“I need to take care of some other details, but I might come back this afternoon if you don’t mind,” he proposed.
“Well, I’m a bit busy today, but if you come after four in the afternoon, you will certainly find me here. I will brew coffee,” she winked.
“How can I refuse to have a cup of coffee?” He chuckled sarcastically.
He returned to the apartment and looked around, searching for Forensic Investigator Romizi, “Leonardo!” he called.
“Found anything interesting?” Leonardo arrived from the bedroom.
“Maybe, one of the neighbors has heard Mr. Calvani returning this morning. According to her testimony, he had a call that forced him to return to the car. I’m going now to the precinct trying to make a sense out of those preliminary information and brainstorm,” he replied, starting to create a sort of list of things to do in his mind before returning there to question Mrs. Moretti. “This afternoon, I’ll come here again to ask some questions, but particularly I want to know something from the person who holds all the information about the entire neighborhood.”
“Perfect, we’re almost finished here. We might return tomorrow after having analyzed the data we’ve obtained. Do you have the keys to this apartment?” he asked.
A grimace contorted his face. “I’ll have to ask the son to have them.”
Leonardo grinned from ear to ear, “Or maybe we can use these ones,” he said, swinging the keys in the air. “These were in Mr. Calvani’s pocket.”
There had always been a sort of mocking relationship between Maurizio and Leonardo, that started since the day they met. Their friendship was founded on a solid basis, but they always felt the need to remind each other of their flaws; like in a marriage, that was the way to keep the relationship alive and interesting.
“Well, good to know you won’t be left outside. I’m going to my office anyway, and I’ll be waiting for your report this evening.”
He turned on his heels and left the apartment without waiting for a reply. As he was outside, he scanned the road. Parioli was one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Rome, and he believed its residents would be shocked by a murder.
Of course, this could have happened wherever, but in this case the victim is a person well-seen by the community. Moreover, the brutality of the crime is rather expected to happen in poorer zones of the capital, where people can’t afford the costs of private security.
The victim wasn’t a saint and depending on who you ask, you might get different answers. According to his ex-wife, and supposedly those around her, Claudio Calvani was a perfect jerk, who cheated on his wife. Others might have described him as a sympathetic, funny, and easy-going person – nevertheless, not a criminal or a violent man. He lit a cigarette, still glancing around, searching for some other clues to be investigated so to reconstruct the last day of Mr. Calvani’s life, as well as the happenings in the last three to four years.
Something told him the divorce from his wife might have some sort of connection with the murder. The first hypothesis could be jealousy, but his wife wasn’t in the city at the time he got killed, and she would have been the most accredited person to have a jealous reason to kill.
Another can be the girlfriend, perhaps she thought he was still in love with the wife, but in this case, I suppose she would have killed Mrs. Martini. Why kill him? Maybe she found out he was also seeing other women, and the only way to have him for herself was to kill him?
He threw the cigarette away and walked to the car; he needed a plan to follow, and from the details he would have gotten time by time, he hoped to reach the solution of the mystery.
As he arrived at the office, he closed the door behind him and hoped nobody would disturb him. That was a mere hope because he already knew that having the door closed was a clear invitation for the whole precinct to come in and ask him questions.
He sat down at his desk, and for a couple of minutes, his eyes stared at the door, holding his breath, waiting for the first officer knocking or flashing himself in, with the most impossible issue.
Nothing happened, and with a surprised grin, he switched on his computer, as the most surreal feeling of something not going the way it should, grabbed his mind. Despite this detail, he started to write a plan. That was the way he worked. Without a starting list, he was completely stuck into the vortex of the thousand questions swirling in his mind. A list of priorities was a way to put his thoughts into a precise order.
A couple of hours went by and raising his glance to the clock on the other side of the room, he had the confirmation that the world had finally stopped, and some sort of catastrophic event was on its way.
“Two hours...” he muttered, surprised. “The door has been closed for two hours, and nobody knocked! Either everybody is dead, or they’ve learned the meaning of a closed door.”
He stood up and keeping the most religious silence, he tried to focus on the noises coming from the corridor and the other offices. Indeed, it sounded like the work was going on regularly, but nobody had anything to ask.
“Then, there’s nothing else to do but to acknowledge that my colleagues understood, after 9 years that when my door is closed, they need to keep themselves out of my sight.”
An amused smile relaxed his face, smoothing the creases on his forehead, and returned to sit at his desk. Glancing at the list he wrote and the comments at the side of each point, he
