The man rises inside the confessional. I hear the bench creak. The door will open in three to five seconds. He will step out. He will walk down the center aisle toward the main doors. He will pass within six feet of me.
I cannot be here.
I move. Fast, silent, practiced. Off the pew and into the shadows behind the column nearest the side aisle. Two seconds. My body presses against the cold stone. My breathing slows to something inaudible. My glasses fog for a moment from the temperature shift between the warm pew and the cold marble column. I take them off, wipe them on my shirt, put them back on. Three seconds.
The confessional door opens.
He steps out. Adjusts his jacket. Straightens the Rolex. These are the gestures of a man who has just cleared his conscience. Three Hail Marys for a murdered wife and aviolated child. He walks down the center aisle with the same authority he brought in.
I watch from behind the column.
His face. I memorize it. The jowls beginning to form along his jawline. The pockmark on his left cheek near the ear. The way his eyes sit deep in their sockets, recessed, as if his skull is trying to swallow them. Thin lips. A nose broken at least once, maybe in youth, set slightly crooked. He looks like a man who run a company. A family. A small kingdom of pain.
His walk. Confident stride, slightly longer on the left than the right. Favoring the right hip. An old injury or a recent one. Either way, it slows him half a beat every other step.
His shoes. Brown leather. Ferragamo, based on the buckle. Size 44, maybe 45. The soles are worn on the outside edge, which means he supinates. Which means he'll lean left when he pivots. When the time comes, I'll approach from his right.
The main doors close behind him.
I step out from behind the column. The nave is empty again. The four candles burn in the alcove. Father Domenico is still in the confessional, silent, waiting. He will stay there for ten minutes after the last appointment, as he always does.Praying. Or whatever he does behind that screen when the work has been assigned.
I walk to the alcove. Stand in front of the four flames. Orange light on my glasses, on my hands, on the front of my dark shirt.
Four.
I close my eyes.
The girl was seven. She learned not to cry because crying made it last longer. A seven-year-old girl figured out that silence was a survival strategy. She did the math on her own suffering and optimized for duration.
She and her mother is dead now. The man who killed them just walked out of this church with a clear conscience and a gold watch and three Hail Marys as the price of two lives.
I open my eyes.
The candles burn. Steady. Indifferent. Mechanical in their purpose. They are not sacred objects. They are signals. Binary. On or off. Lit or dark.
I turn from the alcove. Walk to the side door. Apply the pressure on the lower hinge. Step into the Naples evening where the heat wraps around me like a fist.
I have forty-eight hours.
I pull my phone out. Open the notes app. Begin typing what I know. The face. The walk. The shoes. The hip. The watch. The car he likely arrived in. The neighborhood he likely lives in, based on the suit and the shoes and the way he scanned the church like a man slumming.
I save the note. Lock the phone. Put it in my pocket.
The vicoli are dark now. The cat is gone from the dumpster. The laundry still hangs between the buildings, white sheets like flags of surrender strung across the alley.
I walk home.
I have work to do.
Chapter 2
The Kill
Valentina
I find him in nine hours.
The shoes were the key. Ferragamo Tramezza, brown calfskin, the buckle style they discontinued two years ago. A man wearing discontinued Ferragamo doesn't buy off the rack. He has a relationship with a specific salesperson at a specific store. Naples has two Ferragamo boutiques. One on Via dei Mille. One on Via Calabritto.