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“Well, she doesn’t,” he said, trying not to sound belligerent. “She’s trying to find out every way she can, but she doesn’t.”
“What is Lily Parr’s relationship to you, Mr. Ranieri?”
Whee, haw. Who the fuck knew. “We met early this morning.”
“And you killed three men defending her? And you believe that she has no idea why they attacked her?”
He swallowed. “That’s correct.”
“She must be a very persuasive woman.”
Bruno cursed himself for making this call. “The forensic analysis of the scene will bear up everything that I say. Talk to the techs.”
“I usually do,” Petrie said. “In any case, you and Ms. Parr are urgently wanted for questioning. How soon can you get here?”
“I’m not sure,” he hedged. “Right now, I’m stranded with no vehicle. And I have to make sure Lily gets someplace safe first.”
“Did you not hear what I said, Mr. Ranieri? Ms. Parr is wanted for questioning, too. We can come and pick you up. Where are you?”
“Look, she did nothing! All she did was get attacked!”
“We’ll see,” Petrie said. “Mr. Ranieri, do you have a twin brother?”
The question took him by surprise. “No. Why?”
“No brothers at all?”
He squinted into the wind, which was whipping tears from his eyes and then threatening to freeze them. “No. None. What the hell?”
“You might be interested to know that until you called me just now, you were presumed dead.”
Bruno scowled in total bafflement, squinting as the icy wind whipped tears out of his eyes. “What? Dead? How? I never—”
“A man committed suicide this morning,” Petrie said. “He looked exactly like you. In fact, I suggest you call your great-aunt Rosa right away and tell her you’re alive, since I just got in touch with her and requested that she come down here to identify your body.”
Bruno jolted up to his feet. “What thefuck?”
“Hey, mistakes happen when you flee the scene of a triple homicide,” Petri said. “Call her, please. She’s upset.”
“It’s not a triple homicide!” Bruno protested. “I didn’t commit a crime! I just prevented them from killing us!”
“Yes, of course,” Petrie said. “Call your aunt, and then come in, and tell us all about it. You’ll probably need to give us a blood sample, too, so we can rule you out—”
“You guys already have one,” Bruno said. “From some stuff that happened last year.”
Petrie was silent for a moment. “I see. And might this situation have any connection to what happened last year?“
“Absolutely not,” he said. “No chance in hell.”
“Huh. You have a really eventful life, Mr. Ranieri. And I want to talk about this all further. Come on in, soon. And please keep in mind. The longer I wait, the worse your prospects become.”
“I can’t do that right now,” Bruno said. “I’m truly sorry. I’m not doing this to make trouble for you. I’ll be in touch.”
He broke the connection, and dropped his face into his hands. It was snowballing. A dead look-alike suicide, a hysterical Zia Rosa. And staying square with the law and trying to help Lily Parr seemed to be mutually exclusive. He didn’t relish the thought of life as a fugitive. Much less did he relish the thought of life in prison.
He had to call Zia, but that was going to be an emotionally punishing yell-fest. He was too rattled to face it, at least for another minute or two. Sean, next. He pulled out the phone Alex had given him, enabled the encryptation function, dialed.
“About goddamn time,” Sean said tersely. “What the fuck is going on? With this cop, calling to tell Zia Rosa that you blew your brains out? She practically had a stroke on us, man! It was ugly!”
