Dante deeply, deeply wanted to get out of the room. “So…time of death?”
Guzzanti sighed. “I’ll need to do a test for that.” He reached into his bag and pulled out a strange-looking thermometer. He looked up at Dante. “The Americans, bless them. They don’t know how to cook and can’t manage to make a decent wine, but boy do they know their dead bodies. I’m going to measure the temperature of the body’s liver.”
“Liver?” Dante gaped. “But—but the liver is inside the body.”
“Good going, Sherlock. Indeed it is. And that is why, Commissario Rossi—” Guzzanti looked over his half-moon glasses as he stressed Dante’s title, “—I’m going to need your permission to remove the dead man’s jacket and shirt, punch a hole in his side and measure the temperature of his liver.”
Dante didn’t know about the temperature of Roland Kane’s liver, but he did know that the temperature of the room suddenly shot up ten degrees. He tried desperately to think of some reason why Guzzanti couldn’t do this, but it was hard to think with his stomach sliding greasily up his throat.
He deepened his voice. “I’m not certain I can give you permission at this time, Guzzanti, because it might violate the integrity of the crime scene, and—”
“Shut up, Dante,” Guzzanti said, scrutinizing the bottom of his bag. “I’m going to need an extra pair of hands here.”
Dante looked down at his own hands and put them behind his back. No way.
“Me, doctor.” Loiacono trembled with eagerness. “May I be allowed to assist you?”
“You may, inspector. Put these on.” Guzzanti held out a pair of latex gloves and Loiacono donned them with a snap.
“Okay.” Guzzanti looked up. “This is what’s going to happen. I am going to open up the man’s jacket, pull up his shirt and undershirt, if he has one, and expose the lower right quadrant of his torso, find myself a nice intercostal space, take out a punching awl and punch a hole through the skin with enough force to reach the center of the right lobe of the liver. After which I will insert a thermometer into the hole and thence down to the liver. Any questions?”
“No, sir!” Loiacono shouted and dropped to his knees.
For one crazy moment, Dante thought Loiacono had had a religious epiphany, but he was only getting close to Guzzanti. Who was going to punch a hole in a man’s liver. Right now. This minute. A trickle of sweat tickled its way down Dante’s back.
“Remove the man’s clothes, inspector,” Guzzanti ordered as he pulled out a long, thin instrument. “I need access to the liver. Very good,” he said as Loiacono bared the right side of the man’s abdomen.
Dante wanted desperately to look away, but he couldn’t. He willed his cell phone to ring. Any interruption would do. Fire. An earthquake. Anything.
Guzzanti put a notepad and pen in Loiacono’s hands. “Okay now, inspector, please take notes.” Guzzanti read off the thermometer. “Ambient temperature twenty-eight degrees.” He drew a line in the air from the body’s nipple down to the edge of the rib cage. He pressed hard against the ribcage with his left hand, while lifting the awl in his right.
“This is the theory, Dante.” He looked up and squinted. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” Dante assured him, swallowing bile. “Perfect.”
“All right. Now, this is the point of the exercise. After death, the body cools at a constant rate of half a degree per hour for the first twelve hours postmortem.” He pressed the tip of the awl against the point indicated by his left hand. He pushed hard then, gripping the awl with both hands. He leaned down heavily. “Damn chest wall. Ah!”
With a pop, he broke through the skin, pressing down until the awl had penetrated to the hilt. He probed delicately, frowning. “Gesù, the guy’s liver is like butter.”
Dante’s stomach roiled as he remembered eating fegato alla veneziana the evening before. The delicate, Venetian liver-and-onion dish was one of his favorites.
Guzzanti pulled back. “Okay, now. Take this, inspector.”
The awl emerged with a slight, sickening pop and Guzzanti handed it to Loiacono. He picked up the thermometer and inserted it into the hole, holding it there for three minutes, which he timed by looking at his wristwatch.
“Right, Loiacono, please record. Ambient temperature twenty-eight degrees, corpse hepatic temperature thirty-point-one degrees, which would indicate…let me see…circa twelve hours from moment of death.”
Loiacono wrote fervidly, while Guzzanti took a felt-tip pen, circled the puncture hole and put his initials next to the circle. “That’s so no one can accuse me of having delivered a killing blow to the liver. Heh-heh.”
Dante smiled sickly.
Guzzanti stood and pulled off his gloves. “Well, that was fun. Trust the Americans to provide the best entertainment. Do you want me to do a vitreous humor test, Dante?”
Saliva was pooling in Dante’s mouth. He had to swallow. “Vitreous…what’s that?”
“I stick a needle in the guy’s eye and syringe out the liquid. ’Course the eyeball collapses, then,” Guzzanti said cheerfully. “Another American technique, bless their souls.”
“No, that won’t be necessary,” Dante said. “Loiacono, see to the cleaning up here. Then go downstairs and advise the Americans I want to talk to them, and arrange for their transport down to headquarters. Ask the magistrate for the authority to sequester the foreigners’ passports, and then collect them. The Americans are from Southbury, Massachusetts. It so happens I know the Chief of Police there. His name is Sam Murray. I want you to email him with the names of the foreigners and ask him to email me what they have in their files. Print out the answers and leave them on my desk.”
“Sir!” Loiacono’s dark eyes gleamed. He liked police work, but he loved computers with a passion verging on the aberrant. Dante was sure he’d just made Loiacono’s day.
Dante turned on his heel with dignity and walked carefully down to the communal bathrooms where he relieved his stomach of last night’s liver.
Chapter Five
Don’t be misled by facts.
Southbury, Massachusetts
The good news was that the doorbell ringing didn’t hurt so much anymore. The bad news was that it was his sister, Lou, at the door.
Nick opened the door and stared at Lou, hating her because she looked so good. She was dressed in one of her usual designer outfits in some bright jewel color and not a hair on her dark head was out of place.
“I used to think of you as my big, handsome brute of a brother,” she said idly from the doorframe. Her huge dark-blue eyes, so remarkably like his own, looked him up and down, taking in his unshaven chin, tousled hair and bare chest. “But I guess brute just about covers it now. Do your eyes hurt?”
“Everything hurts,” Nick answered shortly. “Why?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen that shade of red outside a fashion magazine before. How come I haven’t seen you? I was worried.”
Nick leaned against the doorjamb negligently, as if he were relaxed and had nothing else to do and not as if he’d fall down otherwise. “Had an out-of-town exhibition game.”
“Well, that’s no excuse for disappearing. Can I come in?”
“Can I stop you?” Nick countered, and turned away.
Lou sucked in a breath and Nick winced, knowing what she was seeing on his bare back. The pain of the bruises had lessened, but even he had whistled when he’d seen the blues and greens, slowly turning yellow at the edges, in the mirror. There was even a little black here and there.
Lou had seen him in this shape before, but Nick knew she never got used to the sight.
“Christ,” Lou muttered behind him, and Nick hobbled more quickly into the living room. The lecture was coming. Any minute now.
He wished he could fortify his system with alcohol, but he’d probably exceeded his body’s yearly quota.
“You can turn around, Nick,” Lou said acidly. “You don’t have to hide. I’m not going to say anything. If you want
to beat yourself to a pulp, week after week, that’s your business.”
Nick slumped down into the sofa and Lou sat disturbingly close. Lou might hold off for a minute or two, but he wasn’t counting on it. She hated hockey, and said so. Often. To her, it was basically pro wrestling with a stick.
Lou’s sharp eyes narrowed. “Listen, I swore to myself I wasn’t going to ask, but…how are you?”
“You were right the first time. Don’t ask.” Nick felt weary and depressed.
“Too late.” Lou kept her voice light. “I already did.”
“I’m fine.” Nick pursed his lips and studied his knees. “Just fine.” He looked up to see if Lou was buying it. Unfortunately, her mind was even sharper than her eyes.
“Uh-huh,” she said dryly. “Spill it.”
He didn’t have any choice. Lou was as tenacious as a bloodhound. He heaved a sigh. “I…it’s like this.” Nick started to tell her everything—the concussion, the medical tests, the doctors, the enforced retirement, Faith—but to his horror, his throat seized up. His tongue became a useless muscle in his mouth.
I can’t play hockey. Ever again.
The words were there but they simply wouldn’t come out. It was like looking at a train wreck. You saw the smoking ruins, could hear the cries of the wounded, but words simply couldn’t describe it.
Lou was watching him with her I-love-you-but-you-exasperate-me look and she was probably about five seconds from tricking it out of him. Nick had never, ever been able to out-think his sister Lucrezia.
He struggled up from the couch and went to the bookcase, where he picked up a sheet of business-grade paper, folded three times to fit into an envelope. One lousy sheet of paper that had changed his life.
He sat back down, looking at the paper he held in his hands, wondering where to start.
There was silence for a long moment, then Lou said, gently, “What’s wrong with your leg? You’re limping.”
Nick’s throat eased. He could talk about that. “It’s not my leg. It’s the knee.”
“The meniscus again?”
He nodded.
“Christ, Nick, how many times have they operated on that knee?”
“Seven. The surgeon said next time I should just buy myself a new one.”
“Maybe while you’re at it, you should just buy yourself a new head,” Lou said acidly. “What?” She’d seen him wince.
Here it comes, he thought. “Well, since we’re on the subject…at the last game, I was backboarded and—”
“Wait, you were what?”
Nick nearly smiled. Lou knew what he had in his bank account. She knew the name of every girlfriend he’d ever had. If she thought about it, she probably knew what color briefs he was wearing. And yet, though he’d been a professional hockey player for going on twelve years now, she’d systematically refused to learn even the basics of the game.
Here goes, he thought. “Someone drove me into the backboard…hard. It’s an illegal move and the player got fined. But as I went under, I felt something crack in my knee. I went off to the bench for a minute and the coach pumped me full of painkillers and—ouch!”
Nick glared at Lou and rubbed his head where she’d whacked him with a rolled-up magazine. As if he wasn’t banged up enough as it was. “What the hell was that for?”
“You felt something snap in your knee and you went back into the game?” Lou spoke through gritted teeth. “What on earth happened to you, Nick? You used to be a smart little boy, before you grew up. Overgrew up. Then you turned into a moron.”
If you only knew how big a one, thought Nick. “Lou, you know what hockey’s like. Unless a limb is actually hacked off, you play. But that’s not the problem. The thing is, I also…uh…sort of…blacked out for a while. Probably not more than a second or two. But I forgot to tell coach.”
“Hold on.” Lou’s pretty face turned sharp and fierce. “You blacked out? And you—” She thumped him over and over again with the magazine. “—you forgot to tell the coach?”
Nick lifted his arms in defense. “Wait, it’s not as crazy as it sounds. It was the middle of the game, and it was a close one, and I didn’t realize until later that I’d actually lost consciousness for a moment. It’s a symptom of concussion, the doctor said. Not remembering.”
Lou was sitting back on the couch, arms folded, eyes blue fire. “So when did you tell the coach, Einstein?”
Nick winced again. “Later. At the end of the game.” He hung his head, then looked at her out of the corner of his eyes. “We won the game. I scored the winning goal.”
“With a concussion.” Lou rolled her eyes.
Okay, so that wasn’t going to fly.
Nick drew in a deep breath. Coughed. The closer he got to the heart of the matter, the more his throat closed up. “After the game, I told him about the blackout and coach ordered me into the hospital for a check-up. I was put through a variety of tests which were—not fun.” Nick shivered at the memory of being enclosed in the tight MRI machine.
He was tough and he could take blood and broken bones with the best of them. But that eerie machine was like a coffin…it had been like being buried alive. Nick studied his hands. Hands that would never hold a hockey stick again. At least not professionally.
“And?” Lou prodded. “What did the doctors say?”
This was it. Nick handed her the sheet of paper and sat back, closing his eyes.
Lou sucked in her breath as she read. Nick knew every word, from the heading—Clarence A. Sorenson, MD, Specialist in Neurology—down to the last words. We hereby advise that Nicholas Rossi be barred from competition athletics for the rest of his natural life.
And in between were all the fun words describing possible consequences if he were allowed to continue playing—secondary concussion, cranial nerve damage, possible permanent neurological damage, possible cognitive deficits, biochemical changes at the cellular level.
And there it was. What Nick had tried to drink himself into a stupor to forget. Twelve years of his life down the drain because of an overenthusiastic adversary and a few moments of blackout.
“Oh, Nick,” Lou breathed. She put her hand on his bare shoulder. “Oh, Nick, I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, well…” Nick shrugged, trying not to think about the rest of his life. “Had to retire sometime.” He tried on a smile. “Just didn’t think it would be this soon.”
Lou was looking at him and he knew she was reading every emotion he had. She’d always been able to do that. Just like their mother. “You know, Nick, maybe this accident is…is a blessing in disguise.”
Nick blinked. “Say what?”
“Oh, Nick, just think of it. How long do you think you could have gone on? You’re thirty-two years old. You could have played for what? Another seven, eight years? Ten tops? And then what? You’d be forty and a has-been. A rich has-been,” she added wryly. “But it would be too late to do much of anything else. You’re young enough now to start putting that brain of yours to use.” She knocked affectionately on his head. “I know you have one in there. You had one before you started playing hockey.”
“No jock jokes,” Nick warned.
“No jock jokes.” Lou smiled happily. “I’m going to delete my jock joke file. Now you can move on to the next thing.”
Yeah. Whatever that was.
“Life after hockey.” Nick shook his head. He didn’t want to admit it, but he felt better now that he’d told somebody. He even managed a smile. “Is there?”
“Oh, Nick.” Lou scooted over and picked up his hand. He’d broken each and every finger. Some twice. He’d also broken his collarbone three times, his arm and his nose. That hadn’t been such a bad thing—Lou said it saved him from pretty-boy looks. But everything else… “One of these days you were going to kill yourself. And for what? Wouldn’t you like a real life? A real job? And a real woman, instead of those silicone hockey bunnies with room-temperature I.Q.s you date?
“Ouch.” Nick slouched lower i
n the couch. “I haven’t seen her in two months.” His love life was not something he wanted to get into right now.
“What you really need is a smart, nice woman,” Lou swept on relentlessly. “Someone who cares for you as a person, not someone who’s blinded by your fame or money. Someone like—like Faith. She’s smart and nice and funny and pretty in her own quiet way. And the way she looks at you—” If Lou hadn’t been holding Nick’s hand, she wouldn’t have felt him jolt. “What?”
“Nothing.” Nick withdrew his hand and rubbed it across the back of his neck.
Shit. Of course Lou was right. Faith was exactly what he needed. He’d had her and he’d fucked it up. He shouldn’t even be thinking this because he’d always suspected Lou could read his mind.
“Say,” he said brightly. He stood up, staggering slightly and steadied himself with a hand on the back of the sofa. “You want something to drink? I don’t think I have anything alcoholic left, not even shaving lotion, but there might be—”
Lou’s watched him carefully. “Nick? Nick?” She raised her voice as he gimped as fast as he could into the kitchen. He had some Advil in there and maybe the microwave would mess with his thoughts so Lou couldn’t read them.
She got up and followed him.
“Nick, did anything happen between you and Faith? Because she was acting funny yesterday when I mentioned your name…Nick, get your head out of that refrigerator!”
Nick straightened and gave a bright smile. “What was that? Here, I found a beer for you. It was under the lettuce.”
Exasperated, Lou took the can of beer and set it on a counter with a bang. She crossed her arms and waited. When she started tapping her foot, Nick threw up his hands.
“Okay, okay. I blew it. Okay? Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“What I want to hear is what happened,” Lou said grimly. “Now.”
It wasn’t easy, confessing to being a jerk. Especially to his sister. Nick knew it was going to hurt, so he hobbled back into the living room and sat down. Might as well be comfortable. He drew in a deep breath, then blew it out.