“All done?” she asked.
“Not quite. Sorry, I just need some caffeine.”
“Take your time, eh . . .”
“It’ll just be a minute, don’t be nasty. Do you want an espresso?”
Colomba would have liked one, but she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, so she refused the offer. Dante made himself one of his coffee blends with the touch of a fine herbalist, then downed two demitasses in a row without giving them time to cool down. “Ready,” he said. “Where are they?”
“Here.” Colomba turned the computer screen toward him. While she was waiting for him, she had put the six pictures together into a single screen shot; down at the reception desk, she’d scanned the ones that had come in to the hotel fax. They’d stood out because they were black and white. Six pictures of children between the ages of five and six, all of them with identical smiles on their faces. As she looked at them again, Colomba realized for the first time that the one they were looking for, if he was among them, was the lucky one. Kidnapped and held prisoner by a madman but still alive, unlike the others.
Dante looked at the composition for ten seconds, arms crossed, then pointed decisively at a photo. “Him,” he said.
Colomba let out her breath in a hiss. “He seems the most likely one to me, too, but I can’t be a hundred percent certain. And neither can you. Children grow up fast, and they change.”
“A hundred percent, for sure,” he insisted. “Who is it?”
“The one from the minivan in Macerata. Ruggero Palladino.”
“Fuck.” And the echo of the dream-not-dream came back into Dante’s mind for a moment, muddling one massacre with another. But he said nothing to Colomba, in part because there was nothing reasonable he could tell her. “Six dead just to get him.”
“Tell me why you’re so certain?”
“Don’t you notice anything? Something that differentiates him from the other children.”
Colomba thought back to the pictures of the Maugeris’ son and the precise analysis that Dante had done of his condition. But here there was just one photograph, and it was posed, to boot. Then she noticed his eyes. “He looks kind of Asian.”
“Narrow eyes, close together, right. And what about the chin, what do you see?”
Colomba sighed. When Dante started talking like a professor on a podium, he truly was insufferable. But she played along. “Receding, not prominent. Like the chin of the boy in the video, but he was in another position and I couldn’t swear to it.”
“A receding chin, as it’s known. But he doesn’t look that way because he resembled his father or his mother. It’s a facial dysmorphology, due to a developmental problem with the inferior maxillary bone. It’s a typical warning sign of FAS.”
“Of what, excuse me?”
“Fetal alcohol syndrome,” he said, as if it were the most obvious thing. “That idiot mother of his got drunk while she was pregnant. A fetus isn’t capable of disposing of the metabolic residue of the alcohol that comes to it through the placenta—”
“Yes, I know that. I’m a woman of childbearing age.”
Dante treated the interruption like the buzz of a fly. “—and malformations ensue.”
“How bad off is he?”
“There are various degrees of severity of FAS, depending on the quantity of alcohol consumed by the mother and the timing, whether it’s in the first three months or even later. It’s called ARND, or alcohol-related neurodevelopmental disorder, when there are disabilities in neurodevelopment, and ARBD, or alcohol-related birth defects, when there are serious physical problems. The boy in the video was moving easily, so I’d say ARND. God only knows how he’s doing in captivity.” He looked at Colomba. “That’s why I’m sure that Ruggero is the right boy. He had learning and cognitive developmental delays, just like Luca, though of a different nature. Apparently the Father is drawing his cards from the deck of the least fortunate.”
20
Under normal driving conditions, it takes a little more than two hours to get from Rome to Fano. Traveling with Dante, however, was anything but normal, given his fixation with speed limits and his frequent impulsive demands for fresh air, so Colomba resigned herself to the idea that it would take twice the time and they’d get there late at night. She secretly vowed that next time she’d slip the entire contents of one of his illicit bottles of pharmaceuticals into his coffee. But whenever her frustration reached the boiling point, exacerbated by her lack of sleep, Colomba had only to mutter the three magic words—“the least fortunate”—that were guaranteed to immediately silence her troublesome passenger.
“It’s a decision he made recently,” he said once he was heartily sick of the reference. They’d just left the highway and the tollbooth behind them, and were driving along the county road. It was already dark, and the traffic consisted almost entirely of heavy trucks.
“But you’re the one who said he never changes his method. That it’s always the same.”
“His methods are always the same, okay? Not his choice of victims.”
“They’re always children, about six years old.”
“That aside, he did not use to seek out the least fortunate.”
She gave him a sidelong glance. “Are you sure?”
“I was a very good student in nursery school. And I already knew how to read, a little, when I was taken. And I could write all the letters in the alphabet. No cognitive deficits of any kind.”
“If you say so.”
Dante threw his head back. “Why don’t you phone my father and ask him about it? And I was also very sociable with kids my age.”
“Well, then, you’ve changed considerably.”
“Oh go to hell,” he said, tipping his seat back and pretending to go to sleep.
She tapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t get too comfortable, because we’re here.”
Topped by a sign reading MILITARY ZONE and by strings of barbed wire, before them stood the barracks of the local carabinieri; Colomba had called them during the drive, in search of the warrant officer whose name appeared at the bottom of the accident report. If they’d arrived early, he was going to wait for them in a café in town, but seeing the time he must have gone back on duty by now. He was working the night shift. Colomba pulled in to the first available parking space, and Dante sprawled out, getting even more horizontal, if such a thing were possible.
“I’m not going in there.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve already had problems of my own justifying my interest. With you along, I’d just raise eyebrows. Speaking of which . . .” She unclipped the holster from her belt and slid it under Dante’s seat. “Keep an eye on this for me.”
He sat up straight. “Are you done leaving that thing around like it was a toy? One of these days you’re going to shoot me by accident.”
“It won’t be an accident,” she said with a credible imitation of Dante’s sarcastic grin. Then she got out. Actually, though, her mood was by no means one of unconcern. If the warrant officer happened to sniff out some flaw in her story, he’d retreat into the characteristic vagueness that the cousins were so good at emanating when they chose to erect a wall against outsiders. That was just one more reason she chose to leave her sidearm in the car. It wasn’t a regulation-issue weapon, and a carabiniere would notice that immediately.
Colomba rang the bell and identified herself to the officer standing sentinel at the front entrance; he saluted and buzzed her in through the high-security door. It was a small barracks, its walls in need of a coat of paint and four plastic chairs at the disposal of those waiting their turn to file complaints. At that time of the evening, no one was there, just a lance corporal with a plastic cup of coffee who eyed her for a moment curiously, until he saw the golden badge that Colomba had hung on her belt, with her police ID turned inward. Spataccare, that was the verb in Italian slang, and it meant showing off tinhorn trinkets. But it was something that came to her instinctively every time she had to visit police stations or carabinieri
barracks where she wasn’t a known quantity. It was faster than having to introduce herself each time, and it warded off wolves. Not always, but most of the time at least.
Warrant Officer Colantuono, about sixty years old, boasted whiskers worthy of being featured on a calendar and a Sicilian accent, from Palermo, to be exact. He turned out to be anything but suspicious and was happy to tell her everything he knew about the minivan crash. Colomba always underestimated the effect she had on men, whether or not they were in uniform, and she tended to forget the times that leaving the top button of her blouse undone had been far more effective than waving her police ID and badge.
So the warrant officer swallowed her story of a vague additional investigation triggered by an independent plaintiff filing a new criminal complaint. After treating her to an espresso that Dante would have heartily disapproved of, he told her what he knew. It was the Macerata highway patrol that had sent the first responders to the scene of the crash, but it had fallen to his barracks, and to him in person, to inform the families and arrange for the bodies to be identified. The minivan was registered in the name of the parish priest of Sant’Ilario, and it had gone off the road at a hairpin curve on county road 362.
“At that point on the road, there’s a steep embankment several dozen yards in extent, and the vehicle hurtled over it subsequent to the motorist losing control. I swear to you, Deputy Captain, that I’ve never seen a bigger puddle of mayhem in all my born days.”
“Was the driver speeding?” asked Colomba.
“From what the mechanical examination was able to determine, there had been a problem with the brake assembly. And I should add that I knew the parish priest very well, and he was a slow driver even on his bicycle, let alone on those dangerous curves.”
“What was the condition of the bodies?”
“Listen, Deputy Captain, I’m not trying to gross you out, but you know what it looks like when you leave a sausage too long on the grill? That’s what they looked like. If you hadn’t known that they were human beings, anyone could have made that mistake.”
“Did their relatives identify them, though?”
“Yes, and it wasn’t hard. I might have been exaggerating a little.” The warrant officer opened the window and pulled out a cigarette. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
“No, go right ahead.”
“Nasty habit. I just can’t seem to stop. When I try, I put on five pounds and then I start smoking again. And I keep the five pounds. What was it I was telling you?”
“You were explaining how they identified the bodies.”
“Yes, as I was saying, they all had parts that were still intact. You could still clearly see the facial features of u parrinu—excuse me, the parish priest, my Sicilian still comes out now and then—and the same was true of the schoolteacher. They recognized the other priest from his clothing. One of the children—and when I think back on it, it still breaks my heart—was all hunched over with his arms wrapped around him, trying to protect himself.” He pointed vaguely with his lit cigarette to an area between head and belly.
“You remember very clearly.”
“Well, like I told you, I’d never seen anything like it. And believe me, I’ve witnessed a substantial number of bad crashes.”
“There were two children in the van.”
“Yes. The schoolteacher’s son, the one who was curled up in a ball. The other one, the Palladinos’ son, was a piece of charcoal, though. They identified him by a chain he wore. And by his wallet.”
“He was the most badly burned.”
“Now that you mention it, I’d have to agree. He was already born unlucky. With the problems with his mother . . . Just think, she’d committed herself to a clinic to stop drinking when she learned she was pregnant. Then her baby was born the way he was. Her husband, Signor Palladino, told me all about it. He works for the city, and he still looks like a ghost.”
“So was a DNA test done on the bodies?”
“No. Why should we have? There was no mistaking them.”
Colomba stood up and extended her hand. “Thanks. You’ve been very helpful.”
“Are you already going?” The warrant officer smiled. “What a pity.”
“Maybe I’ll come back and see you some time if I think of any other questions to ask.”
“I hope you do. If I may, we don’t see women as lovely as you very often, and I’m pretty sure that’s true where you come from, too.”
“Thank you.”
As he was walking her to the exit, Warrant Officer Colantuono added, “A nasty crash, and an ironic one, too. They’d just gone to pray at the sanctuary, and look at the gift the Good Lord gave them. Who can ever say what He’s thinking?”
“Yeah, who can say,” said Colomba, who’d stopped asking that question back in Sunday school.
“Still, it could have been worse. There could have been one more dead.”
Colomba froze. “One more?”
Colomba went back to the car. Dante had stepped out to smoke a cigarette, and he’d bought himself a Toblerone nougat bar at the smoke shop nearby. He offered her a piece.
“No, thanks,” Colomba said. “I know how they did it.”
“How they staged the accident?” asked Dante, getting the point immediately.
“Yes.” They got back in the car, so they could talk far from prying ears. “A motorist who went past the minivan before the crash said that he’d seen it pulled over on the side of the road and a man was talking to the driver through the window. He remembered it because he recognized the parish priest at the wheel.”
“Did he see the man who was talking to him?” Dante asked.
“Not his face, and he didn’t provide a description. He said that he just assumed it was a hitchhiker. It was dark out, and he just lit him up for a second with his headlights.”
“The Father. He killed them there and took the boy.”
“Or maybe he just drugged them and then pushed the van off the road. But it still doesn’t add up, Dante. It’s almost impossible for one person to have done it all.”
“The driver didn’t see anyone else.”
“Back in your day, he had a helper, Bodini. Maybe he has one now. Someone hiding by the side of the road. Or, more likely, in a car nearby. And that’s where they had the corpse they switched out.”
“Where’d they get the body?”
“I’m hoping they stole it from a morgue somewhere, or maybe they paid off a doctor. But I’m afraid that it was—”
“—another one of his victims. A prisoner who wouldn’t obey, for instance . . . so young.” Dante seemed to be about to explode. “We need to have the child’s body exhumed,” he said frantically. “We have to find out who he is.”
“That would take an order from the magistrate. And we don’t have anything to justify it but our theories. If we can find the Father, we’ll get all the different pieces of the puzzle to slide into place. That child’s in no hurry. And neither are his parents. If what we think is true, they already assume he’s dead.”
“Christ,” muttered Dante. Then, just to drive home the point, he stuck a pill in his mouth, taking it without a glance and swallowing it without water. “In all these years he’s just gone on kidnapping and murdering.”
“We can’t be sure of that. He might have just started up again recently.”
“I am sure of it. He never stopped. And he’s not going to stop until you put a bullet in his head. By the way, take your gun back.”
She did. “I’m not a vigilante with a death wish, Dante. I’m a cop. I want him in prison.”
“Not me. I want him dead. He needs to stop breathing the same air as the rest of us.”
She could see he was trembling. “He’ll never lay a finger on you again, I swear it,” she told him.
“I still can’t—” he started to say, then stopped and started again with a firmer voice. “I still can’t control myself when I sense his presence nearby. I thought I’d be able to, sooner or later
.”
“You’re doing fine. I’d be afraid if I were in your shoes. After everything he did to you.”
“Doesn’t he scare you?”
“No, he just makes me angry. And I don’t know . . . maybe aghast is the right term. It seems inconceivable to me that a monster like him could really still exist. He’s like an ogre out of a fairy tale, like Freddy Krueger. But I’m not going to go on pretending I don’t believe in him. He exists, he’s out there somewhere, and we have to find a way of convincing everyone else that he exists.” Colomba put the car into gear. “Now we have to go see the Palladino family. Don’t even dream of trying to stay in the car. I need your opinion.”
“Even if I’m rude to the mother?”
“Just try it, and I’ll lock you in the trunk.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Try me.”
But it turned out that there was no need. Dante’s bellicose impulses subsided in the presence of the sorrow they found in the home of the couple, surprised by their arrival just as they were finishing their frugal dinner. It was as if the two of them had been hollowed out from within by some disease, the kind that takes you apart bit by bit without ever finishing you off entirely. From what Colomba and Dante had learned, the father was forty and the mother thirty-five, but to look at them you’d say they were closer to retirement age: he had deep creases, thinning hair, and haggard cheeks; she had prematurely gray hair that dangled in long messy shocks over her eyes. Colomba realized that the woman had never ceased to blame herself for her son’s death, denying herself even the minimum of grooming that would have dictated the occasional visit to the beautician and a touch of makeup when needed. And her husband’s eyes seemed to be sinking away into their sockets. Though Colomba had never before encountered Fathers or serial kidnappers, she was thoroughly accustomed to couples like this one, with all the murders she’d investigated. Victim’s relatives, murderer’s relatives, or the murderers themselves. The latter, brought face-to-face with their guilt, had begun to understand that they’d ruined two lives: their victim’s and their own, which could now be measured out by the yardstick of prison. And the Palladinos’ single-family detached house showed the effects of the loss they’d suffered, with pictures of their son displayed everywhere, even in a sort of altar that occupied an entire living room wall, with crucifixes and images of the Madonna.
Kill the Father Page 23