Blow Fly

77

LUCY SLIPS THE FOLDED PAPERS out of her back pocket as Berger sits next to her on the couch.

"Police reports, autopsy reports," Lucy tells her.

Berger takes the computer printouts from her and goes through them carefully but quickly. "Wealthy American lawyer, frequently in Szczecin on business, frequently stayed at the Radisson. Apparently shot himself in the right temple with a small-caliber pistol. Clothed, had defecated on himself, a STAT alcohol of point-two-six." She glances up at Lucy.

"For a boozer like him," Lucy says, "that was probably nothing."

Berger reads some more. The reports are detailed, noting the feces-stained cashmere pants, briefs and towels, the empty champagne bottle, the half-empty bottle of vodka.

"It appears he was sick. Let's see," Berger continues, "twenty-four hundred dollars in American cash inside a sock in the bottom drawer of a dresser. A gold watch, gold ring, a gold chain. No evidence of robbery. No one heard a gunshot, or at least never reported hearing one.

"Evidence of a meal. Steak, a baked potato, shrimp cocktail, chocolate cake, vodka. Someone-can't pronounce the name-working in the kitchen seems to think, but isn't sure, that Rocco had room service around eight p.m., the night of the twenty-sixth. Origin of a champagne bottle is unknown but is a brand the hotel carries. No fingerprints on the bottle except Rocco Caggiano's… Room was checked for prints, one cartridge case recovered-it and the pistol checked for prints. Again, Rocco's. His hands checked positive for gunshot residue, yada yada yada. They were thorough." She looks up at Lucy. "We're not even halfway through the police report."

"What about witnesses?" Lucy asks. "Anybody suspicious…"

"No." Berger slides one page behind another. "Autopsy stuff… uh… heart and liver disease, why am I not surprised? Atherosclerosis, et cetera, et cetera. Gunshot wound, contact with charred lacerated margins and no suppling. Instantly fatal-that would make your aunt crazy. You know how she hates it when someone says that a person died instantly. Nobody dies instantly, right Lucy?" Berger peers over the top of her reading glasses and meets Lucy's eyes. "You think Rocco died in seconds, minutes, maybe an hour?"

Lucy doesn't answer her.

"His body was found at nine-fifteen a.m., April twenty-eighth…" Berger looks quizzically at her. "By then he'd been dead less than forty hours. Not even two days." She frowns. "Body found by… I can't pronounce his name, a maintenance guy. Body badly decomposed." She pauses. "Infested with maggots." She glances up. "That's a very advanced stage of decomposition for someone who's been dead such a short time in what sounds to me like a relatively cool room."

"Cool? The room temperatures in there?" Lucy cranes her neck to look at a printout she can't translate.

"Says the window was slightly opened, temperature in the room sixty-eight degrees, even though thermostat set on seventy-four degrees, but the weather was cool, temperature low sixties during the day, mid-fifties at night. Rain…" She is frowning. "My French is getting rusty. Ummm. No suspicion of foul play. Nothing unusual happened inside the hotel the night Rocco Caggiano ordered room service, the alleged night, if the room service guy has the date right. Ummm." She scans. "A prostitute made a scene in the lobby. There's a description. That's interesting. I'd love to depose her."

Berger looks up. Her eyes linger on Lucy's.

"Well," she says in a way that unsettles Lucy, "we all know how confusing time of death can be. And it appears that the police aren't sure of the time and date of Rocco's last meal, so to speak. Apparently, the hotel doesn't log room service orders on a computer."

She leans forward in her chair, a look on her face Lucy has seen before. It terrifies her.

"Shall I call your aunt about time of death? Want me to call our good detective friend Marino and ask his opinion about the disruptive prostitute in the lobby? The description in this report sounds a little bit like you. Only she was foreign. Maybe Russian."

Berger gets up from the couch and moves close to the windows, looking out. She starts shaking her head and running her fingers through her hair. When she turns around, her eyes are veiled with the protective curtain she keeps drawn virtually every hour of her every day.

The prosecutorial interview has begun.