Temporary Perfections Read Online Free PDF Page B

be dragged to safety in some other place that was less oppressive. As a result, I missed part of Fornelli’s account. I remember becoming aware of his voice again through my dazed fog when he was already halfway through the story he was telling.
    “… and at that point they realized there was a serious problem, and they opened an investigation. They interviewed a lot of people. They requested Manuela’s cell phonerecords and her ATM transactions, and they examined her computer. They were thorough, but in all these months not a thing has turned up, and we don’t know any more today than we did the first day.”
    Why were they telling me all this? Perhaps the time had come to ask.
    “I’m very sorry. Is there some way I can be of help?”
    The woman looked at my colleague. The husband also turned slowly and looked at him, with that devastated face that looked like it was about to fall apart. Fornelli looked at them for a few seconds, then turned to speak to me.
    “A few days ago, I went in to talk to the assistant district attorney who has the case.”
    “Who is it?”
    “A guy named Carella who’s been here only a short time.”
    “Yes, he just got here. He came from Sicily, I think.”
    “What do you make of him?”
    “I don’t know him well yet, but I’d say he’s a respectable attorney. He’s a little dull, perhaps, but I think he earns his keep.”
    Fornelli grimaced, almost imperceptibly and certainly involuntarily, and then continued.
    “When I went to see him, to review the situation, he told me he was getting ready to request that the case be closed. Almost six months have gone by, he told me, and he has no evidence that would justify extending the investigation.”
    “What did you say?”
    “I tried to tell him that he can’t just close a case like that. He responded that if I had any other leads to suggest, I was welcome to do so, and he’d take my request under consideration. Unless I brought something else to his attention, though, he’d have to request the case be archived. Ofcourse, that doesn’t mean they couldn’t reopen the case if something new came up.”
    “So,” I said, as I began to guess why they’d come to see me.
    “On my recommendation, Tonino and Rosaria would like to hire you to study the file and identify any further lines of investigation that we can suggest to the prosecutor, to keep him from closing the case.”
    “Your confidence in me is flattering, but that’s a job for an investigator, not a lawyer.”
    “We don’t feel comfortable going directly to a private investigator. You’re a criminal lawyer, and you’re a good one. You’ve seen plenty of files. You know what goes into an investigation. Money is the least of our concerns. In fact, money isn’t a concern at all. We’ll spend whatever’s necessary, for you and for a private investigator, if you decide you want to work with one.”
    Except I had no fee schedule for that kind of professional service. The official guild fee list doesn’t include “investigative consultation to locate missing persons.” That unhappy thought came to mind immediately and made me feel uncomfortable. In my discomfort I looked around, and I happened to meet the gaze of the father. That’s when it dawned on me that he was probably on medication. Psychiatric drugs. Maybe they were causing his vacant expression. I felt even more uncomfortable. I decided that I should thank them courteously but decline the offer. It would be wrong to feed their hopes and take their money. But I didn’t know how to say it.
    I felt like the hard-boiled detective character in one of those cheap mystery novels. A down-on-his-luck private investigator who receives a visit from a client, insists he can’ttake the case—just to give the story a little rhythm, to add an element of suspense—and then changes his mind and goes for it. And of course, he always solves the mystery.
    But there was nothing to solve in this case. Maybe they’d never