“The problem…” He hesitates, brows tugging together. “The problem is, at a certain point, the intel on him just—goes blank. There are a few black holes. And nothing further back than grade school, other than a birth certificate. That’s in there, by the way.” He nods at the folder.
I open it up again and look through for it. I don’t know why I care, but it stirs something in my heart to see that birth certificate. Edward Blair MacCallum. His birthday is July 13, and he was born in a small private hospital in Virginia.
“It’s not what I expected to see.” Jacopo leans forward. “There’s no reason for those gaps, not when he was a kid. Where’s his medical record? School?”
I sigh, shut the folder. “He couldn’t have been recruited by the FBI in kindergarten. I’m not sure why you have such an issue with this.”
“Well, there’s also an issue with the mother. This pharmaceutical company she works for, the one where she’s CEO? It’s a shell. A shell within a shell within a shell. My contacts haven’t been able to trace the core owner yet, it’s so complex.”
Shell corporations can be legal, of course. But the Castellani accountants make great use of them for creative tax purposes. “You think there are…Family connections?”
“I just think it’s weird, is all,” Jacopo says. He’s watching me closely.
“Don’t fucking look at me like that.”
“I’m not looking at you like anything. This is just my face. And I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with the guy. I’m just saying, there are some holes in his background.”
“Then fill them in! That’s your job, isn’t it?”
“And I’m doing my job,” he snaps back. “But the Castellani name doesn’t jog memories as much as it used to in this city.”
Jacopo still has that look in his eye, and I still feel as though I’ve given away something about myself by snarling at him. To change the subject, I take the handkerchief-wrapped stiletto out of my desk drawer and lay it out for his inspection. “I found this in the incinerator. I believe it must be the weapon the killer used.”
Jacopo gives a low whistle. “Yep. That’ll do it.” He pulls the weapon closer by sliding the handkerchief across the desk, and sees the same thing I saw: my mother’s sigil. “Huh,” he says, looking up at me. “Interesting.”
“There are only three of these made, that I know about,” I say. “They were important relics to my mother’s Family, made in Renaissance times—said to be crafted out of the iron nails from the Crucifixion.” Jacopo scoffs, but I ignore that and go on. “One was buried with a Pope in the sixteenth century. One is in a museum in Rome. And one belonged to my maternal grandfather.” I let that sink in, then ask, “Would my mother be so foolish as to announce her involvement?” It’s a genuine question.
Jacopo thinks it over. “She wouldn’t shy away from taking responsibility, unless she had a reason to keep it secret,” he says at last. “Might be she didn’t want you to know. But where would the killer get something like this, if not from her?”
“Where, indeed,” I mutter. “I also found this.” I’ve put the cell phone in a Ziplock bag, but I can tell from Jacopo’s face that I might as well have left it in the incinerator.
“Won’t get anything from that. Do you know whose it is?”
“No idea. Could have been my father’s—he was in the habit of destroying his old phones. Take it anyway, see if you or your contacts can do anything with it.”
“Okay, but I’m telling you now—”
“Yes, yes. I understand,” I say impatiently. “There’s one more thing. I received this in the morning mail.”
I pass the note over to him, the one telling me to keep away from Teddy.
“PacSyn,” I tell him when he’s read it, and his eyebrows have returned to their usual position. “Or at least, that’s what the logo suggests.” I can see by the way he frowns, he’s as unconvinced as I am.
“PacSyn, huh?” He shrugs, offering the note back to me between two fingers. “And made so conveniently obvious.”
“Meaning?”
He sighs. “Meaning I don’t think it’s PacSyn, and neither do you.”
“Then who? And why?” Jacopo looks deeply troubled, but stays silent. “Speak your mind,” I tell him impatiently.
“You won’t like it,” he begins darkly. “But…this message is opaque. Is it a threat? A warning? Hard to tell. What if that ambiguity is designed to trigger you into actually keeping Teddy close, for protection?”
I’ve already wondered the same thing myself, but I still don’t like hearing it from him.
He goes on, making it worse. “What if Teddy is another Family’s mole?”
“Will you ever stop smearing the names of my lovers, Jacopo? Do you plan to kill Teddy in front of me as well?”
