The Crocodile (26 page)

Lojacono leaned towards the speakerphone. “And the father, Felice, is he still in town?”

Mariani replied hesitantly, “Well, sure, I think he is. He’s not someone you see much of in town, to tell the truth, as he tends to mind his own business. He’s the kind of person that tends to keep to himself, so to speak.”

Piras interjected. “In any case, we need to speak to him. I wonder if you’d be good enough to bring him in to the station. And let us know when you have him.”

Lojacono broke in again. “One more thing, Brigadier. Are there any other relatives?”

“Um, you know, Inspector, in these small towns, more or less everybody’s related. My wife, who is from here, has a ridiculous number of uncles and aunts and cousins, for instance. I know for sure that the De Falcos have at least two groups of relatives, but I don’t think they see a lot of each other.”

“Is there anyone who was especially close to the girl? An old boyfriend, for instance, or some dear friend?”

Mariani said nothing for a moment, obviously trying to gather his thoughts. “I seem to remember that there was a young man, maybe a distant relation of some sort, who used to see her; but then he left too, went up north for work. Though I could certainly be mistaken, it’s been so many years.”

Piras cut the conversation short. “Maybe the girl’s father will remember that boy’s name. Brigadier, please call me the minute you get back to the barracks with De Falco. We’ll have a chance to talk and then, if necessary, we’ll come out to see you. All right?”

“Certainly, dottoressa, right away. I’ll call you later.”

Roberta finishes dressing Stella and gets herself ready to go out. Luckily, it looks like the rain is subsiding for today. The baby’s only been out for some fresh air a couple of times in the past week, and the pediatrician insists on her getting outdoors as much as possible.

Perhaps this is the new frontier of medicine, thinks Roberta: the return to nature. She believes in it up to a point. Nature is fine if you’re in the foothills of the Alps or in Polynesia, but not in this city, where the air you breathe is made up of black exhaust fumes, and trucks are there loading and unloading all day long, making it impossible to push a stroller down the sidewalk.

But the pediatrician was very clear: the baby needs to be outdoors. In this phase of her development, spending too much time shut up indoors can make her more susceptible to viruses and germs.

Roberta suspects that the doctor thinks she’s too apprehensive. I’d like to see you, she wanted to tell her, if you’d had to fight for ten years, if this angel had flown down from heaven just when you were on the verge of giving up. She’s too precious to me, my little jewel.

She buttons the baby’s onesie right up to her neck and adjusts her knit cap. Stella looks up at her, recognizes her, and smiles. She reaches out her tiny hand, and Mamma pretends to eat it. Stella laughs happily; she likes this game. On the facing wall is the sketch of her imaginary daughter’s face, the sketch she did while she was pregnant. Roberta congratulates herself: she wanted her, she dreamed of her, and she finally had her. That face is exactly how Stella will look in a few months.

Roberta is very careful as she walks down the stairs, the baby in her arms. She uses them a thousand times a day, those stairs, going from the kitchen to the upper story, as she doesn’t place a lot of faith in the room monitor, even though she’s adjusted it so that she can even hear Stella breathing. She’s read terrible things, of babies dying in their sleep, inexplicable occurrences, babies suffocating in their bedclothes. She realizes that she won’t be able to spend her whole life with her eyes wide open, checking on the baby day and night, but deep in her heart there is a never-fading fear of losing her.

She thinks of Orlando, who makes fun of her for all her phobias; but deep down she knows that he shares many of them. He really is an outstanding father. When she first met him, that’s the first thing she thought: he’d make a great father. And yet he seemed anything but, with his devil-may-care attitude and his love of nice clothes and sports cars. He might have seemed superficial, but she knew how to look under the surface, and her reward was the wonderful family she now has.

Having secured the baby in the stroller, she opens the door and emerges into the fresh air outside. Yes, the weather is acceptable, at least now, at the warmest time of the day. She’s put off the walk to give the pallid sun time to heat up the air somewhat, and now she has only a short while to get her grocery shopping done before the shops close for the midday break. She accelerates her step, imitating the sound of a roaring engine for the baby’s amusement. The little girl laughs and claps her hands.

Roberta emerges from the gate, looking around cautiously before crossing the street, but there’s no one around at that time of day.

No one but an old man sitting on a bench, reading a newspaper.

Less than an hour later Piras’s telephone rang again. Brigadier Mariani sounded mortified.
“Dottoressa, I’m sorry. Signore De Falco is gone.”

Piras and Lojacono looked at each other.

“What do you mean he’s gone? He’s gone out?”

“No, he seems to have left town. Let me explain: the De Falcos live in Contrada Spicchio, a part of town a little way out of the center, in a terrace house built in the eighties. The house is all shut up, the blinds are down, it looks like no one’s been there for a while. I asked some of the neighbors and they agreed that no one had seen Signore De Falco for at least a couple of weeks, if not longer.”

Lojacono asked, “He didn’t say goodbye to anyone? He didn’t tell anyone where he’d be going?”

The brigadier replied, “No, and that’s the odd thing. He didn’t leave keys with anyone, or a forwarding address. He didn’t tell anyone anything. Very simply, one night he was there and the next morning he was gone. A woman who lives next door told me that she was worried about him so she went and knocked on his door but no one answered.”

Piras nervously twirled a lock of her hair. “All right, Brigadier, listen closely: I’m going to fax you a warrant to search that residence. Give me the complete address so I can fill out the warrant. Get out there and search the place immediately, and report back right away by phone. I don’t want you to waste any time writing up a report. In the meantime, whatever information you dig up on De Falco or anyone else with ties to the family, any strange developments, or anything else, call me immediately. Is that clear?”

“Certainly, dottoressa. Let me give you the exact address of the house.”

After hanging up the phone, Piras turned to Lojacono.

“Well, what do you think of that? This could be the jackpot, no?”

Lojacono shook his head. “Maybe, maybe not. Maybe in the aftermath of his wife’s death he decided to take a trip somewhere. Or else he killed himself too, and they’re going to find a dead body in the house. Anyway, what matters most right now is that we find out one thing: who was the father of Eleonora’s unborn child? If you think about it, it’s the one piece of the puzzle that’s still missing. This friend of mine, a woman I was talking to last night, opened my eyes to it. If I were out to take revenge for the death of a girl I cared about, who had done to herself what Eleonora did, the first person I’d be eager to settle scores with would be whoever got her pregnant and then abandoned her to her fate.”

Piras stared at him wide-eyed. “A friend of yours? A woman you were talking to? Who is this? And why on earth would you be talking to other people about such a top-secret investigation?”

Lojacono raised both palms in a gesture of self-defense. “Hold on, hold on! I didn’t name any names, and my friend is the owner of the trattoria where I have dinner every night. She doesn’t know anything about anything. Still, you have to admit that her suggestion is valid. He’s the only one who’s still missing.”

Piras thought it over. “As a matter of fact, it’s true. The classmate who told her where to get the abortion, the nurse, the doctor—all of them are basically secondary figures. The chief culprit is still missing—the one who triggered the whole affair. But how can we figure out who he is unless we at least track down De Falco’s father?”

Just then an officer stuck his head in the door and said, “Forgive me, dottoressa, but there’s someone outside who wants to speak with you. A certain Doctor Rinaldi.”

The man who walked into the small conference room was a completely different person from the one they’d met a few days earlier. The vast torment filling his reddened eyes might have been the same, but this time his demeanor was humble and confused.

His face was lined from lack of sleep, a heavy five o’clock shadow darkened his jaw, and his hair was in disarray. He was tieless and a tuft of grey chest hair protruded from his open collar. He looked years older.

In one hand he held a large green notebook, what looked like a school ledger book. He stood there until Piras waved him to a chair. He drew a deep breath and started talking.

“Dottoressa, I’ve given a lot of thought to the conversation we had the other day. To tell the truth, I also received a phone call from Signora De Matteis, whom you saw again, from what I gather. She made me . . . helped me to rethink a few things. She made me stop and consider. In a certain sense, I could say that she opened my eyes. And I realized that . . . You know that my son meant everything to me. Everything. Without him, nothing has any meaning for me now: my career, my practice, my work. Nothing. And if in some way I’ve been the cause of this . . . my god, this is madness . . . then I must do something to make amends. I need to try to make amends. To the extent that I can. You see, he wanted to be a doctor, but not the way I’ve done it. He wanted to help others. He talked to me about Africa, about volunteering . . . I can’t allow him just to have died without trying to do something.”

Lojacono and Piras exchanged a fleeting glance. They understood that the man needed to talk. He went on, addressing them both.

“I knew Lorusso, but you already know that. When you’re young, you understand, you have a goal in mind and that’s the only thing that matters. I wanted to open my clinic . . . Well, it was perfectly legal, I only did it in a way that anyone who wanted greater secrecy, the absence of any official records . . . Anyway, luckily nothing bad happened as a result.”

Lojacono murmured through clenched teeth, “Maybe not on the operating table. But afterwards it did.”

Rinaldi ran his hand through his tousled hair. “Yes, afterwards it did. But I couldn’t know that, could I? What could I know about what my patients did after? I read about the De Falco woman in the newspaper and for weeks I expected to be subpoenaed. I was afraid that they’d find some trace of me, my address, my phone number. Then, as time passed, I forgot about her. Until De Matteis mentioned her name on the phone.”

Piras broke in, her voice gentle. Lojacono admired her approach, designed to keep Rinaldi from feeling he was on the defensive again.

“Doctor, no one is interested in putting you on trial here. These are old stories, and right now the last thing we want to do is dig them over. What we need to know, and urgently, is anything you can tell us about Eleonora De Falco. Is there anything you remember about her?”

Rinaldi had clutched the green ledger book to his chest the whole time he’d been in the conference room. Now he lay it down on the table, opening it more or less midway through.

“I don’t remember her as a person. You understand, it was in the interests of discretion. I’d talk about anything affecting the clinical picture, symptoms, and tests if necessary, but if there wasn’t anything physiological to discuss then I basically wouldn’t open my mouth. But, to be on the safe side, I jotted down certain basic information in this ledger book. Nothing much: last name, first name, address, and nature of the treatment. Here she is: De Falco, Eleonora, Via dei Cristallini, number sixteen. Dilation and aspiration. In other words, a surgical abortion. Eighth week of pregnancy. From the article in the newspaper I found out that she had a bad infection. Evidently she hadn’t taken the antibiotics I prescribed for her. Nothing odd about that, poor girl; when you’ve made up your mind to die, you’re not likely to take your medicine.”

Lojacono drilled in, “And you didn’t see her again afterwards? She didn’t come in for a follow-up?”

Rinaldi shook his head decisively. “No, she didn’t come back. They didn’t usually come back.”

Piras nodded her head wearily. Rinaldi’s confession added nothing to the information they already possessed.

All the same, she asked, “And you don’t remember whether, when she came to your clinic, she might have mentioned any names, a next of kin or anything?”

Rinaldi nodded. “Of course. I always asked for a reference, a contact, in case something went wrong. After all, these were operations performed under anesthesia; I’d never have run the risk of having no one to contact.”

Lojacono leaned forward, his eyes narrowed to two slits. “What’s the name of the contact that she gave you?”

Rinaldi checked the ledger. “Masi, Orlando. Care of the administrator of the polytechnic.”

The old man becomes the Crocodile.
Methodically he readies himself, with the curtains drawn, the bedside lamp dimly lighting the room.

He’s cold, calm, and composed. Every so often a tear drips out from behind the lens and he wipes it away with an abrupt dab.

He knows that his long wait is about to come to an end. He knows—from under the water’s surface, from his place of hiding, from where he’s watching—that his immense hunger is about to be sated.

He polishes his shoes. Then he moves on to his trousers, checking the crease, his shirt, his tie, his jacket. He knows that this time there will be no repeat performance, this time things will be different, from start to finish.

He understands that he no longer has the luxury of time, the way he did with the other killings. That it won’t be enough to lurk in the shallow swamp waters, mixing his own scent with the smell of rot and decay, camouflaging himself in his drab armor, a log among logs, water in the water, vegetation amid vegetation. This time he’ll have to pounce suddenly, clamp his jaws shut on his prey’s throat, and take a single, furious death-dealing bite. This time his jaws won’t have a chance to gnaw quietly, crushing bones as part of his meal.