Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [105]
Finally the dogs gave up, one after the other, walking lazily around the dock sniffing at nothing. One of the handlers looked up and shook his head.
“Grazie, Signore, “Roscani said to Edward Mooi.
“Prego,” Mooi nodded, then walked out and back along the path toward the villa.
“That’s all,” Roscani called to the dog handlers, and watched as they and their animals and the four carabinieri climbed the stairs, following in the direction Edward Mooi had gone, toward the house and the convoy of parked police vehicles.
Slowly Roscani started up the path after them. They had been there for more than two hours and nothing had been found. Two hours wasted. If he was wrong, he was wrong. And he needed to leave it and move on. Still—
Turning, he looked back. There was the boathouse and beyond it the lake. To his right he could see the dogs and the armed carabinieri almost to the villa. Edward Mooi was out of sight.
What had he missed?
To the left of the villa, between it and the boathouse was the stone landing with its ornate balustrade where the hydrofoil captain had said he put the fugitive priest and the others ashore.
Once again Roscani looked to the boathouse. Absently his fingers went to his mouth, and he took a pull from his phantom cigarette. Then, his eyes still on the boathouse, he dropped the imaginary cigarette, ground it out with his toe, and walked back and went inside.
From the top of the stairs he saw nothing but the motorboat moored to the dock below and the equipment needed to tend it. At the far end, the rectangular opening to the lake. The same as before.
Finally, he went down the stairs and walked along the dock beside the boat. Bow to stern. Stern to bow. Looking. For what, he didn’t know. Then he climbed onboard. Studied the interior of the hull, the seats, the cockpit. The dogs had complained but found nothing. He could see nothing. A boat was a boat, and he was wasting his time. He was about to step over the side and back onto the dock, when he had one last thought. Crossing to the stern, he looked down at the twin Yamaha outboard engines. Kneeling, he reached over the side and gingerly ran his hand down the lower leg of each, touching the side panels between the power head and the water where the exhaust line ran.
Both were warm.
74
8:00 A.M.
ELENA VOSO CROSSED THE SQUARE AND started down the steps toward the lake. Shops catering mainly to tourists lined either side of the walkway down. Most of them were already open. Salespeople and customers alike, cheery, smiling, seeming happy about the prospects for the day.
In front of her Elena could see the lake. Boats crisscrossed on it. Across the street at the bottom of the stairs she could see the hydrofoil landing, and she wondered if the first hydrofoil had come yet, if Luca and Marco and Pietro were already in Como or maybe at the station, waiting for the train to Milan. At the bottom of the stairs was something else too—the Hotel Du Lac—and even now she wasn’t certain what she would do when she got there.
After Edward Mooi left the grotto in the motorboat, Elena had taken Salvatore and Marta to where Michael Roark, or—and now she had to think of him this way—Father Daniel, was. He had been awake and moved up on one elbow, watching as they came in. Elena had introduced Salvatore and Marta as friends, saying she had to leave for a short while and they would care for him until she got back. Even though he was beginning to regain full use of his vocal chords and could talk for short periods of time, Father Daniel had said nothing. Instead his eyes had searched hers, as if somehow he knew she had found out who he was.
“You will be all right,” she’d said finally and left him with Marta, who had mentioned that his bandages should be changed and said that she would do it herself, indicating she had some training in medical care.
And then Salvatore had led Elena into a part of the caves she had not seen before. A twisting, turning route through a series of stone corridors