The Fatal Touch Read Free Page A

she saw Commissioner Blume and Inspector Panebianco walking over toward her. Blume was carrying a bag, which he dropped on the ground next to her. He unzipped it, pulled out a pair of latex gloves, and snapped them on. Panebianco did the same, and then they waited for her. Feeling self-conscious, Caterina plucked out two gloves from the box and pulled them on, taking twice as long as Blume.
    Blume nodded at Rospo, then turned his head downwards at his bag, and pointed at a roll of crime scene tape with his toe. Rospo picked it up, and Blume shook his head in sharp dismissal, saying, “What the hell? You need to be told everything?”
    Rospo was gone. Blume asked Caterina to start writing down anything and everything she saw. But first, he wanted her to get the names of the policemen called to the scene and everyone present.
    Then he asked her if anything had been added to the scene since she arrived or if anyone had touched the body. But as she began her complicated response he stopped her.
    “It’s OK. I know about Rospo’s body-lifting efforts already. I just wanted to see if you did.”
    “You were testing me?” A thought occurred to her. “You’re not really just arriving now, are you?”
    “No. I got here a while ago.”
    “You didn’t seal the area off,” said Caterina, annoyed at being played like this.
    “I did. You didn’t check. The exclusionary cordon you wanted was fine, but I chose to close off Vicolo del Moro. No access there means no access to any entrance to the piazza. One roadblock instead of two. Less manpower. We’ll narrow the area later, when people start waking up and going to work.”
    “I see,” said Caterina.
    Blume pointed to a pile of cobblestones and sand piled up against the wall of a bar, and said, “Use the tape and ring it around those stones afterwards. They might want looking at.”
    “OK,” said Caterina.
    Blume clapped his hands together. “So, are you having fun, Inspector?”
    “I am glad to be here, if that’s what you mean,” said Caterina.
    “If I had meant that, I would have asked if you were glad to be here,” said Blume. “Don’t you think this is fun?”
    Caterina thought of her son waking up to her absence, the dead tramp with the white beard a few meters away, the scorn she had seen in the policemen’s eyes when she tried to give them orders. “No. I wouldn’t say fun, exactly, more . . .” She stopped, realizing that Blume did not really want to stand there listening to her trying to give shape to her thoughts.
    Blume confirmed her suspicion by getting down to business. “So Rospo and his partner moved the body. Well, that’s a good start. I suppose we’ll begin with the assumption this is yet another mugging. Certainly, it’s another foreigner . . .” He stooped and she realized it was up to her to continue.
    “The victim—” began Caterina.
    “He may not even be a victim,” interrupted Blume. “Unless you broaden the category to include victims of misfortune or stupidity, in which case we are all victims.”
    “He was just a tramp, banged his head; then died from exposure,” said Caterina. “I saw some scenes pretty similar to this with illegal immigrants.”
    “Just a tramp, eh?”
    “I didn’t mean that a tramp is less important,” said Caterina.
    “It was not a moral reprimand, Inspector. It’s just you never know where a corpse is going to lead you. Murder cases can be short or long. Go have a look at those cobblestones, I’ll call you over in a minute. Oh, and do a sketch, would you? Of, you know . . .” he swept his hand around. “This place. It’s a nice little piazza. Sort of like an arena, isn’t it? Or a Greek theater. Or something.”
    Caterina took some crime scene tape and went over to the pile of cobblestones, and stared at them blankly, looking for their significance. Inspector Panebianco, who had not said hello, was standing beside Blume and taking copious notes.
    She looked at the notebook in her hand,