“Let her go. She’s one of us.”
Fowler was close behind, clutching his suitcase. He lost a few valuable seconds stooping down to retrieve Paola’s cell phone. She decided on the shortest route, straight through Saint Peter’s Square. The crowds were smaller there owing to the fact that the police had set up one line crossing the square, in contrast to the incredible masses of humanity on the earlier stages of the route. She ran with her ID out so as to avoid trouble if she encountered police along the way. Once they crossed the esplanade and passed Bernini’s Colonnade without too much trouble, they arrived at the Via Corridori out of breath. From there on, the mass of pilgrims was menacingly tight. Paola plastered her left arm across her chest to lessen the chances of her pistol being seen. She moved in close to the buildings and tried to make headway as quickly as she could. Dante was a few steps ahead. He served as an improvised but effective battering ram, all arms and elbows. Fowler was immediately behind.
It cost them ten excruciating minutes to arrive at the door that led into the sacristy. Two agents were waiting for them, ringing the bell nonstop. Dicanti, panting, covered with sweat, her leather holster in full view and her hair slick and shiny, looked every bit an apparition to the two police officers, who nonetheless greeted her respectfully as soon as they saw her UACV identification.
“We received your warning. There’s no answer from inside. We have four officers at the other entrance.”
“Can you tell me why the hell you haven’t gone in yet? Are you aware a fellow officer could be trapped inside?”
The two agents stared at their shoes.
“Direttore Troi called. He told us to proceed with caution. Many people are staring at us, Ispettore.”
Dicanti leaned against the wall and took five seconds to gather herself together. Shit, she said to herself, Let’s hope we’re not too late. “You have the ‘master key’?”
One of the cops pointed to his thigh, where, cleverly concealed from outside view in an extra pocket, he carried a steel bar with two teeth on the end. People in the street were beginning to pay attention to the drama unfolding in this group that milled around the church door. Paola gestured to the cop who had showed her the door breaker.
“Give me your walkie-talkie.”
The cop handed her the device, which was hooked by a cable to the holder on his belt. Paola dictated a few short, precise instructions to the team on the other side of the church. No one was to make a move until she got there, and of course no one was to go in or out.
“Could someone explain where all this is going?” Fowler asked in between gasping for breath.
“Our best guess is that the suspect is inside. I’ll go over it a little more slowly now. For starters, I want you to stay outside and wait,” said Paola.
The priest handed her the cell phone that had fallen out of her pocket.
“This is yours.”
“Thanks, Padre.” She made a gesture with her head in the direction of the human tide surrounding them. “Do what you can to distract them while we force the door. Let’s hope we get there in time.”
Fowler nodded. He looked around, hunting for a perch where he could stand out from the crowd. There were no cars in the vicinity; the street had been closed off. No time to waste. What he had was people, so he would have to use them to get a little leverage. A tall, rugged-looking pilgrim stood out from the crowd close by. He must have been six feet tall.
Fowler went up to him and said, “Do you think you could lift me on your shoulders?”
The young man used his hands to indicate that he didn’t know Italian. Fowler used the same language of gestures to indicate what he wanted. After several tries, the pilgrim got it. He put one knee on the ground and lifted the priest up, a big smile on his face. Surveying the crowd from above, Fowler began to sing the communion chant from the Requiem mass.
In paradisum deducant te angeli
In tuo advente
Suscipiant te martyres . . .
People in the crowd began turning around to look at him. Fowler gestured for his heavily laden porter to move toward the center of the street, taking attention away from Paola and the others. Several of the faithful, friars and priests for the most part, joined in the hymn for the dead pope, in whose honor they had been standing and walking for many hours.
Making use of the distraction, the two cops were able to force open the door to the sacristy with the steel bar. They slipped in without calling attention to themselves.
“Boys, one of ours is in here. Let’s proceed with utmost caution.”
They entered in Indian file, Dicanti flying in, her pistol out. She left it to the two cops to search the sacristy, while she walked into the main part of the church’s nave. She hurriedly searched the chapel of Saint Thomas. It was empty, still closed off by UACV’s crime scene tape. She looked over the chapels on the left side, her finger on the trigger of her pistol. She signaled to Dante, who was covering the aisle on the other side of the church, checking each one of the chapels. The faces of the saints moved around restlessly, projected onto the walls by the flickering, sickly light cast by the candles burning on every available surface. The two met up in the central aisle.
“Nothing?”
Dante shook his head. No.
They saw it at the same time. There it was, written on the floor near the entrance, at the foot of the baptismal font. In large, red, twisty letters was written:
“The banners of the King of Hell are coming ever closer,” a voice behind them intoned.
Startled, the two agents turned around. Fowler was walking up behind them. He had brought the hymn to a close and slipped inside the church.
“I thought I told you to stay outside.”
“Forget about that now,” Dante interjected. His attention was riveted by the trapdoor sitting open on the floor. “I’ll call the others.”
Paola looked as if she had come unhinged. Her heart told her to go down below immediately, but she didn’t dare go into the dark. Dante raced over to the front door and opened the locks. Two agents walked in, leaving the two others standing on the threshold. One of the cops pulled the Maglite from his belt and offered it to Dante. Dicanti grabbed it out of his hands and headed down, her back against the steps, her muscles tense, her pistol pointing straight ahead. Fowler didn’t come along, staying above and murmuring a short prayer.
Paola’s head emerged out of the darkness a short time later. As soon as she climbed the stairs, she raced out of the church. Dante dragged himself up the steps slowly. He looked at Fowler, and shook his head.
Paola stood on the street. She was sobbing. She got as far as she could from the doorway and threw up everything she had in her stomach. Young people, who appeared to be foreigners waiting on line, came up to her to see if she needed help.
“Are you OK?”
Paola waved them off. Then Fowler was there, lending her his handkerchief. She accepted it and wiped away the vomit and tears. Her head was spinning. It couldn’t be; Pontiero just couldn’t be that blood-drenched pile she’d found tied to the column. Maurizio Pontiero, detective: a good man, fit, overflowing with an always surprising and always sympathetic sense of devilish humor. A paterfamilias, a friend, a companion. On rainy afternoons, he slunk around inside his raincoat; a colleague, he always paid for the coffee they shared; he was always there. He had been there for many years. It just couldn’t be that he had breathed his last, that he had been reduced to that formless hunk of flesh. She wanted to tear that image right off her retina. Her hands pressed against her eyes with terrible force.
Her cell phone rang. She grabbed it out of her pocket, disgusted, and stood there paralyzed. On the screen, the caller was identified as M. Pontiero.
Paola was dying of fright as she took the call. Fowler studied her, intrigued.
“Yes?”
“Good afternoon, Ispettore. How do you feel?”
“Who is this?”
“Ispettore, please. You yourself asked me t
o call whenever I remembered something useful. And I just remembered that I had to take your coworker out of the picture. I am truly sorry. He got in my way.”
“We are going to catch you, Francesco. Or should I call you Victor?” Paola was spitting out the words furiously, her eyes damp with tears while she tried to keep her balance and hit him where it hurt. So that he knew his mask had been torn off.
Silence on the other end of the line. But only for a second. She hadn’t taken him by surprise in the slightest.
“So you already know who I am. Well, give my best to Padre Fowler. He has lost a bit of hair since the last time we saw each other. You yourself look a little pale.”
Paola’s eyes opened wide in surprise.
“Where are you, you sick bastard?”
“You don’t know? I’m right behind you.”
Paola looked out over the thousands of people crammed into the street, some wearing hats, some baseball caps, waving banners and drinking water, praying and chanting.
“Why don’t you come over here, Padre? We could have a little talk.”
“No, Ispettore, I’m afraid I have to keep my distance from you a little longer. But don’t think for a second that you have made any progress because you have unmasked good old Francesco. His life had run its course. I finally had to let him go. And don’t worry, you’ll be hearing from me soon. There’s no need to trouble yourself over the way you treated me when we met. I’ve forgiven you. You are very important to me.”
He hung up.
Dicanti threw herself into the crowd, pulling people apart without rhyme or reason, looking for men of a certain height and grabbing them by the arms, turning the ones looking the other way around, tearing off their hats. People scattered and moved away. She was demented, the look in her eyes was that of a lost soul, and even so, she was ready to go over every last pilgrim one by one if she had to.
Fowler waded into the heart of the crowd and, grabbing her arm, held her back.
“It won’t work.”
“Take your fucking hands off me!”
“Paola. Let it go. He’s not here.”
Dicanti started to sob. Fowler put his arm around her. On all sides, the gigantic human serpent moved slowly forward, pushing toward the public presentation of the body of John Paul II. And somewhere inside its body the serpent was carrying a killer.
THE SAINT MATTHEW INSTITUTE
Sachem Pike, Maryland January 1996
Transcription of Interview #72 Between
Patient No. 3643 and Doctor Canice Conroy,
with the Assistance of
Doctor Anthony Fowler and Sahler Fanabarzra
Dr. Conroy: Good afternoon, Victor.
No. 3643: Hello again.
Dr. Conroy: A day of regressive therapy, Victor.
[Transcription once again omits the process of hypnosis, as in previous reports.]
Fanabarzra: It’s 1973. From here on in you will listen to my voice and no one else’s. Are we in agreement?
No. 3643: Yes.
Fanabarzra: He cannot hear you, gentlemen.
Dr. Conroy: The other day we performed a Rorschach test. Victor participated in the process in a normal fashion, pointing out the usual birds and flowers. In only two did he say that he saw nothing. Take note, Father Fowler: when Victor takes no interest in something, it is because it affects him deeply. What I hope to do is to provoke that response during the state of regression, so we can learn its origin.
Dr. Fowler: I disagree about the soundness of the method, more than whether it is empirically possible. When he is in a state of regression, the patient doesn’t have many defensive mechanisms at his disposal, as he would in a normal state. The risk of inflicting trauma is too high.
Dr. Conroy: Those same defenses have rendered his brain inoperable. You know that this patient suffers from a profound rejection of particular episodes in his life. We have to get past the barriers, to uncover the origins of his illness.
Dr. Fowler: At what price?
Fanabarzra: Gentlemen, please keep your discussion to a minimum. In any case, it is impossible to show the patient any images now that he cannot open his eyes.
Dr. Conroy: But we will describe them. Go ahead, Fanabarzra.
Fanabarzra: Yes, sir. Victor, it is 1973. I want us to go to a place that you like. Which one shall we choose?
No. 3643: The fire escape.
Fanabarzra: Do you spend a good deal of time on the fire escape? No. 3643: Yes.
Fanabarzra: Tell me why.
No. 3643: The fresh air. It doesn’t smell bad out there. It smells really bad inside the house.
Fanabarzra: It smells?
No. 3643: Like rotten fruit. The stench is coming from Emil’s bed.
Fanabarzra: Your brother is sick?
No. 3643: Yes. We don’t know why. Nobody takes care of him. My mother says he is possessed. He can’t stand light and he has shaking fits. His throat hurts him.
Dr. Conroy: All symptoms of meningitis. Photophobia, rigidity of the neck, convulsions.
Fanabarzra: No one is taking care of your brother?
No. 3643: My mother feeds him sliced apples, when she remembers to. He has diarrhea and my father doesn’t want to know anything about it. I hate him. He looks at me and then tells me to clean my brother. I don’t want to, it makes me sick. My mother tells me to do something. I don’t want to and she pushes me against the radiator.
Dr. Conroy: We have already documented the bad treatment he received. Let’s find out what makes him see the images he sees when he takes the Rorschach. This one in particular concerns me.
Fanabarzra: Let’s go back to the fire escape. Sit there. Tell me what you’re feeling.
No. 3643: Fresh air. The metal beneath my feet. I can smell the Jewish food from the store in front.
Fanabarzra: Now I want you to picture something. A large black blotch, very big. It fills up all the space in front of you. In the lower part of the blotch there is a small white oval. Does that look like something to you?
No. 3643: The darkness. All alone in the closet.
Dr. Conroy: Pay attention. I think we have something here.
Fanabarzra: What did you do in the closet?
No. 3643: They shut me in there. I’m alone.
Dr. Fowler: For God’s sake, Conroy, look at his face. He’s in pain.
Dr. Conroy: Shut up. We are getting where we need to be. Fanabarzra, I am going to write further questions on this blackboard. Read them just as I write them, are we agreed? Fanabarzra: Victor, do you remember what happened before they shut you up in the closet?
No. 3643: Many things. Emil died.
Fanabarzra: How did Emil die?
No. 3643: They have locked me up. I am all alone.
Fanabarzra: I know that, Victor. Tell me how Emil died.
No. 3643: He was in our room. Papa was watching the television, Mama was out. I was sitting on the fire escape when I heard a noise.
Fanabarzra: What kind of noise?
No. 3643: Like a balloon when the air flies out. I stuck my head in the room. Emil was very pale. I spoke to my father and he threw a beer can at me.
Fanabarzra: He hit you?
No. 3643: In the head. I’m bleeding and crying. My father stands up, raises his arm. I tell him about Emil. He gets really angry, he says it’s my fault. That I was taking care of him. That I deserve to be punished. And he starts in on it again.
Fanabarzra: The same punishment as always? He touches you there?
No. 3643: He hurts me. I am bleeding on my head and my rear. But he stops.
Fanabarzra: Why does he stop?
No. 3643: I hear Mama’s voice. She is shouting terrible things at Papa. Things I don’t understand. Papa says she knew already. My mother screams and calls out to Emil as loud as she can. I know Emil can’t hear her and I am very happy. Then she grabs me by the neck and throws me inside the closet. I shout. I am afraid. I bang on the door for a long time. She opens it and shows me the knife. S
he says if I open my mouth, she’ll stab me with it.
Fanabarzra: And what did you do?
No. 3643: I keep quiet. I am alone. I hear voices outside. Voices I don’t recognize. They are there for hours. I stay in the closet.
Dr. Conroy: Those must be the voices of the emergency ambulance service taking the body of his brother away.
Fanabarzra: How long are you inside the closet?
No. 3643: A long time. I am alone. My mother opens the door. She says that I have been very bad. That God doesn’t like bad little boys who make trouble for their parents. That I am going to learn God’s punishment for those who misbehave. She give me an old plastic container and tells me to do my business in there. In the morning she gives me a glass of water, bread, and some cheese.
Fanabarzra: How many days were you there?
No. 3643: A long time went by.
Fanabarzra: You didn’t have a watch? You couldn’t count time?
No. 3643: I try to keep count, but it’s too long. If I really press my ear to the wall, I can hear Mrs. Berger’s transistor radio. She’s a little deaf. Sometimes she listens to baseball.
Fanabarzra: How many games did you listen to?
No. 3643: I don’t know, forty, maybe fifty. I lost count.
Dr. Fowler: My God, the kid was locked in the closet for almost two months.
Fanabarzra: You never went out?
No. 3643: Once.
Fanabarzra: Why did you go out?
No. 3643: I made a mistake. I kick the can with my foot and it turns over. The closet smells like death. I throw up. When Mama comes back, she’s angry. She rubs my face in the filth. Then she drags me out of the closet so she can clean it.