Read Day of Confession for Free Online

him the opportunity to disprove it.” Anger and passion crept into Pio’s voice. “We could also ask him why he did what he did. And who else was involved. And if he had been trying to kill the pope…. Obviously we can’t do any of that….” Pio sat back, fingering his glass of mineral water, and Harry could see the emotion slowly fade.
    “Maybe we will find out we were wrong. But I don’t think so…. I’ve been around a long time, Mr. Addison, and this is about as close to the truth as you get. Especially when your prime suspect is dead.”
    Harry’s gaze shifted off, and the room became a blur. Until now he had been certain they were mistaken, that they had the wrong man, but this changed everything.
    “What about the bus…?” He looked back, his voice barely a whisper.
    “Whatever Communist faction was behind Parma’s murder, killing one of their own to shut him up?… The Mafia doing something else entirely?… A disgruntled bus company employee with access to, and knowledge of, explosives?… We don’t know, Mr. Addison. As I said, the bombing of the bus and the cardinal’s murder are separate investigations.”
    “When will all this be made public?”
    “Probably not while the investigation continues. After that we will, in all likelihood, defer to the Vatican.”
    Harry folded his hands in front of him and stared at the table. Emotions flooded. It was like being told you had an incurable disease. Disbelief and denial made no difference, the X rays, MRIs, and CT scans stared back from the wall just the same.
    Yet, for all of that—for all the evidence the police had presented, one solid piece stacked upon the another, they still had no absolute proof, as Pio had admitted. Moreover, no matter what he had told them about the substance of Danny’s phone message, only he had heard Danny’s voice. The fear and the anguish and the desperation. It was not the voice of a murderer crying out for mercy to the last bastion he knew, but of someone trapped in a terrible circumstance he could not escape.
    For some reason, and he didn’t know why, Harry felt closer to Danny now than he had since they were boys. Maybe it was because his brother had finally reached out to him. And maybe that was more important to Harry than he knew, because the realization of it had come not as a thought but as a rush of deep emotion, moving him to the point where he thought he might have to get up and leave the table. But he hadn’t, because in the next moment another realization had come: he wasn’t about to have Danny condemned to history as the man who had killed the cardinal vicar of Rome until the last stone had been turned and the proof was absolute and beyond any doubt whatsoever.
    “Mr. Addison, it will be another day at least, perhaps more, before the identification procedures are complete and your brother’s body can be released to you…. Will you be staying at the Hassler the entire time you are in Rome?”
    “Yes…”
    Pio took a card from his wallet and handed it to him. “I would appreciate it if you kept me informed of your movements. If you leave the city. If you go anywhere where it would be difficult for us to reach you.”
    Harry took the card and slipped it into his jacket pocket, then his eyes came back to Pio.
    “You won’t have any trouble finding me.”

7
    Euro Night Train, Geneva to Rome.
    Tuesday, July 7, 1:20 A.M .
    CARDINAL NICOLA MARSCIANO SAT IN THE dark, listening to the methodic click of the wheels as the train picked up speed, pushing southeast out of Milan toward Florence and then Rome. Outside, a faint moon touched the Italian countryside, bathing it in just enough light for him to know it was there. For a moment he thought of the Roman legions that had passed under the same moon centuries before. They were ghosts now, as one day he would be, his life, like theirs, scarcely a blip on the graph of time.
    Train 311 had left Geneva at eight-twenty-five the night before, had crossed the