The Bone Chamber

10

The moment Tony Carillo disconnected with Sydney, he called his friend Michael “Doc” Schermer, who was literally the go-to guy when it came to discovering obscure information. “You at your desk?”
“Yeah.”
“Guess who I just heard from?”
“Your soon-to-be ex, who realizes she made a big mistake and is begging your forgiveness, but you told her to pound sand, because you just came into a major inheritance, and the girls are lined up outside your door?”
“Whatever you spiked your coffee with, save me some. And no. Fitzpatrick just called. She’s on her way to Italy.”
“And what’s she doing there?”
“Being that she’s an upstanding agent, she couldn’t discuss it with me, for fear I’d end up in front of the OPR tribunal alongside her,” he said, referring to the Office of Professional Responsibility, the Bureau’s internal affairs watchdogs. “So you can see my dilemma.”
“So what is it you can’t discuss with me, for fear I’d be drawn and quartered alongside you?”
“You mean the part about the ambassador to the Holy See’s daughter being murdered, after having her face and prints removed to prevent her ID? Or something about a possible affair with a congressman and the pontification of whether or not the death was related?”
“First,” Doc Schermer said, “I’m impressed you can use pontification in a sentence. Second, in light of the case matter relating to the pope, I’m wondering if you did it on purpose. Third, if I’m going to get fired, I’d rather it wasn’t for a bad pun. So what is it you’re not really asking me?”
“To find out everything you can on this congressman. I want to know every skeleton in his closet, and every committee he’s ever sat on. I want to know about the girl and what she’s involved with. And last but not least, I could use a legit reason to get on a plane to D.C. ASAP, so I can get the Bureau to pick up the tab. If I’m going to be unemployed soon, I’d rather not be out the airfare.”
“I’m sure I can dig up an old case for you that needs follow-up in the D.C. area,” he said, and Carillo heard the click of his keyboard as Doc Schermer started typing. “Give me the names of all the involved…”


Sydney looked around her apartment, trying to figure out all she’d need for the trip. Everything except her work clothes was still in boxes. Her indecision on where to look for an apartment was now costing her time, and she wished she’d just let Scotty pick out a place. A few minutes later her contact at Homeland Security called her back.
“What’s the good word?” she asked Levins.
“Your guy’s flying to Rome, Fiumicino, via Dulles at seven P.M.”
“What are the chances you can book me on that flight in the seat next to him?”
“Can’t. But I can put you in the row right behind him.”
“Works for me.”
“Ciao. And you owe me. Credit card number would be a good start. I’ll think of a proper extortion after you get back.”
Perfect, she thought, looking around at all the boxes, searching for the one marked “Important Papers.” Time to pull out her damned passport.


Zach Griffin’s seat was near the rear of the plane, far enough back to be able to see what was going on up front, and the best way he knew of scanning and profiling each passenger on board. It was one of the reasons he was always the last to board, when circumstances necessitated public transportation. He preferred knowing whom he shared a plane with, because he didn’t like surprises.
And he didn’t like finding unexpected passengers seated one row behind him.
He stopped at his seat, eyed Sydney Fitzpatrick, who occupied the middle seat right behind his. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Good to see you again, too.” She smiled.
He didn’t smile back. Instead, he looked at the twenty-year-old kid sitting next to her in the aisle. He dug a few bills out of his wallet and waved them in front of the kid’s face. “Yours if you switch seats with me.”
The boy shrugged, grabbed the bills, and got up to switch seats.
Zach swung his bag in the overhead bin, then sat next to Fitzpatrick, who sat with her hands folded on top of some file folder in her lap. He eyed it, then her. “What the hell are you doing on this flight?” he asked.
“I’d ask you the same, but I figure it has something to do with this.” She opened the folder, then slid out a section of a newspaper, the article and accompanying photograph on Alessandra Harden, while making sure no one else could see it.
“How did you discover who she was?”
“How was it you didn’t?”
“Besides the obvious?” he asked, referring to the victim having no face. Or fingerprints. “We had a suspicion, but needed confirmation. Hence the need for your services. As you can appreciate, they are no longer needed.”
Sydney tucked the article back in her folder. “Well, here’s the thing. A couple guys tried to Ten X me last night, and, just a quirk of mine, I tend to take those sort of things personally. The way I see it, with one of them still at large, it’s in my best interest to figure out what the hell is going on.”
“It would have been in your best interest to fly home on the plane we’d provided. Had you done so,” he said, keeping his voice low, “and not involved yourself in something you shouldn’t have been nosing around in, you wouldn’t have been made into a target.”
“Well, it’s a little late for that now, isn’t it? And speaking of being in my best interest, how is it I had to learn from someone else that my very good friend, whom I personally recommended for your case, was killed. What if her parents had decided to hold a local service?”
“Like I said, on the off chance it was something more than a hit-and-run, we didn’t want you there for the obvious reasons.”
“The off chance?” she whispered. “Had you informed me of everything from the beginning, last night’s events could have been completely avoided.”
He glanced over at her, saw she was staring straight ahead, doing her best to keep her temper in check. “You’re welcome to get off the plane.”
“Not going to happen.”
“How’d you get permission to fly out?”
“Simple. I called the security officer at HQ, told him I had hankering to go to Italy, because I got a real good deal on a flight, but only if I leave now. He told me I knew the drill. Leave my gun at home, and see him when I get back for a security briefing. Italy’s not way up there in the countries of concern, you know.”
“So you lied.” That was something he hadn’t expected, not based on her background.
“Bent the truth a little. I’m thinking about visiting the Vatican. You?”
Griffin buckled up his seat belt as the flight attendant made her rounds for the preflight check. “Haven’t decided yet. But wherever I go, it’ll be without you. You lost your friend, and for that I’m sorry. But that makes you emotionally involved. It’s something I can’t afford.” He leaned back, closed his eyes. “So how was it you found her?” he asked.
“The crime scene photograph. The red sandstone. Looked it up on the Internet and discovered the Smithsonian was built with it. From there it was basic. Looked up vehicles towed in the area, found one that was connected to a missing person, who happened to be a student in a history class she assists with,” she said, patting the folder on her lap. “Their professor confirmed it this morning.”
Impressed by her powers of observation and deductive reasoning, he was still bothered that she’d found the connections so easily, primarily because it had put her in danger. Even so, she’d handled herself well, better than the two agents he’d assigned to follow her. “Sorry about losing you last night.”
“Yeah, well, it all worked out in the end.”
“Except you let the second guy get away.” He opened one eye, smiled at the dark look she gave him. “Would’ve been cleaner had you gotten him, too.”
“Win some, lose some.”
He laughed. Sydney Fitzpatrick was nothing like he’d been led to believe. That didn’t mean he was keeping her on, but at the very least, it was going to make his flight less tedious.


The plane touched down at the Leonardo da Vinci Airport in a smooth landing, and the moment the seat belt lights were shut off, the passengers rose from their seats and started digging for their carry-ons. Zach retrieved his and Sydney’s, then they both remained seated, waiting for the passengers in front of them to depart. Sydney unzipped her bag, dropped in the folder of the conspiracy report, then sat back to wait, thinking that Griffin might actually let her in on his investigation after all.
That illusion lasted until he said, “When we get off the plane, you’re going back on the next flight to the States.”
“You can’t order me,” she told him. “I’m on vacation.”
“Watch how fast I get you ordered back.”
She didn’t doubt for a second that he could do it. “At least let me see Bernini’s Daphne and Apollo at the Villa Borghese. Not letting an artist see Bernini is like…like not letting a cop shoot a gun.”
“That’s the lamest analogy I’ve ever heard.”
“I’m sleep deprived.”
“Fine. Daphne at the Villa Borghese tomorrow. And then you’re out of here. Where are you staying?”
“I haven’t gotten that far.”
He took out one of his business cards, wrote the name of a hotel on it and below that a number, then handed it to her. “This place will be perfect. Modernized and secure. And the number is my emergency contact number while I’m here. And I mean emergency. When I get off this plane, we are simply two passengers who chatted on the flight over. You do not know me, and I don’t know you.”
“Fine. But I guess you’ll never know if I get on that return flight.”
He glanced over at her. “Good point. I’m booking, paying for, and personally delivering you to that plane. Come to think of it, I’ll deliver you to your hotel room.”
“What hotel are you staying in?”
“I’m not.”
The row in front of them started forward, and the two of them followed the other passengers to passport control.
The terminal at Leonardo da Vinci was crowded with travelers speaking a babel of foreign languages. Following Griffin’s lead, she dug her passport out, then stepped into the line for non–European Common Market passengers, careful to listen as he was questioned, though she was certain he wasn’t giving accurate answers.
“Business or pleasure?” the short and rather sour-faced passport control officer asked in English, eyeing his passport, then him.
“Business.”
“Nature?”
“Newspaper. A series on vacationing in Italy.”
“Destination?”
“Rome.”
“Length of stay?”
“A week.”
“Fast writer?”
“Very.”
“Thank you.” He stamped Griffin’s passport, then waved him through.
Sydney went through the same drill, but when he asked her the nature of her visit, she nodded toward Griffin and said, “I’m illustrating his articles.” Her return ticket was for a week as well, since Levins had booked it to match Griffin’s.
As they walked off, Griffin said, “Quite the cover story.”
“No worse than yours.”
If she had any hopes that Griffin might forget about babysitting her until her plane, they were crushed as he took her by her arm and led her to the Alitalia departure desk. “When is the next flight back to…” He glanced at Sydney, then the attendant as he said, “San Francisco.”
The woman tapped at her keyboard, eyeing her screen. “The soonest we can get you on a connecting flight via New York is tonight—”
“She’ll take it.”
“She won’t,” Sydney said. “She has some illustrating to do.” Then to the clerk, asked, “What do you have day after tomorrow?”
“We have a mid-afternoon flight that leaves at two-forty.”
“Perfect,” Griffin said. He took out a credit card, slapped it on the counter. “Give her your ID and your ticket, Fitzpatrick.”
Sydney tried to keep her expression neutral as she handed over her passport and plane ticket. The clerk eyed the ticket, punched in some numbers, and said, “It’ll be an additional one hundred dollars for the change, not including the charge to get to San Francisco.”
To which Sydney told Griffin, “You should just save your money and time. I can do this myself.”
“You could, but I get the feeling you won’t.”
The clerk dutifully ignored their conversation as she finished up the reservation, printed out the ticket, then gave everything to Sydney. Griffin reached over, took possession of the new plane ticket as if he didn’t trust her at all.
“Gee, thanks,” Sydney said to Griffin as they walked away.
He didn’t respond, and judging from the expression on his face, she wasn’t sure she’d have wanted him to. Deciding it best not to push him further, thereby ruining any chance she had of changing his mind, or at the very least, making a break, she slung her bag over her shoulder and walked quietly beside him as he stepped out to get in the long line of passengers waiting for a taxi.
After five minutes they arrived at the head of the line. As soon as Griffin gave the driver the name of the Albergo Pini di Roma on the Aventine, they were off. The taxi careened through the flat marshlands that bordered the airport and veered in and out of the insane traffic that congested the roads leading to Rome, past the rather nondescript modern apartments. Cabdrivers in the States had nothing on this guy. She gripped the seat to keep from sliding around, while the driver gave a monologue of the sights in heavily accented English: the Baths of Caracalla to the left, the Palatine Hill with its sprawling Palace of the Caesars to the right, a glimpse of the Colosseum in the distance as they turned into the sycamore-lined Viale Aventino. He was proud of his knowledge and probably hoped for a substantial tip. Sydney, more frightened than impressed, wondered if she’d be killed in a taxi before she had a chance to find out who had murdered her friend, then tried to murder her.
As far as she knew, the moment she stepped back in the United States, they’d come after her again. Too late to take back that burning curiosity that compelled her to find the murder scene, determine what they were covering up, and follow the trail here. Now she’d be damned if she would sit back and put her life in some other government agency’s hands. At the moment she knew of only one person who held her best interests at heart, who cared about what happened to her and those she loved. That person was she.
“Have you ever been here?” Griffin asked.
“A few times as a kid,” she said, noting that he seemed unfazed by the wild taxi ride. “My parents brought me to visit some of my mother’s relatives. She actually lived here for a few years before she married my father.”
“You speak Italian?”
“Not enough to traverse the country without a dictionary and some very patient natives who don’t mind me massacring the language, but my mother can.”
“Massacre it?”
“Speak it. Pretty fluently.”
The taxi drove up the steep Via Santa Prisca and turned into the wide and surprisingly traffic-free piazza, stopping in front of the Albergo Pini di Roma. Griffin, who apparently spoke fluent Italian, instructed the driver to wait for him while he checked Sydney in. They exited the cab, and Sydney took a good look around the hotel. With its terra cotta–washed stucco facade into which a gleaming glass entrance had been set, the Pines of Rome Hotel managed to look rustic and modern at the same time. Two low travertine steps led into the marble-floored lobby in which comfortable armchairs had been grouped at intervals around red Turkish carpets. A long reception desk ran the length of one wall.
“Nice place,” she said.
“You’ll need your passport to book the room,” he told her when they reached the desk.
Sydney surrendered her passport to the desk clerk, who punched the information into her computer. When she finished, she slid Sydney’s key across the counter and said, “Enjoy your stay.”
Her room was on the fourth floor, tastefully decorated and refurbished, a mix of vintage 1920s, the height of the fascist era, and modern updates. A large oak wardrobe occupied a corner and she set her bag on a chair beside it, then walked to the window. Her room looked out toward the Tiber River and across to the Gianicolo Hill. “Wish I really was here to paint. It’s gorgeous.”
“Perks of the job,” he said. “Drawbacks are that you don’t get much time to enjoy the perks.” He didn’t move from the door. “You think you can stay out of trouble until I come by for you?”
“As much as I’d love to get out there, the first thing on my agenda is a nap.”
“That makes two of us. I’ll give you a call this evening after I visit the ambassador for the death notification.”
“You know, I might be able to help. With the ambassador.”
“Thanks, but no thanks. Mind if I use your bathroom before I leave?”
“All yours.” She stepped out onto the narrow balcony to get a better look at the immediate area. The pine-scented air was brisk, but she found it refreshing.
After a few minutes she felt his presence before he made it known, and finally she turned, saw him staring at her. “Something on your mind?”
He didn’t answer right away, just eyed her, giving her the feeling that he could see deep within her, guess that she had no intention of remaining uninvolved. “I should warn you, if you go out, don’t carry a purse. If you do, watch out for the light-fingered gypsies in designer clothes.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said as he left.
Sydney didn’t move from the balcony. She waited until she saw him emerge four stories below. Just before he got into his waiting cab, he glanced up, as though he’d been aware she’d been watching him. He didn’t wave, just looked at her, then slid into the backseat and the cab drove off. A small red sedan pulled out from the curb after him, honking its horn at a woman who stepped off the sidewalk, then jumped back.
Only then did she return inside, deciding that as much as she really wanted to see the sights, what she really desired was a soak in the tub and a long, long nap. The spacious bathroom had been updated, including a large Carrara marble tub with gold dolphin-shaped faucets. She ran the water, then got out some clean clothes and the report on conspiracies that the professor had given her, and was about to head back into the bathroom when she spied a small refrigerator. On impulse, she opened it and found an assortment of beverages. When in Rome, she thought, withdrawing an ice-cold mini bottle of prosecco. She poured it into one of the flute glasses sitting on top of the small refrigerator, then carried that into the bathroom. When the tub was filled, she undressed, slipped into the steaming water, and sipped her sparkling wine.
Not too bad, she thought, picking up the first page of the report, trying to give it a thorough read. Maybe it was the lack of distractions from passengers or from Zach Griffin’s presence, or that she was more relaxed, but she was having a hard time keeping her eyes open as she scanned Xavier Caldwell’s report. It was your basic conspiracy theory on Freemasons and the New World Order; Caldwell’s version stated they were running Washington, D.C., New York, and the entire banking system. Definitely nothing new. Flipping through several more pages, she decided that Caldwell was a bit heavy on a few key words like Illuminati, Vatican, and the P2 Italian Freemasonry lodge.
Grade B for effort, in that it took some time to type up, or at least cut-and-paste the dozens of pages from various conspiracy Web sites, but D-minus for originality. Even so, she continued to read, just in case there was something there. But jet lag finally caught up with her. Having no energy, she got as far as dressing in her underwear, then bundling up in the thick terry robe hanging in the wardrobe. The bed was soft, inviting, and she picked up Caldwell’s report, thinking she’d read a few more pages before sleep finally overtook her. She nodded off twice, then woke again trying to grasp what the professor had told her…something about Xavier Caldwell speaking to Alessandra about finding proof of a government conspiracy, but she had warned him off…and now she was dead and he was missing…
Her last thought before the report slipped from her grasp and she fell asleep was that she needed to call Carillo.