Read Online Dying on the Vine by Aaron Elkins - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Aaron Elkins
Ads: Link
fit.”
Gideon laughed. “If you ever run into a murder case where everything’s consistent with everything else—no conflicting eyewitness testimony, no loose ends, no ambiguities, no unanswered questions—please let me know, will you? We’ll write it up for the journals.”
“You can say that again,” John agreed.
But Rocco stuck to his guns. “It doesn’t make sense to shoot someone if they already fell off a goddamn mountain. That alone throws the scenario our guys put together out of whack, and it worries me. If it’s true. It
should
worry me. What kind of a cop would I be if it didn’t?” Meaningful pause. “
If
it’s true.”
Gideon considered himself well and deservedly rebuked. “Rocco, you’re absolutely right. I’ve been treating this as a class exercise, no more. I kind of forgot it’s a real case with real human beings.”
“Oh, it’s a real case, all right. And there’s one other minor little point. If . . .” He sighed. “John, you keep checking your watch. What, I’m boring you guys? You gotta be somewhere?”
“Yeah, as a matter of fact, we do,” John said. “We’re supposed to meet our wives for dinner at six, and we don’t know how far the restaurant is from here. We don’t even know where the hell it is, exactly.”
“What restaurant?”
“Umm . . .”
“L’Osteria di Giovanni,” Gideon said. “Do you know it?”
“Yeah, it’s a ten-minute walk from here. A good place. Come on, I’ll walk you over partway. We can talk while we walk.”
“Sure,” Gideon said, “but listen, if you’re free, why don’t you join us for dinner while you’re at it?”
“Hey, I’d love to,” Rocco said, his testiness of a moment ago gone as abruptly as it had come, “but I can’t. I have to pick up
my
wife back at the train station at six-twenty. Come on, it’s this way, down Via degli Avelli.”
Florence’s Via degli Avelli—the Street of the Tombs—is not the gloomy passageway the name suggests. In fact, it is one of the city’s livelier, trendier thoroughfares, with wall-to-wall restaurants, sidewalk cafés, and upscale hotels lining one side of it. The other side, however, runs for more than a hundred yards along the outer wall of Santa Maria Novella’s narrow, old cemetery. This wall consists of a long row of twenty-foot-high, horizontally striped, Moorish stone arches that protect upscale wall-to-wall shelters of a different sort: the ornate, aboveground stone burial vaults of Florence’s fourteenth- and fifteenth-century elite, all bearing intricately carved reliefs of their family crests and insignias of rank.
Rocco gestured at them as they walked past. “Bet there’d be some bones in those things that’d perk your interest.”
Gideon laughed. “I bet there would. So what’s this other minor little point, Rocco?”
“Only that
he
fell off the cliff too—after shooting himself up there—so he must’ve been twice as dead as she was when he hit the bottom, right? Which would have made it a little hard for him to administer that coup de grâce down below, wouldn’t you say?”
“He shot himself at the top?” Gideon echoed, frowning. “No, you’re right, that complicates things. How sure are you that it worked that way, that he didn’t kill himself down below, after he shot her?”
“Pretty sure, considering that he left most of his skull up there, with some of the rest of it scattered along the way down, while he was bouncing off the rocks. Our guys took most of a day picking them out of the cliff. His skeleton was every bit as busted up as hers was. He took one hell of a fall too, no question.”
“That’s puzzling,” Gideon said. “It would seem to mean he shoved her off the cliff, then climbed down and shot her just to make sure she was well and truly dead, then climbed all the way up
again
—two hundred feet—shot
himself
, and then fell off the cliff too. How would you explain that?”
“How would
I
explain it?
Gideon laughed. “If you ever run into a murder case where everything’s consistent with everything else—no conflicting eyewitness testimony, no loose ends, no ambiguities, no unanswered questions—please let me know, will you? We’ll write it up for the journals.”
“You can say that again,” John agreed.
But Rocco stuck to his guns. “It doesn’t make sense to shoot someone if they already fell off a goddamn mountain. That alone throws the scenario our guys put together out of whack, and it worries me. If it’s true. It
should
worry me. What kind of a cop would I be if it didn’t?” Meaningful pause. “
If
it’s true.”
Gideon considered himself well and deservedly rebuked. “Rocco, you’re absolutely right. I’ve been treating this as a class exercise, no more. I kind of forgot it’s a real case with real human beings.”
“Oh, it’s a real case, all right. And there’s one other minor little point. If . . .” He sighed. “John, you keep checking your watch. What, I’m boring you guys? You gotta be somewhere?”
“Yeah, as a matter of fact, we do,” John said. “We’re supposed to meet our wives for dinner at six, and we don’t know how far the restaurant is from here. We don’t even know where the hell it is, exactly.”
“What restaurant?”
“Umm . . .”
“L’Osteria di Giovanni,” Gideon said. “Do you know it?”
“Yeah, it’s a ten-minute walk from here. A good place. Come on, I’ll walk you over partway. We can talk while we walk.”
“Sure,” Gideon said, “but listen, if you’re free, why don’t you join us for dinner while you’re at it?”
“Hey, I’d love to,” Rocco said, his testiness of a moment ago gone as abruptly as it had come, “but I can’t. I have to pick up
my
wife back at the train station at six-twenty. Come on, it’s this way, down Via degli Avelli.”
Florence’s Via degli Avelli—the Street of the Tombs—is not the gloomy passageway the name suggests. In fact, it is one of the city’s livelier, trendier thoroughfares, with wall-to-wall restaurants, sidewalk cafés, and upscale hotels lining one side of it. The other side, however, runs for more than a hundred yards along the outer wall of Santa Maria Novella’s narrow, old cemetery. This wall consists of a long row of twenty-foot-high, horizontally striped, Moorish stone arches that protect upscale wall-to-wall shelters of a different sort: the ornate, aboveground stone burial vaults of Florence’s fourteenth- and fifteenth-century elite, all bearing intricately carved reliefs of their family crests and insignias of rank.
Rocco gestured at them as they walked past. “Bet there’d be some bones in those things that’d perk your interest.”
Gideon laughed. “I bet there would. So what’s this other minor little point, Rocco?”
“Only that
he
fell off the cliff too—after shooting himself up there—so he must’ve been twice as dead as she was when he hit the bottom, right? Which would have made it a little hard for him to administer that coup de grâce down below, wouldn’t you say?”
“He shot himself at the top?” Gideon echoed, frowning. “No, you’re right, that complicates things. How sure are you that it worked that way, that he didn’t kill himself down below, after he shot her?”
“Pretty sure, considering that he left most of his skull up there, with some of the rest of it scattered along the way down, while he was bouncing off the rocks. Our guys took most of a day picking them out of the cliff. His skeleton was every bit as busted up as hers was. He took one hell of a fall too, no question.”
“That’s puzzling,” Gideon said. “It would seem to mean he shoved her off the cliff, then climbed down and shot her just to make sure she was well and truly dead, then climbed all the way up
again
—two hundred feet—shot
himself
, and then fell off the cliff too. How would you explain that?”
“How would
I
explain it?
Similar Books
