Dying For Siena Read Online Free PDF

or was it coagulated?”
    “Oh, I see.” Personally, Faith thought that, like a vampire’s, Kane’s blood couldn’t coagulate. “Well, it didn’t drip blood, if that’s what you mean. So I dropped the knife and went down to tell someone that Professor Kane was dead.”
    “Murdered, you mean.” His gaze was level, as was his voice.
    “Yes. Murdered.” Faith spread her hands. “You know the rest. I waited in the reception room while he called the police. You.”
    “Me.” He rose and her eyes followed him up. He was very tall, almost as tall as Nick. “I’m going to have to ask you to be available for further questioning. We’ll be wanting to talk to you again. And we’ll be wanting to talk to your colleagues, as well. Please ask them to be available and not to leave the Certosa until I say so.”
    Faith rose, too. “Certainly.”
    He smiled faintly. “I’m sorry you’ve had such a…violent introduction to Italy. Lou will be on my case about this.”
    She was startled. “It’s not your fault, Commissario .”
    “I told you. Please call me Dante.” He sighed and tucked his notepad in his shirt pocket. “And of course she’ll blame me. Lou could make rain seem my fault. And Nick’s.”
    It was true. It was one of the things Faith most admired in Lou.
    Dante held the door open for her and followed her out. He murmured a goodbye, and Faith went to break the news to her colleagues about the murder and to look for a cup of coffee.
    Coffee first.

Chapter Three
    After things have gone from bad to worse, the cycle will repeat itself.
     
    Commissario Dante Rossi really hated murder.
    He had become a police officer because he loved upholding the peace. He hated it when the peace was broken.
    A wayward husband or two, kids who got overly rowdy, some property damage, Palio fans from rival contradas getting into fist fights…those were perfectly normal events which could be easily put right.
    But murder—well, nothing would put a death to rights. Not even the God he didn’t believe in could bring someone back to life.
    Dante heaved a huge sigh and turned his mind to the business at hand. Second stairs to the right, Egidio had said. His crime scene people would be arriving soon. He wanted to get there beforehand and gather first impressions, take the lay of the land, as it were.
    He ran nimbly up the stairs and turned right, his boot heels echoing along the empty corridor as he counted off the cell numbers.
    The door to cell seventeen was open so he looked in, pulling out surgical gloves from his pocket as he did so.
    He couldn’t remember the last time he had been required to wear latex gloves.
    From outside in , from left to right, from ceiling to floor. He remembered that from his course on Crime Scene Techniques in Rome taught by Claudio Simoni, a man so old he had seemed mummified except for his sharp black eyes. “Observe, observe, observe,” Simoni had repeated endlessly.
    Well, there was nothing to observe from the doorway. This door had nothing whatsoever to distinguish it from any of the others in the long, empty corridor except for the small brass seventeen, a number that brought bad luck in Italy.
    It had certainly brought bad luck to Roland Kane.
    Dante nudged the door open slightly with his foot and it swung silently to the left. Divide the room into four quadrants. He could almost hear Professore Simoni’s voice with its tobacco rasp. Anterior, posterior, left, right. Where is the body?
    Neatly laid out on the median line, he mentally answered Professore Simoni. Feet north, head south.
    The room reeked of alcohol. There was an open bottle of Glenfiddich whiskey on the laminated desk, half full, and a full bottle next to it. Dante sighed because he knew that the opened bottle—and the unopened bottle as well, just to be thorough—would have to go to the toxicology lab in Florence and it was likely they’d sit on it for days.
    Dante leaned over and sniffed the air. There was a definite