Death and Judgment by Donna Leon

Author:Donna Leon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 1995-09-15T16:00:00+00:00

19

All thoughts of Signor Rondini, however, were wiped from Brunetti’s mind by the news that pulled him, half-shaved, from the bathroom the next morning. Ubaldo Lotto, the brother of Carlo Trevisan’s widow, had been found shot dead in his car, parked on a side road that led off the state highway between Mestre and Mogliano Veneto. He appeared to have been shot three times, at close range, apparently by someone who was sitting beside him in the front seat of his car.

The body had been discovered at about five that morning by a local resident who, his car slowed by the heavy mud formed by the night’s rain and by the large car parked at the side of the narrow road, had not liked what he had seen when he passed: the driver slumped over the steering wheel, the motor of the car still running. He had stopped, walked back to peer inside, and then, seeing the blood pooled on the front seat, had called the police. When they arrived, the police cordoned off the area and began to search for traces of the killer or killers. There were signs that another car had been parked behind Lotto’s, but the heavy autumn rain had washed away all hope of taking an impression of the tire tracks. The first policeman to open the door gagged at the smell of blood, fecal matter, and some heavy scent he took to be the victim’s aftershave, all blended together and exaggerated by the heater of the car, which had run at its highest setting during the hours Lotto lay across the steering wheel in his death’s embrace. Carefully, the crime scene crew examined the area around the car and then, when it had been towed to the police garage in Mestre, pored over the vehicle to extract and label fibers, hairs, and any other particles of matter that might provide information about the person who had sat on the front seat beside Lotto when he died.

The car had already been towed when Brunetti and Vianello, driven in a car from the Mestre police, arrived at the scene of the killing. From the backseat, all they saw was a narrow country lane and trees that still dripped with water, even though the rain had stopped at dawn. At the police garage, they saw a maroon Lancia sedan, its front seat covered with stains that were slowly turning the same color as the car. And at the morgue they met the man who had been called to identify the body and who turned out to be Salvatore Martucci, the surviving partner of Trevisan’s law firm. A flash from Vianello’s eyes and a slight nod in Martucci’s direction told Brunetti that this was the same lawyer Vianello had spoken to, the one who had displayed so little grief in the aftermath of Trevisan’s murder.

Though thin and wiry, Martucci was taller than most Southerners, and his hair, which he wore shorter than was the current style, was reddish

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