CHAPTER THREE: CLOSURE
The clean-up crew paced in awe through the wrecked house, marveling at the diabolical ingenuity of the many traps that peppered its interior. While Henrietta's armor had enabled her to escape injury from the quadruple shotguns, the two Squadra Mobile officers who triggered the pit trap were not so fortunate. Seriously injured upon being snared, attending doctors at the hospital to which they had been evacuated nonetheless confirmed that they would recover. A bomb squad had successfully defused the massive explosive device that Sundown had attempted to detonate. This was the bomb with which the homicidal pair intended to bury by the roadside and blow up a school bus – a professionally built monstrosity with enough power to destroy a tank.
Hard on the heels of the army of police technicians was Enzo Spinelli, and he was livid. I gave you explicit orders to capture the murderers alive that we could investigate their links to terrorist organizations from which they almost certainly obtained their equipment, he fumed at Giuseppe, and your cyborg kills them both. What is the meaning of this? Giuseppe could only provide the fractured explanation that Henrietta gave him after he gently questioned her in spite of his own aggravation – that she felt an inexplicable surge of fear and revulsion upon encountering them and their foul work, and could only banish these feelings via wholesale extermination. She presently sat silently in a corner, hands trembling slightly and hot tears streaming down her face. But she was not crying, and nobody – not even Giuseppe – dared to approach her at this point.
Utterly mystified and still stung, Enzo made it clear to Giuseppe that friends though they were, he would be filing a complaint with Chief Lorenzo over what had taken place. But it was soon afterwards, as both men searched through the grisly contents of the killers' lair, that they would find answers and Enzo's viewpoint change drastically.
Among the bell jars filled with ghastly anatomical specimens, small mountains of contaminated needles (intended for mounting in theater seats), bomb-making materials, enormous caches of weapons and numerous tomes on black magic rituals and the occult, Giuseppe discovered a large, leather-bound ledger entitled Curriculum Mortis, filled to brimming with newspaper cuttings on the Nightfall and Sundown murders and gloating, graphic accounts of the crimes by the killers themselves. He was thunderstruck to learn that the pair had been responsible for numerous other unsolved deaths all over Italy prior to adopting the Nightfall and Sundown personas, including the cruel butchering of a Rome family of six that occurred three years ago. Enzo gasped upon reading the name of the sole survivor of that terrible incident, and a badly shaken Giuseppe put his finger to his lips as they moved back into the hall.
"Oh, well," said Enzo awkwardly, all the anger gone from him. "I suppose it'll save us the cost and trouble of putting the whoresons on trial." He patted Giuseppe on the shoulder and gave Henrietta a nod of acknowledgment. "Good job, you two."
Giuseppe tenderly helped his ward up and held her close. "Perhaps it was just as well that you did what you did, Henrietta," he said, voice quavering. "I'm proud of you."
And that was all she needed to hear. Henrietta, limp at first, returned the hug like she would never let go, and Giuseppe carried her to where Alphonso was waiting to take them home. Enzo stood at the door, staring at the van's taillights as it turned a corner and vanished from sight. He was left standing there for a very long time.
END OF CHAPTER THREE
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