queen sized mattress lay directly on the floor with no bedside tables. One reading lamp sat directly on the floor next to a few books. A flimsy looking wood table was tucked in the corner with a Macintosh laptop perched open atop it, a wireless router hooked into the wall.
Wolf went to the computer, swiped his finger, then pushed a few buttons. It was dead.
The small closet was filled halfway with hanging clothes, anal-retentively separated into different color genres.
Wolf raised his voice, “The girl upstairs, what was her name? Cristina?”
“Yes,” Rossi walked to the bedroom doorway.
“I’d like to go talk to her.”
“Let’s go.”
There was no answer at the door upstairs.
“How about the apartment below his apartment? What did they say? Didn’t they hear anything? The chandelier hitting the floor?”
“Nobody lives there,” Rossi shrugged.
“Okay, obviously this girl isn’t home. Do you guys know where she is? Where she works?”
“I do not know.”
“Did you question her on Sunday?” Wolf asked.
“I talked to her a little. I didn’t think to ask her a bunch of questions. Just if she heard anything. It was a tough time for her and she needed support. She was very upset. We called in a person, but she had disappeared before the…person could arrive.”
“A counselor?”
“Yes, a counselor. But she left before the counselor arrived.”
“Okay,” Wolf sighed heavily. “You didn’t ask her about drugs?”
They walked down the stairs to the outside of Wolf’s door.
“No. It really was not an interrogation. We were, dealing with the delicate task of…removing your brother’s body. Knowing what the evidence inside was presenting us, it was more a matter of comforting the girl.”
“And this neighbor?” He pointed to the only other door that was on his brother’s level.
The manager said a few sentences, and Rossi took the reigns with translation, “They were gone, and have been for over a month. A lot of people go on vacation for August here, and they have been gone all of August, and all of September so far. They weren’t here.”
“Okay.” Wolf suddenly felt light headed.
The manager said something to Rossi and Lia while pointing at Wolf. He held up the keys and shrugged his shoulders.
Rossi began answering in the negative, then looking questioning at Lia, who looked skeptically at Wolf.
“What’s going on?”
“He is saying you can stay here if you like. The rent is paid for the month, and he can give you the keys,” Lia said.
“Thanks, that would be perfect,” Wolf took the keys from the manager’s outstretched hand. “What is your name?”
“Guiseppe.”
“David. Thank you.”
The manager showed Wolf the different keys for the gate and door locks, then left. They all looked at their watches, 5:38 pm.
“Is it too late to go see my brother?” Wolf’s body screamed for sleep, but he knew it was a luxury he would have to forego.
“I have to leave for other commitments,” Rossi looked at his watch.
Lia nodded her head, “The morgue is open twenty four hours. We can go right now.”
Chapter 13
Wolf sat in silence on the way over to the morgue. Glancing at his watch, he did a quick calculation —
“I’m sorry I was so angry earlier,” Lia said, looking at Wolf. Her tanned olive skin coupled with her luminous eyes in the subdued evening sunlight was startling to him, and he wasn’t easy to startle. He unconsciously rubbed his face, noting the long stubble — way past a five o’clock shadow.
“No problem. I would have been pissed too,” he said.
She shot him a suspicious look.
“I couldn’t tell if your boss was just a terrible English speaker, or a terrible bigot. I take it he’s a terrible bigot. ‘We have eemportant work to do and cannot spare officers, so I weel geev you Lia for two days,’ I believe he said. Yeah, that would piss me off too.”
Lia gave him an unreadable look and resumed driving.
“I know that what your boss thinks is important to you, and you think that he thinks he’s put you on an unimportant case. Obviously that pisses you off, and I’d be pretty angry, too. But, the thing is, my brother didn’t kill himself. I’m one hundred percent sure of that. So that only leaves one other option. He was murdered.”
They drove in silence for a few minutes. Wolf could see Lia glancing at him from his peripheral, unsure of what to say.
“I was really sweating being paired up with Tito there for a minute,” he said with a shake of the head, breaking the silence. “So, thanks again.”
“Yeah, Tito’s a dumbass, you would be pretty screwed with him,” she said laughing out loud with a wide smile.
Lia pushed a button on a state of the art looking electronic keypad next to a heavy steel door.
“Si?” said a tinny male voice.
“Noi siamo.”
“Ciao,” a voice said from a doorway down the hall. A bald man was peaking his head out, looking over his pushed down glasses. They followed his beckon.
The room was cold, and smelled of formaldehyde, just like any other morgue five thousand miles to the west in the US. Two rows of four refrigeration units lined the far wall. The lower right-most one was pulled out displaying a sheeted lump of a figure.
His heart skipped and his breath caught as he looked down, then he turned to shake the hand of the pathologist.
“Ciao. I am Vittorio.” He blinked rapidly behind thick glasses while stretching his neck muscles as if his collar was itchy. He stood just under the height of Lia, who Wolf judged earlier to stand at about five foot eight inches.
Vittorio and Lia had a brief exchange in Italian, Vittorio looking intelligently at Lia in between blinks. Vittorio left the room quickly, and Wolf turned to the pulled out refrigeration unit.
He didn’t want to waste any more time, but he knew he should probably wait for the pathologist to return before looking at his brother. He wasn’t in that much of a hurry to look at his face, a face he hadn’t seen alive in over five months, other than in tiny pictures on a blog.
Lia came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder as he stared at the sheet below.
“Sorry.” Vittorio moved swiftly into the room. “I have the records all-a here now. Are you ready, officer
