“I wasn’t pretending. I almost passed out.”
“No answer.” Wolf smacked a mosquito on his neck.
The apartment was along the same wide river that dumped out of Lake Como, a few minutes’ drive to the north, halfway between the observatory and the city of Lecco. The building was large, containing thirty or more apartments, and built directly within a hollowed out section of a steep hill that sloped to the water.
“I don’t think he is home.”
Wolf bent forward. “Is there a building manager button?” He waged war on two more mosquitoes hovering around his ears.
“I don’t see one.” She shrugged.
“Okay, you do the talking.” Wolf pushed five buttons in quick succession.
She turned and gave Wolf a dirty look, hands on her slender hips.
“Pronto?”
“Pronto?” Two people answered almost simultaneously.
“
The gate buzzed and clicked open, then buzzed again.
“Okay, now let’s go get a closer look.” Wolf pushed through the gate.
“Is this how they do it in Colorado?”
“Nope. We don’t have fences like this where I come from.”
They climbed the stairs to Dr. Rosenwald’s floor and ran into a concerned looking old woman poking her head out the door.
She and Lia had a brief conversation.
“What did she say?”
“She hasn’t seen him.”
A knock at the door produced no response from inside, no sounds at all.
“Would you object to me picking this lock?” Wolf raised an eyebrow.
“I…could you do that?”
“I could. They don’t teach that here in your military?”
“I don’t remember learning that skill, no.” She smirked. “Well, in Italy, we do not need a warrant for drugs to search a person’s property. Since your brother had drugs in his system on the night of his death, and he was with this person on the night of his death…then, I don’t see any problem with us entering this apartment on suspicion of drugs.”
“Okay, good. I’m going to need some things — I need something that is long and thin metal, and I haven’t seen a lock like this in my life. I say let’s go to the old lady’s apartment and see what we can get there.” He turned to walk down the hallway.
Lia reached down and turned the door knob. With a soft click the door creaked open to the inside.
She swept her hand at the door. “They don’t teach that skill in the American military?”
“Huh. No I don’t remember learning that. Touche.” He stepped in.
The apartment was dimly lit. A corridor hallway inside the entrance was lined with a body length mirror and framed painting that looked to be Australian aboriginal art.
Two doors were closed on the right hand side and a brightly lit bigger room was at the end of the narrow hallway.
“Hello?” Wolf called into the apartment.
Lia flipped a light switch and the hall flooded with yellow light. She shut the door, suffocating all outside noise.
He caught the smell her breath as she turned toward him, and then the lavender scent of her hair. The apartment was completely silent save the gentle rustle of Lia’s clothing.
Wolf was aware he’d passed beyond the act of looking to staring. “I’ll check this door.” He turned and opened the nearest door, revealing Rosenwald’s bedroom. A queen sized bed lay un-made with two shirts strewn across it. A dirty clothes wicker basket was filled to the brim giving the room a musty body-odor smell. The screen-less window was open a crack, and Wolf felt another tiny sting and slapped his forearm.
A distant thunder rumbled outside, shaking the building deep. Light dimmed by the second. A mid-day thunderstorm was building outside somewhere within the haze.
“Pretty nice place!” Lia’s voice was somewhere else in the apartment. He left the room and followed her voice down the hall into a large living room that had vaulted ceilings. There were two massive windows set in an exposed brick wall that looked out on the river, filling the room with subdued natural light. The opposite wall was painted Italian-flag-green. From it hung a medium sized flat screen television. Australian landscape photography and paintings adorned the rest of the wall space. It was thoughtfully and tastefully designed with attention to detail. There was a leather couch, dark wood end tables and a kitchenette with a table where Lia was digging in a back pack.
“Notice the coffee table over there.” She nodded her head toward it.
Looking, Wolf saw a small pile of Euro coins, a few pieces of paper, and a tiny white bag. It looked like a bag of cocaine. He picked it up and looked closely. It looked and smelled like it at least.
“So, Matthew here is also using cocaine,” she said.
“I don’t think my brother was using cocaine.”
“Sorry.” She gave him a sideways glance. “What about what the coroner’s report?”
“It said there was residue on his nose. There weren’t any blood tests done.”
“True.”
He closed and pocketed the tiny bag and they began a thorough search of the apartment. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary for a single male from Australia, living his life as a Gamma-ray astronomer in a foreign country. Other than the bag of coke that is. Receipts were strewn about on the kitchen counter, none giving any clues to anything but his diet, which consisted of a lot of vegetables from the local supermarket.
“There’s no phone. That reminds me, can we look at phone records for my brother and this guy? There may be some clues there. We should have the cell phone company ping his phone as well to see where it’s at, if there’s any charge left in it. Did it go straight to voice mail when you called it earlier?”
“Yes, it did.”
“Okay, that says something. He’s not charging his phone. Maybe he knows someone could trace his phone if he charged it. Maybe he’s running. I don’t see his car keys anywhere. What about his passport? I haven’t seen one, have you?”
“No.” She looked around with her hands out.
“Okay, so he has his passport also. Can we trace movement with his passport?”
“Probably not. At least, it’s not easy. Schengen rules allow free travel between most European countries. Most countries don’t even have electronic passport control of any kind. There will be a guard, and he will look at the passport, and done.” She swiped her hands together as if wiping off crumbs. “We can check of course, but it is very difficult to trace by passport now. We can check his credit cards and cell phone.”
“You have a person in the Caribinieri that does all this stuff?”
“Yes.” She smiled. “there is a guy who does all this stuff. He is the technical genius of the office.”
A close thunder rumbled long and slow, followed by a deluge of rain drops hitting the roof and windows.
“We’ll have him check on Dr. Rosenwald’s car as well,” she said. “He can get the registration.”
“I wonder if he could hack into my brother’s computer at the same time.”
“If it can be done, he will be able to do it.”
I’d also like to take a thorough look at the police report, or whatever you call it here in Italy,” he said. “All after we go to the Albastru Pub.”
“Is that all?” She looked at him facetiously.
“I hope that’s all. Yeah.”
A white flash of lightning lit the interior of the apartment, followed by a deafening boom that rolled into the
