Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [106]
At the top they had emerged into a heavy thicket and walked down a forest path to a fire road. There Salvatore had helped her into a small farm truck, told her how to get to Bellagio and what to do once she reached it.
Well, now she had reached it and was almost to the bottom of the steps across from the Hotel Du Lac when she saw them—police. They were right in front of her—an ambulance and three police cars and a crowd of onlookers directly across the street near the boat landing at the edge of the lake. To her left was the little park with the public telephone she had been instructed to use to call Father Daniel’s brother at the hotel.
“Someone drowned,” she heard a woman say, and then other people pushed past her, coming down the steps, rushing to see what had happened.
Elena watched for a moment, then glanced toward the telephones. Father Daniel was in her care, Edward Mooi had said. Maybe so, but reason told her that when she got the chance she should go directly to the police. Whether her mother general knew what was going on made no difference. Nor was it her business what Father Daniel had done or had not done. That was what the law was for. He was wanted for murder and so was his brother. There were the police. All she had to do was go.
And she did, moving away from the phones, crossing the street toward them. As she reached the far curb, a loud noise went up from the crowd at the water’s edge. More people hurried past, anxious to see what was going on.
“Look!” someone said, and Elena saw police divers in the water near the boat landing lift a body from the lake. Policemen onshore hefted it from them and put it down on the landing. Another rushed to throw a blanket over it.
That breathless moment in time, that uncounted second, when the public glimpses the suddenly dead and becomes instantly silent, froze Elena Voso where she stood. The body fished from the lake was that of a man.
Luca Fanari.
75
HARRY WATCHED THE POLICE AND THE CROWD across the street a moment longer, then turned from his hotel room window to look back at the television. Adrianna in her L. L. Bean field jacket and baseball cap stood in a pouring rain outside the Geneva headquarters of the World Health Organization. A major story was coming, piecemeal, from mainland China. Unofficial reports from the city of Hefei in eastern China indicated that a major incident had taken place concerning the area’s public water supply—thousands of people were rumored to have been poisoned and more than six thousand were already dead. Both Xinhua, the New China News Agency, and the Chinese Central Broadcasting Bureau dismissed the reports as unfounded.
Abruptly Harry hit the MUTE button and Adrianna was silenced. What the hell was she doing in Geneva reporting on an “unfounded” incident?
Unsettled, he glanced back out the window. Then at the bedside clock.
8:20 A.M.
No calls. Nothing. What had happened to Edward Mooi? Had he not reread the fax? And now Adrianna was in Geneva when she should have been in Bellagio. Crazily, he felt abandoned. Left in a tiny hotel room while the world went on.
He turned back to the window. As he did, a police car pulled up directly across the street. The doors opened, and three men in plainclothes got out and headed for the boat landing. Harry’s heart stopped. The man walking first, leading the others, was Roscani.
“Jesus.” Instinctively he twisted back from the window. At almost the same instant there was a knock at the door. Every nerve stiffened. The knock came again.
Quickly he went to the bed, opened the suitcase, and took out the sheet of paper with Edward Mooi’s telephone number. Ripping it in pieces he went into the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet.
The knock came once more. Softer this time. Not the authoritative strike of the police. Eaton—of course. Harry relaxed, then walked to the door and opened it.
A young nun stood there.
“Father Roe?”
Harry hesitated. “Yes