“Burri, that’s right. Exactly.” Rocco caught up with the doctor. “No, it’s just that if a person tries to remember a thing and he can’t quite get it, he might wind up killing a bunch of neurons. Burri. What’s that?” he asked the medical examiner, who was holding out another plastic bag.
“In here is the rest of the handkerchief. It was hanging out of his mouth.”
“Did the snowcat cut it? Weird. That seems pretty odd to me.”
“My job is to analyze corpses. Yours is to understand how they got that way.”
Rocco pulled away from the wall and grabbed the door handle.
“Wait! There’s one last thing that will interest you.” The doctor picked up two plastic bags. One contained a glove. The other held a pack of cigarettes. “Now, then. These were found in the inside pocket of the down jacket. An empty pack of Marlboro Lights, and this glove. Black. A ski glove. Colmar brand.”
“Ah. Okay, good. We’ve found one glove. What about the other?”
“No idea.”
“You know something, Alberto? This is a pain in the ass, number ten on the scale, summa cum laude.”
“Which means?”
“The mother of all pains in the ass!”
Cursing under his breath, Rocco walked through the door and left the doctor with his patients.
Italo was outside the hospital smoking a cigarette. Rocco walked past him. “You’re so damned helpful, Italo.”
The officer flicked away his cigarette butt and followed the deputy police chief. “It was because of the taste in my mouth.”
“Fine, but now that you’re sure to have the breath of a cesspool, do me a favor and don’t talk in the car.”
“I’ve got chewing gum.”
“Well, chew it,” Rocco ordered him as he got into the car.
They hadn’t gone fifty yards before Rocco’s cell phone started ringing.
“Who is it?”
“Dottore, it’s me, Officer D’Intino.”
“To what do I owe the honor?” asked Rocco, lighting yet another of Italo’s Chesterfields.
“Did you call me ‘your honor’?” D’Intino replied, in confusion.
Rocco sighed and, with endless patience, replied, “No, D’Intino, I didn’t. It’s just a figure of speech. What can I do for you?”
“Ah, yes, I didn’t think so. Well, I called you to say …” And with that the line went dead.
“Hello? D’Intino, hello?”
Static and sighs from the other end of the line.
“Officer D’Intino, hello?”
“Yes? I’m listening, Dottore!”
“You’re listening, my ass! What is it? Why did you call me?”
“Ah yes, in fact. I was looking, as you ordered me, to see if there were any missing-person reports, people who fail to come home, in other words, that kind of thing.”
“And?”
“There was no need. Just a little while ago, Luisa came into the police station.”
Rocco, struggling to control himself, held in the curse of all curses he was about to utter. “Officer! Who is Luisa?” he shouted.
“Luisa Pec. She says that her husband never came home last night. Or this morning, for that matter.”
“So where is this Pec?”
“Who even knows where he is, Dotto’? Luisa says the man’s disappeared!”
“Where’s Luisa Pec! Not her husband!” shouted Rocco at the top of his lungs. Italo was barely able to stifle his laughter.
“Ah … she’s here … Hold on, should I put her on?”
“What are you talking about? Put who on, D’Intino?” Rocco stared at Italo. “I’m going to kill him. I swear to all the saints in heaven, I’m going to kill him. Listen to me, Officer D’Intino, are you there?”
“Yes, Dottore!”
“All right.” Rocco took two quick breaths and tried to calm down. “Now do me a favor and tell Signora Luisa Pec to wait for me in the police station, and tell her we’ll be there soon. Is that all clear?”
“Yes, Dottore. Certainly. You’ll be here any minute. Now, if I can stop looking for missing persons, then I can start organizing the files in the personnel office, because today Officer Malta is sick, so I could—”
“No. Go on looking. We don’t know for sure that this Luisa Pec is the right person, do we?”
“True. You have a point, Commissario.”
“Oh, go fuck yourself, D’Intino!”
“Yes sir.”
Rocco hung up. He looked at Italo. “Her husband hasn’t come home and first thing, people assume the worst. For all we know, the guy’s holed up with some chippie.”
Italo nodded as he accelerated toward the police station. “Dottore, listen, if you want I can have a word with D’Intino and tell him not to call you anymore.”
“Let it be. He wouldn’t understand. He’s my nemesis. You know, when you’ve done a few things that are just so-so? There’s such a thing as divine justice. And I’m paying it. D’Intino is just a tool that God Almighty is using to punish me. A man’s got to accept his fate!”
“But why? What did you ever do?”
Rocco crushed out the cigarette in the ashtray and looked at Italo. “One or two things you already know. You’ve been looking through the papers.”
Italo gulped.
“The most normal thing in the world. I’d have done the same thing. Let’s just say that it was best for me to make myself scarce down in Rome. Decisions from on high.”
“I see.”
“No, you don’t see. But let it suffice.”
Luisa’s eyes were the first thing he noticed. Big baby blues. Along with the oval face and copper blond hair that made her vaguely resemble an Italian-English actress.
“Greta Scacchi,” Rocco whispered to officer Pierron as he approached Luisa, who was sitting waiting on a bench.
“Huh?” asked Italo.
“She looks like Greta Scacchi. The actress. You know the one?”
“No.”
The deputy police chief extended his hand to the woman, who had risen to her feet and was holding out hers.
“Deputy Police Chief Rocco Schiavone.”
“Luisa Pec.”
The woman’s hand was hard and callused, in sharp contrast with the softness of her face and the curves of her body. On her cheeks, a faint blush made her look hale and healthy.
“Please follow me to my office, Signora Pec.”
Luisa and Rocco walked off down the hallway. “So last night your husband didn’t come home?”
“No. He didn’t come home last night.”
“Prego, take a seat,” and Rocco opened the door.
He immediately noticed a whiff of cannabis and hurried to throw open the