Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [88]
“Many men have brothers.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You have been apart all this time. Why is he so important to you now?”
“Because he just is.”
“Then why do you risk his life?”
Fire and anger danced in Harry’s eyes. “Just tell me where he is.”
“Have you thought what you would do if you knew?” Marsciano ignored him, just kept on. “Go to him. Then what? Stay with him where he is? Hide with him forever?—Sooner or later you would realize that you had to face the matter immediately at hand. The police. And when you do that, Mr. Addison, when you come out, you will both be killed. Your brother, because of what he knows. You, because they will think he has told you.”
“Just what does he know?”
For a long moment Marsciano said nothing, then he stepped forward out of the shadow, the light touching his face, illuminating his eyes for the first time. What was there was no longer a papal aristocrat but a lone man who was twisted and torn and filled with fear. More fear than Harry thought anyone capable of. And it caught him wholly by surprise.
“They tried to murder him once. They are trying again. A hunter has been sent to track and kill him.” Marsciano’s eyes were riveted on Harry’s.
“Number forty-seven Via di Montoro. Do not think you retreated to your apartment this afternoon unnoticed. Do not think your priest’s costume will continue to hide you. I warn you with everything I have, to stay away! Because, if you do not—”
“Where is he? What the hell does he know?”
“—because if you do not, I will tell them where he is myself. And if I do, neither of us will hear from him again.” Marsciano’s voice dropped to a whisper. “That much is at stake…”
“The Church.” Harry felt the chill, the immensity of it, even as he said it.
The cardinal stared for the briefest moment, then abruptly turned, pulled open the door, and disappeared into the hallway, his footsteps fading to silence.
60
Three hours later. Monday, July 13, 1:20 A.M.
ROSCANI TOOK THE CALL IN THE NUDE, THE way he always slept in the heat of summer. Glancing at his wife, he put the caller on hold and pulled on a light robe. A moment later he picked up the phone in his study, clicking on the desk light as he did.
A middle-aged man and his wife had been found shot to death in a storage container behind the ambulance company they owned in Pescara. They had been dead almost thirty-six hours when anxious family members had discovered them. Local investigators on the scene at first believed it was a murder-suicide, but after questioning friends and family, decided in all probability it was not. And, on the off chance it might have a connection to the nationwide manhunt, alerted Gruppo Cardinale headquarters in Rome. Hence, the call to him.
Pescara. 4:30 A.M.
Roscani walked the murder scene, the storage shed behind Servizio Ambulanza Pescara. Ettore Caputo and his wife had six children and had been married thirty-two years. They fought, Pescara police said, all the time, and about anything. Their battles were loud and violent and passionate. But never had anyone seen one touch the other in anger. And—never—had Ettore Caputo owned a gun.
Signora Caputo had been shot first. Point blank. And then her husband had apparently turned the weapon on himself, because his fingerprints were on it. The weapon was a two-shot .44 magnum derringer. Powerful, but tiny. The kind of weapon few people even knew about unless they were firearm aficionados.
Roscani shook his head. Why a derringer? Two shots didn’t give you much room for miss or error. The only positive thing about it was its size, because it was easy to conceal. Stepping back, Roscani nodded to a member of the tech crew, and she moved in with an evidence bag to take the gun away. Then he turned and walked out of the shed and across a parking area to the ambulance company’s front office. In the street beyond he could see people gathered in the gray early-morning light watching from behind police barricades.
Roscani thought back to last evening, and what he and his detectives had learned from their singular