  Adele didn’t even bother to answer this time, once more allowing Paige to take the lead. “A similar murder, yes. Matching ligature marks, but we can’t assume anything more than a coincidence at this point.”

  Adele staved off a slight frown at this. She wasn’t so sure in this regard, but also didn’t see the point in objecting, and so she moved past Mariano, down the steps again, and toward the large mansion.

  If it was a serial killer, it meant he’d already claimed two victims. Had he stalked them before making his first kill? How many victims did he have planned?

  Two already… or two disconnected cases?

  Her stomach twisted and she winced against the physical bout of nerves.

  Could she trust her instincts on this one at all? Had Robert’s death really taken so much out of her? He’d been her mentor, her instructor. And the Spade Killer had hunted him anyway. If anyone should have seen the knife in the dark, it would have been Robert.

  And now, Adele felt alone, out in the cold, driving blind on a highway in a blizzard. She could only hope she didn’t go careening into anything too important while fumbling around in the dark.

  A serial killer. Had to be, yes? Or was she now biased?

  She swallowed back her nerves and picked up her pace, her shoes clicking against the cobblestones as she hastened toward the mansion.

  The eldest daughter would have answers. She would have to. On this case, Adele had a niggling suspicion that she would need all the help she could get. One body, two bodies… three? More?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Adele settled slowly at the ornate, oak dining room table beneath a miniature chandelier likely intended to convey unpretentious, but rather settling for something closer akin to watchful and rigid.

  The many crystal baubles reflected the bright yellow light stretching from within the confines of the bulbs and cast shimmering patterns across the lacquered surface of the antique table.

  A round woman with pleasant eyes and a blue turtleneck sat across the table, small hands folded daintily over each other, her rosy cheeks flushed in the bright light and due, in no small part, to the series of questions she’d endured over the last half hour.

  Now, as Adele took in the dining room, she cleared her throat politely, glancing from the woman to the two police officers who were rising from their seats nearest her.

  “Anita?” Adele asked, cautiously, her voice inquisitory.

  Agent Paige crowded in behind Adele, offering no small talk and moving directly toward the table. “Hello, Ms. Calvetti,” she said in accented English. “I was told you can speak inglese. Yes?”

  Anita Calvetti, the eldest daughter of the deceased, glanced uncertainly from the Italian detectives who were now scraping past Paige, along an ornate bookcase and moving back into the hall. Her eyes then darted to Adele and Agent Paige.

  “I… yes,” she said, with no trace of an accent. “I studied in America. Who are you?”

  “DGSI,” Paige said, softly. To Adele’s surprise, the gruff, older agent’s voice was gentler now. And one of her neatly manicured hands reached out, covering half the distance from where she’d sat toward where Calvetti’s hands were still wringing each other. Paige stopped though, before quite making contact, allowing the gesture to simply linger as a placating one.

  Adele settled into the cushioned, ornate chair at the head of the table, beneath the chandelier and facing Anita’s nervous form. The victim’s daughter was quite pretty, with pure black hair and dark, intelligent eyes.

  “I don’t know what DGSI is,” said Anita, frowning. “I just finished speaking with the police.”

  “We’re not Italian,” Paige said, still surprisingly gentle. “Sorry for the inconvenience.”

  “DGSI is French,” Adele supplied.

  “Oh… Well. Okay then. How can I help you?”

  “Would you like a glass of water?” Paige asked. “I know how exhausting these things can be.”

  “I—actually, yes. Water would be great.”

  Paige nodded, rising to her feet and moving around the table. “Kitchen this way?” she asked, pointing toward a side door.

  “Last room on the left,” Anita mumbled, still staring at her wringing hands. The younger woman shook her head slowly as Paige hurried from the room, now leaving Adele and Anita seated across from each other, facing opposite sides of the enormous oak table.

  Adele closed her eyes a moment, trying to place her thoughts. They weren’t so distant from Anita’s, she imagined. The woman couldn’t have been much past her twenties. The same age Adele had been when…

  When what?

  When it had all collapsed.

  “I’m very sorry for your loss,” Adele said, feeling some of her nerves fading to something akin to a sense of familiarity.

  “Thank you, Agent…”

  “Adele. You can call me Adele.”

  “Yes. Well, thank you. I’d be lying if I told you I was very close with my mother. She was a hard woman. Brave, but hard.” Anita sighed again, glancing off at the bookcase with reflective glass doors.

  “I see. And did she have any enemies you can think of? Anyone who might…”

  “Want to strangle her to death? My mother wasn’t a soft woman, Agent Adele.”

  “Just Adele is fine.”

  “All right, Adele. My mother had a reputation of being ruthless in the board room. She was cutthroat to get there.” Anita shrugged.

  “So you’re saying there were many who might have a motive?”

  “Yes. I guess I am saying that.”

  “Anyone in particular you can think of?”

  Anita chewed the bottom of her lip, glancing off for a moment and sighing to herself. Her short-cut, dark hair shifted as her eyes fixated once more on Adele. “I suppose the man she replaced on the board of directors didn’t think too fondly of her.”

  “She took someone’s job?�
��

  “The exact words he used, I believe, before security escorted him out was, ‘you stupid, ugly bitch, I’ll make you pay.’” Anita bobbed her head once, showing no emotional reaction to the harsh words.

  “He said that?” Adele didn’t let her own thoughts show. Clearly, however, the victim was a woman who knew how to raise tempers.

  “Ask anyone at that meeting. He wasn’t happy when they voted him out and my mother in. She was behind it, of course. Like I said, cutthroat.”

  “You sound impressed.”

  Anita sighed again, smiling softly and staring at the back of her soft fingers. “Impressed? Maybe a bit. Angry… that too. My mother wasn’t a very understanding woman either.”

  “Anyone else you can think of?” Adele asked, wincing sympathetically, but pressing the line of questioning.”

  “My father, I suppose.”

  Adele blinked, but before she could continue, Agent Paige returned, carrying a glass of water and placing it in front of the young woman. Anita accepted with a grateful nod and sipped from the glass, sighing in contentment before placing it on the table next to a coaster.

  She stared at where the cool glass met the old antique before looking up again. “Will that be all?” she said. “I’m quite tired.”

  “One last thing,” Adele said, grateful Paige allowed her to continue without interruption. “Your father had a grudge against your mother. Any reason in particular?”

  “They’re divorced now,” Anita said, following another sip. She swallowed. “I guess passion was often a mark of their relationship. Never did one hear such loud altercations when they were angry, nor such emotional reunions when they made up.”

  “But it did end?”

  “Yes. Divorced, like I said. Probably for the best…” Anita trailed off, frowning against what seemed a rehearsed line. “Maybe not the best anymore. But my father didn’t love my mother. Spoke harshly of her since…” She trailed off again, blinking as if suddenly realizing what she was saying. She stammered, looking quickly from Adele to Sophie, “Not that I think he did anything. No, sorry. I was just processing. Both of them were quite angry with each other. But I never felt like they might…” She swallowed. “Harm anyone.”