Aaron Elkins - Dying on the Vine

They were only a few feet from the work table, so the others had no trouble hearing them, and most grinned at the jokes every now and then. But a Carabinieri major from Rome, the highest-ranking officer there, had been glaring over his shoulder at Rocco for a while, clearly unamused.

“Um, Rocco . . .” Gideon began.

“Hey, do you know why carabinieri trousers have those red stripes down the sides? So they can find the pockets, hee-hee.”

The major continued to glare. “Rocco, I think maybe . . .”

“Okay, wait, this guy lives halfway up a narrow mountain road. So one day he sees this Carabinieri car driving backward up the mountain. ‘How come you’re driving backward?’ he wants to know. ‘Because we’re not sure if there’ll be a place to turn around at the top,’ they tell him. An hour later, here they come back down the mountain . . . backward again. ‘So why are you still driving backward?’ he asks. ‘Because we found a place to turn around after all.’”

When Rocco paused to think up the next one, Gideon was finally able to break in. “Rocco, I think you might be annoying the stern, important-looking gentleman over there at the foot of the table,” he said quickly, hoping to head Rocco off.

Rocco glanced up. “Major Grimaldi?” he whispered back. “He’s been listening? Oh Christ, that’s all I need. Come on, let’s get some fresh air. I need a smoke.”

“Are you in trouble?” Gideon asked when they’d stepped outside into the rear parking lot and gotten under an eave to avoid the misty rain that had begun to fall. Gideon had gotten a soft drink, a limonata , from the vending machine next to the door, and he pulled back the tab and took a couple of gulps.

Rocco, in the meantime, flipped open a box of Marlboros, pulled one out with his lips, lit up, and blew out a long breath. “Nah, not trouble, exactly. But I know Grimaldi. He’ll report it to my captain, who won’t be happy. Ah, don’t worry about it, no big deal.”

“ Carabinieri jokes are a no-no?”

“Everything’s a no-no, Gideon, everything that doesn’t make the carabinieri look like God’s gift to the world. You know what this general told us the day we graduated from the academy?” He tucked in his chin and lowered his voice to a magisterial bass. “‘From this day forward, no longer are you Paolo, Mario, or Giovanni. You are a carabiniere . Everything you say, everything you do, is a reflection on the republic which we are honored to serve, and the glorious history of the body of which you are now a part.’ And God, did he mean it.”

Another long pull on the Marlboro. “One time, when I was still on patrol, I was eating my lunch in the car, relaxing, noshing on a panino , you know? And this call comes in. There’s a knife fight in a bar less than a block away from where I’m sitting, and somebody’s gonna get killed. So I drop what I’m eating, jump out of the car, and run over there, and, sure enough, there are these two guys having at it, and they are seriously trying to hurt each other. I get in between them, which is when I got this”—he held out his hand, showing a thin white scar running diagonally along the heel of his palm—“and manage to get them apart. One guy was totally whacked out on something, and I had to get him down on the floor and cuffed before he calmed down. Anyway, I called it in, got them arrested, went to the hospital to get stitched up, and was back at headquarters in an hour to write up my report. What do you think I got for my trouble?”

“Not an award, I’m guessing.”

“A reprimand. Because why? Because I appeared in public without my cap.” He grunted a laugh. “Can you believe it? Jesus H. Christ.”

“Rocco, I have to say—are you sure the carabinieri are a good fit for you? You don’t quite seem . . . well, cut out for the life.”

The lieutenant was shocked. “Are you kidding me? I love the corps. It’s fantastic. I’m proud to be on it. It’s just that they can be a little . . . tight-assed sometimes, about things that seem pretty petty to me. I guess my problem is that I’m a carabiniere , yeah, but underneath, I’m still Rocco. Unfortunately.”

A few moments passed with Gideon silent and Rocco morosely smoking away.

“We’d better get back in, I think,” Gideon said. “They should be finished by now.”

Rocco nodded, took another pull, flipped the cigarette away, and they headed back. “I guess I’m just going to have to learn to toe the line a little better,” he said, but as the door swung open, the edges of his mouth curled into a cherubic little smile, and he put a hand on Gideon’s forearm to stop him.

“Hey, how many carabinieri does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”

• • •

INthe preparation room, the others were still writing up their report on the board and arguing out the last of their differences. Gideon used the time involved to have his first uninterrupted, solitary look at the remains. He went through them slowly, turning this bone over and over in his fingers, lifting that one to his eye and scanning it at an angle, the way you’d examine a pool cue to see if it were straight. By the time he was done, the report was finished, written with red marker on the glossy white board, in the exuberant, loopy script of a sergeant major from Nigeria:

“In examining the skeletal remains presented to us for our analysis, the following traumatic injuries to the skull have been identified: a ballistic entrance wound in the center of the back of the skull, just below the occipital protuberance, and what appears to be an incomplete exit wound at the front, in the form of a ‘reverse depressed fracture.’ We believe that this GSW was the cause of the victim’s death, which was probably instantaneous.

“Trauma to the rest of the body includes fractures of both tibias and fibulas, both femurs, both sides of the pelvis, and numerous thoracic and lumbar vertebrae. Many of these bones suffered multiple breakages. In addition, there were fractures of the bones of the left foot. These injuries are all consistent with a fall from a height. There were also many signs of animal gnawing.

“Our findings: The victim was killed by a fatal gunshot to the head. Her body then fell some distance, sustaining much additional damage. We also attribute the basal ring fracture of the foramen magnum to this fall.

“In conclusion, we conclude that the findings presented by Lieutenant Gardella are supported by the evidence.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you all,” said Rocco, taking bows all around.

“Good job, everybody,” Gideon said. “You’ve all been working hard. Let’s take five minutes for a break. Rocco, can I talk to you for a minute?”

“What’s up?” said Rocco as the others wandered off in twos and threes. “They did a great job, don’t you think? It took our medico two days to get it right.”

“Well, yeah, they did a good enough job, but the thing is, they didn’t get it right. And neither did you guys. I wanted to talk to you about it before I made my comments. I wouldn’t want to make you look bad in front of them, and—”

Rocco lifted his hand. “Don’t give it a thought, Gid. Those weren’t our findings, they were the medico’s findings. Everything I know about skeletal trauma I learned from you in the last three days. Anyway, it was the public prosecutor who made it all official. He’s the boss. We just do the grunt work.” He followed this with a sudden grin. “And I have no problem at all with making Migliorini look bad; pompous, self-important twit that he is.”

“Okay, then.”

“But what exactly did they get wrong? She wasn’t shot in the head?”