Luciano wasn’t sure whether he needed to stay home and think about what had happened, or it was better to escape for a few hours. He took a short pause to consider everything and shook his head. “Perhaps I should remain here and spend some time with my mother. We also need to arrange the funeral, the bureaucratic matters, not to mention the fact that from this moment on, we all need to be available for the investigation. I don’t know what’s going to happen next. One thing, though, I would be grateful for. Could you send me by email the notes you’ve taken and will take at the university? I’m afraid that, at least for the next two weeks, I won’t be able to attend any lectures.”
“Of course, as I arrive home, I’ll send you a copy of today’s lectures and any future ones. I will keep taking notes for you,” Stefano replied, concerned about his friend. He knew how attached he was to his father and how frustrated he was about his careless behavior. Shaking his head, he continued driving to his home, looking forward to the time he could have checked his notes to be sent.
For Luciano, life was getting more complicated than he could have expected. The concern of being at the murder scene was surely bothering him. He certainly was there together with all the people who lived in the building and had access to the underground parking lot. Nevertheless, among all those people, he was the one who had a reason to kill Claudio.
His heart started to race in his chest, and pacing to the window, he peeked outside as if he was expecting the Police car to appear any time soon to bring him to jail for the murder of his father.
The door opened suddenly, and Giulia came in without bothering to knock. She wasn’t used to that care in her home, neither was she used to do so when they lived together.
Luciano turned to the door, expecting to find a Police officer in front of him ready to arrest him. A scream released the tension that built in his soul.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Giulia apologized.
Holding his hand to his heart as if to keep it in place, he collapsed on a chair beside the window. “No, it’s not your fault, I was so caught up in my thoughts and I didn’t even acknowledge your steps coming closer to the room.”
She beamed and walked to him, “I’m so sorry, sweetheart, that it had to be you to discover him dead. It must have been terrible!” Her hands holding him tight to herself and stroking his hair lovingly.
At the feeling of his mother’s touch, he once again released the stress and sobbed without any intention of keeping those tears any longer. “He never cared about me, but I loved him.”
She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say to make him feel better. The only feelings she had for her ex-husband since the day of the divorce, were intense moments of bitterness followed by stretches of indifference. Nevertheless, they still had something important in common: the young man who sobbed desperately clinging to her waist, like his last hope.
“Everybody has a different way to show affection. Perhaps he was caught with his new girlfriend and with his job? Maybe he needed some time to get things settled, but I know he loved you,” she whispered, unsure whether she believed what she was saying.
What was true and what wasn’t didn’t have any meaning at that moment. What counted was that his father was dead, and there wouldn’t have been any chance to fix their relationship. Luciano pretended he didn’t hear what she said. He knew she was trying her best to console him and it was probably what he needed the most.
CHAPTER 5
The following day Maurizio didn’t leave his office; he received the first results from the coroner about the murder weapon, the time of death, and the unfortunate details that the only DNA traces and fingerprints found in the car belonged to the victim and his son. Those weren’t enough proof as they were located on the steering wheel, the door, and those places where whoever used to drive the Lamborghini would have touched. The killer was probably waiting for him, hiding behind the vehicle, and jumped from there as Claudio opened the door.
“The dynamic is still something I fail to understand,” he said, glancing at Leonardo, who was brainstorming with him in the room. He stood from the chair and paced around the room, reaching the center and stopping there.
He grabbed a couple of chairs and aligned them one behind the other. “Mr. Calvani reached his car,” he said, walking to the front chair. “He opened the door, when someone jumped from behind pointing the gun at him.” He pretended to open the door of the vehicle. “If someone is threatened by an assassin before coming inside the car, the first reaction wouldn’t be that of running away?”
Leonardo stood and walked toward him, “Maybe he thought that getting in the Lamborghini would have protected him from the bullets, or that he could have driven as fast as possible to safety.”
“Or the assassin waited for him to be in the car, blocked one hand with the door... No, he couldn’t have done it,” Maurizio reconsidered his thoughts. “Or... the victim knew the assassin. Think if you are Mr. Calvani and are going somewhere, you open the door and I, one of your friends, relatives, acquaintances arrive and ask you to stop for a moment. What would you do?”
Leonardo thought about it for a moment, and pretended he opened the door of the car, “I would have said that
