"We were very close. It was a friends.h.i.+p with a bond of iron." He paused for a moment and then said something incredible. "Spezi, I'd like to give you a scoop. Do you know when Francesco was arrested for having hid his car? Well, I was with him that night! n.o.body knew that, until now."

Antonio was referring to the night of the double murder in Montespertoli, near Poppiano Castle, in June of 1982. At the time Antonio was living six kilometers away. It was this crime that led to the arrest of Francesco Vinci for being the Monster of Florence, and an important piece of evidence against Vinci was that he had inexplicably hidden his car in the brush around the time of the killing. This was indeed a major scoop: if Antonio had been with Francesco that night, it meant Francesco had had an alibi that he never used-and as a result spent two years in jail needlessly.

"But that means your friend Francesco had a witness in his favor!" Spezi said. "You could have helped Francesco avoid being accused of being the Monster and of spending years in jail! Why didn't you say anything?"

"Because I didn't want to get mixed up in his affairs."

"And for that you let him serve two years in prison?"

"He wanted to protect me. And I had faith in the system."

Faith in the system. A totally incredible statement coming from him. Spezi moved on.

"And what was your relations.h.i.+p like with your father, Salvatore?"

The faint smile on Antonio's face seemed to freeze a little, but only momentarily. "We never saw eye-to-eye. Incompatibility of character, you might say."

"But were there specific reasons why you didn't get along? Perhaps you held Salvatore Vinci responsible for the death of your mother?"

"Not really. I heard something said about it."

"Your father had strange s.e.xual habits. Perhaps that was a reason you hated him?"

"Back then I knew nothing about that. Only later did I learn about his..." He paused. "Tics."

"But you and he had some serious fights. Even when you were young. In the spring of 1974, for example, your father filed a complaint against you for robbing his house..." Spezi paused nonchalantly. This was a crucial question: it would confirm if the missing doc.u.ment actually existed-if Salvatore Vinci had indeed filed charges against Antonio just before the Monster killings began.

"That's not quite right," Antonio said. "Since he couldn't say if I'd taken anything, I was charged only for violation of domicile. Another time we had a fight and I pinned him, planting my scuba knife at his throat, but he managed to get away and I locked myself in the bathroom."

We had confirmed a crucial detail: the breaking and entering of 1974. But Antonio had, all of his own accord-almost like a challenge-added a critical fact of his own: that he had threatened Vinci with his "scuba knife." The medical examiner in the Monster case, Mauro Maurri, had written years before that the instrument used by the Monster may have been a scuba knife.

Spezi continued his questions, spiraling in toward our goal.

"Who do you think committed the double murders of 1968?"

"Stefano Mele."

"But the pistol was never found."

"Mele might have sold it or given it to someone else when he left prison."

"That's impossible. The pistol was used again in 1974, when Mele was still in prison."

"Are you sure? I never thought of that."

"They say your father was the shooter in 1968," Spezi went on.

"He was way too much of a coward to do that."

Spezi asked, "When did you leave Florence?"

"In '74. First I went to Sardinia and after to Lake Como."

"Then you returned and got married."

"Right. I married a childhood sweetheart, but it didn't work. We married in 1982 and separated in 1985."

"What didn't work?"

"She couldn't have children."

This was the marriage that had been annulled for nonconsummation: impotentia coeundi. impotentia coeundi.

"And then you remarried?"

"I live with a woman."

Spezi a.s.sumed an easy tone of voice, as if he were concluding the interview. "Can I ask you a rather provocative question?"

"Sure. I may not answer."

"The question is this: if your father owned the .22 caliber Beretta, you were the person in the best position to take it. Perhaps during the violation of domicile in the spring of 1974."

Antonio didn't answer immediately. He seemed to reflect. "I have proof I didn't take it."

"Which is?"

"If I had taken it"-he smiled-"I would have fired it into my father's forehead."

"Following this line of reasoning," Spezi continued, "you were away from Florence from 1975 to 1980, precisely during the time when there were no killings. When you returned, they began again."

Antonio didn't respond directly to the statement. He leaned back in the chair, and his smile spread. "Those were the best years of my life. I had a house, I ate well, and all those girls..." He whistled and made an Italian gesture signifying f.u.c.king.

"And so..." Spezi said nonchalantly, "you're not...the Monster of Florence?"

There was only a brief hesitation. Antonio never stopped smiling for a moment. "No," he said. "I like my p.u.s.s.y alive."

We got up to leave. Antonio followed us to the door. While he opened it, he leaned toward Spezi. He spoke in a low voice, his tone remaining cordial, and he switched into the informal, "tu" form. "Ah, Spezi, I was almost forgetting something." His voice took on a hoa.r.s.e, threatening tone. "Listen carefully: I don't play games."

CHAPTER 36.

Spezi and I submitted the article on the Monster of Florence to The New Yorker The New Yorker in the summer of 2001. My family and I went back to the States for the summer, to an old family farm on the Maine coast. I spent much of the summer working with our editor at in the summer of 2001. My family and I went back to the States for the summer, to an old family farm on the Maine coast. I spent much of the summer working with our editor at The New Yorker The New Yorker, revising and fact-checking the piece. It was tentatively scheduled for publication the third week of September 2001.

Spezi and I both antic.i.p.ated a huge reaction in Italy to the publication of the article. Italian public opinion had long ago settled on the guilt of Pacciani and his picnicking friends. Most Italians had also swallowed Giuttari's theory, that Pacciani & Co. had been working for a shadowy, powerful cult. While Americans might scoff at the very idea that a satanic sect was behind the killings, Italians did not find it unusual or unbelievable. From the very beginning, there had been rumors that a powerful and important person must be behind the killings, a doctor or n.o.bleman. The satanic sect investigation seemed a logical extension of this idea, and most Italians believed it was justified.

We hoped to overthrow that complacency.

The New Yorker piece laid out a very strong case that Pacciani was not the Monster. If not, then his self-confessed "picnicking friends" were liars and Giuttari's satanic sect theory, built on their testimony, collapsed. Which would leave only one avenue of investigation left: the Sardinian Trail. piece laid out a very strong case that Pacciani was not the Monster. If not, then his self-confessed "picnicking friends" were liars and Giuttari's satanic sect theory, built on their testimony, collapsed. Which would leave only one avenue of investigation left: the Sardinian Trail.

The carabinieri, Mario knew, had continued a secret investigation into the Sardinian Trail. A secret informant in the carabinieri, someone whose ident.i.ty even I don't know, had told Mario they were awaiting the right moment to unveil the results of their investigation. "Il tempo e un galantuomo "Il tempo e un galantuomo," the informant had told Spezi, "Time is a gentleman." Spezi hoped that publication of the New Yorker New Yorker article would spur the carabinieri into action, set the investigation back on the right track-and lead to the unmasking of the Monster. article would spur the carabinieri into action, set the investigation back on the right track-and lead to the unmasking of the Monster.

"Italians," Mario said to me, "are sensitive to American public opinion. If an American magazine of the stature of The New Yorker The New Yorker proclaims Pacciani innocent, that will cause a furor, and I mean a proclaims Pacciani innocent, that will cause a furor, and I mean a furor. furor."

As the summer of 2001 drew to a close, our family made preparations to fly from Boston to Florence on September 14 so the children could make the start of school on the seventeenth.

On September 11, 2001, everything changed.

Around two o'clock on that long and terrible day, I turned off the television in the kitchen of our old farmhouse in Maine. I had to get out of the house. Taking my six-year-old son, Isaac, with me, I went out for a walk. The day glowed with autumnal glory, the last hurrah of life before winter, the air snappish and smelling of wood smoke, the sky a vibrant blue. We crossed the freshly mown fields behind the farmhouse, past the apple orchard, and headed down an abandoned logging road into the woods. A mile in we left the road and plunged into the trees, looking for a beaver pond hidden in the deepest part of the forest, where the moose live. I wanted to get away from any trace of human existence, to escape, to lose myself, to find a place untainted by the horror of the day. We forced our way through stands of spruce and fir and slogged across bogs and carpets of sphagnum moss. Half a mile in, sunlight loomed through the tree trunks and we came to the beaver pond. The surface of the pond was utterly still and black, mirroring the forest leaning over it, here and there splashed with red from the leaves of an autumnal maple crowding the pond's edge. The air smelled of green moss and damp pine needles. It was a primeval place, this nameless pond on an unknown brook, beyond good and evil.

While my son gathered beaver-gnawed sticks, I had a moment to collect my thoughts. I wondered if it was right to leave the country when it was under attack. I considered whether it was safe to fly with my children. And I wondered how this day would affect our lives in Italy if we did return. It occurred to me then, as an afterthought, that the New Yorker New Yorker article on the Monster of Florence was not likely to be published. article on the Monster of Florence was not likely to be published.

Like most Americans, we decided to continue our lives as before. We flew back to Italy on September 18, soon after flights resumed. Our Italian friends held a dinner for us at an apartment on Piazza Santo Spirito, overlooking the great Renaissance church built by Brunelleschi. When we walked into the apartment, it was like arriving at a funeral; our Italian friends came forward and embraced us, one by one, some with tears in their eyes, offering their condolences. The evening was somber, and at the end, a friend who taught Greek at the University of Florence recited Constantine Cavafy's poem "Waiting for the Barbarians." She read it first in the original Greek and then in Italian. The poem describes the Romans of the late empire waiting for the barbarians to come, and I have never forgotten the last lines she read that evening: ...night is here but the barbarians have not come.And some people arrived from the borders,and said that there are no longer any barbarians.And now what shall become of us without any barbarians?Those people were some kind of solution.1 As I expected, The New Yorker The New Yorker killed the Monster piece, generously paying us in full and releasing the rights back to us so we could publish it elsewhere. I made a few halfhearted attempts to place it with another magazine, but after 9/11 no one was interested in the story of a long-ago serial killer in another country. killed the Monster piece, generously paying us in full and releasing the rights back to us so we could publish it elsewhere. I made a few halfhearted attempts to place it with another magazine, but after 9/11 no one was interested in the story of a long-ago serial killer in another country.

In the days following 9/11, many commentators on television and in the newspapers pontificated on the nature of evil. Literary and cultural lions were called upon to express their grave and considered opinions. Politicians, religious leaders, and psychological experts all waxed eloquent on the subject. I was struck by their perfect failure to explain this most mysterious of phenomena, and I began to feel that the very incomprehensibility of evil might be, in fact, one of its fundamental characteristics. You cannot stare evil in the face; it has no face. It has no body, no bones, no blood. Any attempt to describe it ends in glibness and self-delusion. Maybe, I thought, this is why Christians invented the devil and Monster investigators invented a satanic sect. They both were, as the poem goes, "some kind of solution."

During that time I began to understand my own obsession with the Monster case. In twenty years of writing thrillers involving murder and violence, I had tried and largely failed to understand evil at its core. The Monster of Florence attracted me because it was a road into the wilderness. The case was the purest distillation of evil I had ever encountered, on many levels. It was, first of all, the evil of the depraved killings of a highly disturbed human being. But the case was about other kinds of evil as well. Some of the top investigators, prosecutors, and judges in the case, charged with the sacred responsibility of finding the truth, appeared to be more interested in using the case to leverage their power to greater personal glory. Having committed themselves to a defective theory, they refused to reconsider their beliefs when faced with overwhelming contradictory evidence. They cared more about saving face than saving lives, more about pus.h.i.+ng their careers than putting the Monster behind bars. Around the Monster's incomprehensible evil had accreted layer upon layer of additional falsehood, vanity, ambition, arrogance, incompetence, and f.e.c.klessness. The Monster's acts were like a metastasized cancer cell, tumbling through the blood to lodge in some soft, dark corner, dividing, multiplying, building its own network of blood vessels and capillaries to feed itself, swelling, expanding, and finally killing.

I knew that Mario Spezi had already struggled with the evil expressed by the Monster case. One day I asked him how he had dealt with the horrors of the case-the evil-which I felt was starting to affect me.

"n.o.body understood evil better than Brother Galileo," he told me, referring to the Franciscan monk turned psychoa.n.a.lyst he had turned to for help when the horrors of the Monster case began to drag him under. Brother Galileo had since died, but Mario credited him with saving his life during the time of the Monster's killings. "He helped me understand what is beyond understanding."

"Do you remember what he said?"

"I can tell you exactly, Doug. I wrote it down."

He dug out his notes of the session where Brother Galileo spoke about evil and read them to me. The old monk began by making a powerful play on words of the fact that the Italian word for "evil" and "sickness" is the same, male male, and that the word for "speech" and "study" is also the same, discorso. discorso.

" 'Pathology' can be defined as discorso sul male discorso sul male [study of sickness (or evil)]," Brother Galileo said. "I prefer to define it as [study of sickness (or evil)]," Brother Galileo said. "I prefer to define it as male che parla male che parla [evil (or sickness) that speaks]. Just so with psychology, which is defined as the 'study of the psyche.' But I prefer 'the study of the psyche struggling to speak through its neurotic disturbances.' [evil (or sickness) that speaks]. Just so with psychology, which is defined as the 'study of the psyche.' But I prefer 'the study of the psyche struggling to speak through its neurotic disturbances.'

"There is no longer true communication among us, because our very language is sick, and the sickness of our discourse carries us inevitably to sickness in our bodies, to neurosis, if not finally to mental illness.

"When I can no longer communicate with speech, I will speak with sickness. My symptoms are given life. These symptoms express the need for my soul to make itself heard but cannot, because I don't have the words, and because those who should listen cannot get beyond the sound of their own voices. The language of sickness is the most difficult to interpret. It is an extreme form of blackmail which defies all our efforts to pay it off and send it away. It is a final attempt at communication.

"Mental illness lies at the very end of this struggle to be heard. It is the last refuge of a desperate soul who has finally understood that no one is listening or ever will listen. Madness is the renunciation of all efforts to be understood. It is one unending scream of pain and need into the absolute silence and indifference of society. It is a cry without an echo.

"This is the nature of the evil of the Monster of Florence. And this is the nature of the evil in each and every one of us. We all have a Monster within; the difference is in degree, not in kind."

Spezi was crushed by the failure of our article to see print. It was a great blow in his lifelong effort to unmask the Monster. With his disappointment and frustration, his obsession with the case, if anything, deepened. I moved on to other things. That year I began work on a new thriller, Brimstone Brimstone, with my writing partner, Lincoln Child, with whom I had created a series of best-selling novels featuring an investigator named Pendergast. Brimstone Brimstone was set partly in Tuscany and it involved a serial killer, satanic rituals, and a lost Stradivarius violin. The Monster of Florence was dead and I began dissecting the corpse for my fiction. was set partly in Tuscany and it involved a serial killer, satanic rituals, and a lost Stradivarius violin. The Monster of Florence was dead and I began dissecting the corpse for my fiction.

One day, as I was strolling through Florence, I pa.s.sed a tiny shop that made hand-bound books. It gave me an idea. I went home and printed out our Monster article in octavo book format and carried it into the shop for binding. The shopkeeper created two handmade volumes, covered in full Florentine leather, with marbled endpapers. Each cover was stamped in gold leaf with the t.i.tle, our names, and the Florentine lily.

THE MONSTER.

SPEZI.

PRESTON.

It was a signed, numbered edition of two. During our next dinner at Spezi's house, sitting at the table on his terrazzo overlooking the hills of Florence, I presented him with copy number one. He was impressed. He turned it over in his hands, admiring the gold tooling and fine leather. After a while, he looked up at me, his brown eyes twinkling. "You know, Doug, with all this work we've already done...we should should write a book about the Monster." write a book about the Monster."

I was immediately smitten with the idea. We talked about it and decided that we would first publish the book in Italy, in Italian. Then we would rework it for an American readers.h.i.+p and try to get it published in the United States.

For years my novels had been published in Italian by Sonzogno, a division of RCS Libri, part of a large publis.h.i.+ng conglomerate that included Rizzoli and the Corriere della Sera Corriere della Sera newspaper. I called my editor at Sonzogno and she was intrigued, especially after we sent her the ex newspaper. I called my editor at Sonzogno and she was intrigued, especially after we sent her the exNew Yorker article we had written. She invited Mario and me to Milan to discuss the idea. One day, we took the train to Milan, pitched the idea, and walked away with a handsome contract. article we had written. She invited Mario and me to Milan to discuss the idea. One day, we took the train to Milan, pitched the idea, and walked away with a handsome contract.

RCS Libri was particularly interested in the idea because they had recently published another book about the Monster case, which had been a major best-seller. The author of the book? Chief Inspector Michele Giuttari.

CHAPTER 37.

Meanwhile, Giuttari's investigation, which had stalled badly after the business of the "Villa of Horrors," had began to revive. In 2002, a new line of investigation erupted in the neighboring province of Umbria-in the ancient and beautiful hill town of Perugia, one hundred and fifty kilometers from Florence. The first sign of it was an odd telephone call that Spezi got early that year from Gabriella Carlizzi. Carlizzi, you may recall, was the crank who claimed the cult of the Red Rose had not only ordered the Monster killings but was also behind 9/11.

Carlizzi had quite a story to tell Spezi, the Monstrologer. One day, while providing a.s.sistance to the inmates of Rebibbia prison near Rome, she had received an alarming confidence from an inmate who had been a member of the infamous Italian Gang of Magliana. The man had said that a Perugian doctor who drowned in 1985 in Lake Trasimeno had not met his end through accident or suicide, as the inquest had concluded at the time, but had been murdered. He had been killed by the Order of the Red Rose, which the doctor himself belonged to. The other members of the order had eliminated him because he had become unreliable and was about to expose their nefarious activities to the police. To hide the evidence of crime, his body had been subst.i.tuted for another before dumping it in the lake. Therefore, buried in the doctor's grave wasn't his body, but that of the other person.

Spezi, who had a great deal of experience dealing with conspiracy theorists, had thanked Carlizzi very much and explained that, most regrettably, he was not interested in pursuing the story. He got her off the phone as quickly and politely as possible.

Nevertheless, Spezi vaguely remembered the story of the drowned doctor. One month after the last Monster killing in 1985, a handsome young man from a wealthy Perugian family, Francesco Narducci, had drowned in Lake Trasimeno. Rumors circulated at the time that he had killed himself because he was the Monster, rumors which were routinely investigated and dismissed.

In early 2002 the indefatigable Carlizzi, turned down by Spezi in her quest for publicity, brought her story to the public minister of Perugia, a man named Giuliano Mignini, whose jurisdiction covered the province of Perugia. (The public minister is the public prosecutor of a region, a position similar to a U.S. attorney or a district attorney. The public minister represents the interests of the state and argues the case in court, as the advocate for the state.) Judge Mignini was was interested. The story seemed to mesh with another case he was pursuing involving a group of loan sharks who lent money to shopkeepers and professionals at stratospheric interest rates and who, if they didn't get repaid, exacted a brutal revenge. A small shopkeeper who was behind in her payments decided to expose them. She recorded one of their threatening telephone calls and sent the tape to the public minister's office. interested. The story seemed to mesh with another case he was pursuing involving a group of loan sharks who lent money to shopkeepers and professionals at stratospheric interest rates and who, if they didn't get repaid, exacted a brutal revenge. A small shopkeeper who was behind in her payments decided to expose them. She recorded one of their threatening telephone calls and sent the tape to the public minister's office.

One morning, while working in my farmhouse office in Giogoli, I got a call from Spezi. "The Monster's in the news again," he said. "I'm coming up to your house. Put the coffee on."

He arrived clutching a stack of that morning's newspapers. I began to read.

"Be careful or we'll do to you the same as that dead doctor in Lake Trasimeno," the papers quoted the loan shark as saying in the tape recording of the threatening call. That was it: no names or facts. But Public Minister Giuliano Mignini read a great deal into those words. He concluded, apparently based on information given him by Carlizzi, that Francesco Narducci had been murdered by the loan sharks, some of whom might be in contact with the Red Rose or another diabolical sect. Therefore, the loan sharks and the Narducci killing might be connected in some way with the Monster of Florence murders.

Judge Mignini, the public minister, informed Chief Inspector Giuttari of the connection to the Monster case, and Giuttari and his GIDES squad embarked on a determined effort to prove that Narducci hadn't committed suicide. He had been murdered, to silence him and the terrible secrets he knew. Mignini had ordered the reopening of the Narducci case as a murder investigation.

"I can't follow this at all," I said, trying to read the paper. "It makes no sense."

Spezi nodded, smiling cynically. "In my day they never would have printed this merda merda. Italian journalism is going downhill."

"At least," I said, "it's more fodder for our book."

A while later, more news about the story broke in the papers. This time, still quoting unnamed sources, the papers printed a new version of the so-called tape recording. Now the loan shark was reported to have said, "Be careful or we'll do to you the same as we did to Narducci and Pacciani!" This version of the recording directly connected the dead doctor Narducci with the so-called murder of Pacciani-and thus with the Monster case.