Day Of Confession

25

Once again Roscani had to work to ignore Farel. The Vatican policeman was gruff, direct, abrasive when it suited him, putting the Holy See before anything else, as if it and only it had any stake here. It was what you got when you dealt with him, especially if you were from a police force outside his control, and if you were, like Roscani, a person far more introspective, and a great deal less political. Roscani's daily life was devoted to grinding it out and doing the best job he possibly could, whatever it was and whatever it took. It was an attribute he'd learned from his father – a taskmaster and maker and seller of leather goods who had died of a heart attack in his own shop at eighty while trying to move a hundred-pound anvil; the same attribute that he tried to instill in his sons.

So, if you were like that and you realized it, you did your best to disregard people like Farel altogether, and devote your energies to things more positive and useful to what you were doing. Like Scala's comment after Farel had gone, about what they had seen on the video, pointing out the bandage on Harry Addison's forehead and suggesting that most probably he had been injured when Pio's car collided with the truck. If so, and if a medical professional had treated him and they could find that person, it would give them a direction the man had gone.

And Castelletti, not to be outdone, had picked up the videocassette itself and written down the manufacturer and manufacturer's batch code number printed on the back. Who knew where a trace like that could go, what it might turn up? Manufacturer, to wholesaler, to a store chain, to a certain store, to a clerk who might remember selling it to someone in particular.

And then the meeting was over, with the room emptying of everyone but Roscani and Taglia, Taglia with a decision to make, Roscani to hear it.

'You want to give the video to the media. And, like the TV show America's Most Wanted, let the public help us find them,' Taglia said softly.

'Sometimes it works.'

'And sometimes it drives fugitives farther from sight… But there are other considerations. What Farel was talking about. The delicate nature of the whole thing. And the diplomatic implications that could rise between Italy and the Vatican… The pope may wish one thing personally, but Farel did not mention Cardinal Palestrina for no reason… He is the real keeper of the Vatican flame and how the world views the Holy See.'

'In other words, diplomatically, scandal is worse than murder. And you are not going to release the video.'

'No, we are not – Gruppo Cardinale will continue to treat the hunt for fugitives as classified and confidential. All pertinent files will continue to be protected.' Taglia stood. 'I'm sorry, Otello… Buona sera.'

^'Buona sera…'

The door closed behind Taglia, and Roscani was left alone. Frustrated, emasculated. Maybe, he thought, his wife was right. For all his dedication, the world was neither just nor perfect. And there was little he could do to change it. What he could do, however, was to stop railing so hard against it; something that would make his life and his family's a little easier. His wife was right, of course. But the reality, as they both knew, was that he could do as little to change himself as he could the world. He had become a policeman because he did not want to go into his father's business and because he was just married and wanted stability before starting a family, and because the profession itself had seemed both exciting and noble.

But then something else had happened: victims' lives began to touch his on an everyday basis, lives torn apart, ripped often irreparably by senseless violence and intrusion. His promotion to homicide made it worse: for some reason, he began to see the murdered, whatever their age, not so much as themselves but as someone's children – his own, at three or four or eight or twelve – each deserving to live life to its end without such terrible and vicious interruption. In that, Cardinal Parma was as much a mother's son as Pio had been. It made finding the guilty all the more imperative. Get them before they did it again. But how often had he gotten them, only to have the courts, for one reason or another, let them go? It had driven him to rail against injustice, within the law or without. He was fighting an unwinnable war, but the thing was, he kept fighting anyway. And maybe the reason he did was simply that he was his father's son and, like him, had grown up to be a bulldog.

Abruptly, Roscani reached out and picked up the TV's remote, then pointed it at the large-screen television. There was a click as it came on. He hit rewind and then play and watched the video again. Saw Harry on the stool, saw him talk behind dark glasses.

'Danny, I'm asking you to come in… To give yourself up… They know everything… Please, for me… Come in… please… Please…'

Roscani saw him pause at the end, then start to say something more just as the tape itself ended. He hit rewind once more and played it again. And then again. And again. The more he watched, the more he felt the anger build inside him. He wanted to look up and see Pio come through the door, smiling and easy as always, talking about his family, asking Roscani about his. Instead he saw Harry, Mr Hollywood in sunglasses, sitting on a stool, begging his own brother to give himself up so that he could be killed.

CLICK.

Roscani shut off the television. In the semidarkness the thoughts came back. He didn't want them to, but they did. How he would kill Harry Addison when he got him. And there was no doubt at all that he would get him.

CLICK.

He turned the TV back on and lit a cigarette, forcefully blowing out the match afterward. He couldn't allow himself to think like that. He wondered how his father would have reacted if he had been in his place.

Distance was what he needed. And he got it by playing the tape again. And once more. And once more after that. Forcing himself to watch it coldly, analytically, the experienced policeman looking for the smallest piece of something that would help.

The more he watched, the more two things began to intrigue him – the textured, patterned wallpaper barely visible behind Harry; and what happened just before the end, when Harry's head started to come up with his mouth open as if to say something more, but he never did because the tape finished. Sliding a small notebook from his jacket, he made a note.

– Have video image computer enhanced/wallpaper.

– Have English-speaking lip reader analyze unspoken word(s).

REWIND.

PLAY.

Roscani hit the mute button and watched in silence. When it was finished, he did the same thing and watched it again.