Elena dropped the photo onto the table.
She didn't turn back. Instead, she slid next to Luca, invading his personal space until she brushed against him.
She felt him stiffen immediately. A trapped animal.
Elena leaned towards him, her lips a breath away from his ear.
«You see too much, Luca,» she whispered. A hiss barely audible, intended only for him. «You try to feel the pain, the terror. That's why you see nothing.»
His breath caught in his throat.
«It's... inefficient.»
She straightened up, leaving Luca in the void of that sentence.
«But this...»
Her voice rose, filling the room. She pointed to the photo of Judge Rossi.
«This is different.»
She looked Andrea in the eyes.
«Look at the stitching. It's irregular. The hand was trembling.»
She lifted her chin.
«There is anger here. Raw emotion. And this clashes with the other six murders.»
She turned towards Vittorio. She returned to his side, magnetized by his gravity. She brushed his arm.
«The other six were surgical. Cold,» she said, speaking to him, but making herself heard by everyone. «No emotion, no social message. Just... removal of clutter. Pure aesthetics.»
She pointed back to the photo with a sharp gesture.
«But this? Gold thread, the scales...» A grimace of disgust. «This screams morality. Corrupt judge punished. It's a lesson. A cheap sermon.»
She turned again towards Vittorio. Her eyes shone. I see you.
«The true killer doesn't punish. He doesn't teach,» she said, enunciating the words. «He creates.»
Pause.
«Whoever did this, instead, desperately wants to teach. He wants to add a moral meaning where there was no need.»
She squeezed his arm barely.
«It's not the same man, Andrea. It's a copycat who understood nothing of the original.»
Vittorio didn't look at the photos. He was looking at her.
Elena felt the weight of his burgundy gaze upon her, warm and heavy. There was no need for words: approval shone in his eyes like a silent trophy.
«A copycat who didn't understand the original,» he repeated. His deep voice vibrated in the air, transforming her analysis into absolute truth.
He shifted his eyes to Andrea.
«An accurate definition.»
Elena saw the muscles of Andrea's jaw contract.
Hit.
Her confidence annoyed him, threatened his authority.
The detective turned abruptly towards the photos, trying to regain control of the territory with facts, ignoring her again, pathetic.
«Fine,» he growled. «Vittorio, the victim is Judge Rossi. Corrupt. Cause of death: exsanguination.»
He pointed a stubby finger at the photo of the face.
«But look at the mouth. The wounds aren't compatible with a random assault. There is gold thread.»
Elena approached the table.
She didn't look at the photo with the clinical distance of an investigator. She looked at it with the disgust reserved for a forgery hanging in place of a Caravaggio.
«Gold thread...» she murmured.
She bent down. Hands behind her back.
«Crude,» she sentenced flatly. «Irregular stitches. Rushed.»
She made a face, straightening up.
«It's like watching someone trying to imitate a master using crayons. Banal.»
She turned towards Vittorio.
She ignored Andrea. On purpose.
Sniper.
Keep the scraps.
The world reduced itself to a straight line between her eyes and his dark ones.
«Do you see the irony?» she whispered.
He moved closer. Elena felt his heat invade her space.
«The Judge sold sentences for gold,» she said, tracing an imaginary line on the photo, but looking only at him. «And the killer sealed his mouth with the same coin.»
She smiled, but without joy.
«He made a metaphor literal. It's so... elementary.»
«These aren't precision wounds,» Vittorio said. His voice was deep, very close. «The hand was trembling.»
Elena nodded. Her hand found his arm. Her fingers pressed on the fabric, seeking the muscle, seeking the real man under the mask.
«It was shaking with rage, not concentration,» she confirmed. «He didn't want to sublimate him. He wanted to make him pay.»
She leaned in further, her breath brushing his neck.
«It's an act of social hatred, Vittorio. Brutal. Dirty.»
Her eyes locked onto his.
It's not you. You aren't dirty.
«Can you feel how desperate he was? How much he wanted to teach something?»
She squeezed his arm.
«It's almost touching... in its banality.»
Vittorio interlaced his fingers with hers. A forbidden contact, electric, under everyone's eyes.
He wasn't looking at the corpse. He was looking at her taking it apart.
He saw her. He saw that she knew. He saw that she understood.
«An elementary lesson,» he murmured, and for Elena it was like a caress. «A clumsy attempt to re-establish an ethical balance.»
He cast a scornful glance at the photo.
«Ink wasted on an editorial no one will read.»
Elena watched Andrea approach the table, passing a hand over his face.
She felt his desperate desire to make himself useful.
Poor thing. Fragile.
«Exsanguination. No trace of restraint.»
He couldn't do it. He could only look at the photos, shaking his head. He seemed to be looking for a logical handhold on a glass wall.
«The Judge didn't defend himself. Or he couldn't. There isn't a single sign of struggle.»
He turned towards Vittorio.
Again.
For the third time.
«It doesn't make sense, does it? A man who knows he is in danger... and doesn't fight?»
Elena shifted her gaze to Luca.
He had remained apart, hands buried in his pockets. His blue eyes were nailed to the photo of the bloodied scales. Elena saw him shiver.
Too much reality, Luca?
Elena remained silent, indulging the detective's desire to keep her out.
«The killer didn't desire a fight,» Vittorio said. His tone was calm, definitive.
Sexy.
Damn it, concentrate Elena.
«He wanted his submission. The victim had lost the right to judge.»
And then she felt his gaze settle on her.
An understanding that passed over the heads of the others.
«This is not a murder for aesthetics. It's a bureaucratic correction.»
Elena saw Serena's pathetic attempt to insinuate herself into a conversation from which she had been excluded since the introductions.
«A brutal correction, undoubtedly,» the assistant intervened. «But the teaching is more effective when the lesson is impressed with force. The symbology is clear. Perhaps too much.»
Andrea shook his head with a deep sigh.
Floundering.
Elena saw his gaze bounce desperately between the words he heard: Correction. Lesson. Symbology.
It was written on his face. He didn't understand.
He was wondering who the hell had imparted that lesson, but he didn't have the courage to ask.
It was so obvious. So slow.
Elena laughed. She couldn't hold it back.
A low, crystalline sound.
Andrea turned sharply towards her, offended by that discordant note in his bureaucratic requiem.
She turned towards Luca.
She invaded his space again, forcing him to step back imperceptibly. The young man's nostrils flared.
Like an animal smelling ozone before lightning strikes.
Elena felt Vittorio's attention shift onto her. The heat of his gaze on the nape of her neck, on the curve of her back.
Careful Elena. You are mine.
He was watching her.
And she knew it.
«You feel it, don't you?» she whispered to Luca. Voice low, intimate, cruel. «You are trying to tune into the killer's frequency. You are looking for greatness, vision...»
She shook her head.
«But there is too much static. Why?»
She leaned towards him. Her eyes became two black mirrors.
Speechless?
«Because you are listening to the wrong song. There is no genius here, Luca. There is only resentment.»
She pointed to the photos on the table without looking at them.
«The judge didn't defend himself because he didn't have the time. Look at the angle of the blood. He was struck from behind, at the jugular. A deep cut, lethal.»
She went back to staring Luca in the eyes.
«Everything else... the sewn mouth, the scales, the staging... was done afterwards.»
Elena saw understanding make its way painfully into her friend's gaze.
«The killer didn't kill to create something new. He killed to erase something old. And then he played at being an artist with a corpse.»
Click. Prometheus.
Arrogant.
Look at me, Luca. Do you see the difference between an amateur and a Master?
«Look for the little angry man,» she said, voice icy. «Not the omnipotent monster. This is the work of someone who feels small and wants to cast a big shadow.»
With a fluid movement, she broke eye contact.
She turned, leaving Luca in the void of that sentence.
And she returned towards Vittorio.
The transformation was immediate.
Elena let the mask of the judge fall. Her eyes, a moment before black mirrors, now shone with liquid heat.
She approached Vittorio.
So close that their fabrics touched. Her hand slid along the sleeve of his jacket, went down to the wrist, interlaced her fingers with his.
In front of everyone.
Look all you want.
«A bureaucratic correction,» she murmured at his ear. Tone vibrant, low. «You are right. There is no eroticism in these photos. There is only... accounting.»
She lifted her face towards him. Her eyes sought the dark abyss of the Lawyer's.
«It's almost offensive, don't you think?»
She moved even closer. Her lips brushed the lobe of his ear. The rest of the world vanished into indistinct background noise.
«Imagine the trembling hand sewing that mouth. The sweat. The fear of being discovered.»
Elena smelled Vittorio's scent covering the smell of the closed loft.
«There was no control. There was no music.»
Her fingers tightened on his.
«It's disappointing, isn't it?» she whispered. «All this staging for a message so... banal.»
She pressed her other hand on his chest, right over his heart. She felt the beat solid, rhythmic, under her palm.
Alive. Powerful.
«Take me away,» she said.
It wasn't a request. It was a statement of what was about to happen.
Her eyes pinned his.
«The show is second-rate. The sentence has been pronounced.»
Pause. A smile that promised something much more interesting than a corpse.
«This scene has nothing left to tell us.»