Dalton glanced at Brancati, whose face was unreadable. “I would be grateful, Father.”
The priest made the sign of the cross in the air between them, uttered a few unintelligible words in low but sacred tones, and then held out his hand, his face solemn, his dark eyes intense.
“I wish you grace, Signor Dalton. If you wish to confess later, I will open the chiesa and hear you. Good bye, now. God be with you.”
The priest withdrew, and after a long silence — puzzled and vaguely uneasy on Dalton’s part, simply exasperated for Brancati — the major reached out, unzipped the closure, and pulled the flap back. Then he stood aside and opened it to Dalton.
Dalton stepped into the tent, and Brancati followed him inside, moving around what was on the ground in front of them until he could watch Dalton’s face. Dalton looked at the figure on the ground, its back up against the heavy wooden doors of the chapel; it took a while to make sense of what he was seeing. When he finally put it together with the smell of fresh blood and intestinal fluids, a rush of hot acid flowed up into the back of his throat and a chilly sweat came out on his cheeks. He swallowed with difficulty and opened his mouth to take in shallow breaths so the smell wouldn’t overpower him. He swallowed twice more and shoved his hands into the pockets of his Burberry coat. Brancati said nothing for a time and then crouched down beside the body, pulling on a pair of latex gloves.
“This person has been very badly damaged. As you see. So it is very hard to make the identity. I regret asking this, but you must try.”
Brancati pulled out a Streamlight and shone the beam directly onto what remained of the face. Dalton had to make himself concentrate on seeing any remnant of an old and familiar friend in shredded flesh and torn muscle, in a face that was no longer being ruled by the mind and the emotions that had made it live. Even a death mask has a shadow of the living spirit in it; this was barely human.
“Yes,” he said, after a minute. “That’s him.”
“You must name him, Signor Dalton. For the record.”
“That’s Porter Naumann.”
“You’re sure.”
“I think so. Yes. I’m sure. What…?”
“What happened to him? We think he came up here wearing only what you see, the bottom of his…” Brancati hunted the word.
“Pajamas.”
“Yes. Pajamas. And barefoot. Look here.” He indicated the soles of the corpse’s feet, where the flesh was torn and bruised. “He ran all the way from the hostel, it seems. People on the Via Berrettini say they heard a man running last night. Around midnight. They heard him saying something. But not screaming. More like a prayer, or simply talking out loud. But it was raining very hard. No one went to the balcony to look. Bits of the gravel outside we find also in the skin of his feet. See, here, he fell once at least. You see the gashes on the palms. He fell hard onto the gravel. He gets up, stumbles, finally he reaches the doors of the cappella.”
Brancati aimed the light at the wooden doors of the chapel.
“See here the marks. His palms were bloody and he struck the doors. Several times, from the smears here… and here… struck them hard.”
“No one heard?”
“Paolo lives two streets away. And the wind was high all night. The rain washed a lot of things away. Anyway, so far, no one has come to us.”
“Do they know? The people around?”
Brancati gave him a disdainful look. “The whole of Cortona knows. Cortona is not Napoli.”
“What happened to his belly?”
Brancati sighed. “It is speculation only. But we think maybe the dogs.”
“Dogs? Dogs chased him up here and killed him? Jesus Christ. What kind of dogs do you have in Cortona? Werewolves?”
“All dogs are carnivores.”
“His guts have been torn completely out. No poodle did that.”
“No. But the town dogs — many are half-wild. They breed in the fortezza above the town. They would have smelled this in the wind.”
“So the dogs killed him? Is that it?”
“No. That is not possible. He was dead before the dogs found him.”
“How do you know?”
“The wounds. Men don’t bleed after death. If you look at the way he sits, his back against the doors, his ankles crossed so, his knees spread, this is not the position of a man fighting off dogs. And when dogs kill they do it at the throat, at the head, and at the tendons in the legs. The belly they open afterward. After he was dead. It is natural. The scent would bring them.”
Dalton felt the acid rising again. His vision blurred and he swallowed it down again with difficulty. Brancati’s sympathetic look was unconvincing.
“You wish to go now, Mr. Dalton?”
“Is there anything else?”
“Yes. There is. If you are all right?”
“I am.”
“You tell me Mr. Naumann was a banker, yes?”
“A lawyer, actually. His brief was international trade.”
“Never a soldier?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’ve known him for eight years. Ever since I came to work at Burke and Single. He was one of my first trainers. He would have mentioned it.”
“Trainers? Bankers have trainers?”
“Instructors. A mentor.”
“A mentor. I see.”
Brancati pointed the flashlight to an irregular row of coin-shaped lesions across Naumann’s right hip. “Okay. These are bullet wounds. Not recent. But not that old either. Not many years. And this…” He indicated Naumann’s left shoulder. “This is a scar like one gets from a knife. A big knife. It is quite recent. No more than a year old. And he was a very active man. Very strong. See the musculature of the chest and the arms. Here on his left pectoral he once had a small tattoo. It has been partially removed with a laser, but you can see it was once in the shape of a helicopter with spread wings behind it. Do you know it?”
Dalton shook his head and internally damned the Agency medics. Brancati waited for something more, realized that nothing was immediately forthcoming, shrugged, and continued.
“Well, I may know this tattoo. We are military, we Carabinieri. Many years ago, when I was a young man, we took part in a military exercise with some American forces. The tattoo of a helicopter with wings signifies Air Assault training in the U.S. Army. Look at his hands. He has the kind of calluses on his hands that you also have. I have seen these before. I recognize them. They come from a long practice of the martial arts. So, very strange for a banker whose entry visa says he is fifty-two years old. Bullet holes. Tattoos. Knife scars. Mr. Dalton, are your office parties so dangerous? Do the ambulances stand by?”
Dalton didn’t laugh. “I can’t tell what those wounds are. They could be cigarette burns. I have no idea how he came by a knife scar. About the tattoo, many men come to regret the tattoos they get when they’re young and stupid.”
“Like you? A banker only. Never a soldier?”
Dalton shook his head.
Brancati got to his feet, groaning with the effort.
“I don’t think you will say yes if I ask you to take off your shirt?”
“No. I won’t.”
Brancati raised his hands, smiled again. “A joke. Otherwise it is all too dark, too sfumato.”
“A joke. Great. But somebody killed him? Right?”
Brancati’s face altered again, hardened. “Possibly. Possibly not.”
“But you said he was running from someone.”
“I said he was running. I did not say that he was being chased.”
“For Christ’s sake, Brancati. Look at him.”
“I have.”
“What killed him? If not the dogs, then what?”
“Look at his hands, Mr. Dalton.”
Dalton leaned down. Brancati shone the narrow beam of the Streamlight onto Naumann’s lap, where his hands lay palms-up in the bubble-and-squeak of his opened belly. The tips of his fingers were shredded and pulpy.