For once, they all showed up at the police station at the same time, well ahead of the usual hour for the start of their shift. For some of them, like Ottavia, this was nothing new; for others, such as Aragona, the event bordered on the miraculous.
The tropical heat was not yet pounding through the building, because Guida had only just started up the boiler that steam-heated the radiators. Romano, who had no problem with the cold, stripped down to his shirtsleeves; Alex, on the other hand, kept her jacket on.
Palma looked around with some satisfaction, but on his face there was no mistaking the vein of worry that almost never seemed to subside lately.
“I’m happy we’re all here, because that means we can hold a little war council all our own at the start of the day. You know the way matters stand, whether we consider it to be lucky or unlucky, nothing else much has happened in the past few days, and now the press is all over us on this case of the murder of those two kids. The truth is that we’re not making a great deal of progress. We haven’t flushed out the father yet, in spite of the fact that we’ve put out all-points bulletins with mug shots. I’m just wondering how a guy the police know so well can vanish into thin air like that.”
Ottavia was disconsolate.
“Unfortunately, it happens. A couple of times a day I talk to the carabinieri in Roccapriora, who have been put on emergency alert and are keeping a close eye on the family’s few friends, relatives, and acquaintances. I even dug down into a couple of harebrained escapades pulled off by Foti, the Varricchio girl’s young gentleman friend, but really they were just stupid pranks, in the worst cases. So, all things considered, we have nothing to show in that connection.”
“And what about Cava, the guy from the modeling agency, do we have anything new on him?” Alex asked. “He made a terrible impression—on me, anyway.”
“I did a few searches from my computer at home, after you all called me when you were done with your meeting. There’s not a lot to report there: he’s been married to the same woman for twenty years, they have no children; she was a model and was pretty well known, but then she quit. Which is something that happens. I found an article in a scandal sheet from ten years ago or so that talked about a tremendous scene during the summer in some club near the beach. It seems she was drunk and accused him of cheating on her with another woman, also a model, but nothing else seems to have happened.”
Pisanelli butted in.
“The agency is fairly well known. I asked a friend of mine who’s a fashion journalist, and she told me that it’s one of the biggest agencies in southern Italy, if not the biggest outright.”
“Which means that it ranks about two hundredth nationally,” Aragona grumbled. “Like all the other companies around here.”
Pisanelli shrugged his shoulders.
“All the same, it has a pretty good reputation. I checked it out with the local courthouse and there don’t seem to be any lawsuits pending against it in the labor courts, which is pretty unusual for a company in that line of work. Ironclad contracts, and everything seems to be done in the light of day, withholding and worker’s comp and all the rest of it.”
“Good to know,” said Lojacono, “but we’re not talking about tax evasion here, and Cava is no Al Capone. He struck me as a very controlled person, maybe even a little too much so, the typical behavior of people with deep-seated obsessions. The profile of the murderer is that of a person subject to outbursts of rage, moments of absolute blind fury.”
“For instance, the young man who sings and plays the guitar,” Romano said distractedly. “You described him as a moody, emotional individual. And since we know he hit her once, you turned him into the favored guilty party of the day.”
Palma spread both arms wide.
“Look, basically we’re just stumbling around in the dark, here. We’re waiting for the final report from the forensic squad, we’re still waiting to track down and question the father, we’re waiting for someone to make a false step. We’re waiting. And while we wait, time passes, and you know that statistics tell us that . . . ”
Aragona finshed his sentence for him.
“ . . . if the guilty party isn’t apprehended in the first twenty-four hours, the odds of catching them drop precipitously.”
The commissario glared at him.
“That’s exactly right. And you aren’t the only one who knows that, they know it at police headquarters, too, where they can’t wait to lunge at us like a flock of vultures eager to take the case away from us. A couple of days, no more than that, and we’ll have to throw in the towel.”
“It’s not over yet,” Lojacono said grimly. “Leaving aside the report from the forensic squad, there are plenty of other elements still missing. We need to understand the reason for the strange sum the Varricchio girl asked Cava to give her, thirty-seven hundred euros; we need to get over to the university to figure out whether the young man, Biagio, had confided in anyone there; and most of all, we have to find the father of the two victims, Cosimo. They can’t take the case away from us before we fill in the picture with those items. We’ll get busy, but you have to give us cover.”
Palma realized that everyone was looking at him. Beat-up bastards they might be, but at least they were a team. And they were a team that wasn’t about to give up the chase.
“I’ll do everything I can. But let me say it again, at the very outside we have two days. I’ll ward off the blows as they come, but if we don’t find anything, at some point I’ll have to give in. Lojacono, make full use of all the precinct’s resources, including me, if there’s anything I can do. And you two,” he said, turning to Romano and Aragona, “unless you have any new developments in the case of the molested girl, close the file and hand it off to the family court, so you can lend a hand.”
Romano shot a glance at Aragona.
“Let us have the rest of the morning, boss, and we’ll be at your service.”
Palma pointed his finger at Romano.
“Agreed, you can have the morning, but then I want your report. Get on it, guys.”
And with that Palma vanished into his office.
Aragona had a rapt, dreamy look on his face.
“God, I love it, when he does that.”