Sicilian Murder Page 18

  There was movement around the cave and Jill said, “We have an unconscious man close by. He suffered a kick to his head. We're fine but cold. Angela, Marie, Jo?”

  “We are fine as well, cold too, and our man is sitting up and is dazed and we can still see a gun close by if one of you would step over here to take possession of the gun,” Marie said with teeth chattering.

  “I also have a man not moving near me, but I don't see a gun,” Angela said.

  They all moved to assemble in the middle of the chamber eyeing the exit. Jill introduced everyone while Nathan's arms were around her trying to warm her up. The officers reverted back to Italian, and Angela was smiling gratefully at the words. Jill understood why when thin foil looking blankets were produced from a backpack. The other officers searched the men for weapons, then checked for a pulse.

  “They're all alive, but they need medical care. Giovanni, why don't you exit the cave and notify our chopper that it may be needed to transport one or two of the men. Also let the Command know that the Americans are safe and unharmed.”

  The man nodded and left in a hurry.

  “I'm a licensed doctor in the United States. Let me see if I can evaluate and treat the men,” Jill said as she walked over to the man that Nathan had kicked in the head.

  The Carabinieri officer that seemed to have the medical supplies joined her as she kneeled beside the unmoving man. Jill checked his pulse and ran her hands over his body searching for lumps or bleeding. His pulse was strong and his breathing fine and there was no bleeding that she found, and so she said, “He's likely unconscious from a concussion. He needs to be transported to a hospital, but he's not in such bad shape that he needs to go by helicopter.”

  She moved on to the second man and found blood on the side of his head, likely where her softball pitch with the rock had struck him. She heard him groan. His pulse was strong and his breathing fine, so she gave the same advice on hospital transport as the first man.

  The third man's eyes were open and he looked suspicious when Jill approached. He had his hands on his head as though it hurt. His pulse and respirations seemed fine and she pronounced him fit to go to the hospital by ambulance.

  In the end, they took the man who had yet to regain consciousness by helicopter to Palermo. Once more help arrived by car from the Carabinieri, they were able to use litters to move the men out of the cave. After statements were taken, Jill and her friends were cleared to return to Catania and would make it in time for Jo, Marie, and Angela to catch their flights. Jill wondered if the men would be arrested for their behavior in the cave and whether the officers would pursue identifying the other men that had gotten away. Frankly, she didn't care if she ever heard back from the Carabinieri about the five men that entered the cave. She and her friends were safe and uninjured and that was good enough. The man that had suffered Nathan's kick might have diminished capacity once he woke up.

  The laid back life of Sicily had a way of growing on you, and Jill accepted the existence of organized crime and the fact that they were able to do so many unlawful things.

  Chapter 30

  Jill and Nathan were lounging on the sofa in their now empty Catania apartment. They dropped their friends off at the airport and they were on their way back to the United States. Jill had taken a moment to speak with Melissa Chen earlier about what they found so far and where the investigation was going. Melissa had heard much of the story from Brenda and Mrs. Carlucci upon meeting them in Wisconsin. Today's adventures were another chapter in the strange story of the pursuit of a skin cancer remedy. Jill told her that she doubted she would find Randy's murderer as there were so many organized crime members and so many places around Sicily were Randy could have been murdered. Melissa was pleased to hear that the police were searching Salvatore Denaro's property for the lab and manufacturing facility that would make a new illicit drug, but that seemed all Jill was going to be able to do for the Chen family. She and Melissa agreed she would stay on an additional two days to make sure no new evidence came from the search of Mr. Denaro's property. Melissa was fairly sure that once Jill left Sicily, she would receive few updates on the investigation into her father's murder by the Italian police.

  Angela had left her a flash drive with all of the photos she'd taken since her arrival in Sicily. Now with a large glass of her favorite Nero d'Avola wine, she and Nathan flipped through the pictures on her laptop. Nathan was pleased to see the pictures that Angela had taken at the vineyard. They would be perfect for the marketing copy that he needed.

  Angela had left them with over a thousand pictures, and Jill was flipping through them pausing every now and again when she viewed an amazing picture. She halted the slide slow and backed up two pictures not realizing at first what she had seen.

  “What?” Nathan asked staring at the screen trying to see what had caught Jill's attention.

  “Oh my!”

  “What?”

  “Don't you see who is in the picture?”

  Nathan stared a while longer than his memory sharpened into focus.

  “It's Rosso,” Nathan whispered.

  “Yep,” Jill nodded

  “And he shouldn't be in this picture,” continued with his voice low.

  “Nope.”

  “Did we run the bug thing this evening?” Jill whispered in his ear.

  “Yes before we left for the airport, but not when we returned,” Nathan whispered getting up to use Jill's bug scanning equipment.

  He ran it over the entire apartment, their luggage, and even inside the refrigerator, but didn't find anything.

  “Do you think they have more sophisticated equipment than your scanner can detect?”

  “I don't think so. They would have to have invented a new radio-frequency wave. Let's visually look for cameras and then maybe we should go out for a walk and call Lombardo or Cavallaro while we're out.” Jill said in a low voice.

  Nathan nodded and fifteen minutes later they found themselves carrying the laptop and heading for the piazza. When they were a block away from their apartment building, they began talking in normal voices.

  “I don't think we were bugged, but just in case we need to be able to talk about that photo. Do you remember where it was taken?” Jill asked.

  Nathan thought back to the order of the photos and said, “Wasn't it that second day after you and Angela visited the crater? No, I'm wrong, it's the day we went to the vineyard I'm going to help with marketing. We thought we saw a woman trailing our car, but maybe that was Rosso wearing a wig on his head? Can I just say I never liked him? I thought it was because he was short and seemed to have somewhat of a Napoleonic complex around me.”

  Jill smiled at his short person comment, “Com'on, maybe you're the freak of nature here being tall and all.”

  “Right. Who kicked someone in the head and now I have on my conscience that the man might be permanently disabled by my blow to his brain...”

  “You know he was going to kill us. I have no guilt about unleashing you on him. That kick might have been the difference between all of us being alive and well at this moment,” Jill said solemnly.

  As her arm was wrapped in his, she felt him take a deep breath and sigh. The man would remain on Nathan's conscious for a while. Perhaps she'd check in with Cavallaro in a month or two to see what happened to him.

  “In some ways I'm shocked that Rosso didn't notice Angela taking pictures. Perhaps because his head was tilted to the side, he didn't see her at the time. Or perhaps, he was hoping none of us would notice him in the picture. That strategy worked for several days as I had seen the picture before and I was there when it was taken and still I didn't notice him there.”

  The picture showed Russo in the background, across the street from the pharmacy they'd stopped and talked to the people therein. Rosso had never mentioned that he was close by when they were interviewing people in that town. In fact, he had specifically stated he had someone follow them in an unmarked car, but that he had been in Catania
that day. It was the night Jo arrived when he stopped by the apartment and was an ass.

  “So what if he is in the picture. It's not a crime for him to be there.”

  “Yes, but he lied to us and said he was in Catania. I wonder if he was ahead or behind us paying bribes to people not to speak to us.”

  “What does that matter now?”

  “You know I'm bothered by the fact that we haven't solved Randy's murder. What if he's the leak to organized crime? What if he never researched transport up Mount Etna? Maybe he gave us false information to throw us off the scent.”

  They had reached the large pedestrian thoroughfare in downtown Catania. It was full of people strolling to and from restaurants in the area. Groups of women were walking and there were couples arm in arm much like herself and Nathan. It was a beautiful night and Jill and Nathan were perfectly attired to fit in with the crowd. It was hard to believe that six hours earlier, the two of them had hidden in a cold, dusty cave that could have been their final resting spot.

  “Maybe his English isn't the best and he lost something in translation talking to you. He did tell us we had a tail, just that it wasn't himself. Didn't he send his buddies to our aid earlier today? He could have just let us be killed.”

  “That was Sara who came to our aid. Okay maybe it's nothing and I should go back to looking at Angela's pictures to see if there was anything else of concern.”

  Before they made a u-turn to return home, Jill slowly examined the faces of everyone in the square with them but didn't recognize anyone. Once they arrived back to the apartment, they again scanned for electronic devices that shouldn't be in their apartment but found none.

  After resuming their seats on the sofa and refilling their glasses with wine, Jill resumed the slide show, studying each picture with renewed interest wondering what else she'd missed. One turn through the pictures and nothing got her attention although something was niggling at the edge of her conscious if only she could reach out and touch it.

  She started the second round of picture examination and finally stopped on a picture from earlier that day.

  “What do you think this is?” Jill asked.

  Nathan stared at the picture and finally sighed, “It's called, 'a thing that will make us drive nearly three hours across Sicily tomorrow'.”

  “Yes,” Jill said with a smile at Nathan's pained realization of what his day would look like tomorrow.

  One of the pictures close to the cave entrance had caught the sunlight glancing off of it, but it looked like something metallic with a 'G' on it. Could it be a Green Bay Packers pin of some sort that Randy might have dropped there? She couldn't tell the color of the pin and the Georgia Bulldogs used a similar shaped G for their logo. But how many Americans had been near the opening to Entella Cave? It wasn't likely a top hundred visit destination for the island of Sicily. Still perhaps it was just wishful thinking on her part because she felt so dissatisfied with her investigation into Randy Chen's murder.

  The photo was nearly one of the last pictures Angela had taken. Perhaps she hadn't followed up on the metal object as that was when they realized they needed to head inside the cave to get away from the eight men in the cars. Both their run into the cave and their rescue put thoughts of forensic evidence out of everyone's mind.

  She took a photo of Angela's photo to use for her search the next day. Then she decided to start at the beginning of Angela's photos and enjoy the scenes from her goddaughter's wedding. Then she and Nathan had an early night as the adrenaline rush of the day had long drained away.

  Chapter 31

  Once again, they were crossing Sicily from Catania to Palermo and then south toward Lake Garcia and Entella Rock. Jill thought back to other cases she'd investigated and decided this might be her wildest goose-chase. This could be a three-hour drive to nowhere. Especially if the Carabinieri helicopter blades stirred up everything on the ground. The pin could have been picked up by the wind and tossed anywhere. However, it hadn't been able to land in that particular spot so maybe the piece of metal hadn't been disturbed.

  Jill had been on parts of this highway several times since her arrival to Sicily and she saw something different out the window on each drive.

  Her cellphone rang and it was an Italian number.

  “Hello.”

  “Ciao, this is Vice Questore Sara Cavallaro. How are you today?”

  “Alive, thanks to you. I forgot to call you and thank you for sending us the help that saved our lives.”

  “Yes, it was tense time until I received word that you were rescued successfully with no injuries. Are you heading home today?”

  “No, we're actually on our way back to Entella Cave to follow up on one more thing.”

  “What? I thought your friends left last night? What are you investigating?”

  “It's Nathan and me as indeed my friends did leave last night. We found an object in a picture that Angela took yesterday and it looked like something that Randy Chen might have owned so we're going back to take a look. It's probably a waste of time, but I don't like loose ends.”

  “I'm not sure what you mean by it's something that Randy Chen would have owned.”

  “Sara, are you a fan of football?”

  “Yes, I follow the Juventus team,” she replied confusion in her voice as to where the conversation was going.

  “So you have a shirt or something from the team?”

  “Yes, I have a shirt and a cellphone cover.”

  “So if we found you murdered in Siberia, Russia and there was a Juventus women's shirt nearby, we might assume it's yours, right?”

  “Yes,...” Sara was full of doubt as to where this conversation was going with the Americans.

  “That's what I hope to find close to Entella Cave. If I'm right, I'll call you as you might want some crime scene people. If I'm wrong I'll text you.”

  “Ah, okay. Let me know.”

  Jill ended the call and Nathan said, “You didn't ask her about Rosso?”

  “It wasn't something I wanted to ask over the phone. Also, you convinced me that it was no big deal, so I'm going to file that for now and if it becomes relevant before I end this case then I'll ask Sara about it.”

  “Did she understand your example with Juventus?”

  “Given the doubt in her voice, I don't think so. Because she speaks good English, I forget to remember that she may not understand all of our Americanisms, so to speak.”

  Nathan looked sideways as they continued through the countryside.

  Jill's phone beeped with the arrival of a text from Angela saying that the three of them had made it home and all was well. Jill replied as a second chirp rang signifying an email. Sara had kindly given her a status of the three men from the cave, mostly about their criminal charges which made Jill happy. She got to the end of the email and said to Nathan, “The man you kicked has a brain bleed. They put a drain in at the hospital and he's recovered consciousness. The doctors expect him to make a full recovery with a little more hospital care. Hope that relieves your guilty conscious.”

  “Thanks, it does. While I've defeated men in matches, I've never seriously harmed or killed someone even in self-defense. I'll sleep better knowing there won't be long-term damage to the man.”

  Jill patted him on the hand as they skirted the edge of Palermo, before turning south toward their destination, and in less than an hour later they pulled up to the same car park they had used yesterday.

  “Do you think all of the bad guys are in jail?” Nathan asked.

  “No, but they aren't tracking us today since we remembered to scan the car before we set out.”

  Again they walked up and over the hillside that was Entella Rock towards where the cave entrance was as well as the plant that might make Randy Chen's company rich. Studying the photo on Jill's cell phone they approached the area where they expected to find the metal containing the symbols of a 'G'.

  Nathan pointed to the ground knowing not to reach out and touch, “Here
it is.”

  Jill squatted down and looked at the item and smiled. It looked new and shiny. Indeed a 'G' as well as '100' was on the pin. It was a new pin as this was the 100 year anniversary of the Green Bay Packers. It was very likely to have been dropped very recently as there had been no rain in Sicily since they had arrived. It had to have come from Randy Chen as he was on the Board of that organization as a prominent community member and would likely travel with memorabilia. Still she would have a lab verify that his DNA was on it.

  She put her head down and decided it was a pin, the type that you put on a ball cap. She pulled out her cell phone to take pictures, then called Sara and asked her to drive to the Entella Rock park as she had found potential evidence.

  Jill then began walking a grid around the pin. She took a moment to examine this area of the reserve and decided this was about dead center of the oldenlandia adscensions plants in this area. What else might they find here? And then she saw a rag or a piece of cloth and again she took pictures. She leaned downwind of the cloth as she didn't want to drop her own DNA on the cloth. She sniffed several times and the smiled.

  When she was done and was sure the evidence was preserved, she took a seat on the hillside while Nathan returned to the car to bring back a picnic basket. There was nothing more she could do until the officials arrived in three or so hours and in the interim she and Nathan may as well have a picnic in this beautiful region of the world where Randy Chen probably met his end.

  They were snacking on an antipasto salad, cheese, bread, and sparkling water when Nathan noticed a helicopter in the distance.

  “I hope that's the Carabinieri and not the boys from yesterday.”

  “Yeah, me too. We won't be lucky enough to survive a second attack by armed men.”

  They watched a helicopter with dark paint on the bottom and a white roof and tail get closer. Then they saw the words Carabinieri on it and relaxed a little. This was a friend. The helicopter moved off and having watched the operation yesterday when they took the injured man with them, they knew the helicopter would have to land in a place that was about a ten-minute walk away. They proceeded to pack up their picnic so it was ready to go back to their rental car.