them.”
Martignetti shrugged. “Live and learn. Something new every day.”
“Which one’s the man?” Rocco asked.
“The one with the broken head.”
As Rocco nodded his response, he caught sight of two vehicles inching their way over the rough gravel toward them: a familiar, boxy blue van and a black, sleek, private sedan. “Here they come.” He peered at the sedan. “Oh Christ, the prosecutor’s office has sent Migliorini. That’s all I needed. What can you tell me before he gets here and starts issuing orders?”
“Not much, my boy. I didn’t want to disturb the scene before your people were able to have a look. I’ll tell you more after I get the remains to the mortuary, of course, but for now . . .” He stood up and turned so that he faced the cliff wall that rose behind them at about a sixty-degree angle. “From the looks of it, both of them fell from up there.”
“That’s what the caller thought,” Rocco said. “Me too. That makes three of us.”
“Four,” said Martignetti, peering upward. “That would be, what, sixty meters?”
Bosco nodded, sucking on the licorice stick. “Mm, sixty or seventy.”
“The woman must’ve come down first,” Rocco mused. “Since she was right up against the rock and the man was up against her.”
“My gracious, nothing much gets by you people does it?”
Rocco was craning his neck toward the top. “What’s up there? Do you know?”
“No roads, if that’s what you mean. I picked up a topographical map at the visitor center in Poppi. It indicates that there’s a hiking trail along the rim. The nearest structure would appear to be the Cubbiddu cabin about half a kilometer away.”
“Any ideas about cause of death?” Rocco asked. “Do we have a homicide here?”
Slowly, sadly, Bosco shook his head. “Ah, Rocco, you grieve me. You simply cannot keep it straight, can you? You mean ‘manner of death.’ There are an infinite number of
causes
of death, but homicide is not among them. There are, however, five and only five possibilities as to
manner
of death: accident, suicide, natural, undetermined . . . and homicide.”
Rocco rolled his eyes. “Oh, excuse me, signor
dottore
. Can you offer us any preliminary hypotheses concerning the
manner
of death of the deceased?”
“Oh, it’s homicide, all right. But as it happens, I believe I
can
also supply you with the cause. That blown-apart skull the gentleman has? It was a bullet that did that, entering at the left temple and exploding out the right side. A similar cause for the woman. A clear-cut bullet entry wound in the skull. No exit wound visible now, but I suspect we’ll find one when we clean it up a little. We’ll learn more when we get them on the table and cut their clothes away.”
“So we’ve got ourselves a double murder here?” Martignetti said.
“That, or a murder-suicide. Or, for that matter, a double suicide.”
“I’m guessing double murder,” Rocco said.
Vendetta
, he was thinking.
Bosco, Buddha-like on his rock with his hands folded in front of his belly, smiled. “We shall see,” he intoned, “what we shall see. Ah, good afternoon, signor public prosecutor. How nice to see you.”
• • •
IN the event, Rocco’s guess turned out to be wrong. Eight days later, the following article appeared in the Val d’Arno’s leading newspaper:
Corriere di Arezzo, Tuesday, 30 August 2011
PUBLIC PROSECUTOR ENDS CUBBIDDU INVESTIGATION
Ending a mystery that has gripped the Val d’Arno for the last month, Deputy Public Prosecutor Giaccomo Migliorini said yesterday that his office had concluded its investigation into the deaths of Villa Antica founder Pietro Cubbiddu and his wife, Nola, whose skeletonized bodies were found in a remote part of the Casentino National Forest on 22 August.
“It has been established that Cubbiddu killed his wife and then himself,”
avvocato
Migliorini told assembled reporters, reading from prepared notes at the
Kit Tunstall, R.E. Saxton