Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [31]
“Where’s your partner?” Harry tried to break the quiet.
“At his son’s confirmation. He took the day off.”
“I called you…”
“I know—why?”
“About what happened at the funeral home…”
Pio made no reply, just kept driving, as if he were waiting for Harry to finish.
“You don’t know?” Harry was genuinely surprised. He was certain Farel had learned of it and would, at the very least, have informed Pio.
“Know what?”
“I was at the funeral home. I viewed my brother’s remains. The body is not his.”
Pio’s head came around. “Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
“The funeral home made a mistake….” Pio half shrugged. “Unfortunately it happens. It is especially understandable under the circum—“
Harry cut him off. “The remains are the same as those Cardinal Marsciano identified at the morgue.”
“How do you know?”
“He was there, he told me.”
“Marsciano came to the funeral home?”
“Yes.”
Pio seemed genuinely surprised, his reaction honest and instantaneous. It was enough for Harry to tell him the rest. In thirty seconds he explained about Danny’s mole and the reasons why he would never have had it removed. About his private meeting with Marsciano in Gasparri’s office, and the cardinal’s insistence that the body was his brother’s and that he accept the fact and get out of the country with it while he could.
Pio stopped at the tollbooth, picked up a ticket, and swung them onto the Autostrada toward Rome.
“You’re certain the mistake is not yours…”
“No, it’s not.” Harry was adamant.
“You know his personal belongings were found where the remains were recovered…”
“I have them here.” Harry touched his jacket. The envelope Gasparri had given him was still in his pocket. “His passport, watch, his glasses, the Vatican ID—they may have been his. The body isn’t.”
“And you think Cardinal Marsciano knows that…”
“Yes.”
“You are aware he is one of the most powerful and prominent men in the Vatican.”
“So was Cardinal Parma.”
Pio studied Harry, then glanced in the rearview mirror. A dark green Renault was a half mile back, holding speed with them, and had been for some time.
Pio looked back to the road ahead, accelerating past a truck hauling lumber, then pulled into the lane in front of it.
“You know what I would be thinking if I were you.” Pio kept his eyes on the road.
“Is my brother still alive? And if he is, where is he?”
Harry looked at Pio, then turned away. That Danny might still be alive was a thought that came the moment he realized the corpse was not his. But he hadn’t let himself think about it. Couldn’t let himself think about it. Danny had been on the bus. Those who survived were accounted for. So, for Danny to still be alive wasn’t possible. Any more than it was possible for Madeline to have remained alive all that time under the ice. Yet Harry had stayed there watching, an eleven-year-old shivering in his wet and freezing clothes, refusing to go home and change, while the fire department divers worked. Yes, Madeline was down there in the icy, black water, freezing cold and wet as he, but she was still alive, he knew it. But she wasn’t. And neither was Danny. To think so was not only unrealistic but far too painful to even consider.
“Anyone would have thought about it, Mr. Addison. When there is a change of facts, hope is natural. What if he were still alive? I would like to know that too…. So, one way or another, why don’t we attempt to find out?” Pio smiled, not unselfishly, and glanced in the mirror once more.
They had reached the bottom of a long hill with the lumber truck now almost a mile behind. Then Pio saw a car come into the passing lane beside it, accelerate, and then cut back into the travel lane in front of it.
The green Renault.
18
IT WAS AFTER FOUR WHEN THEY CAME OFF the Autostrada, moving with traffic down Via Salaria toward the center of the city. Pio had been alert the whole time, watching the green Renault in the mirror. He’d been expecting it to follow them off at the