Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [38]
For the first time in his life Roscani grimaced at the sound of the saw as the morgue doors closed behind him, and he walked down the hallway and up the steps of the Obitorio Comunale. Something he had done a thousand times in his career. He had seen policemen dead. Judges dead. The bodies of murdered women and children. Tragic as they were, he’d been able to distance himself professionally. But not now.
Roscani was a cop, and cops got killed all the time. It was a truth drummed into you day after day at the institute. One you were supposed to accept going in. It was tragic and sad, but it was reality. And when it came, you were supposed to be prepared to deal with it professionally. Pay homage and move on; without anger, outrage, or hatred for the killer. It was part of what you were trained for in the career you chose.
And you thought you were trained—until the day you walked around your partner’s body and saw the blood and shredded flesh and shattered bone. The grotesque work the bullets had done. Then saw it all over again when the medical people began their work in the morgue. That was when you knew you weren’t prepared for it at all. No one could be, no matter what he was trained for, or taught, or what anyone else said. Loss and rage stormed through you like wildfire, overtaking everything. It was why—whenever cops were killed—every policeman who could, sometimes from across continents, came to the funeral. Why five hundred uniformed men and women on motorcycles were not uncommon, riding in solemn procession in honor of a fallen comrade—one who might have been only a year on the force, a rookie on foot patrol, but who was still a member of the brotherhood.
ANGRILY ROSCANI SHOVED OPEN a side door and stepped into the morning sun. Its warmth should have been a welcome relief from the coldness of the rooms below, but it wasn’t. Taking the long way around the building, he tried to let his emotions fade, but they didn’t. Finally, he turned a corner and walked down a ramp to the street where he’d parked his car. Sadness and loss and anger were crushing him.
Leaving his car, he stepped off the curb, waited for traffic to pass, then crossed the street and started to walk. He needed what he called “assoluta tranquillità,” a kind of splendid silence, that quiet time when he was alone and could think things through properly. Especially now, time alone to try and walk off the emotion, to begin to think things through as an investigator for Gruppo Cardinale, not as the shattered, enraged partner of Gianni Pio.
Time for silence and to think.
To walk and walk and walk.
23
THOMAS KIND PULLED BACK A WINDOW CURTAIN and watched as the men in coveralls emerged from the building and took Harry Addison across the courtyard. He had what he needed from him, or at least as much as he knew he was going to get; now the men in coveralls simply needed to get rid of him.
HARRY COULD SEE only from his right eye. And that was more shadow than image. His left eye had no feeling or sight whatsoever. His other senses told him that he was outside and being walked across a hard surface by, he thought, two men. Somewhere he had the vaguest memory of sitting on a stool or something like it, of taking directions and saying words out loud that were spoken to him through an earphone by the same voice that had spoken to him before. He remembered that only because of the fuss someone else had made about fitting the device in his ear. Most of the argument was in Italian. But part had been fought in English. It was the