A Season for the Dead

Twenty-Seven

San Giovanni, once a refuge for fourth-century pilgrims, was now a modern hospital that sprawled through countless buildings covering a vast parcel of the Caelian Hill. The complex stretched from the old narrow road that led to the church of San Clemente across to the traffic-choked highway that fed streams of cars, buses and trucks into the piazza from the south. Only minutes away was the Clivus Scauri, where Falcone and his men were engaged in the discovery of a further victim and the disappearance of the priest who once, albeit briefly, worked the corridors of the place where Nic Costa now lay on a table in a small cubicle, his head hurting like hell.

Luca Rossi and Sara Farnese had only just argued their way into the room. They sat on the bench seat watching the nurse bandage him, watching the way he listened to the doctor talk about concussion and how, all things being equal, he ought to spend the day in a ward just to make sure there were no lingering aftereffects. His knife wound was minor. The blow to his head when he fell and hit the rock had left a livid but compact bruise on his right temple. Still, Nic Costa was alive and maddeningly ignorant of the reason for it. He waited for the doctor to go away, then turned to the big man.

“I don’t like the look on your face, Uncle Luca. You got him?”

“We wish,” Rossi replied miserably.

Costa was wide-eyed with amazement. “Christ. What more do you need?”

Sara Farnese looked at her feet. Rossi glowered at him from across the room. “Hey, kid. Don’t get precious with me.”

“There were how many men there?”

“Enough!” The big man’s flabby white face turned an ugly shade of angry pink. “Eight. Maybe ten. Think about it. They were there to protect the farm. Which was where you were supposed to be. None of them knew you were running around doing this crazy stuff somewhere else. Falcone is going to tear the skin off my back for letting you go out there. Except, of course, you weren’t even where I thought you were going to be. Remember the deal? You stay in the drive? Where we could be close by?”

Nic’s head ached. He did remember now, and Luca Rossi was right. He’d no one to blame but himself. He remembered too his glimpse of Sara at the window and the terror on her face.

“I’m sorry, Luca. I was an idiot.”

“Yeah, well…” The big man cast a glance at Sara next to him. “You survived. No thanks to us. And we’ve got a name. And another body. Enough there for Falcone to get happy about or crucify us with, depending on his mood.”

“I’ll check myself out. I have to go there.”

“Nic, the doctors…” Sara began to say.

“This one’s even less pretty than the others,” Rossi grumbled, taking it as a given that Costa would leave the hospital. “What can you do?”

Nic moved his shoulder and was pleased by the small amount of pain that resulted. “It’s not bad. Besides, Luca, you need me. I saw this man, remember?”

Rossi looked at the woman again. Nic couldn’t work it out. There was something Luca Rossi disliked about Sara Farnese. It was so powerful he seemed to hate even sitting next to her in the hospital cubicle.

“Doesn’t matter that you saw him, Nic. Weren’t you listening? We’ve got his name. Ms. Farnese here provided it once we’d got you into the ambulance. Seems she had it all along.”

His head hurt even more after that. Sara was staring at the white wall, intent on nothing. Her hair was tousled. It made her look different. She’d left the house with him, unable to put on the mask she normally wore to keep the world from touching her.

“I’ve got some calls to make,” Rossi said. “Your father decided to stay at home once the ambulance people said you’d be fine. I’ll let him know things are okay. I’m outside when you want me. Two minutes away, max. They can take her someplace else. Falcone says the protective custody thing is still on. I’m guessing you won’t want her back at the farm, so they’re making other arrangements.”

He patted the pack of cigarettes in his pocket. “Smoking time too.” Then he was gone, out into the long corridor illuminated by cold fluorescent lights.

Nic Costa pushed himself upright off the hospital table. The cut in his shoulder was minor. His head would get better. It was all a matter of time. She still wouldn’t look at him.

“Thanks,” he said softly.

Sara turned. Her eyes were scared. Astonished too, he thought.

“What?”

“I don’t know what happened out there, Sara. But you stopped him. Thanks.”

Her head moved from side to side, her long, unkempt hair swaying with the motion. “I saw him from the window, Nic. I knew something was wrong. When I got there he ran away. I imagine he was scared everyone else was turning up. He didn’t want witnesses.”

That was a lie. He knew it for sure. He’d heard them talking.

“You spoke to him.”

“Of course I did! I screamed at him to stop. What do you expect?”

“No.” His memory was hazy yet there was something fixed there: He recalled the tenor of their conversation. “You spoke to him. He answered you. It was more than that. You knew who he was.”

“Enough to know his name. He used to hang around the Vatican Library when I was there. We’d talk sometimes.”

“You didn’t…” There was no easy way of asking.

“What?” she demanded, suddenly furious. “Sleep with him? No. Believe it or not, there are men in Rome who’ve been denied that privilege. I hope that doesn’t come as too much of a shock.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh, God.” She shook her head, eyes closed, miserable. “I’m the one who’s sorry. You don’t know what you’re saying. I saw him. I yelled at him until he ran away. Then as soon as he was gone I yelled until the police came. For you and that photographer. He’s hurt more badly than you, they say. He’ll be in here for some time.”

It was possible she was right. He could have imagined the entire exchange.

“Someone else is dead?”

“So they say.”

“You know this one too?”

She picked up her purse and put it on her knee. “I think I should leave. They want me to stay somewhere else. They say they’re sending another police team to pick me up.”

Costa got up off the table and walked, a little shakily, across the room. He sat next to her on the bench, very close. He wanted to make a point: that she couldn’t chase him away so easily.

“Do you know him?” he asked again.

The old Sara looked frankly at him, unafraid. “It was a woman.”

He thought about the bold, unabashed way in which she said it. He said, “So did you know her?”

“I think I slept with her once. Is that what you want to hear?”

“You think?”

“No. I did. They showed me a picture. She was a politician apparently. I slept with her a few months ago. I can’t be certain when. I don’t keep that kind of diary. I apologize. It happened once. It was her idea. Not my kind of thing really.”

He sighed. She could still hurt him, even though he knew this was what she intended. “I don’t understand any of this, Sara. I don’t understand why you do it. I don’t understand why you never gave us her name.”

She laughed, a dry, deliberate laugh, one that was supposed to make him hate her. “You’re so old-fashioned, Nic. You and your father. I love him. Really. I could talk to him for hours because it’s like talking to someone from another time. But the world’s not the way you two imagine it. Maybe it never was. You ask me why I never gave you her name? What makes you think I knew her name in the first place? It was just one night. That’s all.”

It made no sense. It couldn’t be the whole story. “But why?” he insisted.

“Because…” She had to hunt for the answer. “You’ve your kind of love. I’ve mine. We’re different, you and I. What happened satisfied me. Then it’s gone, with nothing lingering, nothing to go stale. No awkward attachments. No bitterness, no pain.”

“So it’s not a kind of love at all?” he said without thinking.

“And it isn’t gone, Sara. Something stays behind. Something that may go wrong. Then people get hurt. Sometimes horribly.”

Her eyes widened. “So this is my fault?” she demanded furiously. “You think I’m to blame for what’s happened?”

It was a stupid thing for him to say in a way but she had misread his point. “Not for a minute.” He stood up, trying to convince himself he didn’t feel too bad. His head was clearing rapidly.

“I knew you wouldn’t stay here,” she said bitterly. “Why can’t you just leave it alone?”

He watched her rise and collect her purse, organize herself for whatever lay ahead. “It’s what they pay me for.”

“No they don’t. No one pays you to risk your life.”

“Next time I’ll be more careful.”

Sara Farnese stared into his face. Then, gently, she touched his cheek with two slender fingers. It was a deliberate act, one he could not mistake.

“Nic,” she said carefully. “If you asked, would they take you off this case?”

“I guess so. But why would I want to do that?”

“Because I want you to? This is about me. There may be things you’ll find out that I don’t want you to know. Things that will make you loathe me.”

“I’m a cop. They give cops drugs to make us unshockable.”

“This is not a joke.”

“I know. Don’t worry about it.”

She glanced at him, uneasy. “Then you’ll ask for another assignment?”

“Are you kidding? This is shaping up to be the biggest thing of my career. What would I look like if I backed out now? I don’t give up on things. Not just because they might be hard or awkward or make me face decisions I’d rather avoid. That doesn’t get you anywhere.”

“It makes life easy,” she said.

“It makes life dull and boring and… perhaps pointless even.”

She nodded. “I thought you’d say that.”

“Thank you. Now, you face a decision. I have to go back to the team. You can stay in this safe house of Falcone’s. Or I can make the case for you to go back to the farm. Not for my sake you understand. For my father’s. He enjoys your company.”

She didn’t recoil from the idea. He was glad. “Will he agree?” she asked. “That awful boss of yours? I don’t like him. He’s too…hard.”

“Falcone thinks that’s what’s required of him. If I ask him to let you stay, I don’t think he’d object. Let’s face it: Your security can’t be much at risk. You met this man. He didn’t harm you. Did he?”

“No,” she answered quietly. “But what about your safety?”

He’d thought about that already. “I’ll be more careful. Besides, I don’t think he’ll come back. It’s as if he has an agenda. I wasn’t really on it. And I told him the truth. That we just set this up for him, the idea that something was going on between us. I told him it was all a lie.”

Was that the way a psychopath really behaved? Nic Costa wondered. Being so picky about who he killed? A chill, dark suspicion surfaced. What if this lunatic had seen him there on the ground, spared his life, then wondered afterward: What was the point? Would he make the same choice again? Or did he just let the innocent off the hook once and then, the next time, think… to hell with it?

There was a sound outside in the corridor. Luca Rossi poked his big white face around the door and looked pointedly at his watch. Costa waved at him for one minute more. Sara waited until the big man retreated, then said, “You’ll find him, won’t you? He’s sick. He needs help.”

“We’ll find him.” Nic hesitated, wondering whether he dared ask.

“Sara?”

She didn’t like the tone of his voice. She knew, he guessed, what was coming.

“Yes?”

“Are there more names we ought to know? Are there more people like this woman? People who aren’t names, just faces?”

“A few. Not recently. I don’t know who they are. I don’t know how you could reach them.” She said it with such conviction. He wanted to believe her.

“There’s a man in the Vatican. Cardinal Denney…”

“Nic!” She was the real Sara again. He could see the tears starting in her eyes. “Is this you talking? Or the policeman? How am I supposed to know who I’m dealing with when you do this to me?”

“You mean the answer would be different depending on if I was asking as a cop?”

“Not at all,” she replied immediately. “I mean that I want to understand what your interest is. Whether you’re asking as a friend. Or because you think it’s your job.”

“As a friend.”

“I don’t know him,” she insisted. “Whoever you are.”