The Garden of Evil Read Online Free PDF

was disarrayed, as if by some kind of violence, and somewhat greasy, maybe from sweat. There was a wound in her throat, perhaps a hand’s span long and probably from a knife, logically the same one that killed the man. The cut ran down towards her breastbone, though it was not deep, it seemed to Costa, since there was much less blood than appeared on the shirt of the other victim. Her pale grey eyes, like those of her apparent attacker, were wide open, though much more distended, as if through some kind of medical condition. They stared fixedly at the ceiling in an unwavering gaze.
    Her lips were a cold shade of blue, starting to resemble the same dull tone he could see in her dead eyes.
    “He didn’t do it,” Peroni insisted.
    “He?” Falcone asked.
    “
He
,” the big man responded, stabbing a fat finger in the air. “Aldo Caviglia. I arrested him once for stealing on the buses. I’ve warned him twice too. He’s a petty thief. A sad, confused little guy. He steals . . .” Peroni looked pale. He was never happy around death. “He
stole
wallets for a living, for God’s sake. The last time I caught him he promised he’d stop.”
    Costa noticed something about the dead man’s appearance: a bulge in his jacket. He knelt down beside Teresa Lupo, receiving a warning glance from the pathologist as he did so.
    “Touch nothing without my permission,” the pathologist warned.
    “The pocket?”
    Teresa looked, saw what he was getting at, then reached into the man’s jacket and withdrew, in her gloved fingers, a woman’s expensive leather wallet.
    Peroni swore.
    “Sometimes people lie, Gianni,” Teresa told him. “It’s shocking, I know. But at least . . .”
    She was sifting through the contents and dropping each item one by one into an evidence bag.
    “. . . He’s given you some ID for her.”
    Teresa straightened up and showed them the card. The three police officers read it.
    “French,” she said. “Might have known.”
    “Why?” Falcone asked immediately.
    “You really don’t notice much about women, do you, Leo? Alive or dead. She’s wearing mascara, so beautifully applied I can’t quite believe it. She still has perfect makeup, despite all that’s happened here. The only other thing she has on are a couple of diamond earrings too beautiful for most of us to contemplate. Also . . .”
    The pathologist nodded towards some large white bags beneath the paint-stained window.
    “She was wearing a winter outfit that must have cost a fortune. And the shoes. In this weather. This was not someone out for a day’s sightseeing, I can tell you that. She was dressed up for something. A business meeting. A date.”
    “Were the clothes torn?” Costa asked.
    “Not in the slightest,” Teresa said. “They were folded up nice and neatly, the way you do before you go to bed.” She glanced again at the card. “Perhaps she was doing business on behalf of the Louvre.”
    Falcone coughed into his fist.
    “Sorry, sorry,” she added. “That’s your job, isn’t it?”
    “Very much so,” Falcone agreed. “Did they have sex?”
    Teresa dropped the card in the evidence bag, passed it to Di Capua, and frowned down at the dead Caviglia on the floor.
    “These two? No. I am guessing here. I’ll tell you more later, once we have them back in the morgue. But some sneaking feminine intuition tells me that couples who expire post-copulation rarely do so with one partner naked and the other fully dressed and looking like he’s going to an interview with his bank manager. Even his zip’s done up, Leo. Think it through for yourself.”
    “She
is
naked,” Costa pointed out.
    “I said ‘they’ didn’t do it. She did. And rough sex, too, though not necessarily rape. There’s minimal bruising. Unprotected, though. I’ll have your DNA sample ready first thing in the morning. A good dinner says it isn’t that of our light-fingered friend here. Nor,” she added quickly, “do I think she killed him. It’s just