Adele paused for a moment. She’d been considering this ever since Robert had told her—why ask for her by name? Then again, over the past year or so, she had been making a bit of a name for herself in the agencies based on her closure record. For some reason, this didn’t give her the small surge of pride she would’ve expected. Rather, she felt a bout of nerves twisting in her belly.
“Interpol has been trying something new,” she said. “I’m just happy to be a part of it.”
“You flew in from Germany? Another case?”
Adele hesitated. “Not a case, no. I have family there.”
He continued driving through traffic, and then, in perfect German, he said, “Do you speak German too?”
She smiled at this and replied in the same language. “Yes, actually, I do. I’m surprised you do though.”
The corner of his lip turned up into a coy smile. Instead of addressing her assertion, he continued in German, “Perhaps the Vatican was right to call you in. We have already cleared out the tourists, and the docent who found the body is there, along with the custodian.” He transitioned back into English. “We’re headed there now.”
Adele was struck by how flawless his accent was. For a moment, she wondered if perhaps Agent Leoni had lived in other countries as well. For another moment, she thought of John, and his fumbling, stumbling way with any language other than French. There was nothing strained about the way Leoni spoke.
She shook her head and glanced out the window, watching the passing cars on the gray roads.
After they moved off the highway, away from the coast and through the flat farmland, they reached the circling stone walls of Vatican City. Leoni parked the vehicle in the Gran Melia and then they moved, walking along Via Del Fondamenta until they finally reached the rectangular brick building with six arched windows. The Sistine Chapel didn’t stand out like some gaudy attraction or fairground spectacle. Rather, it stood separate and resolute from the buildings around it, a thing demanding attention in and of itself—a snapshot into a bygone era. The large, archaic structure stretched into the sky, a solid foundation beneath the heavens. Adele couldn’t help but find herself staring much in the same way she felt tempted to do with Agent Leoni.
As she strolled slowly under the sunlight toward the chapel doors, feeling the gentle breeze against her cheeks and the warmth on her forehead, she couldn’t help but shake a memory.
A memory as a young girl. A memory of coming here before with her mother. It had been after the split. After they had left Germany. Her mother had been afraid that perhaps her daughter wouldn’t be given the full experience of family vacations, travel, and life experience. As a single parent, she had done everything to the max, desperately trying to make up for any holes that might’ve existed in her daughter’s life. They had traveled often, using their home in Paris as a launching platform.
Adele remembered the trip to the Sistine Chapel. She remembered an ice cream cone in her hand, the chill liquid dripping down her fingers. She remembered the tour guide, refusing to allow her entry until she washed her hands. She remembered her mother standing up for her, but eventually taking her daughter off into the washroom and clearing the melted ice cream from her fingers. She remembered a gentle kiss on her forehead, and a quick hug, as Adele had felt frustrated, humiliated. Her mother had made her feel protected, warm, though. She didn’t remember much of the Sistine Chapel at all from the trip. Strange that. The people, not the locations, stuck out most in her memories.
Now, as she moved with the handsome agent away from the parked car toward the Sistine Chapel, stray, loose pieces of gravel crunched underfoot, and her mind continued to wander back to that fateful day. She couldn’t remember exactly what her mother had looked like. Some of the memories were fading; even the beautiful memories ended up swirling, swirling, being dragged into a drain, unable to resist the gravitational pull of an even stronger recollection… Adele shivered now as images flashed.
Fingers sliced, a stitchwork of cuts and torturous marks up and down her mother’s body, discarded on the side of a jogging path in the park. Bleeding, bleeding, always bleeding.
“Agent Sharp?” said a quiet voice.
She blinked, the searing images disappearing for a moment. Adele glanced over toward where Agent Leoni stood. Once, she had likened John Renee to a James Bond villain. If that were true, then Leoni was like James Bond himself.
Expressionless and stoic for the most part, save a coy smile creeping across his lips as if he found something funny in all things, Leoni wore an immaculate suit, as if he were just stepping out of a dinner party, rather than onto a crime scene. He was, of course, impossibly handsome, with nothing out of place save the single superman curl of hair against his forehead.
He looked at her, the same little smile in the corner of his lips; they curved down for a moment as he studied her. “Are you all right? You look pale. If you need to stop to get some food, I don’t mind.”
She quickly shook her head, realizing her hand was trembling. She jammed her fingers into her pocket, and said, “I’m fine. Just get a little bit airsick. It’s not a big deal.”
“Of course not,” he said, curtly, looking away to spare her. Then, with careful strides, not quickly so she could keep up without jogging, he moved back toward the chapel, allowing her to gather herself, breathe a few times to clear her mind, and then follow.
She was grateful he was ignoring her for the moment. There was nothing Agent Leoni could offer her except, perhaps, a beautiful distraction from the memories and thoughts swirling through her brain.
Exhaling deeply, she entered through the museum’s entrance into the entry hall. The walls were lined with ornamental paintings in golden frames, and the halls were wide, leading toward the deeper portion of the structure and the heart of the chapel itself. Adele looked around, examining the nearest paintings for a moment—some of the frames were wider than she was tall.
No sooner had she entered than she spotted two police officers standing by a small table, with seats that looked to have been dragged in from porch seating. Two men were sitting at the table. One of them in neat, tidy blues, sitting closest to a mop bucket. She took this to be the custodian. The other had a golden name tag, and a twitchy disposition which he leveled on the police officers guarding them. The twitchy one with the golden name tag gnawed on the corner of his lip. He was a middle-aged man, with glasses and silver sideburns.
Adele stepped passed Leoni, approaching the table. “Good morning,” she said, softly. “My name is Agent Sharp. Are you Docent Vicente? Do you speak English?”
The man with the glasses looked at her, nervously, and nodded once. The custodian was staring past her. Clearly, Agent Leoni’s movie star good looks weren’t lost on everyone in the room.
She looked from the custodian to the docent. “I’m sorry for keeping you here for so long. I won’t waste any more of your time. Are you the one who found the body?”
The docent hesitated, then nodded once. “I do speak English,” he murmured. She supposed he would—given his role in guiding tours from all over. The man leaned back in the chair, eliciting a small, metallic creak from the seat. He sighed toward the cavernous ceiling and folded his trembling fingers in his lap. “I’ve been waiting for hours.”