Day Of Confession

60

Three hours later, Monday, July 13, 1:20 a.m.

Roscani took the call in the nude, the way he always slept in the heat of summer. Glancing at his wife, he put the caller on hold and pulled on a light robe. A moment later he picked up the phone in his study, clicking on the desk light as he did.

A middle-aged man and his wife had been found shot to death in a storage container behind the ambulance company they owned in Pescara. They had been dead almost thirty-six hours when anxious family members had discovered them. Local investigators on the scene at first believed it was a murder-suicide, but after questioning friends and family, decided in all probability it was not. And, on the off-chance it might have a connection to the nationwide manhunt, alerted Gruppo Cardinale headquarters in Rome.

Pescara, 4:30 a.m.

Roscani walked the murder scene, the storage shed behind Servizio Ambulanza Pescara. Ettore Caputo and his wife had six children and had been married thirty-two years. They fought, Pescara police said, all the time, and about anything. Their battles were loud and violent and passionate. But never had anyone seen one touch the other in anger. And – never – had Ettore Caputo owned a gun.

Signora Caputo had been shot first. Point blank. And then her husband had apparently turned the weapon on himself, because his fingerprints were on it. The weapon was a two-shot.44 magnum derringer. Powerful, but tiny. The kind of weapon few people even knew about unless they were firearm aficionados.

Roscani shook his head. Why a derringer? Two shots didn't give you much room for miss or error. The only positive thing about it was its size, because it was easy to conceal. Stepping back, Roscani nodded to a member of the tech crew, and she moved in with an evidence bag to take the gun away. Then he turned and walked out of the shed and across a parking area to the ambulance company's front office. In the street beyond he could see people gathered in the gray early-morning light watching from behind police-barricades.

Roscani thought back to last evening, and what he and his detectives had learned from their singular tours of the hospitals outside Rome. And that was nothing more definitive than the chance they could be right. That there could have been a twenty-fifth passenger on the bus who was never recorded. Someone who could have walked away in the confusion if he was able or taken off by car or – Roscani glanced at a promotional calendar tacked on the office wall as he stepped into the company's office – by private ambulance.

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.'