Chapter 5 - THE SECOND AUTOPSY
By midnight, the mansion was empty.
Lorenzo allowed the guests to leave only after every phone and vehicle was quietly logged.
Marco left last.
He hugged Lorenzo at the door.
“You scared half of Albany tonight.”
Lorenzo gave a tired smile.
“Good.”
Marco studied him.
“What did the maid's child say?”
Lorenzo paused.
Then lied.
“She said Isabella was in heaven.”
Marco's shoulders relaxed almost invisibly.
Lorenzo noticed.
“Kids.”
Marco smiled.
“They hear adults talking.”
“Apparently.”
They shook hands.
Lorenzo watched Marco's car disappear through the gates.
Then he turned to Antonio.
“Open Isabella's grave.”
Antonio stared at him.
“Tonight?”
“Tonight.”
At two seventeen in the morning, Greenwood Cemetery became a crime scene no police department knew existed.
Only Lorenzo, Antonio, a trusted forensic pathologist named Dr. Evelyn Shaw, and six guards were present.
The coffin came up first.
Lorenzo did not look away.
Eight months earlier he had placed his hand on that lid and believed his life had ended.
Now the same coffin rested beneath portable floodlights.
Dr. Shaw opened it.
The remains inside were badly burned.
She worked silently for nearly an hour.
Then she removed her gloves.
“This isn't Isabella Conti.”
Lorenzo felt no surprise.
Only rage.
“How certain?”
“Ninety-nine percent from the preliminary examination.”
“She was five feet six.”
“These remains belonged to a woman roughly five feet three.”
“Age?”
“Late thirties to mid-forties.”
Isabella had been twenty-nine.
Dr. Shaw pointed toward the jaw.
“There are dental implants that don't match the records you gave me.”
Lorenzo looked at Antonio.
“The original autopsy?”
Antonio's face darkened.
“Signed by Dr. Harold Mercer.”
Lorenzo knew the name.
Mercer had disappeared four months ago.
People believed he had fled gambling debts.
Now Lorenzo knew better.
Dr. Shaw removed something from an evidence bag.
A silver swallow necklace.
The same necklace supposedly recovered with the body.
Lorenzo held the broken half Sophia had given him beside it.
The design was identical.
But the engraving wasn't.
Isabella's real necklace had a tiny letter L engraved beneath one wing.
The necklace from the coffin did not.
A counterfeit.
Lorenzo looked toward the second grave.
His daughter's empty coffin.
“Open it.”
Inside was exactly what he remembered.
A scorched blanket.
A tiny pink cap.
Twisted metal.
Dr. Shaw examined the cap.
“This wasn't exposed to the same fire as the wreckage.”
“How can you tell?”
“The fabric damage was chemically accelerated.”
Lorenzo's eyes hardened.
Someone had manufactured his child's funeral.
Every detail.
Every piece of evidence.
Every reason for him to stop looking.
Antonio's phone buzzed.
He answered.
His expression changed.
“What?”
Lorenzo watched him.
Antonio lowered the phone.
“Father Gabriel's name just appeared in a border database.”
Lorenzo stepped closer.
“Where?”
“He crossed from Canada into Vermont six days ago.”
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
Lorenzo's pulse surged.
“Find him.”
Antonio hesitated.
“There is something else.”
“What?”
“He wasn't alone.”
Antonio turned the phone around.
A grainy border-camera image showed an elderly priest.
Beside him stood a young woman carrying a little girl.
The woman wore sunglasses and a scarf around her face.
But Lorenzo recognized the shape of her posture.
The way she held her left shoulder slightly higher than the right.
A habit from an old horseback injury.
Lorenzo touched the screen.
“Isabella.”
May you like
And for the first time in eight months, Lorenzo DeLuca said her name not as a prayer for the dead.
But as the name of someone he intended to bring home.
