Phil and Julie looked at him. “‘Tullio?’” Phil said. “My, my.”
Caravale, not seeing them, headed off toward the campground office, creating a rolling wave of concerned looks from the campers who saw him. He had changed into his uniform, which didn’t surprise Gideon. At the excavation site, he’d had the impression that Caravale felt anything but at home in jeans and polo shirt. And with reason: A spiffy, well-tailored uniform—especially one with shoulder boards—did a lot for a pudding-shouldered, dumpy type like Caravale.
They caught up with him on the steps of the log cabin office, but a noisily idling diesel-powered tour bus a few yards away drove them back to the lawn to talk.
“How’s Achille doing?” Phil asked at once.
“About the way you’d expect. Shaken up, filthy, but that’s about all, except for the drugging. They treated him fairly well, apparently.”
“Was he able to tell you anything?”
“Not a great deal. He was in a tent the entire time; they never let him out.”
“A tent?” Julie asked. “You mean they kept him outside?”
“No, he’s sure it was indoors. A tent inside a building of some kind. But he has no idea where.”
“What about descriptions?” Gideon asked. “Did he get a look at them?”
Caravale shook his head. “One of the men didn’t have a mask on when they kidnapped him, but he was too terrified by all the shooting to have a clear memory of him. He was ‘big,’ that’s all he can remember. It doesn’t help much.”
“Who wouldn’t have been terrified?” Julie asked. “Poor kid.”
“What about later?” Gideon asked. “He never saw them?”
“Later, whenever they came in, they made him put a blindfold over his head first—some kind of elastic bandage. He thinks there were two of them, both men, but maybe three. I’m starting to wonder if he might not have been drugged—sedated, at any rate—for the whole time. He says he doesn’t think so, but I’m not so sure.”
“So you don’t have much to go on, do you?”
“Much?” Caravale laughed. “You must be seeing something I missed. I didn’t think I had anything to go on.”
“Well, the main thing is, he’s out and he’s all right,” Phil said, as usual pointing out the bright side. “Is he home now?”
“Oh, sure, with his papa and his loving family. They’re all making a fuss over him, he’s very happy. All is well on Isola de Grazia.” He rocked back and forth on his feet, his thumbs hooked in the waistband of his Sam Browne belt.
Something’s funny here, Gideon thought. Caravale was looking too pleased with himself. No doubt he was relieved that Achille had come out of it alive, but at the same time he was now a cop with a big, unclosed case on his hands and nowhere to go with it; not a lead in sight. In Gideon’s experience, that usually made cops cranky.
“Is there something else on your mind, Tullio?” Gideon asked.
“Something else?” He pretended to think. “Oh, yes, that’s right, I almost forgot. Those remains you were kind enough to help out with this morning? We have a positive ID on them.”
Gideon was astounded. “But ...I left Fasoli with them not even two hours ago. They can’t even be clean yet. How did you—”
“Why, I did what you told me. I got a dental identification.”
“But how, how did you—”
“We found his dentist and asked him.”
“I understand, but how could you possibly—I never made any charts, we didn’t—”
He stopped in mid-sentence. Caravale was grinning at him, revealing a surprisingly perfect row of small, square, brown teeth. It was the first full smile that Gideon had seen on his face, and it made him look like a wicked Cupid. Obviously, he wasn’t above taking pleasure in a little mind-boggling of his own.
Fair enough, a little tit for tat. “Okay, I give up,” he said. “I’m completely mystified. How about letting me in on how you managed that?”
“It wasn’t so hard. I decided not to wait for your charts. I simply had our digital photography person photograph the jawbone from a lot of different angles and e-mailed them to the dentist—his office is in Milan—and a little later he called back with a hundred-percent positive ID. Nothing to it. The whole thing took...oh, twenty minutes.”
“But—”
“But how did we manage to find the right dentist? That was no problem. You see, I was already ninety percent sure I knew who those bones came from.”
He looked from one to the other of them, saving the last, longest look for Phil. His expression composed itself, flipping from self-satisfied to grave. “They are the remains of Domenico de Grazia.”
Phil’s mouth opened, shut, and opened again. “Domenico de—”
“Your uncle. The old
TWELVE
THEYgot powdery, lukewarm coffee from a vending machine on the porch of the office building—an expansive
