"Do you know how much it's cost me to design this apartment to my specifications?" asked Dante, still incredulous.

"Yes, I know." Minutillo smiled. "Remember, you sued the architect."

"Because he was a charlatan. And now I'm going to have to sell it. And who would buy an apartment in this condition? An exhibitionist? A pornstar who wants people to see her naked from the street?"

"Once things calm down . . ." Minutillo started to say.

Dante interrupted him. "Things aren't going to calm down. Even if the Father were to magically disappear along with De Angelis and all his little friends, that would just mark the beginning of the procession through here of people in search of vanished relatives. 'Please, we need you to save us,'" he said, mockingly imitating a despairing voice. "I've been through that."

Minutillo didn't reply, knowing full well that Dante had a point. It had happened once before, exactly as he'd said. "Okay, but still, let's just not make things worse. The important thing is not to give De Angelis any excuses. Otherwise, he could definitely make things much, much worse."

Dante looked down at the tips of his shoes. "What was on Rovere's flash drive?"

"I couldn't open it. It wanted a password, and I preferred not to type in random attempts."

"Do you have it with you? Give it to me, please."

Minutillo ran a hand over his hair, so short it was practically a crew cut. "Did you hear what I told you earlier? About what you could be risking?"

"Maybe De Angelis will leave me in peace if I bury my head in the sand, but what about the Father?"

"Till now, he's never gone after you directly."

"True. He's only killed . . . how many people? . . . and all because we were investigating him. Do you think he's just going to drop it now?" Dante shook his head. "I'm getting closer, Roberto. It's too late to give up."

Minutillo sighed and handed him the small plastic drive. "What do you think's on the flash drive?"

"Who do you know that takes the trouble to put a password on a flash drive?"

"No one."

"In that case, whatever it is, it must be important."

Minutillo stared at his friend for a few seconds without speaking. "I'm worried about you, Dante," he finally said. "More than I've ever been before."

Dante smiled and pretended to yawn. "Well, stop. I'm too tired to get myself into trouble. In fact, I think I'm going to take a good long nap right now."

Minutillo left, and when Dante heard the sound of his car going away down the street, he slipped the flash drive into an envelope, put the envelope into his pocket, and went out wearing a gunmetal gray parka that practically swallowed him up. The stairs were a walk in the park compared with what he'd been through lately, or maybe he'd just hit the exact blend of pharmaceuticals. He got downstairs in only ten minutes. Once out in the street, he looked around alertly. He'd never been tailed in his life, but he was sure that he'd know if someone was following him. After countless twists and turns through the streets of San Lorenzo, which were just starting to fill up with kids, he was pretty sure no one was.

He made his first stop at the Bar Marani, at the beginning of Via dei Volsci. The owners knew him well; he was the only client who'd sit outside in the rear patio even in the winter rain, and they were fond of him. He left the envelope with them and told them someone would come by to pick it up before they closed the bar that evening. From there he walked to the pay phone on Via Boccanegra. It took him about twenty minutes, and the walk did him good, sweeping the last few cobwebs from his brain. He called Santiago, told him where to pick up the envelope, explained what he wanted done, and pleaded with him to work as quickly as possible. Yes, there was money in it for him, he reassured him, but only once the job was completed.

When he hung up, he realized that he didn't feel like going home and going to bed. The Ritalin, which at first had simply eliminated any traces of sleepiness, now burned inside him like gasoline. His brain kept spinning, elaborating hypotheses and scenarios, and once again, at the center of each of them was Rovere. Now that Dante had solved the mystery of why he'd been drawn into the Luca Maugeri investigation, he was starting to ask other questions: When had Rovere started working on this matter? And, most important of all, why?

What little he'd been able to find out from Colomba about him, and about his previous investigations, in no way suggested a connection with the Father. The impression he'd gotten of Rovere was that he was a solid, cautious cop, careful of every step he took both in and out of the line of duty. He certainly wasn't reckless to the point of sticking his nose into someone else's case just for the fun of it.

Dante hoped that at least a partial answer might come from the flash drive, which would soon be safe in Santiago's skillful hands. But he was eager to find out immediately, and there was only one person he could reach out to. He waited for a Maghrebi to finish his phone call to his faraway girlfriend, and then Dante made a second phone call. This time he called a woman who had been trying to track down her sister for years, until Dante had found what was left of her under her father-in-law's basement floor. She felt a debt of gratitude toward Dante, and she worked at the hospital where Colomba was being treated. She told him the room number but apologized and said she wasn't working a shift right now. Dante asked her to explain the layout of the ward and understood that he could make it in without her help. It didn't even occur to him that he might wait until the next morning, so uncontrollably was his brain seething with activity. He called a cab and rode over with all the windows wide open. He asked the driver to drop him off just a few yards away from the hospital; then he climbed over the fence and made his way into the grounds. As he walked, he looked up at the third-story windows, counting. The map of the building rotated in his mind: if he closed his eyes, he could see it as if it were a three-dimensional rendering. He stopped at the foot of a cypress: the room was straight overhead, on the third floor. He climbed the tree as if it were a ladder. That was child's play for him; he'd always been a good climber. He scrambled through the branches like a monkey even though he had only one fully functional hand; his light frame was a help. One of the highest branches with enough structural integrity to bear his weight was just at the level of the window in question. He clambered out onto the limb on all fours but realized that the windowsill was still too far away for him to leap across. From where he was, though, he could see the bed, dimly lit by the night light that Colomba had left on, and her face among the pillows.

As he was considering whether to climb down and get some pebbles to throw at the glass, he noticed that someone was moving in the hospital room. From Dante's vantage point, he could barely make out the unknown visitor, who was right at the edge of the band of light cast by the streetlamp outside, but he was immediately positive that he was up to no good. The man was wearing a lab coat, but he wasn't moving the way doctors or nurses do in a hospital, with spare, almost brusque gestures, typical of people accustomed to dealing with the suffering of others. Whoever this was, he was clearly quite tense, as if he knew he was somewhere he wasn't supposed to be.

The man took a step toward the bed, and now Dante could see his hands. He held them so they gripped the hem of the lab coat right at chest height, in a universal gesture of anxiety and self-defense. He moved farther into the light. Dante saw a face he would not soon forget. The man's furtive movements were those of someone about to embark on a difficult or dangerous task. Dante didn't want to wait for him to act; he had to sound the alarm, wake up Colomba and the entire hospital, if that proved necessary. But before he could even try to take action, a whispering arose from the darkness among the trees and slashed him like a cracking whip. Dante immediately began trembling uncontrollably. That whispering stirred terrible nightmares deep inside him that had never entirely subsided, nightmares that gnawed at his bowels and made his blood run cold.

He clutched the branch, as if some irresistible force were dragging him down to earth. Don't look, he told himself. Don't look down. But the whispering was doing its work inside him, destroying his will. Slowly he turned his gaze toward the origin of the sound, the strip of darkness between two lampposts. A man was standing with his back to the hospital wall, arms hanging at his sides, eyes glowing almost white, as if blank. Eyes that Dante had seen only once in his life but could never forget.

The man was telling him to come down. He was telling him he was a stupid Beast and that he was going to punish him.

6.

In Colomba's hospital room, the man in the lab coat took another step toward the bed, cursing himself for what he was about to do. Not that his conscience was giving him problems of any kind; it was just that he'd thought he'd left the days of blood and risk behind him. But no one could say no to the German, especially when he eyed you as if he were taking your measurements, the better to cut your throat. He'd made a terrible mistake by not slamming the phone down the instant he'd heard that unmistakable voice out of his distant past.

But who would ever have imagined that the German was still tangled up in the same old business? Truth be told, the man had just assumed he must have died years ago. Instead, there he'd been, and even if his hair was white now and his neck was wrinkly, he was still the same old dangerous son of a bitch. The worst one of all.

The German . . . The man in the lab coat turned the word over in his mind, stalling for time with himself. He'd never actually known his real name. No names. No notes. No chitchat. Those were the rules that the German had set back in the golden years, though they had never applied to him. He'd always known everything about everyone.

He wiped the sweat off his forehead with one sleeve and once again considered giving it all up and leaving. But even if he managed to get away and ditch all pursuit for a while, he still knew what would catch up with him eventually: hunger. No more monthly check, no more easy living. And the idea of looking for work again after all the years he'd spent doing nothing but scratching his ass really didn't tickle his fancy. Not at all. Better to obey the German's orders, get this job done, and forget about it, and then it was back to the easy life.

The man in the lab coat took another step toward Colomba. He could see her clearly now that his eyes were accustomed to the darkness: she was breathing gently, with the sputtering hiss of someone whose nose is stopped up. I wonder what she did to piss off the German, he wondered. He hadn't asked. He hadn't even asked why she had to die.

He pulled the syringe out of his pocket, after rummaging around a little on account of the latex gloves that interfered with his sense of touch. The syringe was just two inches long and terminated in a stout needle, the kind veterinarians use, tougher and less likely to snap off. The German had told him to insert the needle into the IV plug so that he'd leave no marks on the body. An easy job, and one he could have done on his own. It was just that she knew the German's face and would be alarmed if she saw him in her hospital room. Peace and quiet were an essential requirement for that job, as was anonymity.

He'd entered the hospital under the pretext of visiting a relative, and he'd hidden in the toilet of the cafe on the ground floor, where he'd waited for night to fall. He knew they wouldn't clean the toilets until the next morning, just as he knew that there were only two night nurses in the ward where his target was located, while the physician on duty was normally down in the emergency room. He'd waited till well past midnight; then he'd donned the lab coat and climbed the stairs, sticking to his preestablished route and ducking out of sight if anyone went past. It had been easy, and it would be easier still to get out. And then if anyone did spot him . . . well, his instructions didn't include getting caught.

The man in the lab coat studied Colomba's face again, making sure she was still asleep; then he reached his arm out over her to grab the flexible IV cannula hanging on the far side of the bed.

It was just at that moment that he heard the crash of breaking glass behind him. He whirled around, his heart in his mouth, and saw that someone had shattered the window by throwing a shoe through it, a shoe that was now slowly tumbling across the floor.

"What . . . what's happening?" Colomba murmured, almost completely voiceless.

Shit, now she's awake, thought the man in the lab coat. "I just need to change your medication," he said with a smile, doing his best to seem professional. "Why don't you go back to sleep."

Colomba wrinkled her nose. The man reeked of alcohol and looked nothing like any of the male nurses who had told her good night. Then she spotted the broken window and propped herself up on her elbow in confusion. "Wait a minute . . ."

"Please stay still." The man in the lab coat placed a hand on her shoulder to push her down, while he reached out the other hand toward the IV again.

Colomba, wide awake by now, felt in every fiber of her being that something was very wrong. She pushed him away. "Don't touch me."

The man's only response was to grab her by the throat with his free hand, and he did it so suddenly and violently that Colomba felt her lungs shut down all at once. The shadows in the room immediately rose up and began to flail and her ears filled with shrieks and yells. The man shoved her down onto the bed, pinning her with one knee while he continued to choke her with his right hand and reached out for the cannula with his left. On the verge of passing out, Colomba aimed at her attacker's face with the stiffened fingers of her right hand. She was lucky: she hit an eye and felt the nail of her index finger drive into the eyelid. The man grunted and grabbed at his face with his right hand, momentarily freeing Colomba's neck. She immediately tried to yell, but not even the faintest thread of a voice came out.

Now the man punched her in the face, and she rolled over onto her side and then slid to the floor, dragging the IV with her in her fall. She hit her head hard, and the sharp stab of welcome pain chased the shadows back. She took a large gulp of air and again tried to shout, but her throat clamped closed like a trap snapping shut. Her attacker, his left eye streaming blood, kicked her in the ribs, slamming her against the wall, then tried to stab her in the neck with the syringe. By this point he didn't care about doing things according to instructions. He just wanted to finish her off.

With her last remaining strength, Colomba lifted her leg and smashed her instep into the man's testicles. The man dropped to the other empty bed in the hospital room, panting and moaning, and she scampered on all fours toward the door, incapable of getting to her feet. She reached her hand up to the door handle and turned it, but the door remained in place. Only then did she realize that her attacker had jammed the door shut with a wooden wedge. The man grabbed her from behind and spun her against the wall. For a second Colomba saw nothing but darkness spangled with silver stars. The pain in her head was overwhelming.

The man in the lab coat, half-blinded by blood, once again tried to jab her with the needle. Colomba desperately blocked the blow with both hands, just inches from her chest. Crouching over her, the man sweated and puffed like a bellows, his face red with effort, mouth wide open as he exhaled the foul stench of his breath. "You goddamned slut," he muttered. "I'll fix you, bitch."

Colomba suddenly modified her grip, yanking the arm downward. The syringe followed an arching trajectory and planted itself in the flesh just below the attacker's kneecap. She jammed the plunger down with a flat-handed slap. The man opened his mouth to shout, but no sound emerged. The veins on his neck and face bulged and turned scarlet; then he tumbled over onto his side, his unbloodied eye suddenly glassy, foaming at the mouth. Whatever that was in the syringe, it took effect immediately. Colomba heard him gurgle and watched him writhe for a few seconds like a worm on a griddle, until he stopped moving. She put her fingers on his neck, feeling for a pulse, but there was nothing. He was dead.

Just then, someone knocked at the door.

7.

From the hallway a nurse was shouting Colomba's name and trying to open the door. She didn't answer, just lay there staring at the corpse, trying to catch her breath.

I killed him, she thought. The scathing sensation of having put an end to another life overwhelmed her for an instant, and a tremor shook her from within, threatening to shatter her. Whoever that man might have been, she'd just taken everything away from him. Future and past, dreams and fears. With a single act, she'd transformed him from living being to thing. In a flash, she again saw the dead of the Disaster, then the armed robber she'd shot her first year in Palermo, remembering how she'd watched him die there on the sidewalk, and then her first corpse, a junkie she'd found in an apartment where he'd been lying dead for a week, sprawled on a filthy mattress, his face covered with flies. She felt the burden of all those deaths, like a layer of cement, and she felt herself suffocating again. She dug her nails into her palms. Not this time, she told herself. Not for this son of a bitch who wanted to kill you.

The pounding at the door continued. The female nurse's voice was joined by the voice of a man.

"I think the policewoman must have fallen out of bed," the nurse said.

"It's not the door handle," the man replied. "There's something blocking the door itself."

Colomba got to her feet as quietly as she could. What should she do now? The logical thing would have been to open the door and have them call her colleagues, but she knew that no one would believe her when she told them that the man had been sent by the Father to kill her. And in the meantime precious minutes and even hours would be lost. While the Father erased any traces he might have left, if indeed he had left any.

"Let me go get something I can use to pry it open," said the man outside.

Colomba ran a hand over her face. If she decided to act on her own, the risks she would be running were enormous. She could be investigated for murder, first of all, because the innocent victim of an unprovoked attack doesn't just flee the scene, leaving a corpse on the floor. Or if she does, she opens herself up to suspicion. She shook her head, irritated with herself. This wasn't the time to worry about the consequences. She owed something to Rovere and to the children that the Father had carried off.

She looked around for a way out. She saw the broken glass and remembered the shoe that had flown in through the window, waking her up just in the nick of time. A shoe that she now recognized, because when it came to people who wore Doc Martens Clippers with two-inch soles, only one name came to mind.

She leaned out the broken window. She'd expected to see Dante down on the grass below and was stunned to find him clutching the branch right in front of her. The light from the lamp cast a glow on his haunted face and staring eyes. "Dante!" she called, forcing her hoarse voice into action.

Dante crouched motionless, his gaze fixed. He was clutching the branch with his arms and legs and seemed completely oblivious to where he was.

Meanwhile, the male voice outside the door had returned. "Let me try with this," he said, and there was immediately the sound of something metal being pressed against the door frame. "Did the lady inside answer you?"

"No. She wasn't in serious condition. I just hope she didn't hit her head."

"I'll work as fast as I can."

"Oh, shit," Colomba murmured. She grabbed her dead assailant by the collar and dragged him into the bathroom. He was shorter than her and scrawny, but still the effort almost made her pass out. She shut the door and ran over to the bed to stand the IV back up again, sticking the tube back onto her arm with the bandage on it. Then she pulled the curtain shut over the broken window and kicked the Clipper under the bed, where it couldn't be seen. The floor was still covered with broken glass, but there wasn't much she could do about that. She just moved the side table to the middle of the room and placed the chair in front of the door; then she yanked the wooden wedge out from under the door.

The door swung wide open with a metallic tremor. The nurse and the maintenance man found Colomba sitting in front of the door, blocking their way in.

"Did you jam this door shut?" asked the man in surprise, a large screwdriver in one hand.

"No," Colomba murmured. "It was stuck. I tried to tell you that, but my voice is shot."

"Are you all right?" asked the nurse.

"Yes."

The maintenance man gathered his tools and walked off, clearly baffled.

The nurse stood there, studying Colomba. She wasn't sure what she ought to do now. If this had been any ordinary patient, she'd have just made her go back to bed, but the lady cop was a specimen unlike any other. Everyone in the hospital knew who she was, and unsettling rumors were circulating about her. First and foremost, that she was out of her mind. And that even her fellow cops had suspicions about her. All you had to do was look at their faces when they came to her room or left it. The nurse wondered why they hadn't put a guard on the door, the way they do in the movies. "You need to get back in bed," she said, doing her best to sound authoritative. "Let me help you."

"I'd rather remain seated," Colomba whispered, staring at her.

In those eyes the nurse glimpsed a dark menace, even though what Colomba was actually telegraphing was a mute plea: Please, go away.

"Are you sure you're all right?"

"Considering the shape I'm in, yes," said Colomba. "Please, just leave me alone."

The nurse took a step back. She'd never been attacked by a patient, but some of her coworkers had, and one of them had even caught hepatitis after being bitten by a wino with the DTs: none of that for her, thanks. "I'll send the doctor up to take a look at you," she said.

"There's no need," Colomba replied.

"We'll see about that," muttered the nurse, turning away and feeling a shiver go down her back as she did so.

Colomba waited for a few seconds, then leapt to her feet and came dangerously close to tipping over. She felt as if she had a pumpkin in place of her head. She shut the door again, reinserted the wooden wedge, and went back to the bathroom. Her attacker's body was where she'd left it. A large puddle of urine had spread across the floor beneath him. Now this, thought Colomba as she leaned over to go through his pockets. She found a wallet, a bunch of keys, the remote control for an Opel automobile, and a magnetic ID card. No cell phone. She turned the ID over in her hands. She knew that in many hospitals, the staff used badges like this one to get into certain wards, but they were supposed to have the name and a picture of the bearer. This one didn't.

It was a fake ID card, cloned to allow her assailant to enter her room and kill her. There was some money in the wallet, along with a credit card and a driver's license. The license looked authentic and had been issued to Luciano Ferrari, born in 1958, residing at Via Pompeo Magno no. 1 in Rome. Colomba put the license back into the wallet, then slipped the wallet back into the man's pocket. She hid the card, the keys, and the remote in her pajama sleeve. She went over to the small metal locker in the corner of the room. Her clothes weren't there anymore. She cursed herself as she remembered giving them to the friends who had come to see her.

She grabbed her cell phone and put on her boots. When she leaned over to lace them, she felt the blood surge to her head and the lights went out. She was on the verge of fainting. Once again she dug her nails into the palms of her hands and retained consciousness. She took a look out the window-Dante was still out there, gripping the branch-kicked the wedge out from under the door, and gently opened it just a crack: the corridor was deserted. She remembered the shoe and went back to get it, then left the room and headed for the stairs, making it there without being seen. Walking down the stairs was a challenge and made her headache worse, until she began to feel nauseous. On the ground floor she found herself looking down the hallway that led to the front desk, her way blocked by two automatic glass doors that had been deactivated and, in the other direction, an emergency exit. She was about to go out that way when it dawned on her that doing so would sound the alarm throughout the hospital.

She walked down another flight of stairs and came to a metal door on which was written ENTRY FORBIDDEN-MEDICAL PERSONNEL only. It was locked, but on the wall next to the door she saw a magnetic card reader. She tried the badge. The door clicked open, and she walked into a utility hallway lit only by dim orange bulbs. Several colorful plastic arrows pointed in different directions: locker rooms, storerooms, laundry. She followed the hallway, hoping to find a door to the outside. She did find the door to the covered parking structure, and from there a door out to the hospital grounds; the floor around it was littered with cigarette butts.

Shivering from the cold in her flannel pajamas, she followed the outside perimeter of the building, trying to find the location of her room. It seemed to take forever, but at last she recognized her window, with a section of curtain fluttering out through the broken glass. She looked up at Dante, who was still gripping the branch. In vain she tried to catch his attention, and finally, seeing that she couldn't do it, she threw the shoe instead, aiming for his arm.

Instead she hit him in the temple, and Dante came close to falling headfirst, startled and in pain. The shoe weighed nearly a pound, and the impact hadn't been a love tap. Still, it helped to bring him out of his trance. "CC?" he murmured, as if waking from a dream.

"Come down, get moving," she whispered.

For a few seconds Dante didn't budge; then he slid to the ground with a blank expression. "You're alive," he said.

Colomba retrieved his shoe and handed it to him. "Yes, partly thanks to you. But let's talk about that later. Give me your jacket."

Dante took off his parka, doing so as if he were sleepwalking, and stood there in just a black mock turtleneck sweater. She put it on. It was a little narrow in the shoulders, but it hung down below her knees. If it weren't for the pajama pants dotted with piglets, she would have been quite presentable.

"I saw him, CC," said Dante in a dreamy voice.

"The man in my hospital room?"

"No. The Father."