Only then did Patrizio Baudo gulp down a mouthful of tea, which was immediately followed by a shiver. He once again touched the crucifix with his gloved right hand. Rocco shot Officer Casella a look. “I’ll have you taken home now. Please, take anything you’ll need. But I’m afraid you won’t be able to stay in your apartment. The forensic squad is conducting an examination. Do you have somewhere you can stay?”
Patrizio Baudo shrugged. “Me? No … maybe at my mother’s?”
“All right. Officer Casella will accompany you to your mother’s house. Here in Aosta?”
“Not far. In Charvensod.”
Rocco stood up. “We’ll keep you informed, don’t worry.”
“But who was it?” Baudo suddenly blurted. “Who could have done such a thing? To Esther … to my Esther …”
“I promise I’ll do everything I can to find out, Signor Baudo. I assure you.”
“I don’t believe it. I can’t believe it. Just like that? From one moment to the next? What is this? What’s happening?” He looked around in bewilderment. Caterina had dropped her gaze, Casella was fixated on some indeterminate point on the office ceiling, while Rocco stood there, chilly and detached. Deep inside him a rage was burning that wasn’t all that different from what the other man felt. Patrizio finally burst into tears. “I can’t take this …” he murmured under his breath, crumpled up on his seat like an abandoned rag.
Rocco put a hand on his shoulder. “Tomorrow I’m going to need you, Dottor Baudo, once you feel a little stronger. We believe that there was a theft from your home.”
Patrizio went on sobbing. Then the emotional tempest subsided as quickly as it had come. He sniffed and nodded to the deputy police chief. “Not tomorrow. Now.”
“Right now you’re too—”
“Right now!” said Patrizio, leaping to his feet. “I want to see my home. I want to go home.”
“If nothing else, you can get changed, no?” said Casella, inappropriately. Rocco incinerated him with a single glance. “He can’t go around dressed like a clown, you know,” Casella added under his breath, justifying his comment to Rispoli.
“All right, Dottor Baudo, let’s go,” said Rocco, taking the cup still full of tea and setting it down on the desk.
“Don’t call me dottore. I never went to college.” He strode briskly out of the room, followed by Rocco and Inspector Rispoli.
Italo drove the police BMW without revving the motor, carefully avoiding the worst potholes. It was easy to avoid the worst potholes in Aosta. Because there weren’t any. At least not compared with the streets of the Italian capital, where the native Romans had given a name to every lurch and jolt and where trying to accelerate on the sanpietrini—the Romans had named their cobblestones after St. Peter—was an excellent way of procuring a spontaneous abortion. Patrizio Baudo looked out the passenger window. “I’m starting to hate this city,” he said.
“I can understand that,” replied the deputy police chief from the backseat.
“I’m from Ivrea. But you know how things are, right? I found a job here and then … Esther’s from here, from Aosta. We were great friends, you know? I mean, before we got married. I don’t even know how it happened. First we were friends, then we fell in love. Then all the rest.”
Patrizio’s pale legs were trembling slightly. He clutched at his thighs with both hands. He’d loosened the Velcro wrist fastenings of his bike gloves, but he still wore them.
“Signor Baudo, how was your wife this morning?”
“I didn’t see her. On Fridays I only work afternoons, so I get up at six and go out for a nice long ride. Do you ever ride a bike, Dottore?”
“No. Not me. I played soccer.”
“When I was twenty I was on a team. I wanted to become a professional cyclist. But that world is just too hard, too dirty. You might just wind up being second banana, in the middle of the pack during the final sprints, nothing more than that. Maybe I wasn’t really all that good. Every now and then I go out for amateur races.”
Italo stopped at the light. Patrizio sniffed, but with his face turned to look out at the street, so Rocco couldn’t tell if he was crying or just coming down with a cold.
“You’re the last person to have seen Esther. So last night …”
“Right, last night. The usual. She went to bed around ten, maybe ten thirty. I stayed up to watch a little television. There was a movie about some guy who brought salmon to Yemen. So that people could fish for them. Have you seen it?” Rocco said nothing. He knew that Patrizio was just giving voice to a jumble of disconnected thoughts. He was concealing behind words the pain and grief that hadn’t yet clearly surfaced in his heart, and in his head. “It wasn’t bad. The movie, I mean. What I can’t understand is why a person would sit in front of the television set channel surfing without actually watching anything. Do you do that?”
Patrizio sniffed again. But this time his shoulders were trembling. And this time Rocco understood that he was crying.
When they got to Via Brocherel, the van of the forensic squad was already parked outside. Two officers were unloading equipment. A third officer, fair-haired and short, was putting on his white jumpsuit. Italo had double-parked the car and the deputy police chief was walking toward the street entrance, followed by Patrizio Baudo. The press wasn’t there yet, which struck Rocco as odd. But evidently the meeting of the regional assembly to decide on an amateur bicycle race was considered hot news. Just one less pain in the ass, thought Rocco.
The young fair-haired officer went over to Rocco. “Dottore! Special Agent Carini, forensic squad …”
“Welcome to the crime scene. Is your boss with you?”
“No, Dottor Farinelli will join us later. He’s working on a murder down in Turin.”
This was the first time that Rocco had ever heard the expression “down in Turin.” As far as he was concerned Turin had always been “up.” I’m going up to Turin. But “down to Turin”—that’s the way they said it in Aosta. Sort of like when you’re south of the equator, where the water goes down the drain spinning counterclockwise.
“We need to enter the apartment, Carini. This is the victim’s husband.”
The special agent looked at Patrizio Baudo, still dressed in his biking gear. “I should actually talk to my boss … let me call him right now and—”
“You don’t need to talk to anyone. Give us some shoe protectors and latex gloves and stop busting my chops.”
The special agent nodded. “Certainly. Wait here, I’ll bring you everything you need.” He walked over to the van, where his colleague was all ready with briefcase and biohazard suit.
Patrizio looked at the building as if this were the first time in his life he’d seen it. “Is … is my wife still upstairs?”
“I don’t think so, Signor Baudo.” Rocco turned to a young officer standing
