by Blake Pierce
“This is only a live feed. It doesn’t save the footage at all, anywhere,” she said, dismayed.
Cassie drew in an audible gasp. She leaned back against the desk, unable to believe what had just happened. This reprieve was impossible. It felt surreal, and she expected at any moment that Falcone might say, “Oh, of course, I was wrong. Here is the footage.”
She watched as Falcone checked one last time.
“Nothing,” the detective said.
She closed the camera feed and then shut the machine with an exasperated sigh.
At that moment, it came to Cassie why no footage was stored anywhere.
It was because those cameras would have picked up on Ms. Rossi herself, abusing her children. The horrors would have been recorded, and having that footage stored anywhere was simply too risky. All the businesswoman had needed was the ability to keep an eye on what was happening at home, so she could monitor the live feed when she felt like doing so.
Thinking fast, Cassie supposed that meant that, after the divorce, the abuse had worsened. Before the divorce, the cameras had linked to the security headquarters, and the girls’ father had still been present in the home.
Cassie jumped as she realized Detective Falcone was staring at her curiously.
“I wonder if you could give me your version of events again,” the detective asked.
“I—yes, of course. Why?”
Cassie’s face blazed as she realized she’d just questioned the detective’s decision. She hadn’t meant to. In her confusion, the word had just slipped out.
Falcone didn’t say why. She took the tape recorder out of her bag and gestured for Cassie to sit in the chair on the opposite side.
This was exactly where she’d sat when she’d arrived for the interview, and Cassie felt a sense of unreality as she took the seat. Then, she’d been hopeful about starting a new job, positive about finding her sister, feeling as if she could cope with these children and this family. She remembered her optimism when Ms. Rossi had suggested the possibility of an internship after the au pair contract was finished.
Her dreams in that regard were gone, and now she was facing a detective who knew, instinctively, that there was a cover-up, and whose probing intelligence would not rest until she’d worked out the true facts.
“Where would you like me to start?” Cassie asked.
“Why did you only work here for three days?”
“It’s because Nonna was able to arrive earlier.”
“Earlier than what? How long was your original assignment supposed to be for?”
“A week,” Cassie said. She thought that if she said she’d been hired for a shorter time, it would make leaving after three days seem more plausible.
As she spoke the outright lie, she remembered to her horror that the detective had asked her the same question in the dining room, just a couple of hours earlier. Then, she had been truthful, and given the correct answer. Changing her story now would only raise the detective’s suspicions and prove she was a liar.
“Sorry. I misunderstood you. I mean—I mean, a couple of months,” she amended. “Two to three months.”
“And you were asked to leave after three days?”
“Like I said, Nonna arrived earlier.”
“But Nonna suffers from dementia. So who was going to care for her?”
“I was just told she was moving in, so I could go,” Cassie insisted.
“What happened this morning?” the detective asked. “From when you woke. Can you give me an outline of your day?”
“I overslept,” Cassie said. “My alarm wasn’t set for the correct time, so the morning was a rush. The children went to school. There—there wasn’t much for me to do. I went into town to sort out a few things. When I got back, Ms. Rossi was already there, preparing for her mother to arrive. She told the housemaids that they should move the dining room furniture upstairs, so that Nonna didn’t have to walk down.”
Cassie frowned.
“No, no, that happened after Nonna arrived. It was then she saw how she battled with the stairs. Anyway, I went and packed, and then had dinner with the family. Then I went back to my room, showered, and just after that I heard the children calling me.”
“Which child?” Falcone asked.
“How do you mean?”
“Which child called you?”
“I—I couldn’t tell at the time. They sound very alike. It might have been both of them.”
Cassie’s face burned. She was certain she’d given a different version in the previous interview, but for the life of her she couldn’t remember the details, or who she’d said it had been. She knew that this detective had picked up on the disparity. She could see it in the considering expression on her striking, intelligent face.
She expected that the detective would instantly accuse her of a crime, or demand that she come in with her for further questioning, but she didn’t.
She simply said, “Thank you,” in a quiet voice, and switched off the recorder.
Somehow, that made Cassie feel even worse.
*
On her way back to headquarters, Falcone considered the available facts. Her father always emphasized to her that evidence was like a jigsaw puzzle. You had to fit the pieces together. If you applied logic, you found certain ones would slide easily into place and others would seem out of place. Her father had also told her that you didn’t need every piece of the puzzle in order to see the picture. As long as you had some in the correct position, it would start to become clear.
Falcone sighed. The picture in this case was clear, but yet it wasn’t. There was too much missing, and some of the pieces seemed to be a wrong fit. There was a glaring lack of evidence, and she was frustrated by the coordinated stories of the two girls, which she suspected to be false, and by the lack of camera footage.
Briefly, Falcone wondered why the security footage feed had been canceled. Perhaps Ms. Rossi hadn’t been as security-conscious as her ex-husband, but then why have cameras at all?
The footage question could not be answered. So what did she know for sure was the truth?
Falcone remembered the way the younger girl, Venetia, had flinched away from her touch. Her back had been sore. A pain reaction could not be concealed. She’d explained it as a fall from her horse, but to Falcone, that had sounded glib and rehearsed.
Were the children being abused?
If so, by whom?
Had Ms. Rossi seen Cassie Vale smacking them, or hitting them? Had that led to a fight?
She remembered again that porcelain shard, the disproportionate number of wounds and scratches that Ms. Rossi had from her fall, and the scratch and badly concealed bruise on Cassie Vale’s face. Her story was littered with inconsistencies and having heard two versions within as many hours, containing notable differences, Falcone was convinced neither was the truth.
A mother who found out that her children had been abused would be furious, and this confrontation could have led to a fight, and to a fall—or else, being pushed. But then why were the children not more upset? It was possible that they had been intimidated by the au pair, but genuine grief would still find a way out, and Falcone hadn’t seen enough of it.
The other scenario was that Ms. Rossi had been abusing her children, and Cassie Vale had found out, and was trying to protect them.
Falcone wondered if the Rossi family had any documented history of abuse or violent behavior. She decided that first thing in the morning, she would contact the local police as well as Social Services, and see if she could uncover any previous incidents or reports.
Then another idea occurred to her. Perhaps she could pick up something on Cassie Vale. When she’d photographed her passport for identification purposes, she’d noticed a French work visa that was still valid, and also that she’d recently spent some time in the United Kingdom.
Falcone was beginning to wonder if Cassie Vale’s extreme anxiety about being parted from her passport meant that she’d had some
sort of trouble with it before. Perhaps it had been seized by border officials, or even held by the police in the past. That would mean recently, since she’d only left the States a couple of months ago.
Two of the detectives in her team were well connected internationally. One was an ex–Europol employee, and the other had worked in France and Germany. Falcone decided she would ask them to research the young au pair, network with their contacts, and see if her name came up anywhere.
After all, abusers were often repeat offenders, but so, too, were murderers.
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
Every time Cassie closed her eyes, she was taken back to that dreadful, irreversible moment on the stairs. She’d replayed it in her head countless times, but in her efforts to recall the hazy facts, she’d changed the version over and over again.
In one, she pushed Ms. Rossi down deliberately, but although she tried as hard as she could, Cassie couldn’t recall her outstretched hands making contact. It didn’t mean they hadn’t, though, just that she couldn’t remember it. In another, Nina charged forward and shoved her mother with all her might. Nina had run forward, that was true, but the actual push, Cassie couldn’t remember.
She thought she must have closed her eyes when it happened, although she had no recall of doing so. She felt totally confused. It was as if the versions were somehow all true, but the next moment, none of them felt right at all.
Ms. Rossi had screamed. She had threatened Cassie with death. She had yelled that she would kill her, that Cassie wouldn’t get out of the house alive. She’d lunged forward, in an attempt to grab Cassie and throttle her.
No, that hadn’t happened on the stairs, she had done that earlier.
How had the fight moved to that area, after Cassie’s near-strangulation, when she’d been pressed against the mahogany desk in the corridor? Had Cassie walked away? Worse still, had the other woman walked away, and Cassie chased after her and with her open palms, shoved her down while her back was turned?
That was the worst scenario of all and every time Cassie thought of it, she went icy cold and felt herself shrinking inside, because that would be cold-blooded, deliberate murder. If she’d done that, there hadn’t been any element of self-defense at all.
And she did remember her outstretched hands. They were the only perfectly clear memory she had, etched into her mind. Fists clenched, hands together. Had she been going to push, or had she pushed, or had Ms. Rossi fallen to her death in the melee? And what had Nina being doing during all of this?
Every time Cassie thought about the young girl and tried to replay her actions, it seemed that Nina played a bigger role, until eventually Cassie was sure that she had either pushed her mother, or been trying to do so while Cassie had fought her off.
She’d been doing her best to help Cassie and protect her, but how far had her efforts gone?
Cassie turned over and punched her pillow to try and make it more comfortable. Sleep had eluded her the entire night, even though she’d doubled up on her meds at bedtime in a futile effort to stem her overwhelming anxiety, so she didn’t think anything that she could do to her pillow would help.
With a defeated sigh, she checked the time.
It was half past seven. Time to go and get the girls up, and stop this endless fretting. She’d already given the investigator her version. She couldn’t go back and change it now. Her fate was out of her hands. It depended what that quiet, intelligent detective managed to uncover, and how she chose to use the information she found.
Cassie climbed out of bed and swallowed yet another tablet, hoping that the extra dose would help her to stay calm and cope with whatever bombshells the day might bring. She dressed quickly and went to wake the children.
Despite her agonizing stress, her heart lifted when she heard their happy voices from all the way down the corridor.
“Good morning, girls,” she said.
At some stage during the night, Venetia must have come into Nina’s room, because they were tucked up together in Nina’s bed, paging through a pony magazine.
“Good morning,” they chorused.
“Who would like some breakfast? I was thinking we could have toast with Nutella this morning, and look in the fridge to see if there’s any bacon or sausages.” Cassie was relieved by how calm she sounded, and that the children didn’t seem to pick up any of the turmoil that consumed her.
“Yay!” Venetia squealed. “Yummy.”
“I love the sound of that,” Nina agreed.
“All right. I’ll go and make a start, and you girls can get dressed. Think about what you would like to do today, as your papa is only arriving in the evening.”
Cassie headed downstairs, relieved to be able to look in the fridge without feeling as if she was overstepping a boundary. Now that Ms. Rossi was gone, Cassie was realizing how her iron rule and obsession with control had affected the whole household. Although the children were the biggest victims, her mindset must have affected everyone who walked through the door.
The cook had not arrived and Cassie realized that the household staff would not yet know what had happened. She didn’t feel as if it was her place to break this news, and it would be difficult due to the language barrier. When the detective came back, Cassie decided she would ask her to do it. She would be able to give them the official version, and could do so in Italian.
Opening the fridge, Cassie found a pack of sausages. She fried them up in the cast-iron pan she had seen the cook using, and ten minutes later, as if drawn by the delicious aroma, the children came downstairs.
“Sausages for breakfast,” Nina breathed, as if this was nothing short of a miracle.
“We haven’t had sausages for ages,” Venetia said.
“Because they’re so messy,” Nina explained. “And because Mama said we had to wash up and tidy away after breakfast. She used to come and examine the kitchen.”
“Really?” Cassie asked, forking the sausages onto a plate. She was glad the children felt ready to share the vile experiences they had endured.
“Yes, and if there was even a crumb on the counter, it meant that we got no lunch,” Venetia added. “I was very hungry a lot of the time after Papa left.”
“If we used food by mistake that she had planned for a meal, she used to get angry and then we wouldn’t get supper, and we would have to do things like tidy and clean the whole fridge,” Nina said. “Why was she like that, Cassie, do you know? Why did she get so cross with us?”
“And why didn’t she want us to eat?” Venetia added.
Cassie shook her head in sympathy.
“It’s not normal to treat children that way. She was the one doing the wrong thing, not you,” she said, and decided to leave it at that.
No wonder the children had only chosen toast and butter as the safest option. She’d wondered why they’d had such simple tastes. It had been brave of Venetia to request jam at all, and now Cassie understood why she’d so determinedly insisted on putting it away.
It sounded as if Ms. Rossi had deliberately set her children up for failure so that she could have the satisfaction of punishing them. Terrible as Cassie’s actions had been, she was relieved that they had saved the children from having to endure any more of it. Their life had already turned into a living hell, and would only have become worse.
“Remember, though, we can’t tell the lady detective,” Nina reminded her sister.
Venetia nodded conspiratorially and Cassie understood that these girls were going to keep it their secret. They had obviously decided that it was the best course of action.
Knowing this didn’t ease the sick tension Cassie felt inside. No matter what the girls chose to do, they were innocent minors, and if the truth was uncovered, they wouldn’t get into trouble. She would, and might still.
It all depended how much Detective Falcone was able to find out.
*
Detective Falcone started her day at five-thirty a.m. with a run. At this time of year, her exercise was done i
n darkness and, on this particular day, in a light, misty rain. She loved to run. It energized her mind and cleared her head for the coming day. Her usual route led through the winding streets of suburban Milan and crossed the park where, on weekends, she brought her daughter to play. During this hour’s run, she’d often have ideas or even breakthroughs on her tricky cases. Falcone guessed it was due to the oxygenation of her body.
When she started running after her daughter was born, her husband, Marco, had joked that she could surely energize her brain just as well through caffeine and sugar, and why not enjoy her much-needed sleep, and have a sweet, strong cappuccino for the same results? The teasing was all the more outrageous considering he used to get up as early as she did, and went for a two-hour cycle ride most days.
She couldn’t believe that it had been nearly five years since his death. It had shattered her world. Weeks of frantic worry had been followed by the devastating blow of his loss, followed by months of emotional trauma.
Nobody had known why her husband, an ambitious and high-earning law partner in his early thirties, had collapsed and been admitted to ICU after complaining for weeks that he had felt unwell. Test after test were done, but the results kept coming back inconclusive. His kidneys were damaged, his liver was failing, his skin was breaking out in lesions. He had started suffering from seizures, his blood pressure sky-high, unable to keep food down.
Falcone, back in her old life, had also been a lawyer, working for a civil litigation firm. She had taken extended leave to be by his bedside, watching his condition deteriorate daily, with surges of frantic hope as new treatments were tried, followed by crushing despair as they failed.
Finally, they had a diagnosis, and it was one that shattered her world.
Just before his final, fatal seizure, new tests were done and a cause for the strange affliction was found. Her husband, Marco, had been suffering from long-term, systemic heavy metal poisoning.
Falcone ran faster, pushing herself to the limit as she remembered her horror and disbelief at the diagnosis. How could this have happened? Marco was not exposed to chemicals in the course of his work, and as a cyclist who’d aspired to turn professional, or at any rate, win gold medals in the amateur league, he had been extremely fit.