Antonio Manzini - Black Run

“How many ­people live in Champoluc?”

“Leaving out the tourists?”

“Just residents, I mean.”

“Not even four hundred.”

“Just one big family, right?”

“Right. We’re practically all related, really. For instance, me and Amedeo are cousins.”

Amedeo nodded in confirmation. Margherita, seeing that the deputy police chief had no other questions, left with a smile.

Rocco slapped the snowcat driver on the knee. This was the first time Italo had ever seen his boss make an affectionate gesture toward a stranger. Amedeo jerked in fright. “All right, then, Amedeo, now it’s time for you to head home. Get some sleep if you can. In fact, you want some advice? Get drunk—­tie one on. And don’t ever think about it again. After all, it wasn’t your fault, was it?”

“No. That’s the truth. I was driving, then all of a sudden I heard this super-­loud cracking sound and I slammed on the brakes. I didn’t know what it was. A root, or a rock. But when I got out, all that blood … I hadn’t seen the body at all!”

Rocco tilted his head slightly to one side, then reached one hand out toward the breast pocket of the young man’s windbreaker. He inserted two fingers and pulled out a pack of Rizla cigarette papers.

“You didn’t see it—­unless you had smoked yourself blind,” Rocco said, sniffing the papers. “Grass. At least grass keeps your spirits up. How many joints did you smoke while you were up grooming the snow?”

“One,” Amedeo muttered with a groan.

“Plus you can throw in a ­couple of jiggers of grappa for good measure, and then that poor sucker might have been trying to cross the road and you would never have seen him, would you?”

“No, Dottore! No! I swear that I just didn’t see that person at all. The snowcat has seven spotlights bolted to its roof; if he’d been crossing in front of me, I’d definitely have seen him!”

Wide-­eyed, Amedeo looked first at Rocco and then at Italo, in search of an understanding gaze. “When I got out, I thought I’d run over a chicken, or a turkey, even if there are no chickens or turkeys up here. But there were feathers and down everywhere, a sea of feathers.”

Rocco smiled faintly. “It could have been a down comforter from Ikea, no?”

“Believe me, Dottore. I didn’t see him!”

“How the fuck do you know it was a man?” Rocco snapped, and the sudden shift in mood frightened even Italo Pierron.

Amedeo seemed to shrink into his chair. “I don’t know. I just said that, for no reason.”

Rocco stared at the young man in silence for at least ten seconds. Amedeo was sweating. The fingers of his hands gripped the little table, shaking.

“Amedeo Gunelli, believe me, if I find out that he was out walking and you ran him over, it’ll be manslaughter at the very least. You’ll be looking at a nice long stretch in lockup, you know that?”

“When the deputy police chief says ‘lockup,’ he means prison,” Italo translated. Having spent the past four months listening to Rocco, he was starting to understand the way ­people talked in Rome.

Amedeo’s jaw dropped as if someone had just pulled a string.

“Remember one thing, Amedeo,” said Rocco as he got up from his chair. “The police can be your friend or your worst nightmare. That’s up to you.”

Outside, the wind slapped the two cops in the face with its icy palms. Italo trotted over to the deputy police chief. “Why did you say that to him? Do you think he ran him down?”

“I wish he had. The case would be closed. No, he’s not the one who did it. The snowcat up there has no dents or scrapes on the front section. If he’d hit him straight on, there would have been something. But there’s nothing.”

“Well?” asked Italo, who was baffled.

“You see, Italo, if you scare them, they’ll always be eager to help. He’s a good kid—­he might turn out to be useful. It’s always better for them to be afraid of us, trust me.”

Italo nodded with conviction.

“But there is one thing we’ll need to keep in mind: even with those blindingly powerful spotlights, he didn’t see that poor guy’s body lying on the ground. That’s something we need to give some thought to.”

“A sign that the body was covered with snow?”

“Nice going, Italo. You’re starting to catch on.”

Rocco and Officer Pierron were about to get into the car when a dark blue Lancia Gamma screeched to a halt thirty feet away.

Rocco rolled his eyes. There was no mistaking it: dark blue Lancia equals attorney general’s office.

A man got out of the car, five foot six tops, bundled in a down coat that hung below his knees. He wore a fur hat that almost covered his eyes. He strode rapidly over to Rocco Schiavone, right hand extended. “Name is Baldi. Pleased to meet you.”

Rocco shook his hand. “Schiavone, deputy police chief of the mobile squad.”

“Well, can you tell me what we’re looking at here?”

Rocco looked him up and down. The man looked like a veteran of the Italian army in Russia, but he was the investigating magistrate on duty. “Are you the investigating magistrate?”

“No. I’m your grandmother. You bet your ass I’m the investigating magistrate.”

This is beginning well , thought Rocco.

Dottor Baldi seemed to have an even shorter fuse than Rocco did. He was on duty and now he too had landed this tremendous pain in the ass. In a way, it made Rocco happy—­it meant he wasn’t the only one who’d been dragged out of a warm bed on a quiet night at home and sent rudely out into the snow at an elevation of five thousand feet above sea level.

“Well, there’s a corpse up there. A man. Between forty and fifty years old.”

“Who is it?”

“If I knew that, I would have told you first name and last.”

“No ID?”

“Nothing. We’re just guessing that it’s a man. I don’t know if I convey the idea.”

“No, you don’t convey it at all,” the magistrate replied. “Why don’t you stop beating about the bush. Get to the point. Dottor Schiavone: how can you tell that it’s a man? Describe clearly exactly what we’re dealing with, because I’m already pissed off.”

Schiavone cleared his throat. “Because the snowcat ran over him and churned him to bits with its tillers. You see, the head was crushed, with resulting expulsion of brain matter; from the thoracic cavity there was a generalized and random expulsion of shreds of lung particles and other visceral matter that even Fumagalli, our medical examiner, was hard put to identify. One hand lay thirty feet from the body, an arm was ripped loose, the legs were bent in a manner that defies nature roundly, and have, therefore, clearly been shattered in numerous places. The stomach has been twisted into an array of bloody coils and …”

“That’ll do!” shouted the magistrate. “What, is this your idea of fun?”

Rocco smiled. “Sir, you requested a detailed description of what we have up there, and I’m just providing you with it.”

Maurizio Baldi nodded repeatedly, looking around him as if in search of a question to ask or an answer to give. “I’ll be at the courthouse. I’ll see you around. Let’s hope that this was an accidental death.”

“Let’s hope so, but I don’t believe it.”

“Why not?”

“Because I have a sense about it. I haven’t had a lot of luck in a while now.”

“You’re telling me. The last thing I’m looking for is a murder case underfoot.”

“Ditto, exactly.”

The investigating magistrate glanced at the deputy police chief. “Can I give you a piece of advice?”

“Certainly.”

“If what you say is true and this is not an accident, you’ll have to work up here. Dressed the way you are, there’s a good chance you’ll develop frostbite, then gangrene, and we’ll have to amputate your hands and feet.”