The Patience of the Spider Read Online Free Page A

meantimehe drank on the run, as the doorbell was already
ringing. Livia didnt even ask where he was going or why.
Shed opened the window and lay stretched out, arms over her
head, basking in the sunlight.
    In the car Gallo told the inspector what he knew about the situation.
The kidnapped girlsince there was no longer any
doubt that she had in fact been kidnappedwas named Susanna
Mistretta. A very pretty girl, she was enrolled at Palermo
University and getting ready to take her first exam. She lived
with her father and mother in a country villa about three miles
outside of town. That was where they were heading. About a
month earlier, Susanna had started going to a girlfriends house
in the early evening to study, usually driving home on her
moped around eight.
    The previous evening, when she didnt come home at the
usual time, her father had waited about an hour before calling
the girls friend, who told him that Susanna had left as usual
at eight oclock, give or take a couple of minutes. Then hed
phoned a boy whom his daughter considered her boyfriend,
and the kid seemed surprised, since hed seen Susanna in the
afternoon in Vig, before she went to study with her friend,
and the girl had told him she wouldnt be coming with him to
the movies that evening because she had to go home to study.
    At this point the father started to get worried. Hed tried
    reaching his daughter several times on her cell phone, but every
time the phone was turned off. At a certain point the home
phone rang, and the father rushed to pick up, thinking it was
Susanna. But it was the brother.
    Susanna has a brother?
    No, shes an only child.
    So, whose brother was it? Montalbano asked in exasperation.
Between Gallos speeding and the pothole-riven road
they were traveling on, his head was not only numb, but the
wound in his shoulder was throbbing.
    The brother in question was the brother of the father of
the kidnapped girl.
    Dont any of these people have names? asked the inspector,
losing patience, hoping that knowing their names might
help him follow the story a little better.
    Of course they do, why wouldnt they? Its just that nobody
told me what they are, said Gallo. He went on: Anyway,
the kidnapped girls fathers brother, whos a doctor
    Just call him the doctor uncle, Montalbano suggested.
    The doctor uncle had called to find out how his sister-in-
law was doing. That is, the kidnapped girls mother.
    Why? Is she sick?
    Yessir, Chief. Very sick.
    And so the father told the doctor uncle
    No, in this case you should say his brother.
    Anyway, the father told his brother that Susanna had disappeared
and asked him to come to the house to lend a hand with
his sick wife, to free him up so he could look for his daughter.
But the doctor had to take care of some obligations first, and it
was already past eleven when he arrived.
    The father then got in his car and very slowly retraced the
route that Susanna normally took to go home. At that hour in
winter there wasnt a soul to be seen anywhere, and very few
cars. He went back and forth along the same route a second
time, feeling more and more bereft of hope. At a certain point a
motorbike pulled up beside him. It was Susannas boyfriend,
who had phoned the villa and was told by the doctor uncle that
there still was no news. The kid told the father that he planned
to scour every street in Vig, to see if he could at least find Su-
sannas motorbike, which he knew well. The father retraced Su-
sannas route from her friends house to his own home four
more times, occasionally stopping to examine even the spots on
the pavement. But he seemed not to notice anything unusual.
By the time he gave up and went home, it was almost three
oclock in the morning. At this point he suggested that his doctor
brother phone all the hospitals in Vig and Montelusa,
telling them who he was. But they all answered in the negative,
which on the