"Fantastico!" I said.

"And," he added, his eyes twinkling, "I've got a scoop for the show that n.o.body knows about, not even you!"

I sipped my coffee and waited.

"You remember when I spoke to you of the detective who told me the French tourists must have been killed on Sat.u.r.day night, because they had larvae on them as big as cigarette b.u.t.ts? Well, I managed to get my hands on the photographs taken by the forensic team that Monday afternoon. Printed in the corner was the actual time the photographs were taken, around five o'clock, three hours after the bodies were discovered. Blowing them up you can see the larvae very well, and they are truly big. I did some research and discovered the top Italian expert on forensic entomology, internationally known, who with an American colleague ten years ago developed a technique for establis.h.i.+ng the time of death based on the development of larvae. His name is Francesco Introna, director of the Ist.i.tuto di Medicina Legale in Padova, director of the Laboratorio di Entomologia Forense at the Ist.i.tuto di Medicina Legale of Bari, where he teaches; he's got three hundred scientific publications in medical journals and he's an expert consultant for the FBI! So I called him, sent him the photographs, and he gave me the results. Beautiful results. Here's the definitive proof we've always sought, Doug, that Pacciani was innocent, that Lotti and Pucci were liars, and that his picnicking friends had nothing to do with the killings!"

"Fabulous," I said. "But how does it work? What's the science behind it?"

"The professor explained it to me. The larvae are fundamentally important for arriving at the time of death. The calliforidi calliforidi, the so-called blue flies, deposit on the cadaver a large number of eggs in a cl.u.s.ter. They lay eggs only during the day, because the flies don't fly at night. The eggs require between eighteen and twenty-four hours to hatch. And then they develop on a rigid schedule."

He pulled out the report. "Read it for yourself."

It was short and to the point. I pa.r.s.ed my way through the dense, scientific Italian. The larvae in the photographs of the French victim, the report stated, "had already pa.s.sed the first phase of development and were in the second....They could not have been deposited on the remains less than thirty-six hours previously. As a result, the theory that the homicide could have been committed the night of September 8 [Sunday night] and that the deposition of the eggs could have taken place at dawn on the ninth, with the photographs taken twelve hours later-at five o'clock in the afternoon-finds no support in the entomological data. The data places the time of death in the preceding day, at the minimum."

In other words, the French tourists must must have been killed Sat.u.r.day night. have been killed Sat.u.r.day night.

"You understand what this means?" Spezi asked.

"It means the self-confessing eyewitnesses are d.a.m.ned liars- because they all claimed to have witnessed the killings on Sunday night!"

"And Lorenzo Nesi's testimony putting Pacciani near the scene of the crime Sunday night is irrelevant! If that's not enough, Pacciani had an alibi for his whereabouts Sat.u.r.day night-the actual night of the murder. He had been at a country fair!"

This was absolutely decisive. The entomological evidence proved (as if more proof were needed) that Pacciani and his alleged accomplices had nothing to do with the Monster of Florence killings. It also, therefore, demolished the satanic sect theory-which had been built entirely on the guilt of Pacciani, the false confession of Lotti, and the testimony of the other algebraic witnesses. They were exactly what Judge Ferri had called them in his book: "coa.r.s.e and habitual liars."

This new evidence, Spezi said, would force investigators to reopen the Sardinian Trail. Somewhere in the murky depths of the Sardinian clan, the truth would be found and the Monster unmasked.

"This is incredible," I said. "When this is broadcast, it'll cause one big beautiful uproar."

Spezi nodded silently. "And that's not all." He unwrapped the object on the table, to reveal a peculiar stone, carved in the shape of a truncated pyramid with polished sides, old and chipped, weighing perhaps five pounds.

"What is it?"

"According to Chief Inspector Giuttari, this is an esoteric object used to communicate between this world and the infernal regions. To everyone else it is a doorstop. I saw this one behind a door at the Villa Romana in Florence, now the German Cultural Inst.i.tute. The director, Joachim Burmeister, is a friend of mine and he lent it to me. It looks almost identical to the stone collected in the Bartoline Fields near the scene of a Monster killing in 1981.

"Chi L'ha Visto?" Spezi went on, "will be shooting a segment in the Bartoline Fields, at the scene of the crime. I'll be standing at the very spot where the earlier doorstop was found, holding this one-proof that Giuttari's 'esoteric object' was merely a doorstop."

"Giuttari won't like it."

Spezi cracked a small, wicked smile. "I can't help that."

The program aired on May 14, 2004. Professor Introna appeared, presented his data, and explained the science of forensic entomology. Spezi appeared with his doorstop in the Bartoline Fields.

Instead of one fine, big, beautiful uproar, absolutely nothing happened. Neither the prosecutor's office nor the police showed a crumb of interest. Chief Inspector Giuttari dismissed out of hand Professor Introna's results. Police and prosecutors had no comment on the doorstop. As for the murder convictions of Lotti and Vanni, Pacciani's so-called picnicking friends, officials issued a bland statement that the Italian judicial system had reached verdicts in those cases and saw no need to revisit them. In general, officialdom carefully avoided commenting on the program. The press let them get away with it. The great majority of Italian newspapers ignored it completely. This was science-not another s.e.xy story on satanic sects-and it wouldn't sell papers. The investigation into satanic sects, hidden masterminds, bodies exchanged in tombs, conspiracies among powerful people, and doorstops mistaken for esoteric objects continued unabated.

Spezi's appearance on television did have one definitive effect. It seemed to inspire Chief Inspector Giuttari's undying hatred.

On our last night in Florence before moving back to America, we joined Mario and Myriam with other friends for a farewell dinner in their apartment, on the terrazzo overlooking the Florentine hills. The date was June 24, 2004. Myriam had prepared an extraordinary dinner, starting with crostini with sweet peppers and anchovies served with a spumante from the Alto Adige; wild pheasant and partridge, shot by a friend the day before, wrapped in grape leaves; a Chianti cla.s.sico from the Viticchio estate; wild field greens served with the spicy local olive oil and an intense twelve-year-old balsamico; fresh pecorino cheese from Mario's village of Sant'Angelo; and zuppa inglese.

The morning before, on June 23, Spezi had published an article in La n.a.z.ione La n.a.z.ione, in which he had interviewed Vanni, the ex-postman of San Casciano, convicted of being Pacciani's accomplice. Spezi regaled us with the story of how he had encountered Vanni, by sheer chance, at a nursing home while pursuing an unrelated story. n.o.body knew Vanni had been released from prison, for reasons of ill-health and advanced age. Spezi recognized him and seized the opportunity to interview him on the spot.

"I Will Die as the Monster But I Am Innocent," ran the headline. Spezi got the interview because, he said, he reminded Vanni of the "good old days" in San Casciano, when he and Vanni had briefly encountered each other during a festival, long before the poor postman became one of Pacciani's infamous picnicking friends. They had ridden around together in a car full of people, Vanni waving the Italian flag. Vanni remembered Spezi and waxed nostalgic-and that was how Spezi got him to talk.

The sun set over the Florentine hills as we ate dinner, filling the landscape with a golden light. The bells of the nearby medieval church of Santa Margherita a Montici tolled out the hour, answered by the bells of other churches hidden in the hills around us. The air, warmed by the sinking rays of the sun, carried up the scent of honeysuckle. In the valley below, the crenellated towers of a large castle cast long shadows across its surrounding vineyards. As we watched, the hills sank from gold to purple and finally disappeared into the evening twilight.

The contrast between this magical landscape and the Monster that once stalked it struck me particularly hard at that moment.

Mario took the occasion to bring out a present for me. I unwrapped it to find a plastic Oscar statue, with a base that read, "The Monster of Florence."

"For when the film is made from our book," Mario said.

He also gave me a pencil drawing he had made many years earlier of Pietro Pacciani, sitting in the dock during his trial, on which he had written, "For Doug, in memory of a vile Florentine and our glorious labor together."

When we returned to the house we had built in Maine, I hung the drawing on the wall of my writing hut in the woods behind our house, along with a photograph of Spezi in his trench coat and fedora, Gauloise stuck in his mouth, standing in a butcher shop under a rack of hog jowls.

Spezi and I spoke frequently as we continued to work on the Monster book. I missed my life in Italy, but Maine was quiet, and with the frequent foul weather, fog, and cold, I found it a marvelous place to work. (I began to understand why Italy produced painters while England produced writers.) Our little town of Round Pond has five hundred and fifty residents and looks like something out of a Currier and Ives lithograph, with a white steepled church, a cl.u.s.ter of clapboard houses, a general store, and a harbor filled with lobster boats, surrounded by forests of oak and white pine. In the winter, the town is buried under a thick blanket of glittering snow and sea smoke rises from the ocean. The crime rate is almost nonexistent and few bother to lock their homes even when they go away on vacation. The annual bean supper at the local Grange is the front-page news in the paper. The "big town," twelve miles away, is Damariscotta, population 2,000.

The culture shock was considerable.

We continued to work on the book by e-mail and telephone. Spezi did most of the actual writing, while I read and commented on his work, adding some chapters in my miserable Italian, which Spezi had to rewrite. (I write Italian at what might generously be called a fifth grade level.) I wrote additional material in English, which was kindly translated by Andrea Carlo Cappi, the translator of my novels, who had become a good friend during our years in Italy. Spezi and I spoke on a regular basis and made excellent progress with the book.

On the morning of November 19, 2004, I went into my writing shack and checked my voice mail, to find an urgent message from Mario. Something shocking had happened.

CHAPTER 42.

Polizia! Perquisizione Perquisizione! Police! This is a search!"

At 6:15 on the morning of November 18, 2004, Mario Spezi woke to the sound of his door buzzer and the raucous voice of a police detective demanding entrance.

Spezi's first clear thought, on rousing himself from bed, was to hide the floppy disk that contained the book we were writing together. He leapt out of bed and ran up the narrow staircase to his garret office, where he yanked open the plastic box containing the diskettes for his ancient computer, took the one with "Monster" written in English on the label, and shoved it down into his underwear.

He reached the front door just as the police came pouring in. There seemed to be no end to them, three...four...five. In the end Spezi counted seven. Most of them were fat and their big jackets of gray and brown leather bulked them up even more.

The oldest one was a commander from Giuttari's GIDES squad. The others were carabinieri and policemen. "Graybeard," the commander, wished Spezi a dry "buongiorno" and shoved a piece of paper at him.

"Procura della Repubblica presso il Tribunale di Perugia," read the letterhead-Office of the Public Prosecutor in the Tribunal of Perugia-and below that, "Search Warrant, Information and Guarantee to the Accused on the Right of Defense."

It had come straight out of the office of the public minister of Perugia, Giuliano Mignini.

"The person named above," the doc.u.ment read, "is hereby under official investigation for having committed the following crimes: A), B), C), D)..." They were listed up to the letter R. Nineteen crimes, none of them specified.

"What are these crimes, A, B, C, etcetera?" Spezi asked Graybeard.

"It would take volumes to explain them" was the man's response. Spezi could not know what the crimes were-they were under a judicial order of secrecy.

Spezi read with incredulity the reason for the search. It said he had "evinced a peculiar and suspicious interest toward the Perugian branch of the investigation" and that Spezi "demonstrated a zealous effort in attempting to undermine the investigation through the medium of television." This, he figured, must refer to the Chi L'ha Visto? Chi L'ha Visto? program of May 14, in which Professor Introna had completely cut the legs off the satanic sect investigation and Spezi had waved around the doorstop, making Chief Inspector Giuttari look like a fool. program of May 14, in which Professor Introna had completely cut the legs off the satanic sect investigation and Spezi had waved around the doorstop, making Chief Inspector Giuttari look like a fool.

The warrant authorized the search of the house but also of the "persons present or who may arrive" in search of any object that might have something to do with the Monster case, even peripherally. "There is sufficient reason to believe that such objects may be present in the premises of the person above indicated and on his own person."

Spezi went cold when he read this. It meant they could search his body. He could feel the angular plastic case of the diskette digging into his flesh.

Meanwhile, Spezi's wife, Myriam, and twenty-year-old daughter, Eleonora, stood in the living room in their bathrobes, alarmed and confused.

"Tell me what you're interested in," Spezi said, "and I'll show you, so you won't trash my house."

"We want everything you have on the Monster," said Graybeard.

Which meant not only the entire archive Spezi had acc.u.mulated over a quarter of a century of researching and reporting on the case, but all the material that we were using to write the Monster book. Spezi was custodian of all the research; I had only copies of the most recent doc.u.ments.

It suddenly occurred to him what this was about. They wanted to prevent publication of the book.

"s.h.i.+t! When will you give it back to me?"

"As soon as we have checked through it," said Graybeard.

Spezi brought him up to his garret and showed him the ma.s.ses of files that const.i.tuted his archive: packages of yellowed newspaper cuttings, mountains of photocopies of legal doc.u.ments, ballistic a.n.a.lyses, ME reports, entire trial transcripts, interrogations, verdicts, photographs, books.

They began to load it all into big cardboard boxes.

Spezi called a friend of his at the news agency ANSA, the Italian equivalent to the a.s.sociated Press, and had the luck to catch him. "They're searching my house," he said. "They're taking away everything that I need to write my book with Douglas Preston on the Monster. I won't be able to write another word."

Fifteen minutes later the first story about the search broke on the computer screens of every newspaper and television station in Italy.

Meanwhile Spezi called the president of the Order of Journalists, the president of the Press a.s.sociation, and the director of La n.a.z.ione La n.a.z.ione. They were more scandalized than surprised. They told him they would raise h.e.l.l with the story.

Spezi's cell phone began to ring like mad. One after another his colleagues called, even as the search plodded on. They all wanted to interview him. Spezi a.s.sured them that as soon as the search was over, he would meet with them.

The journalists began arriving under the house even while the search was still in progress.

The police didn't content themselves to taking only doc.u.ments that Spezi had showed them. They began to rummage through drawers, pull books off the shelves, and open up CD holders. They went into his daughter's room and searched her closet, her files, her books, letters, diaries, sc.r.a.pbooks, and photographs, scattering stuff on the floor and making a mess.

Spezi put his arm around Myriam. His wife was trembling. "Don't worry, this is just routine." Myriam was wearing a jacket and at the opportune moment he dove for the diskette, extracted it, and slid it into one of her pockets. He then gave her a kiss on the cheek as if to console her. "Hide it," he whispered.

Several minutes later, pretending to be upset, she sagged into a low ottoman that was coming apart at one of the seams. When the police had their backs turned she quickly slid the floppy disk into the ottoman.

After three hours of searching, they seemed to be finished. They strapped the loaded cartons onto luggage carriers and asked Spezi to follow them to the carabinieri barracks, where they would make an inventory, which he would be required to sign.

In the barracks, while he was seated on a brown Naugahyde chair waiting for the list to be ready, he received a telephone call on his cell phone. It was from Myriam, who was trying to put the house back in order, and who unwisely spoke to her husband in French. Spezi and his wife habitually spoke French in their home, as she was Belgian and they were a bilingual family. Their daughter had gone to French schools in Florence.

"Mario," she said in French, "don't worry, they didn't find what really interests you. But I can't find the doc.u.ments about the scagliola." A scagliola is a type of antique table, and Spezi owned an extremely valuable one dating back to the seventeenth century, which they had just had restored and were thinking of selling.

It wasn't the most felicitous thing to say at that moment, in French, when it was obvious their cell phone was being tapped. He cut her off. "Myriam, this really isn't the time...not now..." Spezi flushed as he closed the phone. He knew his wife's comment was completely innocent, but that it could be interpreted in a sinister light, particularly since it had been spoken in French.

Not long after, Graybeard came in. "Spezi, we need you in here for a moment."

The journalist rose from the chair and followed them into the next room. Graybeard turned and stared at him, his face hostile. "Spezi, you're not cooperating. This isn't working at all."

"Not cooperating? What's that supposed to mean, cooperate? I left my entire house at your disposal so you could put your grubby hands wherever you pleased, what the h.e.l.l more do you want?"

He stared at Spezi with his hard, marblelike eyes. "That's not what I'm talking about. Don't feign ignorance. It would be much better for you if you would only cooperate."

"Ah, now I understand...It's about what my wife said in French. You think she was trying to tell me something in code. But you see, that's my wife's language, and it's normal for her to speak French, we often speak French at home. As for the contents of what she said"-Spezi figured that Graybeard wasn't bilingual-"if you didn't understand it, she was referring to a doc.u.ment that you didn't see, which was my contract with the publis.h.i.+ng house for my book on the Monster. She wanted to tell me that you hadn't taken it. That's all."

Graybeard continued to fix him with narrowed eyes, his expression unchanging. Spezi began to think that the problem might be with the word "scagliola." Not many Italians outside the antiquarian field knew what it meant.

"Is it the scagliola?" he asked. "Do you know what a scagliola is? Is that the problem?"

The policeman didn't respond, but it was clear that this was, in fact, the problem. Spezi tried to explain, to no avail. Graybeard was not interested in explanations.

"I regret to say, Spezi, that we're going to have to start all over again."

They turned around. The policemen and carabinieri got back into their vehicles, and they all drove back to the apartment with Spezi. For four more hours they turned the place upside down-and this time they trashed it for real.

They didn't miss anything, not even the s.p.a.ce behind the books in the library. They took the computer, all the floppy disks (except the one still hidden in the ottoman), and even the menu of a Rotary Club dinner where Spezi had attended a conference on the Monster. They took his telephone book and all his letters.

They were not in a good humor.

Spezi was also beginning to lose his temper. When he pa.s.sed through the door to the library, he gestured to the stone doorstop that he had borrowed from his German friend, the one he had waved about on the television show. It was sitting behind the door, doing what it was supposed to do-being a doorstop. "You see that?" he said sarcastically to the detective. "It's like the truncated pyramid found at the scene of one of the crimes which you insist on claiming is an 'esoteric object.' There it is, take a good look: can't you see it's only a doorstop?" He gave a mocking laugh. "You find them everywhere in Tuscan country houses."

It was an extremely serious mistake. The detective seized the doorstop and packed it away. And thus was added to the evidence against Spezi an object identical to the one that GIDES and Giuttari believed to be of prime importance to their investigation, something the Corriere della Sera Corriere della Sera had written about in a front-page story, calling it, without a trace of irony, "an object that served to put the earthly world in contact with the infernal regions." had written about in a front-page story, calling it, without a trace of irony, "an object that served to put the earthly world in contact with the infernal regions."

In the report prepared by the police of the items taken from Spezi's house, the doorstop was described as a "truncated pyramid with a hexagonal base concealed behind a door," the wording implying that Spezi had made a special effort to hide it. The public minister of Perugia, Giuliano Mignini, justified the retention of the doorstop in a report that stated the object "connected the person under investigation [i.e., Spezi] directly with the series of double homicides."

In other words, because of that doorstop, Spezi was no longer suspected of merely obstructing or interfering with the Monster of Florence investigation. Now they believed that an object discovered in his house tied him directly with one of the crimes.

The Chi L'ha Visto? Chi L'ha Visto? program and the June 23 article had fixed Giuttari's hatred and suspicion of Spezi. In a book Giuttari published about the case, program and the June 23 article had fixed Giuttari's hatred and suspicion of Spezi. In a book Giuttari published about the case, The Monster: Anatomy of an Investigation The Monster: Anatomy of an Investigation, the chief inspector explained how his suspicions developed. It is an interesting look into the way his mind worked.

"On June 23," Giuttari wrote, "one of [Spezi's] articles came out in La n.a.z.ione La n.a.z.ione, an 'exclusive' interview with the lifer Mario Vanni, ent.i.tled I Will Die as the Monster but I Am Innocent I Will Die as the Monster but I Am Innocent."

In the story, Spezi mentioned that he had encountered Vanni once, many years before the Monster killings, in San Casciano. This struck Giuttari as an important clue. "I was mildly surprised that the two had known each other since the days of their youth," he wrote. "But I was struck even more by the curious coincidence that the bitter public foe of the official investigation into the Monster case and the strenuous defender of the 'Sardinian Trail' had not only revealed himself as having excellent rapport with the indicted ex-pharmacist [Calamandrei]...but now stood revealed as a longtime friend of Mario Vanni."

Giuttari went on to say that Spezi had "partic.i.p.ated in a television series" that attempted to focus attention back on the Sardinian Trail, "recycling the same old tired and unverified theories" that had been discredited long ago.

"Now," Giuttari wrote, Spezi's "interfering presence was beginning to look suspicious."

With the doorstop in hand, Giuttari and Mignini had the physical evidence they needed to connect Spezi to one of the actual crime scenes of the Monster.

When the policemen had left, Spezi slowly walked up the staircase to his garret, afraid of what he might find. It was even worse than he'd feared. He fell into the chair that I had given him upon my departure from Florence, in front of the empty s.p.a.ce where his computer had been, and stared for a long time at the wreck all around him. In that moment, he thought back to that crystal-clear morning of Sunday, June 7, 1981-twenty-three years earlier-when his colleague had asked him to take the crime desk, a.s.suring him that "nothing ever happens on a Sunday."

Never in a million years could he have imagined where it would end up.

He wanted to call me, he told me later, but by that time it was late at night in America. He couldn't write an e-mail-he didn't have a computer. He decided to leave the house, walk around the streets of Florence, and look for an Internet cafe where he could e-mail me.