Poisonville

by Massimo Carlotto

  Suddenly I saw Giovanna. She was barefoot, wearing a negligée. From the tiny speaker I heard her voice. “Come on, cut it out,” she was saying, in a voice that was both playful and charged with sensuality.

  “Come on, stop it,” she repeated, shutting a door in the camera’s face. I rewound the video. I watched it again, then for a third and a fourth time. Then I slumped down on the sofa.

  Giovanna was talking to her killer. She was flirting with him, playing with him before taking him to bed, dressed in a department-store negligée. I was all too familiar with the way she was talking, the way she was looking into and away from the camera. This was the prelude to love, desire, and pleasure. I mastered my feelings. I pulled out my laptop computer, plugged in the jack, and uploaded the video. Giovanna appeared on the twelve-inch screen. I watched the video over and over again until the most obvious thing about it finally occurred to me. This hadn’t been shot in her house. I zoomed in on the details of the furniture. Inexpensive, but denoting a certain taste. It was all furniture from the turn of the twentieth century; farmhouse furniture that had been cleaned and restored. I had never been in that house, of that I was certain. “Find the house, and you’ll find the murderer,” I thought to myself as I zoomed in on Giovanna’s face. I wanted to observe her hairstyle closely to figure out exactly when the video had been shot. It had to have been recently. No more than three months old. Until then, she’d worn her hair long, with bangs.

  What I should have done was go straight to Mele and turn over the video to him, but it would have become part of the investigator’s files. Zan would watch it. And if the murderer was ever caught and put on trial, the court would be able to watch it. Perhaps the whole town would see it, if Beggiolin managed to lay his hands on it. I didn’t want the whole town to think of Giovanna as a whore. Even if that’s how I thought of her now. Until that moment, I had continued to love her and to justify her. The phrase that Carla had related to me had misled me until then. In the video, she certainly gave no impression of having been forced to become the slut of the man who had ruined her life. She looked much more like a woman cheating on her future husband with a man she liked very much. She had even let him film her, and she had kept the video. I wondered how many times she had played it back for herself. I hoped there weren’t any other videos. Giovanna had been murdered, and she deserved justice, no matter what had happened. Those images would remain burned into my memory for the rest of my life. I would never be able to remember anything else about Giovanna. If I ever wanted to be free of her smiling phantom in a negligée I would have to find her murderer. Only by ensuring that he had been punished could I hope to recover the modicum of serenity that I would need to rebuild my life.

  My first impulse was to check to see if the house in the video was Zuglio’s, but the rest of the Antenna N/E news was enough to rule that out. At the end of a report on the capers of the home invasion gang, tying them without a second thought to Giovanna’s murder, Beggiolin announced an interview with Giacomo Zuglio.

  The interview was done in the living room of the Zuglio home, as Beggiolin announced in the introduction. From the very first shot I could tell this wasn’t the house in the video.

  “Signore Zuglio, what does it mean to a father to discover that his son is a criminal?” asked the television reporter in a voice filled with empathy.

  “A knife in the heart . . . a sense of failure,” replied the former bank officer. “You think you’ve taught your son certain values, and instead you find . . .”

  He couldn’t finish the sentence, overwhelmed as he was by his feelings. Beggiolin didn’t push him, but the camera focused relentlessly on the hands that covered the man’s face.

  “Will you stand by his side, in this moment of family tragedy?” the reporter asked after a suitable pause.

  Giacomo Zuglio put down his hands and looked steadily into the lens. “From this moment on, Lucio has ceased to be my son.”

  You could hear a woman’s despairing wail. The television camera swung to another part of the room, and I saw a woman crumpled in an armchair, clutching her sides in grief and pain. Beggiolin hastily introduced her.

  “Giacomo Zuglio’s wife and the boy’s mother, Paola,” he whispered softly into the microphone, careful not to disturb the audio of her sobs.

  I switched off the television set. After that news item, no one in town would have any doubts about Lucio Zuglio’s guilt. At least not until the DNA results came back.

  Alvise and Carla were so insistent that I finally had to give in and agree to meet them. My father called me that morning. He had heard about Lucio’s arrest and had managed to move his depature forward. He would be back in two days.

  “The boy has nothing to do with this,” Alvise said immediately, as he poured himself a glass of red wine.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because I know it, and the DNA test will prove me right,” he answered resentfully. “We need to keep investigating the father.”

  “What have you found out?” Carla asked.

  “I’m looking into the corporate structure. I think I’ll have something solid by the end of the week,” I replied, doing my best to sound convincing.

  “There was another fish kill,” Carla said in a worried voice. “I ran new tests, and that soil is increasingly toxic.”

  “Let’s hope they move the toxic waste soon.”

  Carla sighed gloomily. “The toxic substances have leached into the soil. We need a serious clean-up, or there could be serious risk for the local population.”

  “The pollutants could get into the groundwater,” Alvise warned.

  I looked at them both. Clearly they had talked things over at length and they had come to a few decisions.

  “What are you planning to do?” I asked.

  “Unless we make some serious progress in the next few days, we have to report the existence of the waste dump to the Carabinieri,” Carla answered.

  “Let’s wait just one more week,” I suggested. “Let’s see what the investigators turn up on Lucio Zuglio and what information I manage to find about the Eco T.D.W.”

  Carla and Alvise agreed. Before leaving, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a print I had made from the video. Of course, you couldn’t see Giovanna. Instead there was a kitchen cupboard, the edge of a table, two chairs and, in the background, a window.

  I showed it to Carla. “Have you ever seen this room?”

  “No,” she answered, confidently. “Whose house is it?”

  “I don’t know. But I found this photograph among Giovanna’s papers.”

  At last my father came back from Romania. He called me after landing in Verona, and when he entered the law offices, I was there waiting for him.

  “Prunella called me,” he reported as he wrapped me in a hug. “She’s asking me to represent her as civil plaintiff in the criminal case against Lucio Zuglio.”

  “Shouldn’t we wait for the findings of the DNA test?”

  “No. Always remember, if you are representing the civil plaintiff you have to support openly everything the criminal investigators do from the very outset. It’s an old trick; it helps to make the court your ally.”

  “Do you think he’s guilty?”

  He smiled. “I’m astonished you would ask me such a thing. You know how I feel about the presumption of innocence.”

  “You have a point,” I admitted. I stood up and walked over to the window. A light drizzle had been falling relentlessly since morning. The wet stone façades of the buildings in the center of town were glistening in the light of the streetlamps. “I have to give you some bad news,” I said suddenly.

  Papa looked up from a file that his secretary had left for him on his desk. “How bad?” he asked, knitting the fingers of his hands together.

  I told him about the secret waste dump, and about Zuglio and Trevisan. I only l
eft out the fact that Alvise had come back. As long as he remained in hiding, it seemed reasonable to keep his secret. Papa turned pale once he began to grasp how serious matters had become.

  “Trevisan has abused my trust,” he commented in horror. “I helped him in the name of our old friendship.”

  “What do you plan to do?”

  “I need some time, and I especially need to keep this quiet,” he replied. “You can assure Carla Pisani that the soil will be cleaned up, at Foundation expense, as soon as is humanly possible.”

  “Will you arrange to report Zuglio and the Romanian to the police?”

  My father looked straight at me. “When I talked about keeping this quiet, that’s what I meant. An investigation into the actions of these scoundrels could easily uncover the role played by the Eco T.D.W. and the fact that it belongs to the cartel of corporations linked to the Foundation.”

  “I don’t understand. These are serious crimes.”

  “Not so very serious. It’s a small-time fraud, and in Italy, trafficking in toxic wastes is punished with a ridiculously light sentence.”

  “I disagree,” I replied. “Most important, I’m quite sure I can’t make Carla keep quiet about this.”

  “If this story becomes public the damage to the image of the Foundation will be irreparable,” he explained in a heartfelt tone. “A scandal would become a formidable weapon in the hands of our competitors. The Foundation is going through a delicate transition. As I’ve told you, we are transferring all our operations to Romania.” He stood up and walked over to me. “I vouched for Trevisan. I would be the first to pay for that mistake, and I don’t deserve it.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” I promised.

  I left the law offices baffled and disappointed. I could understand that Papa was in a delicate situation, but I would have liked to see a different attitude, a little less eager to engage in a cover-up.

  I still had a few days to decide what to do. I had no intention of continuing to keep the truth from Carla but, for the moment, that was still the simplest way to manage the situation.

  The newspapers and Antenna N/E played up the story of Prunella’s decision to become a civil plaintiff. “We have no prejudices against Lucio Zuglio. We are merely emphasizing Signora Barovier’s determination to obtain justice for her daughter Giovanna,” my father had declared with as much cunning as diplomacy.

  That same day, a blood sample was taken from Lucio Zuglio, who was still in the hospital, in serious condition. The public defender had raised no objections, nor had the defendant. I doubted that proper procedures had been followed, but it was none of my business, and more than anything else, I wanted to find out the test results.

  It was a bitter surprise to learn that it would be impossible to do any DNA testing because of the deterioration of the one sample capable of providing scientific identification of the murderer. As my father had confided to me, Professor Marizza had assured him that he would do everything within his power to ensure that the seminal fluid could not be used as evidence against me. But I felt certain that he would pull back once I had been ruled out as a suspect in the days immediately following. In a press conference, Prosecutor Zan stated that the definitive piece of evidence to prove Lucio Zuglio’s guilt had been lost, but that the evidence gathered in the course of the investigation was more than sufficient to warrant an indictment. The defense attorney had nothing to say, and he did nothing in judicial terms. I had worked with him on other cases, and I knew that he was far from incompetent. Evidently, he had decided not to turn the entire town and the courtroom community—first and foremost among them my father—against himself. Beggiolin continued his campaign relentlessly. Every day he aired a new report that dug Lucio Zuglio’s grave a little deeper. One thing was certain—whoever the murderer was, if there was no DNA evidence he had a much better chance of getting away with his crime.

  Once again, I found myself sitting in front of my computer, analyzing every detail of the video. It had become an obsession. I couldn’t keep myself from going back to stare at Giovanna. I was behaving irrationally, and I was masking it behind the need to gather all potential evidence that could help me identify where the video had been shot. I found myself staring into Giovanna’s eyes. And she wasn’t looking at me. That woman was supposed to be mine, all mine, but instead I was forced to share her with another man. In the end, those were the thoughts crowding into my mind. That night I was stuck on her negligée. I had blown up the hem until it was just a shapeless blob. Then someone rang my doorbell. It was a little past two in the morning. I remembered that I had heard the church bell strike two just ten minutes before. I wondered if it was Mele. Maybe Lucio Zuglio had confessed or had died. Instead, I opened the door to Alvise.

  “I have to talk to you,” he announced in a brusque tone of voice.

  He had wine on his breath, but he wasn’t drunk. He must have gulped down a glass before leaving Carla’s apartment and stepping out in the chilly night air. I ushered him into the living room.

  “I’m worried about Lucio,” he said. “I have a hunch that they’re trying to frame him, just like they framed me.”

  “Why are you so concerned about what happens to that young man?”

  “Because he’s my son.”

  “His mother, Paola, was my secretary. And my lover. The night the factory burned down I was with her,” Alvise explained to me, once I had recovered from my astonishment.

  “Why didn’t you say that when they arrested you?” I asked in genuine surprise.

  He smiled at me bitterly. “To keep her from looking like a slut to the whole town, I provided a false alibi. When they uncovered it, it was too late to retract. They would never have believed me.”

  “Did she already know she was pregnant?”

  “No. She found out later. Don Piero brought me the news. He also told me that Giacomo Zuglio was willing to marry her immediately if I promised to keep matters secret.”

  “Did they know each other?”

  “Paola had to go to the bank frequently for business, and he was courting her. She had always turned him down, but in the end Zuglio got what he wanted anyway.”

  I thought back to the photograph of Giovanna and Lucio in the restaurant.

  “How did Giovanna find out that she had a brother?”

  “I don’t know that. She only told me that she’d found out and that she’d told Lucio about it, too.”

  “So they couldn’t have been lovers,” I thought aloud.

  “And Lucio is innocent. What can we do to help him?” he said.

  “Tell them everything. Are you willing?”

  The next day, even though it was a Sunday, I went to talk with Mele. The officer on duty told me he was off duty, and I had to insist repeatedly before he would call him. He came down a few minutes later. Like the other non-commissioned officers he lived in an apartment building constructed twenty years earlier inside the perimeter of the barracks compound. He was in civilian clothing and his hands were covered with flour.

  “I was making pasta dough,” he explained.

  “I have a witness who can clear Lucio Zuglio as a suspect in Giovanna’s murder.”

  “Tell him to come to the office tomorrow morning.”

  “I would prefer to organize a meeting with Zan, the defense lawyer, and the civil plaintiff.”

  “A slight deviation from protocol” he commented sarcastically. “And your father is in agreement?”

  “I haven’t told him yet.”

  He gave me a questioning look. “He represents the civil plaintiff,” he reminded me.

  “Oh, I’m well aware of that. This is a delicate matter, I’d like to take care of it quickly and quietly.”

  “And who is this witness?” he asked acidly. “One of the usual bigwigs that have to be treated with kid gloves, otherwise they might get their feelings hurt?�
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  “No. He’s nobody, just a loser.”

  He reached out for the telephone. “Let’s see what Zan has to say.” The conversation lasted a couple of minutes. “This evening, at seven,” he said. With a smile, he added, “You ruined the prosecutor’s Sunday.”

  I returned home and reported the latest developments to Alvise, who had just stepped out of the shower wrapped in my bathrobe. It had been a gift from Giovanna. I was certainly not going to bother washing it after he left. It would go straight into the garbage. Barovier had slept in the guest bedroom. I insisted that he stay at my house; if he went back to Carla’s, it would only deepen her involvement in this mess. I watched him as he read the paper. He wore a pair of unfashionable old eyeglasses. I wasn’t sure that he was fully aware of what awaited him. And as I later had occasion to learn, neither was I. A law degree and a few small cases aren’t enough to make someone a good lawyer. It takes experience.

  We arrived at the barracks a few minutes after the time appointed by Zan. The others were already there, sitting in the inspector’s office. When Alvise entered the room, my father was the only one who recognized him.

  “Alvise,” he exclaimed in surprise.

  Alvise wouldn’t deign to look at him, and sat down across from the prosecutor. My father gave me a stern glance of reproof. He must have been furious that he hadn’t been told the identity of the witness. After the initial formalities had been gotten out of the way, Barovier told his version of Lucio’s story. I had advised him to leave out all the other issues. Especially not to say anything about Giovanna’s campaign to clear his name. It was still too early.

  Then it was my turn to wrap up. “Of course, Signore Barovier is ready and willing to have a DNA test to prove his paternity.”

  Zan reacted in an agitated manner. His prosecution theory had crumbled before his eyes. The investigation into the murder of Giovanna Barovier was by no means over. “This means nothing,” he blurted out in a hysterical voice. “There’s no evidence that Giovanna Barovier actually told Zuglio that they were close relatives. Moreover, you are an ex-convict . . .”