The next morning, Fornelli called to express his gratitude again.
“Guido, I can’t thank you enough. Believe me, I understood what you were trying to tell us yesterday. I know this is a last-ditch effort that probably won’t lead to anything. I know this isn’t the kind of work you do.”
“It’s okay, Sabino, don’t worry about it.”
“When the prosecutor told me that he was planning to close the case, the only thing I could think to do was to call you. Those poor people are both just ravaged by grief. He’s worse off than she is, as you probably noticed.”
“Is he taking some kind of medication?”
He was silent for a moment.
“Yes, he’s drugged to the gills. But it doesn’t seem to have any effect, except to make him sleepy. He was—” Fornelli realized the grim implication of his use of the past tense, and quickly stopped himself. “He is very fond of his daughter, and all this has just crushed him. The mother is stronger. She’s ready to fight. I haven’t seen her shed a tear since the girl disappeared.”
“I didn’t ask yesterday whether you tried to get in touch with that TV show about missing persons.”
“Chi l’ha visto? Yes, they included a short segment about Manuela’s disappearance in a couple of episodes, and they put her in their database. But it didn’t do a lot of good. You’ll see in the file that there’s a statement by a nutcase who called the Carabinieri after watching the show. He said that he’d seen her working as a prostitute on the outskirts of Foggia.”
“Did the Carabinieri look into it?”
“Yes, they did. And they realized almost immediately that this guy systematically calls police stations and Carabinieri barracks all over Italy to report sightings of dozens of missing people. Six or seven other people called in to say that they thought they’d seen a girl who looked like Manuela at the Ventimiglia train station, in Bologna, in Brescia dressed as a gypsy, in a small town near Crotone, and some other place that I can’t remember. All of them were interviewed and reports were filed, but nothing solid emerged. The Carabinieri explained to me that every time a missing person is discussed on television, they receive a bunch of phone calls from people who claim to have information but actually know nothing at all. They may not all be pathological liars, technically speaking, but they do it to get attention.”
I let this new information sink in, and realized that at this point I was curious to take a look at the file.
“All right, Sabino, let me take a look at the documents. I’ll see if there are grounds to consider a new investigation, and maybe to hire a private investigator. But if I don’t see anything, if I decide there’s no point in looking into it any further, you’re going to have to take back that check.”
“Just deposit it for now. We’ll talk again after you’ve had a chance to examine the documents. And reading a file is work, in any case.”
I was about to say that I’d take the money when I’d earned it. I was going to say it in a courteous yet firm tone of voice, one that would not allow him to answer. Then it struck me as a pretentious cliché. So I just told him to send me the documents as soon as possible. He said that I’d have a complete copy of the entire file that afternoon, and that was the end of our conversation.
To whatever extent possible, it’s best to avoid pretentious clichés, I thought.
That afternoon, someone from Fornelli’s law office came and handed Pasquale a sizable stack of files. Pasquale carried them into my office and reminded me that in about half an hour we had a meeting with the building commissioner from a small town in the surrounding province; our client had received a formal notification that he was under judicial investigation for malfeasance and illegal approval of subdivisions. For all I knew, the building commissioner was a perfectly law-abiding person, but in some small towns politics takes the form of anonymous accusations and complaints with the public prosecutor’s office.
I let the half hour slide by as I leafed through the file without really focusing on it. More than anything else, I felt it. Those photocopies had an aura that planted a deep and terrible sense of unease in me. I thought about the girl’s parents and about how I would have experienced something as horrifying as the death of a daughter. I tried to imagine it, but I couldn’t. It was so staggering that my imagination failed to provide me with a specific depiction of it. I could barely guess at the nature and scope of that horror.
Why would a normal young woman, with a normal life and a normal family, vanish from one moment to the next, without warning, without giving a sign, without leaving the slightest trace?
Was it possible that she had simply left of her own free will and was so heartless as to abandon her family to its anguish and despair? I decided that wasn’t possible.
If she hadn’t left of her own free will, two possibilities remained. Either someone had kidnapped her—but why?—or someone had killed her, intentionally or accidentally, and then arranged to conceal her body.
Those were some brilliant ideas, I thought. Signore and Signora Ferraro and my colleague Fornelli had certainly made the right decision when they hired a latter-day Auguste Dupin like myself.
The big question, though, was this: What could I do? Even if I read the file and managed to find a shortcoming in the investigation, what would the next step be? In spite of my conversation with Fornelli, I had absolutely no intention of hiring a private investigator. There must have been good investigators around, but I’d never been lucky enough to meet one. I had had only two experiences with detective agencies, and they had both been disasters. I’d sworn I’d never make that mistake again.
Moreover, the notion that I might start investigating the matter myself was crazy, crazy but dangerously enticing.
The only serious option, if I did manage to identify a plausible clue of any kind, was to request a meeting with the prosecutor and—very tactfully, because such people were quick to take offense—suggest that he investigate a little further before closing the case once and for all.
When the building commissioner arrived, I was in the throes of this sort of speculation. Luckily, I now had to think about him and his problems with the law, which distracted me from my tortured logic.
He seemed pretty upset. He was a high school teacher. This was the first time he’d held government office, and this was also his first brush with the law. He was afraid he might be arrested any minute.
I asked him to explain the situation in general terms. I took a quick look at the official notice he’d received and read through a few other documents he’d brought with him. In the end, I told him he could relax: As far as I could tell, there was really no serious evidence of wrongdoing on his part.
He seemed dubious, but relieved. He thanked me and we said our good-byes; I promised to meet with the prosecutor and inform him that my client was entirely willing to come in for an interview and felt sure he could clear up his role in the matter.
One by one, my colleagues—oh, how I dislike that word—came into my office to say good night before going home. This ceremony always makes me feel like a doddering old fool.
When I was finally alone, I called down to the Japanese take-out place a couple of blocks from my office and ordered a truly outsized meal of sushi, sashimi, temaki, uramaki, and a soybean salad. When the woman taking my order over the phone asked if I wanted something to drink, I hesitated for just a moment, then asked for a well-chilled bottle of white wine as well.
“Chopsticks and glasses for two, I imagine,” the young woman said.
“Of course, for two,” I answered.