Karosky walked out from behind the folding screen with an oversized green shirt on.
“Walk over to the examining table and lie down. That’s right. Hang on, let me adjust the support for you. You have to be able to focus on the image on the television screen. Can you see?”
“Perfectly.”
“Great. Hang on, I have got to make some adjustments to the dials on the machine, and then we can get started. What we have here is a really fine television, wouldn’t you say? A thirty-two-inch screen. If I had something like this at the house, for sure my old lady would show me a little respect, don’t you agree?” Once again, the technician laughed at his own joke.
“I’m not sure.”
“Ha. Certainly not, Father, certainly not. That harpy wouldn’t show a little respect to Jesus Christ himself if he slipped out of a package of Golden Grahams and slapped her on her flabby ass. Ha ha ha.”
“You ought not take God’s name in vain, my son.”
“Right you are, Father. OK, everything is ready. You’ve never had a penileplethysmograph before, correct?”
“No.”
“Of course you haven’t. What a joke. Did they explain to you what the test consists of?”
“In general terms.”
“Okay, now I’m going to put my hands under your nightshirt so I can attach two electrodes to your penis. Is that all right? This will help us to measure your level of sexual response to various stimuli. Good, I am now proceeding to attach them. Done.”
“You have cold hands.”
“Yeah, it’s a little chilly in here, isn’t it? Are you comfortable?”
“I’m fine.”
“Then let’s begin.”
One image after another began to appear on the screen: The Eiffel Tower. Dawn. Mist in the mountains. Chocolate ice cream. Heterosexual coitus. A forest. Trees. A woman performing oral sex on a man. Tulips in Holland. Homosexual intercourse. Las Meninas by Velázquez. Sunset on Mount Kilimanjaro. Two men engaging in oral sex. Snow on the rooftops in a Swiss village. A young boy performing oral sex on an older man, the child with sad eyes looking straight into the camera as he sucks on the adult’s member.
Karosky stands up. His eyes are full of rage.
“Father, you cannot stand up. We aren’t finished yet—”
The priest grabs the man around the neck and forces his head down against the instrument board again and again, until blood begins to splash onto the various dials, soaking the technician’s white lab coat and Karosky’s nightshirt and finally bathing the whole world in blood.
“Never commit impure acts like this ever again, do you understand me? Do you understand me, you dirty little piece of shit? Do you?”
CHURCH OF SANTA MARIA IN TRASPONTINA
Via della Conciliazione, 14 Tuesday, April 5th, 2005, 11:59 A.M.
The silence immediately after Camilo Cirin spoke became even more pronounced when the bells in nearby Saint Peter’s Square began ringing the Angelus.
“The second victim? They’ve torn another cardinal to pieces and we just find out now?” Pontiero’s expression made his opinion of the situation absolutely clear.
Cirin, unmoved, stared straight back at him. He was, no doubt about it, an unusual man. Medium height with brown eyes, uncertain age, wearing a plain suit and gray overcoat—nothing about him called attention to itself, which was in itself extraordinary: he was a paradigm of normality. He used as few words as possible, as if by doing so he took himself out of the picture, something that fooled none of those present: all of them had heard talk about Camilo Cirin, one of the most powerful figures at the Vatican, in charge of the smallest police force in the world: the Vatican Vigilanza. A team of forty-eight agents (officially), less than half that of the Swiss Guard, but infinitely more powerful. Nothing took place in his tiny country without Cirin knowing about it. In 1997, a man had tried to outshine him: Alois Siltermann, the newly chosen commander of the Swiss Guard. Two days after his appointment, Siltermann, along with his wife and a corporal of irreproachable reputation, was found dead. They had been killed at gunpoint. The blame fell on the corporal, who, after he supposedly went mad, had shot the couple and then put his “regulation firearm” in his mouth and squeezed the trigger. The entire explanation would make sense if not for two small details: corporals in the Swiss Guard do not carry weapons, and the corporal in question had his front teeth destroyed. All of which leads one to believe that the pistol was brutally forced into his mouth.
A police colleague told Dicanti the whole story. After the event took place, he and his fellow police officers set out to give all possible assistance to the members of the Vigilanza, but they had barely set foot on the crime scene when they were cordially invited to return to the inspectorate and close the door from the inside, without so much as a thank-you for showing up. The dark legend of Camilo Cirin traveled mouth to mouth in police precincts across Rome, and UACV was no exception.
The three of them stood there, just outside of the chapel, stupefied by Cirin’s declaration.
“With all due respect, Ispettore Generale, I think that if it was clear to you that a killer capable of committing a crime similar to this one was running around loose in Rome, you had a duty to report it to UACV,” Dicanti said.
“Absolutely right, and that is exactly what my distinguished colleague did,” Troi responded. “He communicated it to me personally, and we both agreed that this is a case that has to be kept in the strictest secrecy, for everyone’s benefit. And we both agreed about something else. The Vatican has no one capable of going hand-to-hand with a criminal so, how shall I say, idiosyncratic as this one.”
Surprisingly, Cirin interrupted.
“Let me be honest, signorina. Our work consists in containment, protection, and counterespionage. In those fields, I guarantee we are among the best. But with a guy—how did you put it?—who has a few screws loose, we are outside our field of competency. We were thinking about asking for help when we received news of this second crime.”
“It’s our conclusion that this case requires a much more creative grasp of the subject, Dicanti.” Troi was speaking. “Which is why we don’t want you to limit yourself to producing profiles, as you have done up to now. We want you to direct the investigation.”
Paola kept her peace. This was work for a field agent, not for a criminal psychologist. Certainly she could do the job as well as any field agent, what with the training in the subject she had received in Quantico, but that such a request should come from Troi, and at that very moment, astonished her.
Cirin spun around toward a man in a leather jacket who had walked up to the group.
“Here you are. Let me introduce Fabio Dante, deputy inspector of the Vigilanza. He will be your liaison with the Vatican. He will bring you up to speed on the first murder, and you’ll work together on this one, since it’s all one case. Anything you ask of him is the same as asking it of me. And the reverse holds as well: anything he refuses you, it’s as if I myself refuse you. In the Vatican we have our own rules, which I hope you can understand. And I hope you catch this monster. A man who kills two princes of the Holy Mother Church cannot run around on the loose.”
And without a single word more, he walked out.
Troi moved very close to Paola, so close he made her uncomfortable. Their romantic adventure was still fresh in her mind.
“You heard it, Dicanti. You just now made contact with one of the most powerful men in the Vatican, and he has given you a very specific assignment. I have no idea why he settled on you but he expressly mentioned your name. Do what you have to do. Give me reports every day, short, sweet, and to the point. Above all else, collect the irrefutable evidence. I hope your ‘castles in the air’ amount to something this time. Bring me something, and soon.”
Turning on his heels, he headed for the exit in pursuit of Cirin.
“What utter bastards,” Dicanti blurted out when she was certain the others were out of earshot.
“Keep goi
ng, don’t hold back.” Dante, the most recent arrival, was laughing.
Paola blushed and held out her hand.
“Paola Dicanti.”
“Fabio Dante.”
“Maurizio Pontiero.”
Dicanti made use of Pontiero and Dante’s handshake to study the latter closely. Barely forty-one years old, he was short and well built, his head of dark hair sitting on top of barely two inches of thick neck. A mere five feet six inches in height, the superintendent was attractive, even if he was hardly good-looking. His eyes were olive green, so characteristic of the south of the Italian peninsula.
“I take it ‘bastards’ includes my superior, Ispettore?”
“In truth, yes. I believe an undeserved honor has befallen me.”
“We both know it isn’t an honor but a terrible pain in the neck. And it isn’t undeserved. Your track record speaks volumes of your readiness for this. A pity you have no results to go along with it, but that’s about to change, right?”
“You read my job history? Isn’t anything confidential around here?”
“Not for Him.”
“Listen, you pretentious little . . .” Pontiero had smoke coming out his ears.
“Basta, Maurizio. It isn’t necessary. We are at the scene of the crime, and I am the responsible party. Let’s get down to work, and we can talk later. We will leave the field to them.”
“Fine. You’re in charge, Paola. The boss has spoken.”
Waiting a prudent distance on the other side of the red line were two men and a woman sheathed in dark blue overalls. They were the team from Crime Scene Analysis, specialists in evidence recovery. Dicanti and the two others exited the chapel and walked toward the central nave.
“So we agree on that, Dante. Tell us everything you know,” Dicanti said.
“Sure. The first victim was the Italian cardinal Enrico Portini.”
“No way!” Dicanti and Pontiero blurted out in unison.
“Take my word for it, my friends. I saw it with my own eyes.”
“The great candidate of the reform wing. A church liberal. What a mess it would be if the news media got hold of this.”
“No, Pontiero, it would be a catastrophe. Yesterday morning George Bush arrived in Rome with his whole family. Another two hundred representatives and international heads of state are lodging in your country but they will be in mine for the funeral on Friday. We’re on maximum alert, but you know what the city is like. A very complex situation, and the last thing we want is to spread panic. Come outside with me. I need a smoke.”
Dante led them out to the street, where the crowd was constantly growing larger and more tightly packed. The Via della Conciliazione was completely swamped with human beings. Every flag was represented: French, Spanish, Polish, Italian, and dozens of others. Young people playing guitars, the faithful with candles lit, even a blind man with his Seeing Eye dog—two million people would attend the funeral of the pope who had changed the map of Europe. The worst environment in the world to work in ever, Dicanti thought. Any scrap of evidence would be lost in the whirlwind of pilgrims.
“Portini was staying at the Madre Pie residence, on the Via de Gasperi,” Dante said. “He arrived Thursday in the morning since he knew in advance about the pope’s grave condition. The nuns say that everything was completely normal when he dined on Friday evening, and that he stayed a long while in the chapel, praying for the Holy Father. No one saw him go to bed. There was no evidence of a struggle in his room. No one slept in his bed, unless the man who kidnapped him remade it perfectly. He never came down for breakfast on Saturday, but people think he must have continued his devotions at the Vatican. It’s not clear to us what happened on Saturday, but Vatican City was one big mess. Do you understand? He disappeared in the middle of the street in the Vatican.”
He stopped, lit a cigarette and offered one to Pontiero, who turned him down reluctantly and took out one of his own. Dante went on.
“His body showed up yesterday morning in the chapel at the residence, but just as it was here, the lack of blood indicates that the setting was well prepared. Luckily the man who discovered the body was an honorable priest who called us right away. We have photographs of the place, but when I suggested that we should call you, Cirin told me he would be in charge. And he ordered us to clean up absolutely everything. The cardinal’s body was taken to a location deep inside the Vatican, where it was incinerated.”
“What! They destroyed the evidence of a serious crime on Italian soil! This I do not believe.”
Dante stared at them, defiant.
“My boss made the decision, and perhaps it wasn’t the best response. But he called your boss and explained the situation. And here you are. Are you aware what we have on our hands? We are not prepared to handle something like this.”
“Which is precisely why you should have left it to professionals.” Pontiero interjected, a hard look on his face.
“You still don’t get it. We cannot trust anyone, which is why Cirin, a good soldier of our mother Church, did what he did. Don’t look at me with that face, Dicanti. Try to understand the reasons for what he did. If Portini’s death was all we had to deal with, we could have gone looking for any excuse, and the subject would be buried. But it didn’t turn out that way. It’s nothing personal, please understand.”
“What I understand is that we were invited to the second course of the meal. With half the evidence. Fantastic. Is there anything else we should understand?” Dicanti was really furious now.
“At this moment, no,” said Dante, who once again hid behind an ironic smile.
“Shit, shit, shit. We’ve got a terrible mess on our hands, Dante. From now on I want you to tell me everything. And I want one thing to be very clear: I am in charge. They’ve ordered you to help me with everything, but I want you to understand that more important than the fact that the victims are cardinals, both crimes have taken place in my jurisdiction. Is that clear?”
“Crystal clear.”
“It had better be. The modus operandi was the same?”
“As far as my detective talents take me, yes. The body was stretched out at the foot of the altar. His eyes were gone. The hands, just like here, were cut off and placed on a piece of canvas alongside the body. Repugnant. I myself was the one who put the body in a bag and carried him to the crematory furnace. I spent all night in the shower, take my word for it.”
“It would have been a good idea to have stayed a little longer,” Pontiero muttered.
Four long hours later they finished working on Robayra’s body and could start to remove it. On the express orders of Director Troi, it was the very same men in Analysis who put the body in a plastic bag and carried it off to the morgue, so that no one from the sick bay would see the cardinal’s clothing. It was made clear to everyone that this was a very special case, and the identity of the dead man had to continue to be a secret.
For everyone’s benefit.
THE SAINT MATTHEW INSTITUTE
Sachem Pike, Maryland September 1994
Transcription of Interview #5 Between
Patient No. 3643 and Doctor Canice Conroy
Dr. Conroy: Good afternoon, Victor. Welcome to my office. Feeling better?
No. 3643: Yes, Doctor. Thanks.
Dr. Conroy: Do you want anything to drink?
No. 3643: No, thank you.
Dr. Conroy: Well, a priest who doesn’t drink—a real novelty. It won’t bother you if I. . . .
No. 3643: Go ahead, Doctor.
Dr. Conroy: It’s my understanding that you have spent some time in the infirmary.
No. 3643: I picked up a few bruises a week ago.
Dr. Conroy: Do you remember how these bruises came about?
No. 3643: Yes, Doctor. It was during an altercation in the observation room.
Dr. Conroy: Tell me what happened, Victor.
No. 3643: I went there to undergo a plethysmograph, on your recommendation.
Dr. Conroy: Do you recall t
he purpose of the test, Victor?
No. 3643: To determine the causes of my problem.
Dr. Conroy: Exactly, Victor. You recognize that you have a problem, and this is no doubt progress.
No. 3643: I always knew I had a problem, Doctor. I remind you that I am here in this center on a voluntary basis.
Dr. Conroy: That is a subject I certainly want to take up with you in our next session. But for now keep telling me about the other day.
No. 3643: I went into the room and took off my clothes.
Dr. Conroy: That made you uncomfortable?
No. 3643: Yes.
Dr. Conroy: It’s a medical procedure. You have to take off your clothes.
No. 3643: It isn’t necessary, if you ask me.
Dr. Conroy: The technician has to attach the instrument that measures your reaction on a part of your body that is normally hard to reach. Which is why you had to take off your clothes, Victor.
No. 3643: I don’t think it’s necessary.
Dr. Conroy: Very well, just go along with me for a moment and agree that it is necessary.
No. 3643: If you say so, Doctor.
Dr. Conroy: What happened next?
No. 3643: He attached the electrodes down there.
Dr. Conroy: Where, Victor?
No. 3643: You know where.
Dr. Conroy: No, Victor, I don’t know and I want you to say it.
No. 3643: On my thing.
Dr. Conroy: Can you be more explicit, Victor?
No. 3643: On my . . . penis.
Dr. Conroy: Very good, Victor. That’s it: The masculine member, the male organ whose purpose is for copulation and urination.
No. 3643: In my case, only for the second function, Doctor.
Dr. Conroy: Are you sure, Victor?
No. 3643: Yes.
Dr. Conroy: It was not always like that in the past, Victor.
No. 3643: The past is over. I want to change that.
Dr. Conroy: Why?
No. 3643: Because it’s God’s will.
Dr. Conroy: Do you really believe that God is involved with that, Victor? With your problem?