by Jeff Carson
She kept her eyes forward, “Lia.”
Wolf sighed in quiet resignation as she picked up her cell phone and dialed a number.
Chapter 12
Lia hung up after a short conversation and plopped the phone in front of the stick shift.
“I have to admit, I’m glad you kept that phone call to a minimum, Tito was on the phone the entire way here from the train station,” he said. “I never did get a chance to even…”
“Tito’s an idiot,” she said.
“Yeah…” He looked at her expressionless stare out the windshield. “Anyways, thanks.” He turned to look at nothing in particular out the window, seeing a large group of pedestrians walking along the lake shore.
Just then Lia downshifted and accelerated into a traffic circle, threading in between two cars that were no more than two car lengths apart, then shot out the other side, swerved into oncoming traffic, looked left at a convex mirror mounted high on an ancient wall, jammed the brakes and cranked the wheel in a sharp button-hook right turn.
It took Wolf a couple breaths to go from shock to realization he was riding shotgun with a gifted Formula One driver. He let go of his white knuckle grip on the door. “Could you take me to my brother’s apartment?”
“That’s where I’m taking you. We have to meet a colleague first.”
“Okay, thanks. I wasn’t sure. I really haven’t been able to communicate with people that well so far. It’s nice to be on the same page as someone finally.” Wolf sat in silence for a minute. “I noticed your English is very good, hardly an accent.”
“Thanks,” she said.
“Your welcome,” he said.
They parked in a shadowy alley and walked a narrow cobble stone street up a slight rise. An archway opened into a bright piazza that was the length of a football field and not quite as wide. Water jumped out of a ground level concrete slab a few feet to the right. Cafes with four or five rows of outdoor seating lined the entire length of the piazza, old ornate looking residential buildings stacked on top. Aromas filled the air, making his mouth gush. There were people everywhere.
A male Cabinieri officer stood in the deep distance — light blue shirt, dark blue pants with bright red stripe down the side of each leg, and white leather belt. Lia began walking swiftly in his direction.
Suddenly a cacophony of noise stirred the piazza. It was a group of four kids on some motorbikes, rapping their engines loudly. Wolf thought they looked like dirt bikes, but they had smooth street tires on them. Upon closer looking, he realized they didn’t look like it, that’s exactly what they were — dirt bikes with street tires.
Three of them killed the engines and leaned their bikes up against a side alley wall, while another circled back and revved hard in front of a group of people, scaring them into a frenzy of stumbling and shrieks. It was a group of young mentally handicapped people.
Lia slowed down and Wolf came up along side her. She was watching the officer in the distance march with determination towards the four kids on bikes, who were now taking off their helmets and laughing. The fourth kid still sat on his bike, leaning against the wall with the engine shut off, pealing off his helmet.
He didn’t see it coming.
The officer walked up and slapped his head, a smack that was clearly audible from the forty yards they were at. He ripped the kid off the bike and pushed him up against the wall, giving the boy a typewriter to the chest and a vigorous speech that, by the looks of his whitened expression, was the scariest thing he’d ever heard in his life. He released the boy and said something to the others, who all began pushing their bikes out of site up the alley. The Caribinieri officer turned and started walking towards Wolf and Lia.
Wolf bounced his eyebrows. “That’s good police work right there.”
“Detective Valerio Rossi.” He shook Wolf’s hand. “We spoke on the phone. I’m so sorry for your loss, officer Wolf.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it. Thank you for all your help so far.”
“Ready?”
“Yep,” Wolf exhaled.
“His apartment is right here. Just off the piazza. Let’s go.”
Wolf followed Rossi and Lia watching them have a conversation in Italian. Lia seemed to be confiding something to him, and Rossi was shaking his head in disbelief, consoling her with a fatherly, or brotherly, pat on the back.
Wolf turned his thoughts away from their relationship dynamic to the task at hand. His heart skipped a beat at the prospect of going to see where his brother died.
Security fencing surrounded the property, iron spikes filed to thin deadly points topping each tall iron bar. Rossi pushed the intercom button and spoke to a male voice who buzzed them in. It was the property manager who lived on site.
“Buon giorno.” He had a sullen expression, holding his hand out to Wolf.
“Hello, do you speak English?”
“Uhhh, no.”
“Okay,” Wolf glanced at Lia and Rossi. “Thank you for meeting us.”
Lia stepped in and began translating.
“You were the one who found my brother?”
“He and the girl, Cristina, that lives above your brother, found him. He called the Caribinieri.” Lia translated to Wolf.
“Okay. Let’s just head up.”
The janitor took a set of keys out of his pocket and expertly inserted the top key into the door of apartment twenty two. He turned it four or five complete revolutions to the left, then put a smaller key in and turning it five more times before the door popped open a crack.
The janitor stepped back and let the door hang open a few inches. They all looked to Wolf, who stepped forward and pushed.
It smelled of lemon disinfectant, and was very dim. Rossi walked around Wolf and went to the small balcony off the main room, sliding open floor to ceiling shutter doors. Bright sunlight poured in revealing a very spacious room with high ceilings he estimated to be ten feet.
There was a dark wood table and four chairs, a recliner seat, television stand, small flat screen television, two person couch, and a couple folding chairs along the wall. No coffee table or end tables. Black and white photographs hung on the walls. Frameless. They looked to be John’s work, perhaps blown up at a local supermarket, or photo shop, or whatever they had here that did that kind of stuff.
“Apparently your brother went out Friday night with a friend, came home, and the girl living above heard a noise. She said she was concerned after not seeing him all day Saturday, or Saturday night. They were supposed to have a date apparently on Saturday night. She became concerned mid-day Sunday and told the manager.
“The manager came with keys and opened the door, which apparently was difficult, because the keys were in the top lock from the inside. He somehow pushed them out and got it unlocked, then they found the body…uh, sorry, your brother.”
“Did you talk to the person he was out with that night? What was his name?”
“No, we did not. I do not know his name,” Rossi answered with a pained face.
Wolf furrowed his brow. “You don’t know?”
“No officer Wolf. The keys were in the lock, locked from the inside, with only your brother inside,” Rossi held out his hands with an apologetic look.
There was a small hole in the ceiling with a capped wire sticking out. He glanced at the floor and noticed a scratch on the wood veneer right below the hole in the ceiling. Wolf bent down and rubbed it. “This is where the chandelier fell and hit the ground?”
“Yes,” Rossi said. “He was underneath it.”
Wolf had heard the story over the phone. They walked in, found him underneath the chandelier, a leather belt around his neck still fastened to it. Drugs on the scene.
“Where did you find the cocaine?”
“There was a small bag here on the table, and residue on his nose. We have the bag in evidence.”
Wolf noted the shiny, clean table as he walked to the kitchen — a narrow alley off the main room, with another smaller balcony
off of it. Stove burners glistened, the countertops shined. It was perfectly clean, obviously cleaned by the manager, not John.
The manager said something and Lia translated, “He says he cleaned yesterday. He emptied the trash, got rid of some food, and cleaned the debris up in the main room here.”
Wolf walked back to the main room and out to the balcony. They were high above the piazza, looking directly down on it from the third floor, otherwise known as the second floor European, with the ground floor as designated floor zero, he’d noted in the earlier ride in the tiny elevator.
A vast section of Lake Como was in view over the roof tops. Kite surfers and wind sailers still whipped back and forth. The air was fresh and crisp on the balcony. Not a bad place to live, bro.
Wolf went through apartment to his brother’s room in back. He opened the same type of floor to ceiling shutter doors on the balcony, revealing a completely different breathtaking view. The opposite side of the apartment overlooked a mass of the orange clay tile roof tops of similar height to the balcony.
Butting up against the balcony just to the right extended one of the clay tiled roofs. It looked like one could step out onto the rooftops and walk all the way across the city, if one didn’t mind the thirty-plus degree slope of the first roof here. He studied it hard, then craned his head over and looked up to the identical balcony above.
Ducking back in, he noted his brother’s room was sparse in furniture, just like the rest of the apartment. A queen sized mattress lay directly on the floor with no bedside tables. One reading lamp sat directly on the floor next to a few books. A flimsy looking wood table was tucked in the corner with a Macintosh laptop perched open atop it, a wireless router hooked into the wall.
Wolf went to the computer, swiped his finger, then pushed a few buttons. It was dead.
The small closet was filled halfway with hanging clothes, anal-retentively separated into different color genres.
Wolf raised his voice, “The girl upstairs, what was her name? Cristina?”
“Yes,” Rossi walked to the bedroom doorway.
“I’d like to go talk to her.”
“Let’s go.”
There was no answer at the door upstairs.
“How about the apartment below his apartment? What did they say? Didn’t they hear anything? The chandelier hitting the floor?”
“Nobody lives there,” Rossi shrugged.
“Okay, obviously this girl isn’t home. Do you guys know where she is? Where she works?”
“I do not know.”
“Did you question her on Sunday?” Wolf asked.
“I talked to her a little. I didn’t think to ask her a bunch of questions. Just if she heard anything. It was a tough time for her and she needed support. She was very upset. We called in a person, but she had disappeared before the…person could arrive.”
“A counselor?”
“Yes, a counselor. But she left before the counselor arrived.”
“Okay,” Wolf sighed heavily. “You didn’t ask her about drugs?”
They walked down the stairs to the outside of Wolf’s door.
“No. It really was not an interrogation. We were, dealing with the delicate task of…removing your brother’s body. Knowing what the evidence inside was presenting us, it was more a matter of comforting the girl.”
“And this neighbor?” He pointed to the only other door that was on his brother’s level. Number twenty one.
The manager said a few sentences, and Rossi took the reigns with translation, “They were gone, and have been for over a month. A lot of people go on vacation for August here, and they have been gone all of August, and all of September so far. They weren’t here.”
“Okay.” Wolf suddenly felt light headed.
The manager said something to Rossi and Lia while pointing at Wolf. He held up the keys and shrugged his shoulders.
Rossi began answering in the negative, then looking questioning at Lia, who looked skeptically at Wolf.
“What’s going on?”
“He is saying you can stay here if you like. The rent is paid for the month, and he can give you the keys,” Lia said.
“Thanks, that would be perfect,” Wolf took the keys from the manager’s outstretched hand. “What is your name?”
“Guiseppe.”
“David. Thank you.”
The manager showed Wolf the different keys for the gate and door locks, then left. They all looked at their watches, 5:38 pm.
“Is it too late to go see my brother?” Wolf’s body screamed for sleep, but he knew it was a luxury he would have to forego.
“I have to leave for other commitments,” Rossi looked at his watch.
Lia nodded her head, “The morgue is open twenty four hours. We can go right now.”
Chapter 13
Wolf sat in silence on the way over to the morgue. Glancing at his watch, he did a quick calculation — Eight hours ahead, it was 10 am Colorado time. He’d been up since midnight Colorado time when the plane landed at 8 am local time, with a few hours sleep before that on the plane. So what did that mean? It just meant he was tired as hell.
“I’m sorry I was so angry earlier,” Lia said, looking at Wolf. Her tanned olive skin coupled with her luminous eyes in the subdued evening sunlight was startling to him, and he wasn’t easy to startle. He unconsciously rubbed his face, noting the long stubble — way past a five o’clock shadow.
“No problem. I would have been pissed too,” he said.
She shot him a suspicious look.
“I couldn’t tell if your boss was just a terrible English speaker, or a terrible bigot. I take it he’s a terrible bigot. ‘We have eemportant work to do and cannot spare officers, so I weel geev you Lia for two days,’ I believe he said. Yeah, that would piss me off too.”
Lia gave him an unreadable look and resumed driving.
“I know that what your boss thinks is important to you, and you think that he thinks he’s put you on an unimportant case. Obviously that pisses you off, and I’d be pretty angry, too. But, the thing is, my brother didn’t kill himself. I’m one hundred percent sure of that. So that only leaves one other option. He was murdered.”
They drove in silence for a few minutes. Wolf could see Lia glancing at him from his peripheral, unsure of what to say.
“I was really sweating being paired up with Tito there for a minute,” he said with a shake of the head, breaking the silence. “So, thanks again.”
“Yeah, Tito’s a dumbass, you would be pretty screwed with him,” she said laughing out loud with a wide smile. She was beautiful.
Lia pushed a button on a state of the art looking electronic keypad next to a heavy steel door.
“Si?” said a tinny male voice.
“Noi siamo.”
Buzz, click.
“Ciao,” a voice said from a doorway down the hall. A bald man was peaking his head out, looking over his pushed down glasses. They followed his beckon.
The room was cold, and smelled of formaldehyde, just like any other morgue five thousand miles to the west in the US. Two rows of four refrigeration units lined the far wall. The lower right-most one was pulled out displaying a sheeted lump of a figure. His brother.
His heart skipped and his breath caught as he looked down, then he turned to shake the hand of the pathologist.
“Ciao. I am Vittorio.” He blinked rapidly behind thick glasses while stretching his neck muscles as if his collar was itchy. He stood just under the height of Lia, who Wolf judged earlier to stand at about five foot eight inches.
Vittorio and Lia had a brief exchange in Italian, Vittorio looking intelligently at Lia in between blinks. Vittorio left the room quickly, and Wolf turned to the pulled out refrigeration unit.
He didn’t want to waste any more time, but he knew he should probably wait for the pathologist to return before looking at his brother. He wasn’t in that much of a hurry to look at his face, a face he hadn’t seen alive in over five months, other than in tin
y pictures on a blog.
Lia came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder as he stared at the sheet below.
“Sorry.” Vittorio moved swiftly into the room. “I have the records all-a here now. Are you ready, officer Wolf?”
“Yeah, go ahead.” He wasn’t.
The sheet was pulled back in a well executed, not too slow-not too fast technique, revealing his brother beneath.
John’s skin was a bluish white, a peaceful sleeping expression on his face. Wolf noticed his hair had been closely cropped, and a large straight-line bruise was on the right side of his head, angling from the top of the forehead to ear. There was a deep black bruise lining the circumference of his neck, indicating where the belt had been wrapped around his throat.
“Why was no autopsy ordered?”
“We-a determined the external evidence on the body to be consistent with suicide,” Vittorio said quietly. “And we normally do not perform an autopsy for a suicide, unless ordered by the Coroner in collaboration with officers on the scene.”
“How do you explain the bruise on his head?” Wolf asked.
“We determined the bruise-a was antemortem, how you say?”
“Sure, antemortem.”
“Bruising from the chandelier falling on his head.”
“Okay.” Wolf shook his head. “so how did he die? Are you saying he died from the hanging, then the chandelier fell on his head, causing a bruise?” Wolf looked skeptical. “Once the heart has stopped beating, isn’t it impossible to bruise?”
“It is actually entirely possible to bruise shortly after death. If he died while hanging, then shortly thereafter the chandelier gave way, falling on him, it could bruise his head. There was also pooling of blood on the left side of his body, as you can see by the bruising all down the left side, consistent with the position he was found underneath the chandelier.”
“What was the evidence of drug use?”
Vittorio produced some photos from the file he had. “Since we didn’t do an autopsy-a, we did not do a complete toxicology report. But I did an exterior exam-a, and found residue on his nose that was confirmed to be cocaine. I have some photos of your brother’s body at the scene.”