The Crocodile (18 page)

He went in. Marinella was hunched over her desk, her back turned to him, and so she didn’t see him. He didn’t want to startle her so he just stood there, looking at the curve of her spine. His heart throbbed with tenderness. He noticed how she tilted her head to one side as she wrote, like a little girl: his little girl. He let his gaze wander and a wardrobe door, standing ajar, caught his eye: a dark closet.

From within the wardrobe were a pair of yellow eyes, staring fixedly at the girl.

They were reptilian eyes, the pupils a pair of vertical slits, unblinking, lidless. Lojacono watched, hypnotized, rooted to the spot. He couldn’t seem to wrench his gaze away, and he couldn’t intervene: he was paralyzed, the way it often is in nightmares. His daughter went on writing, focused, oblivious to the lurking danger. The wardrobe door began to inch open.

In his sleep, Lojacono was moaning, but in his dream no sound issued from his lips. He desperately struggled as he realized that the monster was about to emerge from the darkness and devour his daughter.

Suddenly, behind him, he heard two pistol shots ring out, and he saw the two yellow eyes in the darkness waver and then sink shut. As if freed from an enchantment, he turned and saw Piras, in perfect firing stance—legs braced, body angled forward, aiming her duty revolver in a two-handed grip. She looked at him and smiled. She struck him as beautiful.

He woke with a start, drenched in sweat. He got out of bed, went to the window, and opened it.

Four stories below, the street glistened with rain. A light flashed on a garbage truck as two sanitation workers hooked bins to the hydraulic hoist that emptied them into the back of the truck.

He looked up over the roofs, towards the lights glittering in the night. You’re somewhere out there. I can sense it. I know it. Maybe you’re still not finished with your horrible task. But I have to find a way to stop you.

From out on the water came the sound of a departing ship. Lojacono thought of Sicily and Marinella.

Both of us are alone in this city. Otherwise someone would have seen you, someone would have recognized you. But you’re invisible, like me. This city is nothing but a damned wall, and you’re hiding behind it. And I don’t know how to batter down that wall and get to you.

But I’ll find you.

You can bet on that.

The parents had been summoned for a ten o’clock meeting. Piras, who had made the phone calls personally, would have preferred to give Doctor Rinaldi the time he needed to come to terms, at least to some minimal extent, with the terrible trauma of his loss. His son’s funeral could not possibly be held until the day after tomorrow at the earliest as the autopsy was still underway. But they couldn’t spare that much time.

To her surprise, and in direct opposition to what Scognamiglio had expected and feared, she’d encountered a spirit of willingness and accommodation on the part of all three of the victims’ parents. She’d told them that this meeting was considered to be crucial to the investigation; she hadn’t needed to say anything more.

Lojacono headed straight over to police headquarters from home, getting there early. He looked as if he’d slept badly. He was ushered into Piras’s office immediately.

“All right then, Lojacono: how do you think we should proceed? Should we have them all come in together?”

“The thing we need to know first and foremost is whether they know each other, if there’s a relationship. Whatever contacts there might have been between the three of them could very well be at the root of everything. I’m not saying they’re even aware of it, I’m not saying they’ll remember then and there. It could be something that seems trivial to them, something that happened a long time ago. What we need to determine during this meeting is whether there is any acquaintance. That’s all. If there is, we can start digging deeper.”

Piras ran a hand over her eyes. “I’m tired, Lojacono. I’m tired and I’m worried. Did you see the papers this morning? One newspaper actually interviewed an American profiler who’s concluded that the tissues are a diversion, and that the murderer is a psychopath who’s bound to kill again. The tone of the articles and the news broadcasts is growing steadily more menacing.”

Lojacono shrugged. “But isn’t that something we only care about to a certain extent, dottoressa? What matters is that we figure out whether this murderer means to kill again, and try to stop him in time. And if we hope to do that, then we have to figure out why he killed in the first place.”

Piras shook her head. “No, that’s not the point. The media hoopla provides cover for the murderer. It hinders us, keeps us from acting freely, conditions the things that we are able to do—and it means that he’s free to work in blessed peace. We have to move quickly, before the rot sets in. What I’m most afraid of is that they take the case out of our hands by sending a consultant down from Rome. They pay a lot of attention to public image these days.”

Lojacono smiled sarcastically. “I don’t doubt it. That’s why we need to take action. This is what I suggest we do: let them come in one at a time, and we’ll study their expressions closely. We’ll speak openly to them, tell them what we think might be the motive linking all the murders together. And we’ll see what they tell us.”

Piras looked baffled. “Listen, Lojacono. Make no mistake, I have every intention of supporting and pursuing this idea of yours to the bitter end, but it’s not necessarily the only option available. You heard your colleagues yesterday, didn’t you? There’s still a possibility that the Camorra is involved in this case, in some way, shape, or form, or else it could simply be a psychopath who’s killing at random but choosing different parts of the city to keep from spreading the alarm too quickly. The kids’ parents have full access to the press and to the television coverage; two of them certainly have connections in high places. I wouldn’t let them in on your theory, and I wouldn’t give even the faintest impression, for their own good, that we’re feeling our way in the dark.”

Lojacono considered the matter. “That’s fine, whatever you say. We’ll watch them carefully, and ask a few neutral questions. But unless we track down the connection, we’ll never be able to stop this Crocodile. That’s one thing I know, and you know it too.”

Before Piras could come up with a retort, the secretary stuck her head in the door and announced the arrival of Doctor Sebastiano Rinaldi, the father of the third victim.

The gynecologist was a distinguished, well-dressed man, somewhere in his mid-fifties. He was wearing a sharp grey suit, a dark-blue tie, and a still-damp raincoat. His hair, grey, flowing, swept back, gave him an authoritative air. His face was smooth, shaven with care. Image counts, Piras had told him. Lojacono decided that he was looking at living proof of that axiom.

Perfect in every detail: except the eyes. They were a window on to misery and despair. The emotion that he could glimpse in the man’s eyes made a mockery of the painstaking care he’d devoted to the presentation of his appearance: this was a man on the verge of collapse.

Piras, doing her best to avoid his gaze, invited him to take a seat in any of four armchairs surrounding her desk.

“Doctor, first of all let me extend my condolences for your loss. And I apologize for having invited you down here so soon after, but we absolutely must move quickly if we wish to bring this murderer to justice as soon as possible . . .”

The man sat down stiffly. His voice was harsh, scratchy.

“Signora, let me tell you something, and I insist on telling you this immediately. My life ended yesterday. My son, Donato, is . . . was the only reason I had, after my wife’s death, for getting up in the morning and going to work. I was laying the foundations for his future, minute by minute. I knew his life, the things he did, the thoughts he had, and I can assure you that nothing, nothing that he was or that he did or that he thought, could possibly have led to . . . to this thing. I haven’t thought about anything else for the past twenty-six hours. I reviewed his life, step by step, and nothing, no one, could have had the slightest motive for taking that life away from him.”

The words poisoned the air like a bad odor. Piras looked at her hands, spread open on the tabletop, as if she were deep in other thoughts. Then she looked up, and Lojacono heard a gentleness in her voice that he never would have expected.

“Believe me, I understand. Even though I don’t have children myself, I understand. You know that the murder of your son is the third, from what we’re able to determine, in a series committed by the same killer. We don’t know whether or not the murderer is done with this . . . this series. We have to assume the worst, so we’re asking for your help. This is Inspector Lojacono, one of the investigators assigned to the case, and if you have no objections, he’d like to ask you some questions.”

Rinaldi turned to look at Lojacono, as if he had only just noticed his presence. Beneath the grief and sorrow in his eyes, Lojacono could also read an uncomprehending rage.

“I won’t be able to rest until whoever did this thing has been punished. Whatever the cost. Ask away, Inspector.”

Lojacono wasted no time on preliminaries. “Doctor, I need to ask you a very specific question, and I hope that you won’t take it the wrong away, as there is no offense intended. My purpose is to attain an objective I believe we both hope to achieve. You said that you’ve thought thoroughly about your son’s life, and that you could find no conceivable motivation for what, sadly, has happened. Is that right?”

The doctor nodded slowly. “Absolutely. For the past few months he’d been seeing a girl; he’d made passing reference to it, and I imagine he planned to bring it up again once things had become a little more serious. I’d asked around, discreetly, and I knew she was a good girl. She came to the house this morning. She’s crushed. I had to comfort and console her. Me. Can you imagine?”

“I’m sorry, I do understand. But I have another question, Doctor, and it has to do with you yourself. I’m going to ask you to think carefully before you answer: was there anyone who hated you so much, for whatever reason, that they might have been tempted to do something like this?”

The question fell into a chilly pool of silence. The man’s expression remained unchanged as he sat there, rigid and proud in the chair, his overcoat draped over his legs.

Then he said, “I get it. The time has come to dig into the lives of others, since nothing has emerged from the lives of the victims themselves.”

Piras decided it was time to come to Lojacono’s assistance. “No, Doctor, that’s not right. But we can’t leave any stone unturned. You are a prominent, well known professional, and you work in the field of people’s health; if there was someone who had any reason to be angry at you, they might very well have chosen to take revenge in this manner.”

“As well as killing two other children who have nothing to do with it, to cover his real purpose? Doesn’t that strike you as a bit much, signora?”

Piras maintained a neutral expression, but her tone of voice grew harsher. “Do you have any better theories, Doctor? Can you point us in some other direction?”

The doctor sat in silence for a moment. Then he turned to look at Lojacono.

“No, Inspector, I can’t think of anyone who hated me enough to . . . excuse me . . . to put an end to my son’s life. The assistant DA is right when she points out that I work in the field of medicine, and inevitably there are cases that turn out less successfully than others. But I’ve been lucky, it’s never happened to me—the way it has to certain colleagues of mine, perfectly capable physicians, by the way—that anyone has accused me of malpractice, of making a fatal mistake. Over time, I’ve managed to consolidate my patients into a single, let us say, restricted specialty. I’ve had the advantage of being able to work with patients who were, for the most part, not in serious conditions, and that has meant a particularly low risk of error. I work with hospitals, which further eliminates the margin of error present in my line of work.”

Lojacono nodded. “How about other areas? Your finances, for example, and investments. Or personal relationships.”

Piras shook her head. Rinaldi took a deep breath, then answered.

“You’re sorely trying my patience, Inspector. I’m going to answer your question because I’ve undertaken to do so, but I’ll do it this once, and that’s it. After my wife’s death, many years ago, I devoted myself to my son and my practice. I entrusted the handling of my money to my accountant, an old family friend, who has a mandate to invest, at moderate risk, in public stocks and bonds. You can check; it’s all there in my tax returns. I’ve done my best to stay away from that side of my life. I look at the final end-of-year statement and, to tell you the truth, I only check to see that the number is bigger than it was last year. From now on, most likely, I’ll stop checking entirely. As for personal relationships, as you put it—nothing at all. I never felt I could bring a woman other than his mother into our house; there was no one who could ever have compared to her in any way. And in any case, at my age, I feel no need for companionship.”

Lojacono thought about the Crocodile and found renewed strength. “I’m very sorry, Doctor. But what I want—more than anything else, and you must take me at my word on this—is to catch this bastard. And if I have to make a fool of myself in the attempt, believe me, I will, without thinking twice. So I can’t really bring myself to ask forgiveness for my indiscretion.”

Unexpectedly, Rinaldi flashed a grimace that might have distantly resembled a smile. “No, I owe you an apology, Inspector. The habit of pride is a nasty disease, and there’s no cure for it. Believe me, I’ll give your questions some thought. And if I happen to discover, in my past, some element that might point to this . . . this thing, I’ll call you immediately.”

Piras broke in. “I’m going to have to presume even further upon your patience, Doctor. We’ve asked the mothers of the two other children to come in, and I’d like to ask you to meet with them, if only for a brief moment. I have something I’d like to say to you, all together. Would you be so good as to wait?”