“We’ll see about that,” muttered the nurse, turning away and feeling a shiver go down her back as she did so.
Colomba waited for a few seconds, then leapt to her feet and came dangerously close to tipping over. She felt as if she had a pumpkin in place of her head. She shut the door again, reinserted the wooden wedge, and went back to the bathroom. Her attacker’s body was where she’d left it. A large puddle of urine had spread across the floor beneath him. Now this, thought Colomba as she leaned over to go through his pockets. She found a wallet, a bunch of keys, the remote control for an Opel automobile, and a magnetic ID card. No cell phone. She turned the ID over in her hands. She knew that in many hospitals, the staff used badges like this one to get into certain wards, but they were supposed to have the name and a picture of the bearer. This one didn’t.
It was a fake ID card, cloned to allow her assailant to enter her room and kill her. There was some money in the wallet, along with a credit card and a driver’s license. The license looked authentic and had been issued to Luciano Ferrari, born in 1958, residing at Via Pompeo Magno no. 1 in Rome. Colomba put the license back into the wallet, then slipped the wallet back into the man’s pocket. She hid the card, the keys, and the remote in her pajama sleeve. She went over to the small metal locker in the corner of the room. Her clothes weren’t there anymore. She cursed herself as she remembered giving them to the friends who had come to see her.
She grabbed her cell phone and put on her boots. When she leaned over to lace them, she felt the blood surge to her head and the lights went out. She was on the verge of fainting. Once again she dug her nails into the palms of her hands and retained consciousness. She took a look out the window—Dante was still out there, gripping the branch—kicked the wedge out from under the door, and gently opened it just a crack: the corridor was deserted. She remembered the shoe and went back to get it, then left the room and headed for the stairs, making it there without being seen. Walking down the stairs was a challenge and made her headache worse, until she began to feel nauseous. On the ground floor she found herself looking down the hallway that led to the front desk, her way blocked by two automatic glass doors that had been deactivated and, in the other direction, an emergency exit. She was about to go out that way when it dawned on her that doing so would sound the alarm throughout the hospital.
She walked down another flight of stairs and came to a metal door on which was written ENTRY FORBIDDEN—MEDICAL PERSONNEL only. It was locked, but on the wall next to the door she saw a magnetic card reader. She tried the badge. The door clicked open, and she walked into a utility hallway lit only by dim orange bulbs. Several colorful plastic arrows pointed in different directions: locker rooms, storerooms, laundry. She followed the hallway, hoping to find a door to the outside. She did find the door to the covered parking structure, and from there a door out to the hospital grounds; the floor around it was littered with cigarette butts.
Shivering from the cold in her flannel pajamas, she followed the outside perimeter of the building, trying to find the location of her room. It seemed to take forever, but at last she recognized her window, with a section of curtain fluttering out through the broken glass. She looked up at Dante, who was still gripping the branch. In vain she tried to catch his attention, and finally, seeing that she couldn’t do it, she threw the shoe instead, aiming for his arm.
Instead she hit him in the temple, and Dante came close to falling headfirst, startled and in pain. The shoe weighed nearly a pound, and the impact hadn’t been a love tap. Still, it helped to bring him out of his trance. “CC?” he murmured, as if waking from a dream.
“Come down, get moving,” she whispered.
For a few seconds Dante didn’t budge; then he slid to the ground with a blank expression. “You’re alive,” he said.
Colomba retrieved his shoe and handed it to him. “Yes, partly thanks to you. But let’s talk about that later. Give me your jacket.”
Dante took off his parka, doing so as if he were sleepwalking, and stood there in just a black mock turtleneck sweater. She put it on. It was a little narrow in the shoulders, but it hung down below her knees. If it weren’t for the pajama pants dotted with piglets, she would have been quite presentable.
“I saw him, CC,” said Dante in a dreamy voice.
“The man in my hospital room?”
“No. The Father.”
“You always see him at the least convenient times,” she said. “Come on, let’s go.”
Dante grabbed her by the arm, stopping her. “You don’t understand, CC. The Father was here. He spoke to me.”
“So what did he look like?”
Dante blinked rapidly. “I can’t exactly remember.”
“Okay, you can tell me all about it later. Right now, we need to get out of here.”
To leave the grounds, they went out through the emergency room. They went in through the rear entrance, making use of the magnetic ID card, walking past busy doctors and paramedics who barely noticed them, blended in with twenty or so people waiting to be seen, and then left through the front door. They moved quickly, though, because as Colomba dragged Dante away from the grounds, she noticed the light in what had been her room being turned on, and before ten minutes were up, she felt sure that the place would be full of cops on the alert. As they were leaving, Dante told her about his vision of the Father.
“Is that why you threw a shoe?”
“I couldn’t move,” he said. “Or shout.”
“Are you certain that the Father was really there?” Colomba asked, dragging him into the first cross street, far from the surveillance cameras on the main thoroughfare.
“Yes.”
“Because if it had been a hallucination, you would have known it, right?” she asked again, skeptically.
“I always know when I’m going around the bend.” Dante was starting to think clearly again, and his gait was more fluid. The immediate past was a mix of gaps and disjointed images.
“And he would have left before us?”
“He might still be inside.” Dante stopped. “We have to look for him, CC.”
“They’d stop us at the front entrance.”
“Why? What happened to the guy in your room?” he asked suspiciously.
“Wait.” Colomba pulled him into a patch of darkness because she’d spotted the lights of an approaching patrol car. The car went past without spotting them.
“Did you kill him?” Dante insisted.
Colomba sighed and said nothing.
“Oh, fuck. I was hoping for a less definitive solution. But it was legitimate self-defense. I’ll testify on your behalf.”
“I can just imagine how much weight that will carry . . . We need to find a car. We can’t cross the city on foot.”
“Let’s use his car. You took his keys, didn’t you? Let me see them.”
“How do you know I took them?”
“If we’re running away in such a hurry, it’s because you want to investigate him. Otherwise you’d be back there answering questions.”
“You can be annoying sometimes.” She threw the key at him.
“It’s an Opel Agila, judging from the remote,” said Dante. He looked around. “He didn’t park by the entrance, but he can’t have left it that far away. He might have needed to get away in a hurry, too, and he knew it.” On the map on his smartphone, he studied the main road, which curved around the emergency room entrance, and then the various streets leading off from it. He dismissed the ones that were too close, the one next to the traffic light, and the one-way streets. That left two. He pointed to them. “Let’s split up, and the first one who finds it can let out a whistle.”
“Like hell I’m letting you out of my sight. We’ll go together.”
It took them just five minutes to find the dark red Opel Agila; meanwhile, the sound of a police siren drew closer. Colomba got behind the wheel, and Dante lay down on the backseat.
“Doesn’t it worry you to drive around in a stolen car
? Because it probably is.”
“If he was using it, it’s probably pretty safe.” Colomba started the car and pulled out. Via Pompeo Magno was in the Prati district: it would take them twenty minutes or so if they didn’t run into trouble. But she wanted to be sure she wasn’t going to the wrong apartment. She called Alberti, who was surprised to hear from her. Maybe surprised was an understatement, seeing the time of night. Luckily he’d set his phone to vibrate, because he had a pair of headphones on and was composing music.
“Deputy Captain . . . did you listen to the pieces?” he asked immediately.
Colomba didn’t have the heart to tell him that she’d left his two-bit MP3 player behind in the room with the corpse. “Not yet. Listen, sorry, I need a favor. I need you to check out a name for me.”
“I’m not on duty, Deputy Captain.”
“You must have a friend who’s on duty, though, don’t you? Call him and ask.”
“All right. Go ahead.”
“Luciano Ferrari, as far as I know born in 1958 in Rome. See if he has any priors, and get his current address and call me back. And if they ask why you’re interested in him, just say the two of you had a fender bender.”
“Deputy Captain, actually I shouldn’t . . .”
But Colomba had already ended the call because she had an incoming call from Infanti. Dante shut his eyes so he didn’t have to watch her drive with one hand, and he would have jumped out the window if he’d had any idea of her actual condition. Her headache and nausea were now compounded by luminous sparks that burst into her field of vision like streamers, and she was having difficulty focusing on the road ahead of her.
Infanti’s voice exploded in her ear. “Where the fuck are you?” he shouted.
“They’ve already told you?” asked Colomba.
“Of course they’ve already told me. Half the office is at the hospital, and you’ve disappeared!”
“I couldn’t stay.”
“You couldn’t stay? What the fuck are you talking about? Who’s the guy in the toilet?”
“I don’t know,” she lied. “But he wanted to kill me.”
“And then what happened?”
“There was an accident.”
“There was a murder, there wasn’t an accident! You have to come back.”
“The hospital isn’t safe. I’ll come straight to police headquarters.”
“Right away, Colomba, or there’ll be trouble.”
“Practically right away.”
“Colomba!”
She hung up and powered down her phone.
“You should pull the battery out of your cell phone,” Dante muttered. “To keep them from tracking you.”
“They’re not going to start hunting me right away. We have a few hours.”
“And then?”
Colomba blew through a red light. “Then I’ll turn myself in.”
“And what will you tell them?”
“That I ran away because I panicked.”
“They’re not going to believe you.”
“But they won’t have any grounds to detain me.”
“But what if they do? You can’t trust De Angelis.”
“Then you’ll just have to go on digging. Until you can find something bombproof that connects your case and the Maugeri case. Until you do, I’ll keep my lips zipped, even if they give me life without parole.”
“I can’t do it all by myself, CC,” Dante whined. “You can’t put that responsibility on me.”
“You walked into a burning building to save me. You’ll do better than you think. Thanks for that, by the way. And thanks for the shoe.”
Dante sat up straight and spoke into her ear. “CC, the Father knows we’re getting closer. Otherwise he wouldn’t have exposed himself to get rid of you. It’s not like him to operate out in the open like this.”
Colomba saw Ferrari’s face again for an instant, twisting with fury just inches from hers. She felt her lungs tighten. “So?”
“So we don’t have much time before he disappears, eliminating any traces that he’s ever existed. And by traces, I mean Luca and the other children. If I have to work alone, it might take too long.”
“What alternatives do we have?”
“Don’t turn yourself in. Go on working with me on this thing.”
“They’d come looking for me, and it wouldn’t last long.” Colomba parked next to a florist’s stand, closed now, at the foot of a rose-colored building.
Dante saw the street number 1. They’d arrived. “It could last long enough. There are places where I can hide you. And I know people who can provide you with fake IDs . . .”
Colomba took a deep breath. “Dante, I can’t. I’ve done a lot of stupid things since you and I started working together, but I’m still a cop. I can’t and I won’t go past a certain point.” She opened the car door. “Come on, let’s go.”
Dante looked up at the facade of the apartment building and shook his head. “Sorry. I’m afraid I can’t.”
“Now of all times?”
“I have my moments, CC. You know that. But I can help you from here.”
“How?”
He pulled out his smartphone. “Video call. Via Skype.”
Colomba understood that there was no point in insisting and got gingerly out of the car. “Don’t stay in the car. If there’s a bulletin out on this car, they’d better not find you sitting in it. But before you get out, wipe it for fingerprints.”
Dante nodded. “Okay.”
Colomba started walking toward the building. But she stopped short almost immediately. There was a question she hadn’t dared to ask until that moment, a question she couldn’t put off any longer. “Did he suffer?”
Dante understood that Colomba was talking about Rovere. “Like a dog. At least from the waist up, because from there down . . .”
Colomba raised a hand, regretting she’d asked. Dante was incapable of sugarcoating things. She replied, “That’s enough, thanks. And turn on that fucking phone.” Then she opened the downstairs door with the dead man’s keys.
8
Ferrari’s apartment house was an elegant, aristocratic building with an old-fashioned concierge’s booth with a bow window, mailboxes made of dark hardwood, a variegated marble floor, and a vague scent of lemon air freshener. A setting where you’d expect a tax adviser’s office, not the home of a murderer. Because Colomba had not the slightest doubt that Ferrari was a murderer, prior convictions or no prior convictions. He’d been too determined to be a first-time killer, too precise in his movements, at least until she’d fought back. What’s more, if the Father had sent him, he certainly wouldn’t have chosen the first person he met in the street. But what connection did they have? Why would Ferrari work with a deranged serial kidnapper? She thought back to Rovere’s words, to the fact that the Father wasn’t working alone. Here was proof of the fact.
She powered her cell phone back up, and it immediately vibrated with a series of missed calls and texts. Half the police force was looking for her, and that, more than anything else, gave her an appreciation of the situation. She was now being hunted by her own colleagues, something she never would have thought could have happened to her, not even in her darkest hours. But here she was, breaking and entering after committing a murder, albeit one she’d committed involuntarily (But had it really been unintentional? Hadn’t she intentionally jammed down that plunger on the syringe?), turning her back on her old life in a way far more radical and violent than if she had simply handed in her resignation.
One text from Alberti contained details about Ferrari from his public records, including the fact that he was unmarried. Then she saw Dante’s face on the screen, bathed in a sinister faint blue light. “Are you in?” he asked.
“Not yet,” Colomba whispered. “I’m still looking for the door.” None of the doors was marked with anything but a number, so she had to examine all the keyholes to find the one that matched her key, by the light of her cell phone. She cursed th
e mania for anonymity and privacy as she climbed one flight of stairs after the other, feeling weaker with each one. Her legs were wobbly, and more than once she was forced to lean against the wall.
“Ask the doorman,” Dante suggested.
“Congratulations, that was a funny joke.”
She finally found the right door on the fourth floor. On the doorbell only the number 9 appeared, but the key matched the lock. “This is it,” she said and turned the phone around to show it to him.
Dante stared into the lens. “What are you going to do if there’s someone home?”
“According to his ID he’s a bachelor.”
“Maybe his girlfriend is waiting for him in his bed.”
“A guy like him doesn’t have a girlfriend. If it turns out I’m wrong, though, I’ll just tell her that Ferrari gave me the keys so I could bring him a change of clothes.” She stuck the key into the lock. “I’m more worried about a burglar alarm.”
“Don’t worry. You don’t put in a burglar alarm if you have something to hide,” Dante pointed out. “You’d run the risk of finding the cops in your home if it went off when you were out.”
“Right,” said Colomba and turned the key. She slipped in quickly and shut the heavy door behind her.
The dark apartment reeked of cigars and a sickly sweet smell that was familiar but that she just couldn’t place. Something organic, that smacked of an animal . . . The answer came to her in a flash.
Dog!
At that very moment she heard the skittering of claws against marble come out of the darkness in front of her, along with a deep, guttural growl. She was able to dodge just in time for a dark mass to go hurtling past and thud into the heavy burglar-proof door, scratching furiously as it went. Colomba reached around for the light switch, found it and switched it on, and found herself face-to-face with the taut muscled body of a Doberman that stared at her, snarling.
“What’s going on, CC?” Dante shouted into her ear.
Colomba didn’t answer; she was too busy sizing up the distances. At the superior police academy at Ostia she and the other officers in leadership training had worked with an instructor from the K9 unit. The man had shown them a video of a German shepherd savaging a mannequin, and he’d followed that with some basic tips—never look the animal in the eyes, don’t turn and run, don’t show fear—and then he’d explained how to attack the dog in case it became necessary. But none of the simulations called for her to be in a hallway, unarmed, with the added problem of having to remain absolutely silent.
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