Chương 5
Security led him into the corridor.
Two uniformed officers waited beside Elias and Sofia. A detective in a damp brown coat stood with a small recorder in her hand. She was in her early forties, with dark hair cut bluntly at her jaw and an expression that suggested she had already been lied to several times that night.
“Dante Rossi?”
“Yes.”
“Detective Lena Morales. I need to know whether there are armed individuals at the location where your wife was held.”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“Between six and twelve, depending on who my mother called after we left.”
“Your mother is Victoria Rossi?”
“Yes.”
One of the officers glanced at the other.
Morales noticed.
“Where exactly was your wife held?”
“In a locked chamber under the east side of the Rossi estate. Entry is through a concealed corridor below the private chapel and through the service stairs behind the kitchen pantry.”
“How did you gain access?”
“I broke the outer door. Elias Finch had the cage key.”
Elias raised a trembling hand. “That is me.”
Morales looked at him. “We’ll get to you.”
A hospital employee approached and whispered to the detective. Morales nodded.
“Mr. Rossi, your wife has injuries consistent with prolonged restraint. The hospital is documenting everything. She has asked that you not be allowed into the treatment area until she says otherwise.”
Dante felt the sentence physically, like a door closing against his chest.
“All right.”
“You understand?”
“Yes.”
“Do you consent to a search of the estate?”
“I don’t own the property.”
“Who does?”
“My mother, through a trust.”
“Can you authorize access to any part of it?”
“The west office, garages, and business wing are leased to companies I control.”
Morales studied him.
“You seem familiar with how warrants work.”
“I’m familiar with lawyers.”
“Your wife says your mother imprisoned her. Your mother lives in a fortified estate with armed guards. You say there may be evidence inside, and you’re already explaining property interests. I need you to decide whether you’re helping me or managing me.”
Dante looked through the small window in the emergency-room door. He could see only moving blue scrubs and the corner of Grace’s stretcher.
“I’m helping.”
“Then start at the beginning.”
“The beginning will take longer than my son has.”
Morales’s face softened by a degree.
“Start with what keeps them alive.”
He told her about the chamber, the cage, the medical bed, the IV bag, the tray, the writing on the wall, and the armed men. Elias provided the route. Sofia described Victoria’s pistol and Carbone’s decision to open the gate.
“Where is Mr. Carbone now?” Morales asked.
“At the estate,” Sofia said. “Unless she has fired him.”
“Or killed him,” Elias murmured.
Morales looked at Dante. “Would she?”
He answered too slowly.
“Yes.”
The detective stepped away to make a call.
Dante sat in a molded plastic chair beneath a television playing a muted home-renovation show. A cheerful couple examined tile samples while rainwater dripped from his suit onto the floor.
He opened his right hand.
Grace’s ring had left a deep circle in his palm. Blood filled the engraved date inside the band. He wiped it with his shirt.
Across from him, Elias bent forward, elbows on his knees.
“How long?” Dante asked.
The old man did not pretend to misunderstand.
“Two hundred and fourteen days.”
Sofia sat beside him and turned sharply. “You counted?”
“I delivered her meals.”
Dante stood so quickly the chair skidded backward.
Two officers moved toward him.
“You brought her food for two hundred and fourteen days.”
Elias looked up.
“Yes.”
“You saw her bruises.”
“Yes.”
“You saw the cage.”
“Yes.”
“You came upstairs and poured my mother’s wine.”
“Yes.”
Dante grabbed the front of his suit.
The officers caught his arms. Elias did not resist or protect himself. He simply looked at Dante with his pale, watery eyes.
“Hit me if it helps you stand still when the police ask what you did for your father,” he said.
Dante released him.
The old man settled back into the chair and straightened his tie.
“I told myself I was keeping her alive,” Elias said. “Some days that was true. Other days I was frightened. Most days it was both.”
Sofia sat with her arms folded.
“You could have told me,” she said.
“I did not know whether you would tell him or her.”
“I would have called the police.”
“And Mrs. Rossi would have known before they reached the gate.”
“She had the sheriff.”
“She had two deputies, perhaps three. I did not know how many.”
“You always know everything.”
“That is something servants allow employers to believe.”
His voice cracked at the end.
Sofia looked away.
Dante sat again. “Why tonight?”
Elias rubbed his throat where Victoria had struck him.
“Dr. Vale was coming to deliver the baby downstairs. Afterward, Mrs. Rossi ordered the south excavation opened.”
“What excavation?”
“Your father’s old drainage project beneath the greenhouse.”
Sofia crossed herself.
Elias continued. “Concrete was delivered yesterday. Mrs. Rossi told the grounds crew it was for foundation repairs. She told me to remove Mrs. Grace’s personal effects from the chamber before dawn.”
Dante stared at Grace’s ring.
“You waited until the day she planned to kill her.”
“I waited too long.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No,” Elias said. “It is the only one I have.”
A surgical nurse came through the emergency doors.
“Family of Grace Rossi?”
Dante stood.
“She needs an emergency cesarean section. The baby’s heart rate is unstable, and there are signs of infection. She is conscious. She has asked to speak to her husband for one minute.”
Dante followed the nurse through the doors.
May you like
Grace lay beneath white hospital blankets, hair pushed back from her face. Without the dirt and shadows of the chamber, her injuries looked worse. Bruises layered her arms in different stages of healing. Red marks circled her wrists. Someone had cleaned the dried blood from her cheek, revealing a split near her eyebrow.
A surgeon stood at the foot of the bed while another nurse placed a cap over Grace’s hair.
