Black Run. Antonio Manzini

      Schiavone took a breath. What a fucked-­up place to come die in.

      “Italo, explain something to me. How could it be that no one saw a dead body lying in the middle of the piste? I mean, weren’t there skiers on that run?”

      “No, Commissario,” Pierron said, then corrected himself. “Excuse me, Deputy Police Chief. They found him in the woods, right in the middle of a road they use as a shortcut. No one takes that road. Except for the snowcats.”

      “Ah. Understood. But who would go bury a body way up there?”

      “That’s what you’re going to have to find out,” Pierron concluded, with a naive smile.

      The noise of a jackhammer filled the cold, crisp air. But it wasn’t a jackhammer at all. The snowcat had arrived. It stopped at the base of the cableway with the engine running, dense smoke pouring out the exhaust pipe.

      “So that’s the cat, right?” asked Rocco. He’d seen that kind of thing only in movies or documentaries about Alaska.

      “That’s right. And now it’s going to take us up, Commissario! Deputy Police Chief, I meant to say.”

      “Listen, just do this—­you’re not going to wrap your head around it no matter how hard you try. Call me whatever you want, I don’t give a damn anyway. Plus,” Rocco went on, looking at the treaded vehicle, “why do they call it a cat if it looks more like a tank?”

      Italo Pierron limited himself to a shrug in response.

      “Well, okay, let’s get aboard this cat. Come on!”

      The deputy police chief looked down at his feet. His Clarks desert boots were dripping wet, the suede was drenched, and his feet were starting to get wet, too.

      “Dottore, I told you to buy a pair of suitable shoes.”

      “Pierron, stop busting my balls. I’m not putting on a pair of those cement mixers you ­people wear on your feet—­not as long as I’m still breathing.”

      They set off through snow piles and potholes created by the skiers’ power slides and oversteers. The snowcat, with the lights mounted on the roof, standing motionless in the middle of the snow, looked like a giant mechanical insect poised to seize its prey.

      “Here, Dottore, step up on the tread and get in,” shouted the snowcat driver from inside the Plexiglas cabin.

      Rocco obeyed. He took a seat inside the cabin, followed immediately by Pierron. The driver shut the door and pushed the gearshift forward.

      Rocco caught a whiff of alcohol mixed with sweat.

      “I’m Luigi Bionaz, and I’m in charge of the snowcats up here in Champoluc,” said the driver.

      Rocco just looked at him. The guy had a ­couple of days’ whiskers, and his eyes were lit up with an alcoholic gleam. “Luigi, are you okay?”

      “Why?”

      “Because before I go anywhere in this contraption, I want to know if you’re drunk.”

      Luigi looked at him, his eyes as big as the snowcat’s headlights. “Me?”

      “I don’t give a damn if you drink or smoke hash. But the one thing I don’t want is to be killed in this thing up at an elevation of five thousand feet.”

      “No, Dottore, everything’s fine. I only drink at night. The odor you smell is probably from some youngster who used the vehicle earlier this afternoon.”

      “Of course it is,” said the deputy police chief skeptically. “Fine. Come on, let’s get going.”

      The snowcat made its way up the steep ski slope. Illuminated by the headlights, Rocco saw a wall of snow straight ahead of him, and he couldn’t believe that that pachyderm could successfully climb such a nearly vertical incline.

      “Hey, tell me something! We’re not about to go head over heels, are we?”

      “Don’t worry about a thing, Dottore. These behemoths can climb slopes steeper than a forty percent grade.”

      They took a curve and found themselves in the middle of the woods. The blade-­like beam of the headlights lit up the soft blanket of snow and the black trunks of the trees that were suffocating the groomed run.

      “How wide is this piste?”

      “Fifty yards or so.”

      “And on a normal day, how many ­people come through here?”

      “That’s something we’ll have to ask at the head office. They know how many daily ski passes they sell. So we could get a count, but it might not be all that accurate.”

      The deputy police chief nodded. He stuck his hands in his pockets, pulled out a pair of leather gloves, and put them on. The run was veering to the right. Pierron said nothing. He was looking up, as if searching for an answer among the branches of the larches and firs.

      They went on climbing, accompanied only by the engine’s roar. At last, in a broad clearing, they saw the beams of the floodlights arranged around the site where the body had been found.

      The snowcat left the piste and cut through the woods. It bounced over a few tree roots and hummocks.

      “Listen, who found the body?” asked Rocco.

      “Amedeo Gunelli.”

      “Can I talk to him?”

      “Sure, Commissario, he’s down at the cableway station, waiting. He hasn’t really recovered yet,” Luigi Bionaz replied as he braked the snowcat to a halt. At last, he switched off the engine. The minute he set his shoes down on the snow, Deputy Police Chief Rocco Schiavone understood just how right his co-­worker had been to recommend he wear heavy boots with insulated soles, the kind of shoes that Rocco called cement mixers. Because they really did resemble a pair of cement mixers. The chill gnawed at the soles of his feet, which were already tingling from the cold, and the feeling jangled his nerves from heels to brain. He heaved a breath. The air was even thinner than it had been at the bottom of the hill. The temperature was well below freezing. The cartilage in his ears was pulsating and his nose was already dripping. Inspector Caterina Rispoli approached him, light-­footed.

      “Deputy Police Chief.”

      “Inspector.”

      “Casella and I went up to secure the location.”

      Rocco nodded. He looked at Inspector Rispoli’s face, which he could barely glimpse under the hat crammed down over her head. Her mascara and eyeliner were oozing down as if off a wax mask.

      “Stay here, Inspector.” Then he turned around. Far below, he could see the lights of the village. To his right was the snowcat that Amedeo had been driving, still parked in the middle of the woods where that poor devil had abandoned it hours ago.

      Walking through nearly knee-­deep snow, Rocco drew closer to the monster. He examined the front of the vehicle. He ran his hand over it, sized it up carefully, as if he were thinking of buying the thing. Then he squatted down and looked under the tracks, covered with fresh snow. He nodded a ­couple of times and headed over to the place where the body had been found.

      “What were you looking for, Dottore?” asked Italo, but the deputy police chief didn’t reply.

      A policeman with a pair of skis thrown over his shoulders came toward them, striding easily, even though he was wearing ski boots with stiff, heavy hooks. “Commissario! I’m Officer Caciuoppolo!”

      “Fuck, another native!”

      The young man smiled. “I secured the crime scene.”

      “Good for you, Caciuoppolo. But tell me, where did you learn to ski?”

      “At Roccaraso. My folks have a place there. Are you from Rome, Commissario?”

      “Yep,