and got out to check.
Silence.
His boots sank into the snow. In the middle of the lane was the dark patch.
“Christ, what the hell is that?”
He started walking. The closer he got, the more the stain in the middle of the shortcut changed color. At first it was black, but now it was purplish. The wind was whistling faintly through the needles of the fir trees, scattering down feathers in all directions.
Small, white, weightless feathers.
A chicken? Did I hit a chicken?! Amedeo muttered to himself.
He kept walking through the deep snow, sinking in five or six inches at every step. The down feathers covering the snow lifted into the air, spinning in tiny whirlwinds. By now the stain was brown.
What on earth did I hit? An animal?
How could he have missed it? With the cat’s seven halogen lamps? And anyway, the noise would have chased it away.
He’d almost walked right over it when he finally saw it for what it was: a stain of red blood, churned into the white blanket of snow. It was enormous, and unless he’d run over a whole henhouse, that was way too much blood to have come out of a single piece of poultry.
He steered clear of the stain and carefully edged around it till he got to the point where the red was brightest, almost shiny. He crouched down and looked carefully.
Then he saw.
He turned and took off at a run, but he didn’t make it to the woods. He vomited all over the Crest shortcut.
A cell phone going off at this time of night meant trouble, as sure as a certified letter from Equitalia, the Italian equivalent of the IRS. Deputy Police Chief Rocco Schiavone, born in 1966, was flat on his back in his bed, eyeing the big toenail on his right foot. The nail had turned black, on account of the filing cabinet drawer that D’Intino had carelessly dropped on Schiavone’s foot while hysterically searching for a passport application. Dottor Schiavone hated Officer D’Intino. That very afternoon, after yet another idiotic move pulled by that cop, he’d sworn to himself and the entire citizenry of Aosta that he’d make sure he got that moron transferred to a godforsaken police station somewhere far from the sea, down at the opposite end of the Italian peninsula.
The deputy police chief reached out his hand and grabbed the Nokia that kept ringing and ringing. He took a look at the display. The caller number was police headquarters.
That rated an 8 on the scale of pains in the ass that ran from 1 to 10. Possibly a 9.
Rocco Schiavone had an entirely personal hierarchy up and down which he ranked the pains in the ass that life senselessly inflicted on him every day. The scale actually started at 6, which covered anything that had to do with keeping house: grocery shopping, plumbers, paying rent. The number 7 included malls, banks, medical clinics, and doctors in general, with a special bonus for dentists, and concluded with work dinners or family dinners, though all his living relatives, thank God, were down south in Rome. An 8 on the hierarchy began, first and foremost, with public speaking, followed by any and all bureaucratic procedures required for his job, going to the theater, and reporting to chiefs of police or investigating magistrates. At number 9 came tobacco shops that weren’t open when he needed a pack of cigarettes, cafés that didn’t carry Algida ice cream bars, running into anyone who wanted to talk and talk endlessly, and especially stakeouts with police officers who needed a bath.
Topping the hierarchy, the worst and the most dreaded, was a rating of 10. The top, the worst, the mother of all pains in the ass: the investigation he wasn’t expecting.
He hoisted himself to a sitting position on both elbows and pushed ANSWER.
“Now who’s busting my balls?” he barked.
“Dottore, this is Deruta.”
Special Agent Deruta. Two hundred and twenty-five pounds of useless body mass vying valiantly with D’Intino for the title of stupidest member of police headquarters staff.
“What do you want, Michele?” roared the deputy police chief.
“We have a problem. On the slopes at Champoluc.”
“And where do we have this problem?”
“At Champoluc.”
“And where is that?”
Rocco Schiavone had been shipped north to Aosta from the Cristoforo Colombo police station, in Rome, the previous September. Four months later, all he knew about the geography of the city of Aosta and its surrounding province was the locations of his apartment, police headquarters, the courthouse, and the local trattoria.
“Champoluc is in Val d’Ayas!” Deruta replied, in an almost scandalized tone of voice.
“What’s that supposed to mean? What’s Val d’Ayas?”
“Val d’Ayas, Dottore, is the valley above Verrès. Champoluc is the most famous village in that valley. People go there to ski.”
“Okay, fine, so what?”
“Well, a couple of hours ago someone found a corpse.”
A corpse.
Schiavone let the hand holding the cell phone flop onto the mattress and shut his eyes, cursing through his teeth. “A corpse …”
That was a 10 on the scale of pains in the ass. Definitely a 10. Possibly 10 with a bullet.
“Can you hear me, Dottore?” the telephone crackled.
Rocco raised the device back to his ear. He sighed. “Who’s coming with me?”
“Your choice. Me or Pierron.”
“Italo Pierron, every day for the rest of my life!” the deputy police chief responded promptly.
Deruta acknowledged the insult with a prolonged silence.
“Deruta? What, did you fall asleep?”
“No, I’m at your orders, Dottore.”
“Tell Pierron to come, and to bring the BMW.”
“Do you think the jeep might be better for high-mountain driving?”
“No. I like the BMW. It’s more comfortable, and it has better heating and a radio that works. The only people who take the jeep are those losers the forest rangers.”
“So should I tell Pierron to come get you at your apartment?”
“Yes. And tell him not to ring the bell.”
He dropped his phone on the bed and closed his eyes, laying his hand over them, palm down.
He heard the rustling whisper of Nora’s negligee. Then her weight on the mattress. Then her lips and warm breath in his ear. And finally her teeth, nibbling at his earlobe. At any other time, these were all things that would have aroused him, but
