Waco. That little aside from the woman cop had sobered him up. It had been almost like a surgical thrust. She was something, that one. Couldn't be more than thirty-five, a real looker, self-assured as anything. The other was just another weak, vainglorious bully, like any number of the screws he'd dealt with in the Big House. But she-she had the confidence, the power, of the devil behind her.
Should he resist, put up a fight? He had tremendous power in his hands, hundreds of followers who believed in him heart and soul. He had the power of conviction and the Spirit, but they had the power of physical arms. They had the might of the state behind them. They had weapons, tear gas, water cannon. If he resisted, it would be a butchery.
What did God want him to do? He bowed, prayed again.
There was a knock on one of the wooden posts of the tent.
"Yes?"
"It's almost time for your morning sermon and the laying-on of hands."
"Thank you, Todd. I'll be out in a few minutes."
He needed an answer, if only for himself, before he could face his people once again. They relied on him for spiritual guidance in this greatest crisis of all. He was so proud of them, of their bravery and conviction. "Soldiers of Rome," they'd shouted so aptly at the cops .
Soldiers of Rome-that was it.
Suddenly, like the cogs of some vast spiritual machine, a series of connections fell together like dominoes in his mind. Pilate. Herod. Golgotha. It had been there all the time, the answer he'd been searching for. He'd just needed the strength of faith to find it.
He knelt a moment longer. "Thank you, Father," he murmured. Then he rose, feeling suffused with light.
Now he knew exactly how he would face the armies of Rome.
He armed aside the tent flap and strode toward the preaching rock. He glanced around at the beauty of the morning, the beauty of God's earth. Life was so precious, such a fleeting gift. As he climbed the path that circled behind the rock, he reminded himself that the next world would be far better, far more beautiful. When the infidels came, a thousand strong, he knew exactly how he was going to deliver them unto defeat.
He raised his hands to a thunderous cheer.
{ 69 }
The cellar of the carabinieri barracks looked more like the dungeon it had once been than a basement, and as D'Agosta followed Colonnello Esposito and Pendergast through the winding tunnels of undressed stone, streaked with cobwebs and lime, he was half surprised to find no skeletons chained to the walls.
The colonnello paused at an iron door, opened it. "As you'll see, alas, we have yet to join the twenty-first century," he said as he gestured for them to enter.
D'Agosta stepped into a room wall-to-wall with filing cabinets and open shelves. Fascicles of documents sat on the shelves, tied up in twine. Some were so old and moldy they must have dated back centuries. An officer in a neat uniform of blue and white, with a smart red stripe down the outside of the slacks, stood and saluted crisply.
"Basta," said the colonnello in a tired voice, then gestured at some old wooden chairs arranged around a long table. "Please sit."
As they seated themselves, the colonnello spoke to the younger officer, who in turn produced a dozen folders and laid them on the table. "Here are the summaries of the homicides that fell within your requirements: unsolved murders over the last year in which the victim was found burned. I have been through them myself and found nothing of the slightest interest. I am much more concerned about what happened up at La Verna this morning."
Pendergast took the first folder, opened it, slid out the case summary. "I regret that more than I can say."
"I regret it even more. Things were tranquil here until you arrived-and then . " He opened his hands and smiled wanly.
"We are almost there, Colonnello."
"Then let us pray you get there, wherever 'there' may be, as soon as possible."
Pendergast began reading through the case summaries, passing each to D'Agosta as he completed it. The only sound was the gentle whisper of forced air, carried into the basement by shiny aluminum ducts that snaked along the vaulted ceilings in a futile attempt to bring fresh air into these depths. D'Agosta looked at each case and its associated photograph, struggling to comprehend the Italian, able to get the gist but no more. Occasionally he jotted down a note-more to have something to report to Hayward on their next call than for his own recollection.
In less than an hour, they'd gone through them all.
Pendergast turned to D'Agosta. "Anything?"
"Nothing stood out."
"Let us take a second pass."
The colonnello glanced at his watch, lit a cigarette.
"There's no need for you to stay," said Pendergast.
Esposito waved his hand. "I am quite content to be buried down here, out of reach, my cell phone dead. It is not so pleasant upstairs, with the Procuratore della Repubblica calling every half hour-thanks again, I fear, to you " He looked around. "All that's lacking is an espresso machine." He turned to the officer. "Caffè per tutti."
"Sissignore."
D'Agosta heaved a sigh and began leafing again through the barely comprehensible files. This time he paused at a black-and-white photo of a man lying in what looked like an abandoned building. The corpse lay curled in a cracked cement corner, very badly burned. It was a typical police photo, sordid, vile.
But there was something else. Something wrong.
Pendergast instantly detected his interest. "Yes?"
D'Agosta slid the photo over. Pendergast scrutinized it for a few seconds. Then his eyebrows shot up. "Yes, I do see."
"What is it?" asked the colonnello , reluctantly leaning forward.
"This man. You see the small pool of blood there, underneath him? He was burned and then shot."
"And so?"
"Usually victims are shot, then burned, to conceal evidence. Have you ever heard of burning a man first and then shooting him?"
"Frequently. To extract information."
"Not over half the body. Torture burning is localized."
Esposito peered at the photo. "That means nothing. A maniac, perhaps."
"May we see the complete file?"
The colonnello shrugged, rose, shuffled to a distant cabinet, then returned with a fat bundle of documents. He put it on the table, cut the twine with his pocketknife.
Pendergast looked through the documents, pulled one out, began to summarize in English: "Carlo Vanni, aged sixty-nine, retired farmer, body found in a ruined casa colonica in the mountains near Abetone. There was no physical evidence recovered at the site, no fingerprints, fibers, shell casings, prints, tracks." He glanced up. "This does not look like the work of a maniac to me."
A slow smile gathered on the colonnello 's face. "Even among the carabinieri, incompetence has been known to occur. Just because no evidence was recovered does not mean there was no evidence to recover."
Pendergast flipped the page. "A single shot to the heart. And what's this? Some droplets of molten aluminum recovered by the medico legale , burned deep into the man's flesh."
He flipped another page.
"Now, this is even more intriguing. Several years before his murder, Vanni was accused of molesting children in the local community. He got off on a technicality. The police theorized that the murder was simple vengeance, and it appears they did not try very hard to find the killer."