Foreign Deceit

They continued walking for another few seconds.

She turned with squinted eyes. “Are you saying that was like your first time having sex?”

“What? Uh, yeah,” he said. “That’s what I was saying.”

She looked down and resumed her walking. “So, your first time was that crowded? I don’t understand.”

“No, more like standing, uncomfortable, and over before I knew what happened.” He looked into the distance at nothing in particular. “Never mind. I very much regret saying that now.”

She burst into a high pitched natural laugh that magnified his caffeine buzz.

Wolf turned to Lia as she drove. “So, how the heck do you speak such perfect English?”

She laughed. “My mother is from New York. She spoke only English to me and my brothers growing up my whole life. It just comes second nature to me. And I also went for two years in college in North Carolina, at Wake Forest.”

“Aha. Okay, that explains it.”

“And you and Valerio?” He braced himself as she dove full speed into another traffic circle. “You seem like close friends on the force.”

“Yes. Valerio is kind of like a brother to me. He grew up with our family. I have three older brothers, and he has a brother, and they were all friends growing up.”

“Wow. Three brothers? Older brothers?” She nodded. “That must have been rough for you growing up.”

“You could say that,” she said with a smirk. Then her expression turned serious. “I had to fight for independence from my brothers growing up. Two of them were very protective of me. I hated it. I didn’t need the protection. It was hard.”

She paused, glancing to the right, then cranked the wheel left, throwing Wolf into a spastic look to his left, then realized she was using another convex mirror.

She looked at him and laughed softly. “I fought and gained the respect I deserved from my brothers.”

A heavy silence engulfed them for a minute.

“So, you feel this job…the colonnello…you aren’t getting the respect you deserve, or the chances you deserve?”

She glared out the windshield. “Yes. Something like that. Valerio was a friend of the family. He grew up with us. He knows I can handle myself. He knows I’m better than what they think. But it’s also a matter of paying your dues. But the dues are much more expensive for a woman in Italy.”

Wolf nodded his head. They drove alongside the lake shore once again. Diamond waves glistened in the sun.

“What do your brothers do? They cops too?”

“Ehhhhhh,” she exhaled, “let’s see, one is a lawyer in Roma, one is a Caribiniere in Bergamo, and one is Guardia di Finanza.”

“What’s Guardia di Fananza? Finance guards?”

“Yes. They are part of the military, kind of like the Caribinieri. They patrol the territorial waters of Italy. Working against smuggling, illegal immigration, that type of thing. Among a lot of other duties.”

“Okay.”

“Yes, Luca is my brother in the Guardia. I am most close to him.” Her face melted into a fond smile, then looked to him with a tinge of regret, as if she realized she was just flaunting a toy he didn’t.

She was, but she didn’t mean anything by it. They drove on in silence.

Chapter 17

They were buzzed into the morgue, this time by a female voice. He met the morning pathologist on duty, Bianca. Lia explained the situation, and Bianca left for a few minutes, returning with the bag from the night before.

Wolf brought the bag into the room where his brother lay, and set it down on the steel table. Lia followed close behind, intrigued. He removed both belts and lay them side by side on the table. The brown belt that was found around John’s neck was noticeably longer. The holes still lined up, but the wear marks were at least five inches apart.

“This brown belt isn’t John’s. It’s from someone with a waist band that is at least five inches bigger.”

“Yeah, but couldn’t the belt have stretched from him hanging on it?”

Wolf looked close at the belt. “It’s not stretched at all,” he said. “There’s a thread pattern on the edges, those would be broken with significant stretching. There’s not one broken thread.”

“Okay, so what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that my brother was found on the ground in his apartment. Not hanging from the ceiling. The chandelier couldn’t hold his weight, there was irrefutable evidence of that. So you tell me which is more likely…

“One — He borrowed someone else’s belt, or stole it for the purpose of hanging himself, did some cocaine, then hung himself with the belt. He hangs there until he is almost dead, kicks the chair out with a convulsion, which sets off a slow drop of the chandelier…but a perfectly timed drop…because the hanging has to kill him. Otherwise he would have just gotten up later with a bad bruise on his head. So, the chandelier stays hanging, just until he dies, then it falls within time to still bruise him after death. Because, like the pathologist said last night, bruising can occur for only a short period of time after death.

“Or, scenario two — Someone strangles him with the belt, probably in a fit of rage. In an effort to cover it up, he strings him, or rather, they string him, to the chandelier.”

“They?” Lia asked.

“There’s no way one man could hold his dead weight up and string the belt on the chandelier at the same time. It had to have been two people. So, they are trying to cover up the murder with a hanging. They string him up, and all goes wrong when the chandelier won’t hold him. He drops, the chandelier drops. It makes a very loud noise, and they freak out. They lock the door and turn out the lights. Cristina said she went downstairs and saw the lights were off underneath the door. John wouldn’t have hanged himself in the dark. That wouldn’t have made sense. The door was locked from the inside. Keys still in the top lock. So they had to be still in the apartment. They probably freaked out after the loud crash…probably didn’t want to go out the front door in case the neighbors came knocking to see what happened. So they turned off the lights and sat quiet. Then they heard the knock at the door. They had to leave some other way, like out John’s balcony along the rooftop next door. They couldn’t have left out the front door, the door was locked, and his keys were found in the apartment.”

Lia was staring at him with raised eyebrows.

He caught her expression and stopped talking.

“I think that there was another man’s belt found around his neck.” She used a slow controlled voice. “I believe that.”

“How do you explain that fact? How does he have a heavier man’s belt around his neck?” Wolf asked. “It’s not his belt.”

She looked at him. “I don’t know.”

Wolf stared wide eyed at the floor, envisioning the night with perfect clarity. Doubt stabbed his line of thought, and it began to waver, and swirl apart. “We need to go talk to an astronomer.” He walked out of the room.

They drove in silence for the twenty minute journey south. Wolf stared unblinking out the window. In his mind he was there the night of John’s death. What really happened? Is it conceivable John killed himself? Had he given up on life? He waits to become a mega successful blogger and author, only to end it all after snorting a bit of cocaine?

What if he actually had given up on life? Maybe his apparent successes to the outsider’s point of view were actually a hollow reminder to John of something John didn’t have in his life. What the