God's Spy (20 page)

22 August 1999

‘Come in, come in. I suppose you know who I am, yes?’
For Paola, meeting Robert Weber made her feel the same way an
Egyptologist would have felt if Rameses II had invited them to tea. She
walked into the conference room, where the famous criminologist was
handing out grades to the four students who had taken the course.
He had been retired for ten years, but his firm footsteps still inspired
a reverential respect in the hallways of the FBI. He was the man who
had revolutionised forensic science by creating a new method of tracking down criminals: the psychological profile. In the highly selective
course that the FBI offered, whose purpose was to develop new talent
in various parts of the world, he was always in charge of giving student
assessments. He made a tremendous impression on students, who were
honoured to sit face to face with someone they greatly admired. ‘Of course I know you, sir. I have to tell you—’
‘Yes, I know already. It’s an honour to know me. Blah blah blah. If
I had a dollar for every time I heard that phrase, I’d be a rich man.’ The criminologist’s nose was buried in a heavy file. Paola stuck a
hand in her trouser pocket and took out a crumpled note, which she
handed to Weber.
‘It’s an honour to meet you.’
Weber looked at the note and started to laugh. It was a one-dollar
bill. Weber smoothed it out and put it into his coat pocket. ‘Don’t crumple the bills, Ms Dicanti. They’re property of the United
States Treasury.’ But he smiled, pleased by the young woman’s quickwitted response.
‘I’ll remember that, sir.’
Weber’s face became serious, strict. It was the moment of truth, and every word that followed was like a hammer blow to his young student.
‘You’re weak, Ms Dicanti. You only just scraped by in the physical tests and target practice. You have no character. You fall apart too quickly. You give in right away. You put up roadblocks against adversity all too easily.’
Paola was shocked. That a living legend has managed to knock the stuffing out of you in less than a minute is a very difficult thing to accept. It’s even worse when his hard-nosed tone reveals that he lacks even the faintest sympathy for you.
‘You don’t reason. That’s OK, but you’ve got to make use of what you have inside. And to do that, you’ve got to invent. Make things up, Ms Dicanti. Don’t follow the manuals to the letter. Improvise, and you’ll see. And be more diplomatic. Here are your final evaluations. Open them after you leave the room.’
Paola took the envelope from Weber with trembling hands and opened the door, grateful to get out of there.
‘One more thing, Ms Dicanti. What’s the serial killer’s real motive?’
‘His hunger to kill, which he cannot control.’
The old criminologist shook his head. ‘You’ll find out what it is when you get to the place where you ought to be. You’re not there yet. You’re thinking just like the books again, young lady. Can you
fathom the torment that makes a person commit murder?’ ‘No, sir.’
‘Sometimes you have to forget all about psychiatric treatises. The
true motive is the body. If you want to know the artist, analyse his
work. The first thing you do when you enter a crime scene is get inside
his head.’
Dicanti ran back to her apartment and threw herself into the bathtub. When she had summoned sufficient peace of mind, she opened
the envelope. It took her a little while to comprehend what she read. She had received the highest score possible on all parts of the
coursework. And a valuable lesson, too: nothing is what it seems.

Thursday, 7 April 2005, 5.49 p.m.

It was just over an hour since the killer had escaped, but Paola could still feel his presence in the room, like someone inhaling fumes, metallic and invisible. When she was speaking to other people about serial killers she was always utterly rational. That was easy – voicing her opinions from a comfortable, carpeted office. And that is where she spent most of her time.

It was a different thing altogether to walk into a room, taking care not to step in the blood on the floor. Not just to avoid contaminating the crime scene: her principal motive for not stomping in carelessly was that the damned blood would ruin a good pair of shoes for ever. And the soul with it.

It had been nearly three years since Director Troi had personally performed the work at a crime scene. Paola suspected he was coming to a degree of involvement where he needed to score points with the Vatican authorities. He really had nothing to gain with his Italian superiors, especially as the whole damn business had to be kept under wraps.

He walked in first, followed by Paola. The others remained behind in the hallway, staring into space and ill at ease. Dicanti heard Dante and Fowler exchange a few words – more than a few of them, she thought, and not exactly civil in tone – but she made every effort to keep her attention focused on what was inside the room and not what she had left outside.

Paola stood by the door, letting Troi go through his routine. First the forensic photographs: one from each corner of the room, from above the body, from every possible side and, finally, one of every element the investigator might consider relevant. When all was said and done, more than seventy bursts of light illuminated the scene in sudden, intermittent flashes that lent the place a blanched, unreal quality.

She took a deep breath, and tried to ignore the smell of blood and the aftertaste it left on your tongue. She closed her eyes and counted from one hundred back to one in her head, very slowly, trying to match the rhythm of the decreasing numbers to the beating of her heart. The frantic gallop at one hundred slowed to a smooth trot by fifty and an easy, steady walk by the time she got to zero.

She opened her eyes.
Cardinal Geraldo Cardoso, 7 years old, was stretched out on the bed. Cardoso was tied to the ornamental headboard with two tightly knotted towels. His cardinal’s cap, still on his head, was tipped to one side, giving him a perversely comical look.
Paola recited Weber’s mantra slowly: ‘If you want to know the artist, analyse his work.’ She repeated it to herself over and over, moving her lips silently until the words had lost all meaning, engraving themselves in her mind as if she were dipping a seal into ink and stamping it on a piece of paper again and again until all the ink was gone.
‘Let’s get started,’ Paola said in a loud voice. She took a tape recorder out of her bag.
Troi didn’t bother to look at her. He was busy collecting evidence and studying the shape of the various pools of blood.
The criminologist began to dictate into her tape recorder in exactly the manner she had been taught at Quantico: make an observation and an immediate deduction. The results of her conclusions would more or less resemble a reconstruction of how events had unfolded.

Observation:
The deceased’s body is tied at the hands in his own room, no signs of violence to furniture or other objects.
Inference:
Karosky used some kind of subterfuge to gain access to the room, and then quickly and silently restrained the victim.

Observation:
A blood-soaked towel on the floor. Looks crumpled.
Inference:
Karosky likely put the towel in the victim’s mouth to stop him from shouting out, and then removed it so that he could continue with his modus operandi: cutting out the tongue.

Observation:
We heard a cry of alarm.
Inference:
What most likely happened is that, once the towel was removed, Cardoso found a way to scream. Therefore the tongue is the almost the last thing that Karosky cuts, before moving on to the eyes.

Observation:
The victim still possesses both eyes, his tongue is cut into strips. The cutting looks as if it was done under pressure; there is blood all round it. Victim’s hands are still in place.
Inference:
Karosky’s modus operandi begins with the torture of the body, followed by the ritual dissection. Cut out the tongue, pull out the eyes, cut off the hands.

Paola opened the door of the room and asked Fowler to join her for a moment. The priest’s face recoiled when he saw the macabre spectacle, but he didn’t turn away. The criminologist rewound the tape on her recorder and they listened to the last point together.

‘Do you think there is anything special in the order he chooses?’ ‘I don’t know. The ability to speak is the most important thing for a priest: he administers the sacraments with his voice. The eyes have no overwhelming importance in a priest’s ministry, since they don’t participate in any critical manner in the fulfilment of his duties. But the hands do fulfil a crucial role: a priest’s hands are sacred, always, no matter what he is doing with them.’

‘What do you mean?’
‘Even a monster like Karosky – his hands are still sacred. His capacity to administer the sacraments is the same as the holiest, purest priest. Doesn’t make sense, but it’s true.’
Paola shuddered. The idea that someone so degraded could be in direct contact with God struck her as repugnant, terrible. She tried to remind herself that this was one of the reasons why she had rejected God’s existence, imagining Him to be an unbearable tyrant in a cotton-soft heaven. Yet thinking more deeply about the horror, the depravity of those who, like Karosky, were supposed to be doing His work, produced a very different effect in her. She felt the same betrayal He must have felt and for a few seconds put herself in His position. More than ever she missed Maurizio, mourning that he wasn’t there to give some meaning to this wretched insanity.
‘Good Lord.’
Fowler shrugged his shoulders, not knowing what to say. He walked out of the room again and Paola turned the tape recorder back on.

Observation:
The victim is wearing a full-length robe, completely open. Underneath, a cotton undershirt and boxer shorts. The undershirt has been torn, most likely with a sharpened instrument. There are a number of cuts on the chest that spell out the words EGO TE ABSOLVO.
Inference:
In this instance, Karosky’s ritual began with torturing the body, then continued with the mutilation. Cut out the tongue, pull out the eyes, cut off the hands. The words EGO TE ABSOLVO were also found at the Portini crime scene – according to the photographs Dante gave us – and at Robayra’s. The variation in this case is unusual.

Observation:
There are bloodstains everywhere, splashes of blood on the walls. A partial footprint stamped on the floor, next to the bed. Looks like blood.
Inference:
Everything at this crime scene is very strange. No way to deduce whether his style has changed or he’s adapted himself to a new environment. His modus operandi is anarchic, and –

Dicanti pushed the stop button on the recorder. There was something that didn’t fit, something terribly wrong.
‘How’s it going, boss?’
‘From bad to worse. I’ve taken prints from the door, from the night table, from the headboard of the bed, but there’s not much else. There are plenty of partial prints but only one, I think, that might be Karosky’s.’
He pressed a piece of plastic on to the headboard as he spoke, making a halfway decent print of an index finger. He then compared the transparency with the digital impression on the ID card that Karosky had had at the Saint Matthew.
‘It’s only a preliminary impression, but there are various similarities. At least I think there are. This ascendant line is characteristic enough, and this deltic . . .’ Troi said, more to himself than to Paola. Paola knew that when Troi recognised a fingerprint as a match, that’s what it was. He was famous – an expert in the field. Watching him at work, in his element, Dicanti deplored the slow ruination that had turned a forensic specialist into a bureaucrat.
‘Nothing else, doctor?’
‘Nothing else. No hairs, no fibres, nothing. This man really is a ghost. If they wore gloves, I’d say Cardoso was killed by a spirit.’
‘There’s nothing spiritual about that severed trachea.’
Troi looked at the cadaver uneasily, perhaps reflecting on the words of his subordinate or extracting his own conclusions.
‘No, not much. That’s true.’
Paola left Troi to complete his work. But she knew that he wasn’t going to come up with anything. Karosky had been thoroughly prepared and, in spite of the pressure, he hadn’t left anything behind. A disturbing suspicion kept niggling away at the back of her mind. She looked around. Camilo Cirin had arrived, accompanied by another man who was small and terribly skinny, almost fragile in appearance, and who seemed to have a very sharp way of looking at people. Cirin walked up to Paola and introduced Magistrate Gianluigi Varone, Vatican City’s only judge. As far as Paola was concerned, he didn’t seem very pleasant: he looked like a skinny, yellow vulture in a jacket.
The judge signed a form allowing for the removal of the body – something that would be carried out with complete secrecy. The two agents of the Vigilanza who had been standing guard at the door had changed clothes. They were wearing black overalls now, and latex gloves. They would take care of cleaning and sealing the room after Troi and his team had left. Fowler was seated on a small bench at the other end of the hallway, calmly reading his breviary. When Paola managed to extricate herself from Cirin and the magistrate, she went over to the priest and sat down next to him. Fowler couldn’t avoid a sense of déjà vu.
‘Very well, Dicanti. Now you know a few more cardinals up close and personal.’
Paola smiled, saddened. So many things had changed since the two of them had waited together outside the chamberlain’s office. And yet they weren’t even a step closer to capturing Karosky.
‘I thought that macabre jokes were Dante’s territory.’
‘Well, they are. I’m just visiting.’
Paola opened her mouth but closed it again. She wanted to talk to Fowler about something that was disturbing her in terms of Karosky’s ritual, but she still couldn’t put her finger on what it was that was bothering her so much. She decided to wait until she’d had more time to give it serious thought.
As Paola would have occasion to confirm later on – and bitterly so – that decision was a terrible mistake.

Thursday, 7 April 2005, 4.31 p.m.

Dante and Paola stepped into Troi’s car, which was sitting outside Saint Martha’s. He was going to drop them off at the morgue before heading on to the UACV offices, to work on determining the weapon of choice in each of the murder scenes. Fowler had just opened the door to the car when he heard someone calling his name.