Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [89]
Castelletti and Scala were waiting as he came in. They were smoking and immediately put their cigarettes out when they saw Roscani.
“Fingerprints again,” Roscani said, deliberately waving away the smoke that still hung in the air.
“The Spaniard’s prints on the assassination rifle. Harry Addison’s prints on the pistol that killed Pio. Now the clear prints of a man who allegedly never owned a gun, yet committed a murder-suicide. Each time making it seem obvious who the shooter was. Well we know that wasn’t the case with the cardinal vicar. So what about the others? What if we have a third person doing the killing, then making sure the prints they wanted on the weapon got there? The same third person each time. The same ‘he/she,’ maybe even ‘they,’ killed the cardinal vicar. Killed Pio. Did the job here at the ambulance office.”
“The priest?” Castelletti said.
“Or our third person, someone else entirely.” Absently Roscani took out a piece of gum, unwrapped it and put it in his mouth. “What if the priest was in bad shape and was brought by ambulance from one of the hospitals outside Rome to Pescara…”
“And this third person found out and came here looking for him,” Scala said quietly.
Roscani stared at Scala, then folded the chewing gum wrapper carefully and put it in his pocket. “Why not?”
“You follow that thinking and maybe Harry Addison didn’t kill Pio…”
Roscani walked off, slowly chewing his gum. He looked at the floor, then at the ceiling. Through the window he could see the red ball of the sun beginning to come up over the Adriatic. Then he turned back.
“Maybe he didn’t.”
“Ispettore Capo—”
The detectives looked up as an investigator from the Pescara police came in, his face already streaked with sweat from the early heat.
“We may have something else. The chief medical officer has just examined the body of a woman who died in an apartment house fire last night—“
Roscani knew before he was told. “The fire didn’t kill her.”
“No, sir. She was murdered.”
61
Rome. 6:30 A.M.
HARRY WALKED TOWARD THE COLOSSEUM, head down, unmindful of the rush of morning traffic passing on the Via dei Fori Imperiali beside him. At this point, motion was everything. The only way to keep from losing what small splinter of sanity he had left. Cars. Buses. Motor scooters. Roared and putted past. An entire society going about their own personal business, their thoughts and emotions focused wholly and innocently on the day before them, the same way he had every morning of his professional life until he had come to Rome. It had been as routine and comfortable as old shoes.
Up at six, exercise for an hour in the gym off his bedroom, shower, breakfast meeting with clients or potential clients, and into the office, cell phone never more than inches away, even in the shower. The same as now. Cell phone right there, in his pocket. Only it wasn’t the same. None of it. The cellular phone was there, but he dared not use it. They could trace it back in an instant to whatever close-by cell site he was using, and the whole area would be filled with police before he knew it.
Suddenly he walked from bright sun to deep shade. Looking up, he saw that he stood in the shadow of the Colosseum. As quickly, his eye caught a movement in the dimness, and he stopped. A woman in a tattered dress stood watching from the base of the ancient arches. Then another stepped in beside her. And then a third, this one holding a baby. Gypsies.
Turning, he saw there were more. Eight or ten at least, and they were beginning to encircle him. Closing in slowly. Singly, and in twos and threes. All were women, and most had children in tow. Quickly Harry