"Right. If there's one thing they know how to do, it's stonewall," Colomba observed. "There are nineteen dead and ten kidnap victims, and that's not counting the victims in Paris and the murders that the Father and the German committed in Rome in just the past few days. Still, everyone's clamming up."

Roberta took a sip of her sangria. "Today I saw the cop who arrested you."

"Santini?" Colomba was stunned. "He's in Cremona?"

"Yes, I saw him check in to the hotel where I'm staying, the Ibis. I usually go back and forth from Milan, but tomorrow morning I have a very early meeting with the Forensic Squad, and I'd like to get a good night's sleep."

"And what is he doing here?"

"He didn't tell me that." Roberta flashed her a conspiratorial smile. "I think Spinelli is grilling him. She couldn't get to De Angelis, but Santini doesn't have the same kind of connections."

"For someone who spends all her time in the lab, you sure know a lot," Colomba commented.

"Actually, I don't spend a lot of time in the lab when I'm here." Roberta smiled. "I spend my days at court, meeting with local experts and prosecutors. And I have to tell you, I find that to be much more exhausting."

The proprietor came to their table to ask if there was anything else he could bring them; they ordered coffees and asked for the check.

"How's it going with the identification of the bodies?" Colomba inquired.

Roberta shot a glance over at the neighboring table to make sure no one was eavesdropping while she talked about corpses; it was the kind of dinnertime conversation that could ruin someone else's meal. "We've identified the names of missing persons who might have the same ages as the subjects whose remains we've recovered," she finally said. "Now we're going to try to contact the relatives and get DNA samples from them for comparison, even though I can't say how many of the remains in the barrels are going to offer us any identifying details. By the way, I'll need a sample from Signor Torre, in order to cross-reference our data."

Colomba nodded. "It would be nice to find out who he really is."

"Don't get your hopes up. It's been a long time. Just as it has for those poor souls at the bottom of the lake. If we manage to identify two or three, we can consider ourselves lucky."

"Aren't you being a little conservative?"

"At LABANOF we have almost a hundred nameless corpses in our coolers, and for most of them we have more than just a tooth that's been marinating in sulfuric acid." She smiled. "I have a few colleagues who might tell you that I'm just an incurable optimist."

When Colomba got back to the hotel at ten, she found a little knot of reporters and photographers waiting for her in the lobby: a rumor had circulated about where the two main characters behind the macabre discoveries in Lake Comello were staying. The flashes blinded her, but even more befuddling was the feeling that she was at the center of attention, something she wasn't used to, something she didn't like one bit. She refused to answer any questions, and instead hurried up the stairs. She found that the Post-it was gone from Dante's door. She heaved a sigh of relief and knocked, but there was no answer.

She went back downstairs, and a straggling photographer took pictures as she hurried over to the reception desk.

The clerk on duty greeted her with an apologetic smile. "We tried to send them away, signora, but they keep getting back in."

"I'm not here about that," she said brusquely. "My friend, Dante Torre. Can you tell me if he's in his room, or has he gone out again?"

The concierge checked on his computer screen. "I'm afraid he's checked out."

At first, Colomba didn't understand. "Excuse me?"

"He paid his bill in full and left."

"And he didn't leave a message for me?"

"No."

Colomba shook her head. "I don't believe it. That's not like him." However upset he might be, he'd never have just dumped her like that. "Who did he speak to?"

"The manager. Shall I get her for you?"

"Yes, thanks."

The concierge vanished into the rear, and after a while the manager called her name. She was a stern-looking woman, about forty.

"Signora Caselli . . . is there some problem?"

"Yes. Did you see Signor Torre leave? Did he seem to you to be"-she hesitated, searching for a word that didn't exist-"normal?" she concluded, realizing that it was a word poorly suited to Dante.

"I really couldn't say. And anyway, our guests have a right to their privacy . . . try to understand."

"You know who I am, and you know who he is, right? And the reason we're here in Cremona?" said Colomba.

The manager sighed. "Yes, ma'am."

"So don't talk to me about privacy. Did you or did you not see him?"

"No, I didn't. He settled up over the phone and gave me his credit card number. It was about nine this evening."

"And the things in his room?"

"He gave instructions to have them sent to his address in Rome. He even paid extra for the service."

"No way," said Colomba. Her heart was in her mouth, and she felt her chest constricting with anxiety. She forced herself to breathe normally.

The manager stared at her with a worried look on her face. "Signora . . . I assure you that's exactly what happened."

"And are you sure it was actually him on the phone?"

The manager hesitated. "I think it was. We hadn't actually ever spoken before."

Colomba galloped upstairs to her room and pulled out the folded sheet of paper that served as an address book in case of an emergency. She found Spinelli's number but stopped just before dialing it. She'd have to tell her that just before leaving, Dante had fought with Valle, and the prosecuting magistrate was unlikely to share her concern; Dante wasn't a minor, after all, and he wasn't considered an endangered witness, because he'd already told what he knew and it hadn't led to the identification of any culprit. And even if Spinelli agreed to send the carabinieri out in search of him, Colomba would have to sit in her hotel room and wait for news, without knowing whether they were out looking or not, much less what steps they were taking. And the Father would learn all about the search efforts, Colomba felt certain.

She hung up the receiver of the room phone by her bed. She'd have to find another way, and right now only one possibility was taking shape in her head. I'm insane even to consider this, she thought. But it was an effort she'd have to make.

She asked the receptionist for the address of the Hotel Ibis and discovered that it was just a twenty-minute walk away. It took only fifteen for her to get there, and she managed to get the room number by pretending she was expected.

Santini opened the door in a tank top undershirt. He needed a shave, and he reeked of sweat. When Colomba told him what she wanted, he let out the first wholehearted laugh he'd had in quite a while. But then he let her in.

Meanwhile, Dante was slowly regaining consciousness. The last thing he remembered was the panel van's window rolling down, then darkness. The same darkness that now pressed in on him, a darkness that smacked of the taste of fabric and the smell of his own breath. Then someone pulled the hood off his head, and Dante saw where he was.

He started screaming.

31.

Santini listened to Colomba's story, sitting on his single bed and polishing off the twenty-two-ounce "bomber" bottle of beer he'd bought at the hotel bar. The hotel room reeked of cigarettes, even though the CIS detective had left the window ajar. "Maybe your boyfriend really did go home," he said in the end.

Colomba shook her head, in irritation. "I don't believe it."

"Because he didn't say good-bye?"

"If he really was so upset that he ran away and forgot his manners, he would have forgotten to pay for the room, too," said Colomba, forcing herself to curb her temper. "He has an old school code of conduct, and I believe he would have paid for my room, seeing that he reserved for the two of us."

"You can't be sure of that. People aren't always predictable, especially when they're under stress."

"I've seen him upset before, terribly upset, and I know what to expect. No, that was someone else calling, pretending to be him."

"The German is in prison. He was the dangerous one."

Colomba shook her head. "No, the Father is the dangerous one. And he's still out there."

"Show me a single piece of evidence that he exists."

"All I know is that Dante believes in him and that he's been right from the very beginning, from the Vivaro mountain meadows, from the disappearance of Luca Maugeri. And if you'd listened to him," she added, making no secret of her anger, "you wouldn't have come off looking like the complete asshole that you did."

Santini let himself sink back against his pillow. "You have a nice way of asking a favor, Caselli."

Colomba pulled over the only chair in the room, turned it around, and sat down in it, straddling it. "I'm not asking you a favor."

"Ah, no?"

"I'm asking you to do the right thing."

Santini sighed in exasperation. "Don't be ridiculous."

"But it is the right thing. And even if you don't believe that, it's better than sitting here drinking and crying over your troubles."

Santini closed his eyes. Of all things I could choose to do, why is it that lately I've always been choosing the stupidest option available to me? "Let me make a few phone calls, and let's see what happens," he said. He felt like laughing again.

It took more than just a couple of phone calls, but finding Dante's trail in a city as small as Cremona was easier than expected, in part because a couple of Santini's subordinates, whom he treated like doormats, pitched in to help. After quickly marking trains, buses, and car rentals off the list, along with hospitals, the city morgue, and other hotels, they managed to track down the taxi driver who'd picked Dante up on the tree-lined boulevard. When they reached him by phone, the cabbie told them all about the farmhouse where he'd left him.

Around midnight Colomba and Santini pulled up outside the farmhouse in Santini's government car. They examined the place by flashlight before making their way around back to the cement platform.

"Is this where they held him?" asked Santini.

"Yes," Colomba replied. "Though the silos are gone. But what did he come here for?"

"A nostalgic outing." Santini looked around: there wasn't a light in the darkness other than theirs. "He's not here. And without a cell phone he couldn't have called another taxi. He must have left on foot."

Colomba waved for Santini to light up the surrounding area. "Or else someone picked him up. A car came through here recently," she said, looking at the tire marks in the soft dirt.

"A panel van," Santini corrected her, and he knew what he was talking about. "But it might just have been a farmer from around here."

"Bring the light over here," said Colomba, pointing to the cement of the platform.

Santini did as she asked, highlighting a number of dark strips. "Dry mud. Someone wiped their feet off."

"Not just someone: Dante. And he wasn't wiping his feet off. Come over here."

When Santini did, he saw that the strips were actually letters and numbers traced out with the sole of a shoe. "EH29" he read.

"A partial license plate number," said Colomba. "So you still think it's all pure chance?"

Santini sighed and pulled out his cell phone.

While Santini was calling his office, Dante reawakened in his prison, and this time he didn't faint immediately. I was given something, he realized, sensing that his thoughts were crawling along like snails. Enough tranquilizer to calm down a horse. Maybe injected directly into his neck, because it ached.

Whatever it was, the drug was working. Not only did it slow him down, it also made it almost tolerable to be shut up in a narrow, rectangular space, twenty by ten feet, with all the openings closed off. It was illuminated by a green child's night light tucked away in a corner; the walls were covered with insulation and wooden boards. There was a Formica counter with a sink, cabinets, a table and chair, and a bunk bed. Dante was flat on his back on the lower bunk, and there was a collar on his neck, made for a big dog, padlocked and fastened to a metal cable that was welded to the headboard of the bed. He tried to tug at it with hands rendered insensible by the tranquilizer, but the ring didn't budge and the bed turned out to be anchored to the floor.

While trying to figure out just how much play the cable had, Dante moved too suddenly and the collar jerked at his throat. It wasn't much of a jerk, but he still felt he was being suffocated and the surge of adrenaline wiped away the effects of the drug. Once again, the walls around him seemed to narrow in as if about to crush him. He opened his mouth to yell for help, but he couldn't do it. As he was passing out once again, he had one lucid thought. Of Colomba.

She knew, he was sure of it. She was coming to get him. He just wondered whether she'd be in time.

"No license plate," Santini told Colomba. They were still at the farmhouse, fighting against the cold and damp. No van registered had a plate that began or ended with the letters and numbers traced in the mud, he explained. Only cars, and there were vast numbers of those.

"Either Torre got the number wrong," said Santini "or else we're wrong. For all we know, someone was here the other night, maybe playing Battleship in the mud."

Colomba shook her head. "No. It was him. This is how he does things."

Santini lit a cigarette. "You think you might be a little too confident?"

"I told you before, I know how he thinks." But did she really? Maybe she just hoped she did, because it was the last thread tying her to Dante. "Can you call the highway patrol?"

"There aren't any video cameras here."

"But maybe the panel van pulled onto the highway. We know the time frame, and we know a part of the license number. That's more than enough. They can just look in their system."

Colomba was referring to Safety Tutor, a speed camera system that recorded the license plates of vehicles passing through toll gates and sent the data to the processing center in Settebagni, where it was analyzed to catch speeders. The police could get into the database, but there were so many search requests for wanted criminals and stolen cars that if you wanted a fast response, it required either a formal request from a judge or else an inside contact. Santini had one.

At two in the morning, as they were waiting along the county road in a bar and tobacco shop that stayed open late for truckers, Santini got his answer. And when he hung up, Colomba saw that he'd lost the weary, indifferent expression of the past few hours. "Okay."

"Okay what?"

"Okay, you were right."

Colomba immediately dropped the stale piece of pastry she'd been trying to choke down. "Did they find the license plate?"

"Yes. And it's a white Fiat Ducato panel van. But according to EUCARIS, that license is registered to a Fiat 500 that was sent to the crusher." EUCARIS is the European Car and Driving License Information System.

"So it's stolen. Where did the camera film it?"