The Crocodile (27 page)

And he’ll have to drag his victim into the abyss, on a one-way journey to death, in search of a peace that he has left behind in the impenetrable darkness of his perennial hunger.

His ravenous hunger has solidified over the years, in the wheeze of an endless death rattle, in the memory of a long-lost tenderness. His hunger has obliterated any and all memories of friendship, sentiment, joy, or love. His hunger is inextinguishable, and it has devoured every feeling in his heart, and in the end, it has actually devoured the heart itself.

Now he removes the plastic tub from the bottom of the armoire, opens it, and lays a cloth out on the bed. He dismantles his weapon, checks it, cleans it, and oils it.

The old man is the powerful, implacable jaws; he is the pitiless clawed feet; he is the formidable clamping strength. He is the poison without an antidote.

The old man is the Crocodile.

In his icy soul, no winds of human pity blow.

Because he is the Crocodile.

Born to kill.

That name had been something like an electric shock. Now they had someone to look for, and they had to find him right away. Afternoon had given way to night, and suddenly the clock had started racing at supersonic speed.

Orlando Masi, care of the administrator of the polytechnic: a message from the past. It seemed to Lojacono as if Eleonora had decided to save an innocent life, one among the many dead that had been murdered on her account: as if she were turning her back, fifteen years after her death, on the vigilante who was distributing rough justice and death sentences according to his own lights.

It wouldn’t be easy though. A sleepy clerk, irritated at having been caught up in a live police investigation as he was heading out the door for the night, told them after a lengthy search that there was no employee of that name, either current or retired, in the records of the polytechnic’s administrator.

Piras ran a hand over her face. “Do you think she gave a random name? Just to put one down?”

Lojacono shook his head vigorously. “No, I’d rule that out. Rinaldi wasn’t a public health facility. All she would have had to do was state that she had no one to contact. No, this is our man; this is the Crocodile’s last victim. The problem is that he could be anywhere after all these years; maybe he only worked here and now he lives somewhere outside of the country. Who the hell knows?”

Piras had been busy obtaining a warrant to search the De Falco residence. Lojacono’s theory—that the man might have killed himself or left some trace of his destination—struck her as one of the more plausible lines to pursue.

The phone call from Warrant Officer Giaquinto, in San Gerardo, came in a little before nine o’clock that night. They’d had relatively little trouble getting into the house, where everything was neat and tidy, as if De Falco had just left the place. There was no evidence of preparations for a trip or an extended absence. There was nothing that pointed to the man’s destination, nor was there much clothing missing from his armoire: there were only two empty hangers.

But they’d really had to do some work to force open the garage door: it was armor-plated and bolted shut from within. Once inside, they’d found what looked like a metalworking shop, with precision instruments and a computer with a high-speed connection. No evidence of any illegal activities, the warrant officer concluded with perfect bureaucratic diction.

But the man was wrong, Lojacono mused. There was clearly evidence of the Crocodile’s activities. Evidence of a lengthy, painstaking process of preparation, and of a conscientious elimination of any and all traces that might help to find him. He felt certain, and he said so to Piras, that the computer’s hard drive had been removed. The warrant officer confirmed that in fact the computer wouldn’t boot up.

Lojacono pulled a handful of ballistics reports out of the folder full of documents in front of him. The report on the last murder read:

EVIDENCE FROM THE MURDER OF RINALDI, DONATO, AND COMPARISON WITH PREVIOUS MURDERS

The projectile in question is a .22 LR cal. bullet, weighing 2.4 g., diameter 5.6 mm, with six right-hand striations, whose class characteristics are compatible with a Beretta 70 series semi-automatic pistol. There is the presence of typical deformations impressed by the projectile’s passage through a silencing device, as well as the presence of deformations due to traces of smoking and scorching. To establish comparison between this projectile and those previously analyzed, it can clearly be ascertained that in this third case the weapon used was the same one employed in the murders of Lorusso, Mirko, and De Matteis, Giada.

So that’s what the metalworking tools and the precision instruments were for, thought Lojacono. In Italy, you can always get hold of a handgun, and the same is true for a box of bullets. But a silencer is a whole different thing, not something you can find on the open market. You have to make it yourself.

The clock was ticking. It was almost ten o’clock already.

It was Piras who had the inspiration.

Her eyes opened wide and she said, “Damn me. Why on earth didn’t I think of this before? If she was forced to do this thing on her own, it means that she was no longer in touch with him, that they had broken up. And it explains why afterwards she did what she did. So she wouldn’t have wanted to have any more contact with him, much less with his family, right?”

Lojacono wasn’t following her. “So?”

“So she wouldn’t have given his home number, and it is unlikely he would have had a cell phone back then. You know why? Because he was a student. Just an ordinary student, and the best way to get in touch with him was by leaving a message with the administrator.”

Lojacono lit up. “An engineering student. Who was working hard on classwork and coursework, and who spent all his time at the university. Which is why . . .”

Piras clapped her hands happily. “The Engineers’ Guild! Immediately!”

This time, things were anything but straightforward. At the Engineers’ Guild, given the late hour, there was no answer. And when they looked up Orlando Masi on their website, all it listed was the name of the company where he worked.

“At least Masi hasn’t gone to work in the north of Italy, or abroad somewhere. He’s still right here in the city, and he works for Gallardo Construction, which is one of the region’s largest public-sector construction companies. Or at least that was where he worked the last time he renewed his membership a year ago. We have the phone number, and a nice little message on the answering machine telling us that the offices are open from nine to one in the afternoon, and then again after lunch from three to five. There’s no one in the phone book by that name. That’s all we’ve got.”

Lojacono nodded. They were both exhausted.

“Let’s hope we get to him in time. Tomorrow we’ll track down this engineer of ours, and we’ll ask him a question or two about his past.”

They agreed to meet very early the following morning and start by calling the construction company.

Neither of them got a wink of sleep, worn-out though they both were.

Sweetheart, my darling,

You know, there are nights that aren’t made for sleeping.

Not that there’s anxiety, or a fear of not being up to a given challenge or task. It’s simpler than that: it’s that you’re about to get something you’ve wanted for a long time, so it tends to keep you up.

It’s sort of the way it is for little children the night before Christmas. A mix of fear and anticipation.

I must have gone over the things I’ll need to do a million times by now. This one is different from the others, because it won’t be enough to sit still like a good boy and wait for them to come to me, heads down, like little lambs at Easter. This time, I’m going to have to arrange to have the proper time and space, and I’ll have to take concrete steps to gain those opportunities.

Of course, I could have waited. If I’d patiently monitored, observed, and watched, sooner or later a situation would have arisen that would allow me to act in greater safety and ease. But I have the sensation, and it’s growing stronger all the time, that my chances are about to run out.

You know, my darling, now I’m in all the newspapers. The Crocodile. Every day they revisit all three murders, word by word, step by step, coming up with ridiculously elaborate theories. They don’t see how simple reality can be, how easy it is to understand what’s happened. What’s happening.

So the best idea is to get moving and put an end to this thing, the sooner the better.

Don’t worry though; I’ve still got everything worked out to the last detail. The last thing we want is to let them catch us now, at the last second, right? Just when it’s all about to come to an end. Can you imagine how ironic that would be, my darling, to be caught and locked up before I could finish my work, without being able finally to hold you in my arms? It would be so laughable.

But it’s going to be different this time. I’ll have to be careful, and I’ll have to be fast.

I’ve made all the necessary preparations. I’ve rehearsed every act, every movement hundreds of times. I’ve found the place, the situation, the logistics.

I’ve prepared the tool.

Two shots. Just to be safe, I’ve loaded three bullets; you always want to have a safety margin. But I’m only going to pull the trigger twice.

You know how it will be: only the guilty, never the innocent.

I’m certainly no killer: I’m here to do justice.

And there are only two guilty parties left to punish.

A
nna Criscuolo, the secretary at Gallardo Construction, would happily have slept for another couple of hours.
Last night, she let herself get sucked into watching an idiotic TV program, a reality show so beastly and vulgar that she was unable to turn off the set and go to sleep. She’d once read in a women’s magazine that hypnotic subtexts are inserted into certain shows to keep the viewers watching, placidly absorbing every minute of advertising. At the time she’d dismissed it as utter nonsense, but now she wasn’t so sure.

But there’s one point on which the boss is absolutely intractable: starting time at the office. When he gets there in the morning, he’d better find everyone at their desks, ready to take his instructions for the day before he heads out to the various construction sites.

Anna has been assigned the task of raising the shutters, as the engineer puts it. She has the keys to the office, so she has to open up, bring fresh air into the premises by opening the windows for a few minutes while the air conditioning system gets going, turn on the computers and photocopiers, start the coffee, turn off the answering service. The engineer has told her that these are crucial tasks, necessary to ensure that as the staff come into work, they all have the impression of a machine already humming along and they’ll get right to work without wasting time.

Therefore, even though the firm’s offices aren’t officially open for business until 9
A.M.
, Anna makes sure she’s there every morning at 8:30
A.M.
to present that picture of efficiency. It’s an important responsibility, the engineer always says. That may be so, but this morning she’d have happily slept in. Goddamned stupid reality show, she thinks to herself as she rummages through her bag for her keys.

From the interior, through the door, she can hear the phone ringing. Who the hell could that be, at this hour of the morning?

She takes her time getting the door open, waiting until the phone stops ringing. Teach them to call at the right time, she thinks with a hint of annoyance.

Piras looks up at Lojacono and shakes her head. Still no answer. They started calling at 8
A.M.
, trying every five minutes, hoping that at least one of the employees might be more of an early riser than the rest.

Piras says, perhaps more to persuade herself than for any other reason, “Maybe this is a different engineer who happens to be called Orlando Masi; or maybe he was nothing more than a friend, the only one Eleonora could think of, and that’s why she gave his name to Rinaldi as a reference; maybe the father of the baby was the old boyfriend from her hometown, the one whose name the brigadier couldn’t remember.”

Lojacono, inscrutable, sits with his arms folded across his chest. “Maybe not. What with all the mistaken theories we’ve pursued, all the times we’ve ignored the most obvious lead, we’ve done nothing but waste time so far. We have this name and the only way we can make any progress is to pursue it. Come on, let’s keep trying to reach someone.”

Piras shoots him a magnificent glare of hatred, then dials Gallardo Construction. On the third ring, someone at last picks up.

As he waits, standing in the shelter of a niche in the wall, the Crocodile listens intently for sounds from the villa. After thinking it over, he selected a space in the wall around a neighboring home, because at that hour the slanting sunlight leaves that side in the shade, making it practically invisible, while still giving him a view of the garage door.

He’s been there for an hour already, even though he knows with precision the time that the man will get his car and drive out of the gate. For the past few days the variations on his departure time have never been more than five minutes.

The sky is leaden grey. Maybe it will rain later on, thinks the Crocodile. But later on, it will all be over.

The conversation between Piras and the secretary at Gallardo Construction was surreal in a way. The woman obstinately refuses to provide any information about the chief engineer: neither his home address nor his cell number. She keeps telling Piras to try calling back later, that Engineer Masi will be in the office at nine.

Piras does her best to keep her cool, but after a little while she starts to raise her voice. Lojacono notices that as she loses her temper, her Sardinian accent becomes much stronger and more distinct. At a certain point, seeing that the conversation has reached a stalemate, Lojacono has an idea and takes the phone out of her hand.