The Fourth Secret Read Online Free PDF Page A

was returning to normal. The hail had worsened; it was useless to turn on the windshield wipers, it made no difference. He proceeded blindly, breaking the tape with his car, drove to the bigger shack, all the way to its open window. He got the car as close as he could, mustered up all his courage, got out, climbed, slipped, cursed, muddied himself, climbed on the hood, and jumped through the window. He landed, crushing his shoulder. His eyes teared up from the pain. He got up. He was completely drenched. It was pitch-black inside; the storm had brought the darkness of night at five in the afternoon. There, he had done what he was told, any other suggestions from his body? His body didn’t say anything at all. So why did it lead him there? It felt like being inside a drum played by a hundred hands. It was the hail pounding on the sheet metal. Deaf, blind, in pain, his arms stretched in front of him like a sleepwalker, he moved three steps forward and, for some reason, he got the idea that the inside of the shack was empty. So he started walking back toward the door and slammed his left leg violently against the edge of a wooden bench. The same exact spot he had bruised two days earlier, slipping on the bathroom floor. The pain, almost unbearable, climbed all the way up to his brain. In horror, he discovered he had become deaf. How could it be that a blow to his leg made him lose his hearing? Then he realized that the fish-tank silence that suddenly came over him was caused by a very simple event: it had stopped hailing. He walked to the front door of the shack, reached for the switch, found it, and flipped on the light. There was no risk of somebody seeing the light through the window; no one would venture all the way into that horrible
chiarchiaro
where the construction site was in such bad weather. The shack was clean, neat. There was a long table, two benches, four chairs. In the back, three stalls: a toilet and two showers. Nailed to the wall without windows, there was a long coat rack. Five pegs held up overalls and clothes with paint stains; above each, was a nail that held up a yellow hard hat; the work shoes were on the floor underneath the clothes. Five of the pegs were occupied, but between the third and the fourth, there was an empty one: no hard hat, no shoes, no clothes. Montalbano got the idea that it must have been Puka’s peg; the carabinieri must have taken his personal effects with them. Now, a subtle music was coming down from the ceiling; it must have started to rain softly, in thin threads, like the hair of an angel. He went to check the two showers but didn’t find anything. As soon as he walked into the toilet, which was very clean, spotless, he felt the urge to pee. Out of habit, he shut the door. When he turned around to get out, he saw that the lightbulb that hung low on an electric wire, created a curious rainbow like reflection on the metal door. He stopped to look and noticed, that just above eye level, there were a few brown stains that came out of a dent shaped like a crescent moon, a dent caused by a metallic object that had violently hit the door. He got close, almost touching them with his nose; there was no doubt, those were bloodstains, left untouched on the metal surface. If the material had been wood, they would have been absorbed. They were rather big stains, enough for any kind of test. But how was he going to collect samples? He needed to go back to his car. He pulled a chair under the window he had come through, stepped onto it, and looked out. It had stopped raining. He started to climb out, and as soon as his body was halfway outside, the hail resumed, worse than before. The bad weather, or whoever was sending it, had ambushed him. Drenched again, he got in the car, grabbed a pocketknife and an old plastic bag from the glove compartment, put them in his pocket, and had a smoke as he waited for the hail to stop. He managed to climb and miraculously balance himself on the hood, but