Kill the King Read online

  Colomba finally saw red. “Just stop beating around the bush. You think it was the boy who did it. You’re just hoping he’ll sob on my shoulder and confess.”

  Lupo smiled. “What can I say, Deputy Captain? I’m open to all possibilities.”

  “What motive would Tommy have had?”

  “The boy is sick, he doesn’t need a motive.”

  “Autism is a syndrome, not a disease,” said Colomba. “People with severe cases, like Tommy, do sometimes hurt other people because they don’t know how to control their own strength or because they have violent outbursts of anger. Slaughtering your own parents in their sleep is quite another matter.”

  “Jeffrey Dahmer was autistic.”

  “Maybe he had Asperger syndrome,” Colomba replied. “That’s very different from Tommy, who isn’t capable of taking care of himself. He could have caught his parents off guard, but his movements aren’t coordinated enough to be able to kill them both before they had time to react. You saw the way he moves.”

  “He might have been lucky.”

  “Let’s take a look at his room.”

  At first, Colomba thought she’d walked into a broom closet. The one window had been covered with a large piece of cardboard and there was only a single bed, a footlocker, and a small cabinet without doors, containing Tommy’s clothing. The sheets were decorated with Disney characters, and there was an old PC on a small table, next to an equally old ink-jet printer that was, however, perfectly maintained. But what caught Colomba’s eye were the photographs of her. There were at least a hundred of them, either printed on copy paper or cut out of newspapers. Tommy had hung them up so that they practically covered the walls and part of the ceiling.

  “Quite a spectacle, isn’t it?” said Lupo. “Do you think that they forced him to stay in here?”

  Colomba studied the room. “No. There’s no bolt on the door, there aren’t any ropes. Maybe he was just more comfortable having it like this.”

  “Maybe he thought he was a vampire.”

  Colomba pretended not to hear him and instead inspected the bed and floor. Sheets rumpled, no blood: Tommy hadn’t gone back to his room after finding his parents dead. Or after killing them. He’d run away without putting on anything heavy to keep him warm. Nothing but the clothes he’d been sleeping in. “Sergeant Major, could you leave me alone in here for a few minutes?”

  “Is there some problem?”

  “No, I just want to have a moment or two to think things over and get a general idea.”

  “Don’t take too long, if you don’t mind. If someone happens to see you here, I’ll have a lot of explaining to do.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  Lupo left the room. Colomba waited until the rustling sound of the shoe covers had faded away, then turned on Tommy’s computer, hoping it wasn’t password-protected. It wasn’t. She quickly found the folder containing the pictures of her and deleted it, then emptied the trash and started the disk-scrubber program. A good technician could no doubt recover those pictures, but not the first reporter to pay a bribe to gain access to the interior of the house. She turned the computer back off and tore the pictures off the walls, starting with the one of her in her uniform, with the gold braid of a full detective. Some of the pictures were printed on the letterhead stationery of a certain Dr. Pala, Psychiatrist and Developmental Therapist for the Young; the address was in a neighboring town. She crumpled those sheets over the big ball of papers she’d already crushed together and stuck the whole agglomeration under her jacket. With the walls bare now, the room seemed even darker and more unsettling. Dante, she decided, would have died if he’d been confined to a place like that. Maybe it was the other way around for Tommy, though.

  He walked two miles, don’t forget that.

  She turned off the light and left the room, discovering immediately that she’d really had no time to waste, because a van with the logo of the SIS was parked just outside the front gate. The “white jumpsuits” were almost fully dressed and were briefly lingering in conversation with Lupo. She pretended not to have seen them and quickly but nonchalantly darted around the corner of the house, where she set fire to the crumpled ball of paper with the matches she still had in her pocket. By the time Lupo caught up with her, there was nothing left but a will-o’-the-wisp clump of ashes and a vague outline of scorched cinders.

  Lupo shook his head. “Well done. Very nice work! Thanks for having treated me like a complete idiot!”

  “They would have been on the front pages of the newspapers even before the pictures of the victims,” Colomba replied, in all sincerity. “I used to have people sneak into my apartment in Rome to tell me about their theories. I don’t want them to know where I live now.”

  “The only reason I’m not going to file a criminal complaint against you is that I respect what you’ve been through. But don’t push your luck, ‘heroine of Venice.’ ”

  “Don’t call me that,” Colomba snarled.

  “I didn’t make up the phrase. So now do you intend to do what you promised?”

  “You mean, am I going to help you frame Tommy?”

  “I don’t want to frame anybody. I just want to avoid wasting a lot of time spinning my wheels.”

  “No doubt they’ll send someone down to help you with the investigation.”

  “This is my district, Deputy Captain. Are you coming or not?”

  “Whatever the boy might tell me, I’m not going to testify. He’ll have to tell someone else the same thing, of his own free will.”

  “Any other conditions or stipulations? Do you want a stretch limousine?”

  Colomba shook her head. “I just want you to forget that you know where I live. Do you think you can do that?”

  Lupo nodded. “Let me show you the way.”

  8

  The farmstay where Tommy was being held until a relative or social services could take custody of him was called Il Nido—the Nest—and it was a fancier version of the farmhouse where Colomba lived: three times the size, with a swimming pool, stables, and riding grounds, surrounded by a vast meadow where two piebald ponies were stamping the snow in unmistakable disgust.

  Tommy was being guarded by the redheaded lady carabiniere and an older colleague of hers in a single room with the shutters closed and the one table lamp switched on. Tommy looked even more enormous in here, sitting on the bed in tracksuit pants and a yellow T-shirt that was too small to cover his belly. He had to weigh almost 350 pounds.

  “Open the shutters, Concio, this place looks like a cellar storeroom,” said Lupo.

  “That’s the way he likes it, Sergeant Major, sir,” the redhead replied. “He doesn’t like being outside. He whined and moaned the whole way.”

  “He walked two miles,” said Lupo. “He’s had plenty of fresh air to breathe, and then some.”

  “He was in a state of shock. You saw the room he was living in, didn’t you?” said Colomba.

  “Sure, I saw, okay. You two stand guard in the hallway,” said Lupo. “I’ll let you know when you can come back in.”

  The two officers chorused “At your orders” and stepped out into the hall.

  “You need to leave, too, Sergeant Major,” Colomba said.

  “I won’t say a word.”

  “If Tommy wanted to talk to you, he’d have done it by now. Get out.”

  “I’ll be right outside the door.”

  Colomba shut the door in his face, then grabbed a chair and dragged it toward the bed. Tommy was playing solitaire with a deck of cards, bouncing slightly on his haunches. He moved the cards around according to no apparent logic, but with meticulous precision in his fingertips.

  Once again, Colomba felt pity for him, and once again, it was as painful as using a muscle that had long ago fallen asleep. Big though he was, he still looked as defenseless as a bear in a cartoon. “Ciao, Tommy,” she said to him with a fake smile. “How do you feel? Did they treat you all right?”

  Tommy went on playing, b
ut more slowly now, spying on her out of the corner of his eye.

  “I’m sorry about what happened to your parents. I came here because maybe you’d like to talk about it with me.”

  Tommy sat there with a card hovering in midair. Then he slowly set it down, muttering something, and for the first time Colomba heard his baritone voice.

  “Did you want me to protect you? Or did you want to tell me something?” she asked.

  Tommy sang a jingle from a television commercial.

  The music and tone were identical, but the words were pure nonsense. Colomba could feel her level of irritation rise, but she clamped down on it immediately. “Let’s try again, Tommy. And let me tell you something. Being here makes me uncomfortable. I really wish I didn’t have to deal with something as ugly as your parents’ death. If I’m doing it at all, it’s because I think I can help you.”

  The boy said nothing, but Colomba had the impression that he’d understood. “Did you do something you shouldn’t have, Tommy?”

  Tommy shook his head, with an exaggerated movement, like a little kid.

  “Did you hurt your parents, because you lost your temper?”

  No.

  “Are you telling me the truth?”

  Tommy nodded.

  Colomba wanted to believe him. “Did you see who it was? Did you know them?”

  Tommy took a very long time to set down the card, but he still didn’t answer.

  “I’d be afraid if I were in your shoes, believe me,” Colomba said. “But you’re safe here. No one’s going to hurt you.”

  Tommy sat motionless, with doubt stamped on his face, Then, with shaking fingers, he gathered up the cards and laid them out again in rows on the bedcovers, divided by suit and in rising rank; once he’d finished organizing them, he raised his forefinger.

  “Should I take one?”

  Tommy nodded.

  Colomba smiled. “There are people who talk and talk and you can’t figure out what the fuck they’re trying to say … You don’t belong in that category.” She reached out a hand toward a card at random, but Tommy tapped the blanket again. Colomba froze: Tommy didn’t want her to choose, he wanted her to pick a specific card that he had in mind. “Okay. Not this one. Farther up, farther down?”

  Moving her hands in concentric circles, she reviewed all the cards … until Tommy started tapping frantically. Colomba stopped her hand again: her fingers were dangling over the king of diamonds. As she picked up the card, the boy’s eyes grew as large as saucers, as if he was afraid of it. The king was a young man, depicted in profile, with long hair, royal mantle, and crown. He was wearing a heavy necklace with a large pendant and in one hand he gripped an ax. The little sun that shone down on him was a gold coin, and at the center of it was a laughing red face. Colomba had never paid much attention to that card, and now it struck her as frightening more than amusing. The ax could certainly represent the murder weapon, but why a king?

  She turned the card to face Tommy, but he didn’t look at it. “Was it someone with long hair who came into your house? Or someone with a strange hat?”

  Tommy shook his head. No.

  “A burglar who took money?”

  Another no.

  Colomba was still struggling to come up with another question when Lupo came in. In his defense, it should be said that he knocked first, but then he hadn’t waited for an answer, either. “The medical examiner wants to take a look at the boy. Do you think I could …”

  Tommy reacted as if he’d just been jabbed with a live high-tension wire. He leaped off the bed, knocking over the nightstand and sending cards and blankets in all directions. He stopped, standing with his face to the wall, fingers laced behind his back, eyes shut tight. He was trembling violently and gasping for breath.

  Lupo snapped his fingers in front of the redhead who stood as if in a trance in the doorway. “Wake up. Call the doctor, the boy’s having an anxiety attack.”

  Colomba felt as if she were having the anxiety attack. She was trembling as badly as the boy.

  This can’t be, she thought.

  But hadn’t she seen him do the exact same thing in the tool shed? She hadn’t deciphered his actions back then, because she hadn’t seen his face, but this time …

  Tommy moaned, gluing his body to the wall as if he were trying to pass through it. A stream of saliva dangled from his slack-jawed mouth. Struggling to move, Colomba hugged him from behind and, for a few seconds, clung to him, breathing in time with him.

  “Everything’s okay, Tommaso. You’re safe now. You’re a good son,” she whispered in his ear.

  She’d used the word “son” intentionally, even though it scorched her mouth. Tommy relaxed all at once and practically tumbled over onto her. Then he wriggled free and started gathering up the scattered cards, collecting them in order of suit and rank.

  In the meantime, the redhead had come back with a gray-bearded man wearing a three-piece suit. If he hadn’t been in his early seventies, he might have seemed like a hipster, but he was the medical examiner. “Everyone out, please,” he said imperiously. “And next time, ask a doctor whether it’s safe to get close to him. Ask me.”

  Colomba had left the room at the word everyone, and now Lupo chased after her down the hallway.

  “I didn’t think I was going to scare him like that. Before this, he never even looked me in the face.”

  “It must have been because he was surprised. Who knows why. Ask the doctor,” Colomba said flatly. She sped up her pace.

  “If he says the boy’s all right, you could try again. Again, on an informal basis.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I can’t help you more than I already have, Sergeant Major. If you wanted a confession, he’s not going to give me one. Not only because he seems incapable of verbalizing, but because I don’t believe he was the one who did it.”

  She tried to walk around Lupo, but he planted himself right in her path. “You saw the house yourself, Deputy Captain. The clothing, the handprints …”

  “Get out of my way.”

  “I can understand why he would have gotten scared, but you?”

  “I’m not scared. I’m just irritated about all the time you’re making me waste.”

  “You’re a bad liar, Deputy Captain. What did the boy tell you?” Colomba darted around him and got into her car, half expecting to see Lupo jump onto the hood to stop her, but that didn’t happen. On the township road to Mezzanotte, she kept the accelerator floored, with the snow chains machine-gunning along on the asphalt. She swerved a few times and came frighteningly close to a head-on crash with a truck, but steering into and out of her slaloming skids, she always managed to regain control of the vehicle. She didn’t even know that she was driving; hers were automatic movements guided by nothing more than a speck of consciousness. The rest of her mind had gone three years back in time.

  On that day of a bygone year, a younger Colomba was standing in front of ten rusty shipping containers in the countryside not far from Rome; the ten containers were arranged among the stumps and scrub brush in the yard of an old working farm. The special forces had cordoned off the area and the bomb disposal team had deactivated the triggers of the plastic explosives that sealed the hatches. When they opened the containers, the bright sunlight had blinded the people being held captive in them. The oldest prisoner was twenty, the youngest six, and they were almost all in terrible conditions of health. Some of them had taken to their heels, running uncertainly on legs that could barely carry them, but most of them had remained motionless in their cells. They had been bent to the will of a man who believed himself to be God, and who had done as he’d pleased for thirty long years, kidnapping and murdering children, raising them like battery hens, inculcating in their minds the supreme directive, the order that demanded obedience, on pain of death.

  Never look outside.

  When the hatch opened, they had been taught to turn and face the closest wall, their hand
s behind their backs.

  Just as Tommy had done.

  Colomba didn’t know how or when, but Tommy, like Dante, had been the Father’s prisoner.

  CHAPTER II

  1

  The Father is there, in the crate, with Dante. Dante can hear him breathing by his side. He hears his faint voice deriding him, the touch of his hands. Dante doesn’t know how to escape, he can’t even shift his position. The lid of the crate is just a couple of inches out of reach of his forehead. Otherwise, he’d eagerly slam his head into it until it killed him. He’d beg, if his mouth weren’t gagged; he’d rip the veins out of his limbs with his teeth.

  Why can’t he just die? He prays to a God he doesn’t even believe in to strike him down on the spot with a lightning bolt, to kill him now. The screams in his head become deafening; he trembles and drools.

  He doesn’t know how much time has passed when he regains consciousness, so exhausted that he’s practically calm. The Father is no longer there with him. Colomba has killed the Father to save Dante’s life.

  Dante thinks as little as possible about the silo in the countryside outside of Cremona where the Father held him captive for thirteen years. But now he’d gladly trade this place for that. At least there he had a bucket for his physical needs and not the adult diaper that, he now realizes from tentatively touching himself, girds his hips.

  His relative state of calm is vanishing, and now Dante can feel his inner drooling idiot begin to rear his head. He concentrates on the rudimentary form of self-taught meditation that he’s developed, a discipline that before now he’s used only as a way of fighting the symptoms of withdrawal from various pharmaceuticals. He visualizes the image that he’s associated with calm and well-being: Gudetama. Gudetama is a character from Japanese anime cartoons, an egg yolk with arms and legs who spends his time napping and complaining. Maybe not what a Zen master would have recommended, but then Dante believes in freedom of choice. Gudetama brings about the desired effects, and Dante’s respiration starts to return to normal, he can feel himself calming down. Dante imagines Gudetama slithering lazily and oozily through the air holes in the crate and sprawling on the cover, inhaling fresh, open air. And he can surely do it, too; if he only gets busy, freedom is only inches away.