Chapter Six
Six
The afternoon sky was blue, a clear view to the double peaks of Vesuvius on the horizon as Nikki rode her Hornet to the US military base at Capodichino.
She’d slept fitfully through the bright morning hours, city noises echoing up through her bedroom.
Now she was strangely disconnected, as if pieces had shaken loose inside.
She wanted to hit something hard enough to knock everything back into place.
Entering the gate lent her a sense of normalcy, the uniformed guard checking her through with a friendly “Have a nice day, ma’am.
” Less reassuring was what met her at the office.
Her on-duty partner for the afternoon shift was Mario.
He skulked in his cubicle, the fluorescent overhead lights seeming to paint the frown onto his heavy jowls, vertical lines slashing the edges of his mouth like a ventriloquist dummy.
He didn’t look up or acknowledge when she entered, removed her rucksack and jacket, and started her computer.
Angelo usually made it a point to keep Nikki and Mario separated on the duty roster. It had been months since they’d spent time together. But the last-minute schedule change forced an unwelcome overlap.
Nikki’s biggest problem with Mario wasn’t the relentless bullying, the physical aggression, or his casual sexism.
Obnoxious as those traits were, Nikki could tolerate them as long as they didn’t interfere with the job.
But he’d failed to help her when she called for backup last summer during the search for the kidnapped base commander, Admiral Redford.
Mario had allowed his personal dislike of Nikki to eclipse any remnant of professionalism, and it had nearly gotten her killed.
Afterwards, during the investigation, Mario refuted Nikki’s testimony—that he’d rejected her call for support. He claimed a poor connection, that he hadn’t heard her request, that the line had disconnected.
“It was a stressful time,” he said. “Investigator Serafino was clearly emotional…it must have affected her judgment. She might not remember what actually happened.”
Without recordings or witnesses to prove otherwise, Mario had suffered no consequences to his career in Phoenix Seven. But the lie and its implications hung off him like a noxious stink. The annoyance Nikki usually felt for him solidified into contempt.
—
Doing her best not to look at or think about Mario, Nikki tended to her work, tidying leftover paperwork and checking emails.
Then she scrolled through the texts on her phone, hoping to find something from Valerio. Nothing.
She called. No answer.
She hung up and texted, You okay?
No reply.
—
Valerio’s outburst at Angelo last night was so unlike him. It worried her. She hadn’t talked to him for a while; they’d both been too preoccupied with work, and besides, the weather had been too shit to take their sailboat, Calypso, to sea.
At the station, there had been blood on Valerio’s sleeve. The same blood streaked through Monica’s hair—from the woman at the church.
Nikki exhaled.
She didn’t want to be part of another murder investigation. Even brushing up against this case knotted a cord of dread around her throat. But she also didn’t want to walk away. How could you see something like that—know that it had happened—and not help?
When she closed her eyes, Nikki saw the childlike face, the pooling blood, and the fine layer of feathers. Everything arranged beneath the altar as if a young angel had fallen violently to Earth.
Had she come into Chiesa del Gesù Nuovo seeking refuge? If so, there’d been none. The beasts of Naples hunted even here.
There it was: That constricting grip. Helplessness. Fear. Nikki hated it.
Well, at the very least, she could do some due diligence for the case and look into the witnesses: Monica Lissom and Kami Washington.
—
Both women had a robust presence on social media, their European holiday thoroughly documented. Dancing in heels and slinky dresses at the Louvre, sipping espresso in the Vatican’s courtyard café, shopping on the Ponte Vecchio. Ideal, effortless fun that was clearly carefully staged.
Nikki scanned these profiles, then traced both women backwards in time to graduation pictures and photos of student and sorority life at Texas A she’d dated a string of celebrities who appeared with her in paparazzi photos in gossip magazines.
Her most recent boyfriend seemed to be a thirty-one-year-old technology guru named Kevin Walker.
Kami Washington didn’t come from the same wealth as Monica.
Her parents were computer programmers, and she seemed to have enjoyed a comfortable middle-class upbringing in suburban Texas.
Her degree was in electrical engineering and she’d done two summer internships with engineering firms in Texas, and volunteered for the Red Cross.
Her boyfriend for the past three years was a civil engineering student named Amir Bloomfield.
—
Nikki was summarizing the results of her research when the phone rang. Mario answered, the low grumble of his voice barely audible over the hum of the ventilation.
Minutes passed, and Mario’s heavy footsteps tromped towards her. Nikki swiveled in her chair in time to watch him enter her cubicle.
So accustomed to Mario’s disregard, his sudden proximity sent a surge of hot tension through her.
“What do you want?” she demanded, keeping her face impassive.
He stared for several seconds, breathing heavily through his nose. His face was flushed, lips pressed together, jaw working.
“You think you’re so fucking special.”
Mario was a big man, with decades of densely packed muscle and fat.
He’d always seemed eager to leverage his size, to violate her boundaries.
Three years ago, during her first weeks and months on the job, he’d jostled her in the hallways, shoving her against walls.
Once he’d stumbled into her and grabbed her breast as though clumsily trying to steady himself.
She’d decided long ago that she’d break his arm before she ever let him get that close again.
“Go back to your desk,” she said.
He was blocking her egress, the closed space of the cubicle suddenly suffocating—the stink of garlic and heavy cologne masking a deeper, gamier odor. His gaze roved across her body, lingering on her breasts and coming to rest between her legs before flicking back to her face. He edged closer.
“You think you should have special rules,” he said. “Special treatment.”
“Not special rules.” Nikki stood, prepared to fight him back if he took another step.
Her arms twitched, primed to strike. “Just the usual rules; the rules that say you should do your job properly…that you should answer a call for backup from a colleague…that you shouldn’t lie in an investigation to save your ass.
You and I both know what you did. If you can’t handle that, maybe you should find another place to work because I’m not fucking going anywhere. ”
For a moment, she thought he really would hit her. He stared, seeming to consider. Then, abruptly, he turned and strode from the office, door slamming behind him.
It took a while for Nikki’s heart to stop hammering. She did push-ups and squats and kicks. For another hour she made an effort to work, then finally slipped on her motorcycle jacket and left the office.
She jogged across the base, cold air and sunlight working into her, surveying the pale yellow of the stucco buildings, the blocky concrete constructions and high metal fences.
It was an ugly facility, but she’d always liked it: the structure and order of the military organization, and the sense of otherness that the Americans brought.
Here, she’d become a professional investigator at Phoenix Seven—a job that gave her purpose.
Not even assholes like Mario had affected her drive.
But now, something had changed. She felt a hollow place in her center, a sense of entering an empty room with only echoes and shifting shadows to remind her it had once been filled. The world looked different, too. Stripped of color.
She wanted to get back to the way things used to feel, but couldn’t seem to find the map.
—
Her phone rang. She answered and heard Sonia’s voice. “Are you here already?”
Nikki hated this feeling: like she’d missed a step.
“Where am I supposed to be?”
“I called the Phoenix Seven duty phone. Your guy answered. He said he’d tell you. We needed you at the station. We had a witness come in.”
Silently, Nikki cursed Mario.
“I’ll come right away.”
“No. Not there. We’ve identified the victim: Claire Sexton, a nanny for a British family. They’re scheduled to berth their yacht in Molo Luise this evening. The family can speak with us now. Meet me at the marina near Castel dell’Ovo.”
—
The rain was starting again. Not yesterday’s torrent, but a persistent drizzle. As Nikki rode down the hill from the airport into the city center and then along the waterfront, raindrops spattered her helmet, obscuring her vision.