the two young men entered Peppinotto’s truck repair shop and they opened fire immediately as they walked through the door killing Peppinotto and the mechanic who works with him who must have been about thirty years old himself and also one of their customers a farmer who had just dropped in to have his tractor repaired because Peppinotto even though he worked mainly on trucks grew up in a farm family and was friends with plenty of the farmers who were friends of his father and they would drop by his repair shop if they had problems with their tractors or with other farm equipment they knew that he could help them out and one of these farmers poor guy happened to be standing there just as the killers walked through the front door there was also a young boy just twelve years old an apprentice who hid under a truck they found him after the first volley of shooting ended they let him go and told him not to say anything to anyone and in fact for two or three years this kid didn’t even leave his house and then he went far far away from my home town because he could never quite recover from the experience

these two killers went to the repair shop in the late afternoon it was a Thursday because it was on Friday that I got the phone call and they told me about these two guys going to the shop and how they killed Peppinotto and the other mechanic and the farmer too and I asked if I could get off work early and I rushed back to my apartment and packed my bags and took the train back home on Friday evening I was in Naples at the train station they came to pick me up and took me home on Sunday morning I went to my sister Tiziana’s house which had also been Peppinotto’s house he had set up his truck repair shop across the road that runs from the town to Villa Literno and all my relatives were there as well as my sister’s husband Antonio who is almost forty years old and he asked me if I would go with him to the morgue in Caserta where they had autopsied Peppinotto

in Caserta my brother in law and I went to the morgue we filled out all the documents and signed them and then we went in I don’t know if you have ever been in a morgue there’s a stench there that’s like what you smell in a butcher’s shop in the freezer the smell of frozen blood seeps in everywhere and stays with you after you leave it clings to your clothing and you can never get it off you I noticed it later after we left the morgue and I kept feeling that cold in my bones and the smell is the same smell that I would always smell on a friend of mine whose family has a butcher’s shop and who used to study at the university with me but would work half days at his father’s butcher’s shop he always reeked of that same smell and you couldn’t stand to be near him it’s a nauseating smell and at the same time a sensation of cold and frozen blood that seems to get everywhere it seems to get under your skin and into your bones