was right. Aleandro has the pellets in his basement; he knows all about the chemical and who supplies it and where it’s stored.
Another name for sodium hydroxide is lye.
At Sterling’s empathetic prodding, Aleandro had disclosed that he, too, has a relative who is one of the “disappeared”—an uncle who also worked as an electrical inspector for the government. The uncle submitted a poor report on a water plant and did not come home from work one night. The police did nothing. Aleandro’s family did nothing. They don’t speak of it; five years later, they are still afraid.
All over the world, from Mexico to Albania, criminal networks dispose of victims using lye. It is a caustic metallic base used in manufacturing all kinds of corrosive products, like paint strippers. When pure pellets of sodium hydroxide are combined with water and heat, a reaction occurs that chews up the chemical bonds that normally keep tissues intact. The corpse dissolves into a pinkish liquid, occasionally leaving bone husks that are as fragile as cicada shells.
Aleandro had given Sterling directions to his own supplier of fertilizer and chemicals, including industrial lye. The company is called Spectra and is headquartered in Milan, but the local distributor operates out of a town nearby called Monte San Stefano.
MONTE SAN STEFANO, ITALY
TWENTY-SIX
Monte San Stefano is an hour to the south — halfway to Rome. From the turnoff it is slow going on a two- lane road that coils through clay hills, only to discover that Monte San Stefano barely exists. There is a shoe outlet and a truffle museum, both closed for lunch. Inquiries at a gas station five kilometers past yield zero results, until the nice lady behind the counter asks to see the grimy paper on which Aleandro carefully printed the address, and recognizes the name of Marcello Falassi — a truck driver who makes deliveries for Spectra.
“She said he lives a couple of kilometers back that way,” Sterling explains as we exit the store. “When we see a big white house, we turn left and keep going east.”
“How far?”
“Until we come to an old barn. The turnout is across the road. We drive until we see a red fence, and there’s the house.”
I realize that Sterling had orchestrated the outing to Aleandro’s farm not to indulge in nostalgia for growing olives in Texas, but because he believes Cecilia is already dead. That she was taken by the mob, shot within a couple of days, and her body has already been reduced to God knows what. The quicker we find the remains, the quicker we can track the bad guys.
Sterling insists it’s a simple idea — deduction 101—to trace the supply route of the lye back to the mafiosi. Plausible, maybe; a long shot, definitely. In my opinion, we don’t know enough to commit to chasing some delivery man all over Tuscany. As we get into the car, it is hard to stifle my impatience. I want to go back to Siena and investigate properly. Why am I listening to him? I am the trained Bureau specialist. If I don’t actually say it, that is what I’m thinking, and at this moment I would be just as glad to drop the burden of Sterling’s shell-shocked emotions, get back on the phone with my coolheaded FBI partner, Mike Donnato, and find Cecilia, unencumbered.
“Do you really think this is worth it?” I ask. “We’re spending an entire day on a very shaky lead. The guy who drives a chemical truck? He’s going to know where the bodies are buried? We should go back to Siena and nail that girl, Zabrina.”
“The guy who drives a truck gets orders from somewhere.” Sterling climbs behind the wheel.
“Yes, a manifest from an office in Milan—”
Sterling slams the door. “Stop nagging.”
It stops me, all right. Like a bucket of ice water.
“We’re arguing an investigative approach,” I say unsteadily. “Back and forth. Your ideas, my ideas.”
“I know what an argument is, honey.”
“It’s how we do it in the Bureau. Maximize the options.”
“We do it the same way in my shop.”
“Where? In a bunker in Iraq?”
I regret it immediately.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “That was stupid. I didn’t mean it.” He pulls over and stops.
“Up ahead, that’s the big white house. That’s the road where we turn. If you want to go back to Siena, we keep on going straight.”
“I don’t like the word
He exhales with exasperation. “What do you want me to do?”
“Talk to me like a professional. I’m talking to you like a professional—”
“You’re gonna tell me how to talk, now?”
“I’m not taking orders from you.”
“Nobody’s giving orders. The FBI is playing you. Can’t you see that? And meanwhile, the mafia has Cecilia.”
“I see that.”
“Seems to me, professionally speaking, whatever drug business your nephew or his father have been into is a sidebar. It might connect, might not. We tried following the investigator’s report and ended up at an apartment with nobody home. With the kidnap, our objective has changed. First and foremost, we need to find Cecilia, dead or alive. This Marcello Falassi, who delivers the chemicals, he might know something about that, or lead us to someone who does.”
Sterling is watching my face. He wants to know if I can really hear it.
“Make the turn to Falassi’s place,” I say.
He hesitates.
“I mean it. Go.”
The road is a whispering tunnel of green. There are no other cars. We arrive at a crossroads, make a guess, and keep heading east, coming out to ripe farmland dotted with rolls of hay, and the low-pitched clanging of hundreds of tin bells. A herd of sheep is crossing, guided only by a white dog. Two by two, docile as a class of kindergartners, they go out one gate, across the asphalt, and into the neighboring field. The dog stands on a rise and barks, the sheep stream past, and the bells are like a living wall of sound. There are no humans in sight. Even when the herd has disappeared, the dog continues to bark at our car. As soon as we creep past, he goes.
It sobers me. Simple equations that I never really understood. Dogs and sheep. Farmland and sun. Build your fortress on the highest ground. Not for the first time since I’ve been in Italy, the external world — the wild-eyed horses in the Palio, this troubled man beside me in the car — seems extraordinarily vivid, while my own self feels distant from the experience, more and more transparent. Is that what a career in the black box of the Bureau does to you? Numbs the senses, as well as the soul?
Marcello Falassi lives in a powder-blue trailer on the dark side of the road, the only structure for several kilometers. We have seen many low-income houses cheerfully surrounded by sunflowers and artichoke plants, but this one has nothing to say for itself, except bales of wire in the front yard. I suppose nothing grows because of the damp, sunless location. But when we pass a dead dove splayed out on the walkway, I wonder if something else is at play.
