The afternoon sky was blue, a clear view to the double peaks of Vesuvius on the horizon as Nikki rode her Hornet to the US military base at Capodichino. She’d slept fitfully through the bright morning hours, city noises echoing up through her bedroom. Now she was strangely disconnected, as if pieces had shaken loose inside. She wanted to hit something hard enough to knock everything back into place.
Entering the gate lent her a sense of normalcy, the uniformed guard checking her through with a friendly “Have a nice day, ma’am.” Less reassuring was what met her at the office. Her on-duty partner for the afternoon shift was Mario. He skulked in his cubicle, the fluorescent overhead lights seeming to paint the frown onto his heavy jowls, vertical lines slashing the edges of his mouth like a ventriloquist dummy. He didn’t look up or acknowledge when she entered, removed her rucksack and jacket, and started her computer.
Angelo usually made it a point to keep Nikki and Mario separated on the duty roster. It had been months since they’d spent time together. But the last-minute schedule change forced an unwelcome overlap.
Nikki’s biggest problem with Mario wasn’t the relentless bullying, the physical aggression, or his casual sexism. Obnoxious as those traits were, Nikki could tolerate them as long as they didn’t interfere with the job. But he’d failed to help her when she called for backup last summer during the search for the kidnapped base commander, Admiral Redford. Mario had allowed his personal dislike of Nikki to eclipse any remnant of professionalism, and it had nearly gotten her killed.
Afterwards, during the investigation, Mario refuted Nikki’s testimony—that he’d rejected her call for support. He claimed a poor connection, that he hadn’t heard her request, that the line had disconnected.
“It was a stressful time,” he said. “Investigator Serafino was clearly emotional…it must have affected her judgment. She might not remember whatactuallyhappened.”
Without recordings or witnesses to prove otherwise, Mario had suffered no consequences to his career in Phoenix Seven. But the lie and its implications hung off him like a noxious stink. The annoyance Nikki usually felt for him solidified into contempt.
—
Doing her best not to look at or think about Mario, Nikki tended to her work, tidying leftover paperwork and checking emails.
Then she scrolled through the texts on her phone, hoping to find something from Valerio. Nothing.
She called. No answer.
She hung up and texted,You okay?
No reply.
—
Valerio’s outburst at Angelo last night was so unlike him. It worried her. She hadn’t talked to him for a while; they’d both been too preoccupied with work, and besides, the weather had been too shit to take their sailboat,Calypso, to sea.
At the station, there had been blood on Valerio’s sleeve. The same blood streaked through Monica’s hair—from the woman at the church.
Nikki exhaled.
She didn’t want to be part of another murder investigation. Even brushing up against this case knotted a cord of dread around her throat. But she also didn’t want to walk away. How could you see something like that—know that it had happened—and not help?
When she closed her eyes, Nikki saw the childlike face, the pooling blood, and the fine layer of feathers. Everything arranged beneath the altar as if a young angel had fallen violently to Earth.
Had she come into Chiesa del Gesù Nuovo seeking refuge? If so, there’d been none. The beasts of Naples hunted even here.
There it was: That constricting grip. Helplessness. Fear. Nikki hated it.
Well, at the very least, she could do some due diligence for the case and look into the witnesses: Monica Lissom and Kami Washington.
—
Both women had a robust presence on social media, their European holiday thoroughly documented. Dancing in heels and slinky dresses at the Louvre, sipping espresso in the Vatican’s courtyard café, shopping on the Ponte Vecchio. Ideal, effortless fun that was clearly carefully staged.
Nikki scanned these profiles, then traced both women backwards in time to graduation pictures and photos of student and sorority life at Texas A&M University: hundreds of images of parties, football games, tailgating, drinking, dancing, and more parties. Turning next to news and public records, Nikki assembled biographies.
Monica Lissom was the only child of an ambassador father and socialite mother. From an early age, she appeared in photographs at galas and philanthropic events. She’d studied economics in college, and her success in that field seemed a foregone conclusion due to her family’s wealth and influence. She’d spent a semester interning in London at an investment firm called Stonehaven Wealth Management. Her love life was public; she’d dated a string of celebrities who appeared with her in paparazzi photos in gossip magazines. Her most recent boyfriend seemed to be a thirty-one-year-old technology guru named Kevin Walker.
Kami Washington didn’t come from the same wealth as Monica. Her parents were computer programmers, and she seemed to have enjoyed a comfortable middle-class upbringing in suburban Texas. Her degree was in electrical engineering and she’d done two summer internships with engineering firms in Texas, and volunteered for the Red Cross. Her boyfriend for the past three years was a civil engineering student named Amir Bloomfield.
—
Nikki was summarizing the results of her research when the phone rang. Mario answered, the low grumble of his voice barely audible over the hum of the ventilation.
Minutes passed, and Mario’s heavy footsteps tromped towards her. Nikki swiveled in her chair in time to watch him enter her cubicle.
