her career back on track, on getting married. And the best way she knew to do that, was work.
Tuesday
Forty-Five
I t seemed unreal that they’d been in Italy for just two days. Taylor felt like she’d been here for at least a month.
At least she had one worry out of her hair. With Memphis being called back to New Scotland Yard, the tension level would dip dramatically. The Macellaio case complete for the time being, his superiors weren’t willing to continue footing the bill, not when he had other cases to wrap up. She didn’t mind taking on the extra work. Distance from Highsmythe would be a blessed thing.
The brothers had been transported to the hospital of Santa Maria Nouva, were being treated for second- degree burns on their fingers and palms. It was a crude attempt to erase their identities, but not enough for a permanent solution. The burns were severe, but they would heal without grafts. A third-degree burn might have worked, but the only real way to completely abrade their fingertips would be concentrated acid or plastic surgery. And even then, the result would leave them with a unique impression that could be identified from here on out.
Taylor knew what they were trying to do. It made a sick kind of sense. The police couldn’t tell the twins apart from their DNA, but they would have easily been able to discern who was who from their fingerprints. No fingerprints, no way to tell the two apart, and no way the governments of either country could separate them until they discovered who was who.
Thankfully, the police were smarter than the twins.
She and Baldwin were congregated in the hallway outside the brothers’ room. The carabinieri had seen no reason why the brothers shouldn’t be housed together; space was at a premium in this hospital, and they were handcuffed to the railings of their beds. Their doctor, an elegantly coiffed ebony-haired woman with a Sicilian accent, gave her assessment in crisp English.
“Their fingertips will heal eventually. The burning is severe, but only what we call second degree. There will be extensive scarring, but they have not permanently eradicated their fingerprints. Patient A is the worse of the two. It looks like his hands were held on the skillet for a longer period of time than Patient B. His burns are slightly more severe, and as such we’ve scheduled him for a debridement in the morning to remove the remainder of the dead flesh. Patient B does not require quite this level of treatment.”
“How long will it be until they are healed enough for us to try?” Baldwin asked.
“I cannot judge how long, nor how well the healing will be. Their palms were abraded entirely, the burns are more severe in the center of the hands. Dio mio, to place one’s hands on a burning fire, I cannot imagine who could want to tolerate such pain. They are sedated, but conscious, if you need to speak to them. They want to know about a cat.”
“That must be Gavin,” Taylor said. “Which one asked?”
“They both did. On an eye signal, they spoke in unison. They both simply said cat. ”
Clever boys.
They thanked the doctor, who nodded, shook their hands and went on her rounds.
“You ready to rattle their cages?” Baldwin asked.
“You bet.”
Taylor opened the door to the twins’ room. They were lying quietly in their beds, side by side, each facing the other. They were staring at each other so intently, the longing so concentrated that Taylor felt like they were communicating telepathically.
The sameness of their faces was eerie. Taylor had known identical twins in the past-she’d worked a case that centered around identical twin girls just last year-but Tommaso and Gavin were different. More alike. She knew it was a psychological response, the concept of the two being raised apart and still finding themselves on a psychotic path was mind-boggling. Identical twin necrophiliacs. This was one for the medical journals.
Neither man acknowledged their entrance. She knew Baldwin was itching to interview them, so she stepped aside and let him talk first.
“My name is Dr. John Baldwin,” he began. Neither twin turned to him, though Taylor could see that the one in the bed they’d labeled A flinched a bit. So they didn’t like doctors. Add to that the current situation; their pain must be tremendous. Interesting.
Baldwin continued. “I’m with the FBI. This is my colleague, Detective Jackson, from the Metro Nashville Police.”
She watched for a tell, but neither man gave any indication that they knew, or cared, about Tennessee.
“You’ve been placed under arrest by the Italian judiciary, who have named you both indagato. Essentially, you’ve been indicted on the charge of murder. You will stand trial, most certainly be convicted. Italy isn’t fond of Il Macellaio. In addition, we will be separating you as soon as we finish this interview. And I’ll let you know, on the record, that while Italy does not have the death penalty, the United States most surely does. One of you will be extradited, and under federal law the United States has the right to seek the death penalty against you.”
Still nothing. No word, no movement from either bed.
Baldwin took a small plastic chair and set it between the beds, at their feet. He settled into the chair and smiled pleasantly. “You may think that you’ve tricked us by obscuring your fingerprints. You were wrong. We know who each of you are.”
He turned to the man in bed A. “Gavin.” He looked to his right, to bed B. “Tommaso.”
“Ha,” the twin in bed B said. “See, you are already making incorrect assumptions. You have no way of identifying either one of us.”
“Oh, but you’re wrong. You may have thought you were clever, but we’ve seen much better. Your dental records are being flown here as we speak. The dentists at the 31st Dental Squadron at Aviano have kept detailed records on all of their patients. One call to the archives and they were able to locate the records of Thomas Fielding.”
Taylor spoke for the first time, addressing the man in bed A. “And Gavin, Dr. Simpson from Manchester was very disappointed to hear that we needed your radiographs. He also kept meticulous records. He already told us to look for very slight lower anterior crowding. Thomas had braces when he was a teenager. Your foster parents wouldn’t spring for it, decided you were just fine as is.”
At the mention of foster parents, the man in bed A squirmed. They already knew it was Gavin, knew he was the man passed out when they arrived at the cottage. That his brother had held his hands to the face of the skillet for a fraction longer than necessary, like a child maliciously pulling off the wings of a fly to see what would happen.
Baldwin finished their assessment. “And Thomas, we know about the amalgam fillings. The military was a bit behind the times when it came to dentistry, they weren’t concerned with the aesthetic, cosmetic advances being made in private practice. While all the boys your age, including Gavin here, had their teeth filled with tooth-colored resin composite, you were still receiving the amalgams. Identical twins don’t have identical dentition, and environmental factors further indicate differences. So you burned yourselves, put yourselves through all this pain, for nothing. Gavin, you’ll be returning to the States with us. Thomas, the Italians have a cell with your name on it.”
Baldwin stood. Taylor was impressed; she knew what restraint it took not to try to wrestle every ounce of information out of them at once.
The twin they knew was Gavin started to cry.
Taylor spent the next hour on the phone with Julia Page, going through every permutation for extraditing Gavin back to Nashville.
The judiciary in Italy wasn’t keen on the death penalty, and as such wouldn’t extradite either of the brothers to a country that would charge them with death. And they had themselves a lovely little conundrum, one they
