Viper

73

Santa Lucia, Napoli Sorrentino had been found by his housekeeper.

Dead in the middle of his waterbed.

Blood and water all over the place.

Bella Di Lazio had taken her weekly money off the worktop, rung the cops and gone home.

She wouldn't weep for him. He'd been mean and arrogant. Hadn't given her a pay rise or a tip in the two years she'd worked for him. Good riddance.

Less than two hours after Bella had gone, the ME had already completed his visit.

Sylvia Tomms arrived with her brain still reeling from all the other developments – Creed; the Tortoricci murder; the killings at the Castellani camp; and of course Franco, the runaway cousin.

Lieutenant Marco Vassopolus – known by all who couldn't remember how to say or spell his surname as Marco V – showed her around the scene. 'Housekeeper found him like this. Bullet wound to the skull. Silencer. No forced entry.'

'ME give you time of death?'

Marco shook his head. 'Still fixing it. He did a partial on the body, said by the cooling he reckoned it might be ten to twelve hours ago.'

Sylvia checked her watch. 'Late night, early morning by the sound of it.' She walked the protective transparent sheets around the deflated, blood-soaked waterbed where the corpse still lay. It looked like Sorrentino had fallen into the mouth of a giant man-eating plant. Something straight out of Beetlejuice.

'The guy was a skunk, but he didn't deserve this.' She bent over the body. 'When will the van be here to move him?'

'Next thirty minutes. Morgue said they'll ring when it's on its way.'

Sylvia peered at Sorrentino's waxy face. His jet-black hair was now plastered in the crimson gel of his own blood. 'Hard to think that he was such a playboy. Tried it on with everything in a dress. Even me. Guess dying on his bed is somehow appropriate.'

'Exhibits team said they found a lot of – you know – erotica, around the place.'

'Erotica?' Sylvia laughed. 'Any chance of being more precise?'

He coloured a little. 'Lubricants, lotions, velvet handcuffs -'

'Velvet, eh? Imagine if we had those as standard issue. Any letters or diaries?'

'No letters. We found some address books. Not one black book, but two – well, actually they were red and green address books.'

'Let me guess, one for work, one for pleasure?'

'Both pleasure. The green one was for women he'd slept with – complete with ratings out of ten – the red one was for those he was still hunting.'

'Yeah, well, I guess all of us reds can heave a sigh of relief.' Sylvia grimaced as she looked closer at Sorrentino's empty eyes and pale-blue lips.

'The bed's blown out but he wasn't popped on the mattress,' said Marco. 'Look near the edge and you can see where the perp slit it with something after he dropped the vic there.'

Marco always talked in American cop jargon and it irritated the hell out of her. She'd have picked another lieutenant if there had been any others to pick. Some of her homicide squad were currently working more cases than she was, and to top it all Pietro had called in sick.

'Where exactly was he when he got shot?' asked Sylvia, noticing no powder burn marks on Sorrentino's face. 'From the size and shape of the flesh wound it looks as though he was more than a metre away. Am I right?'

'Doc said the same – though he didn't stay long. He had another case to get to. Said he'd do his notes on this one when he got back to the lab.'

'Who was it?'

'Larusso.'

Sylvia slapped her forehead. 'Was he sober?'

Marco V shrugged. It was about as diplomatic as he could manage.

Sylvia said what they were both thinking. 'That man's a disgrace. He should run a wine cellar not a Medical Examiner's desk. What else did he say?'

Marco motioned his boss around the circular bed towards the doorway. 'See the spatter up the wall? Larusso thinks the shooter took Sorrentino out just after he entered the bedroom. Light switch is interior left side of the door. Il Grande Leone comes in the darkened room, pops on the switch, takes a few paces forward and then, blam! That's the way he thinks it went down.'

Sylvia studied the spatter marks. She wasn't so sure. Sorrentino was a tall guy. Six foot, maybe six-one. The blood had sprayed vertically, not horizontally. 'Look at the cornice and the ceiling,' she said. 'We've got spray up there and…' she looked closer, wrinkled her face and added, 'what also looks like part of his once great brain. See the grey matter, clinging to the bottom of the cornice?'

Marco cringed. 'I see it.'

Sylvia paced around again; her feet in slip-ons, similar to the plastic clogs surgeons wear. 'Get the techies to send me the first reports when they've run a laser trajectory kit over it.' She pulled up beneath the blood spray and examined the area at her feet. 'This carpet's all fucked up with blood, but look at the wall. This brown spot here around waist height looks like something else, maybe a trace of faeces. Did the great La-fucking-Russo sniff this one out?'

Marco shook his head.

Sylvia took in the room from the killer's perspective.

Walked it through. 'Sorrentino was made to stand here by the shooter. Then – well, then he literally had the shit frightened out of him before he was killed. He'd pressed himself against the wall, scared to move.' She pointed to the dead scientist. 'When you move him, you'll see he messed himself. Our ME should have seen that. And if he had been sober and not aching to run for his next drink, then maybe he would have done.' Something else was wrong. A shot from close up should have blown a bigger hole in the wall, not to mention a bigger hole in Sorrentino's head. 'Forget what the Prof said. Bernardo wasn't killed straight away. It wasn't that kind of killing.' Her eyes roamed across the room. 'Even more interesting is the question of where our shooter had been standing.'

Marco was still staring at the stains of blood, brains and shit. 'Why? Why does it matter that much where he was? Someone blew Sorrentino's brains out and dumped him on his bed.'

Sylvia wagged a finger. 'It certainly does matter. For a start it tells us the killer is a man, not a woman. Look at the carpet pile and the blood flow. There are no drag marks across the carpet. Someone picked up a six-foot-tall, dead man, carried him several metres and dumped him on the bed. Not many women can do that.'

'I've dated a couple,' he joked. 'Not that that's anything to brag about.'

'As may be, Romeo. But I doubt any of them could put a bullet in your brain from across the bedroom with one single shot.'

Marco started to get the picture. 'The killer was a pro?'

Sylvia wondered how Marco had made lieutenant. 'Another thing; given most of the blood is on and around the bed, leaking out towards the wall, our man may well have got himself covered in it. You can bet someone's burning old clothes tonight, if they haven't done so already.'

Marco V started making notes. He'd have street dumpsters, house garbage sacks, garden fires and local drains checked straight away.

Sylvia walked and talked from the doorway to the corpse. 'I think our killer was waiting in the dark. I'd say he stuck his gun to Sorrentino's head when the light came on. Then he moved him over here.' She stepped gingerly to the spot where the carpet was stained the heaviest. 'While Sorrentino stood here, the gun still on him, the shooter stepped back and made himself comfortable on the bed. I think for a minute or so he just sat there and enjoyed scaring the living crap out of him.'

'Forensics said they'd come back to the bed, they're still dusting other parts of the apartment.'

Sylvia moved back to the corpse and examined it once more. 'Then, after he'd had his moment of fun, he shot him. Just the once. Dead centre in the forehead from nearly three metres away. Hence the blood and brain sprayed up there on the wall and ceiling.'

'So, I'm right. It certainly sounds like a pro job.'

'You're an annoying little shit, but yes, you are right.' Sylvia pointed up at the wall in front of her. 'Now, when forensics dig the bullet out of that wall, I want to know its entire ballistic history and I want to know it in Ferrari-fast time. I'm betting that for once it's Sorrentino's work and not his play that got him into trouble. And I also bet that slug matches those from the victims at the Castellani campsite.'

Sylvia had seen enough. She stepped out of the crime scene and shuffled off her gloves and changed shoes. On the way to the car she checked her phone and picked up a message from Susanna Martinelli, a coordinator in the Incident Room. They finally had an ID on the second victim found buried near Vesuvius.

It was nineteen-year-old Gloria Pirandello.

She'd been missing for six years and was another one of the names on Creed's list.