Garry struggled to his feet.
"You are saying nothing!" Artin whispered. "Silence, baby-cry." They turned and walked away quickly.
Garry stepped from the wall.
He saw who'd just called to him. It was the assistant director of the prison, a narrow, balding man who wore the uniform of the Penitentiary Police. It was perfectly pressed.
Garry joined the man in front of the doorway.
"You are well? What has happened?" He was regarding Garry's gray, grass-stained jumpsuit.
"I fell."
"Ah, fell. I see." He didn't believe him, but in prison--even in this short period of time, Garry had learned--the authorities don't question what they choose not to question.
"Si?" Garry asked.
"Signor Soames, I have for you good news. The prosecutor in your case has just called and informed me that the true attacker has been identified. He has applied to a magistrate that you be released."
Breathlessly, Garry asked, "For sure?"
"Yes, yes, he is certain. The documents for release have not been signed yet but that will happen soon."
Garry looked back at the doorway to his cell wing, thinking of the two Albanians. "Do you want me to wait in my cell?"
The assistant director debated a moment looking over Garry's torn sleeve. "No, I think that's not necessary. Come into the administrative wing. You can wait in my office. I will bring for you caffe."
Now the tears came. And came in earnest.
Chapter 54
The team had assembled in the situation room near the lab on the ground floor of the Questura.
Sachs and Flying Squad officer Daniela Canton had brought the evidence collected at the farmhouse near the organic fertilizer farm, and Beatrice Renza was completing her analysis. The evidence was here too from the factory in Naples, which had been dubbed by Daniela's partner, Giovanni Schiller, Il Casa dei Ratti.
Spiro stood in the corner of the room, arms crossed. "Where is Ercole?"
Sachs explained that she'd sent him on another assignment; he would be back soon.
Rossi was on the telephone and when he disconnected, he explained that he had located the owner of the farmhouse, who'd rented the place to the Composer. He lived in Rome and had driven to Naples to meet an American, who had given his name as Tim Smith, from Florida. The owner confirmed he resembled the composite picture of the kidnapper. He'd paid cash for two months plus a bonus.
"A bonus," Rossi said with a wink in his voice, "for riservatezza. Discretion, you would say. That's not what the landlord said but it was what I understood. He supposed the man wanted a place for his mistress. He didn't suspect a crime, he insisted. Of course he did but he hardly cared."
The landlord had told Rossi he had none of the cash left--hence, no fingerprint possibility--but he did have a thought about the make of the man's car. Though the renter had parked out of sight, the landlord had coincidentally driven off the main road to get to a restaurant outside town and gotten a look at an old dark-blue Mercedes. A quick search confirmed that the Michelin tire size was compatible with older Mercedes. Rossi put the notice out to all law enforcement agencies to look for such a sedan.
Farmhouse Outside of Caiazzo
--Dell Inspiron computer. --Passcode-protected, sent to Postal Police.
--Western Digital, 1 TB drive. --Passcode-protected, sent to Postal Police.
--Browning AB3 rifle, caliber: Winchester .270. --Serial number indicates stolen three years ago, private residence in Bari, probably sold on the underground market.
--Box of 23 Winchester .270 cartridges, two empty brass shells.
--Ballistics indicate same weapons used to fire at American detective Amelia Sachs and Officer Ercole Benelli at Capodichino refugee camp.
--Six E-note bass strings, one tied in a noose.
--Drives an older-model, dark-blue Mercedes.
--Four tire treads in driveway. --Michelin 205/55R16 91H (same as earlier scene), probably from the Mercedes.
--Pirelli model 6000 185/70R15.
--Pirelli P4 P215/60R15.
--Continental 195/65R15.
--Various items of clothing, some suspect's, some from victims (see inventory). --Unable to trace purchase.
--Various items of toiletries (see inventory). --Unable to trace purchase.
--Food (see inventory). --Unable to trace purchase.
--Fodor's guide to Italy. --Unable to trace purchase.
--Berlitz Italian phrase book. --Unable to trace purchase.
--List of victims, personal details, locations where they were to be held for videoing. (printout). --Ali Maziq.
--Malek Dadi.
--Khaled Jabril.
--Additional traces of olanzapine and amobarbital.
--Friction ridges: --Only the victims'. --Ali Maziq.
--Khaled Jabril.
--Areas in house seem to have been swept, alcohol used.
--Latex glove marks revealed throughout.
--Two dozen footprints, not matching any earlier. --Size 71/2 (m)/9 (f)/40 (European), leather sole.
--Size 101/2 (m)/13 (f)/45 (European), unknown running shoe, well worn.
--Size 9 (m)/101/2 (f)/43 (European), unknown style, probably hiking boot or running shoe.
--Converse Cons, as before--The Composer's.
--Three others of indistinct size, two plain leather soles, one Rocky Lakeland hiking boot.
"Why all the footprints?" Spiro wondered aloud.
Rossi: "Some possible tenants looking at the rental, I would assume. And the victims. The Composer kept them there until he was ready to make his video. They might have walked to and from the car--even if they can't remember it now."
Rhyme sighed. "I hope one of those prints isn't another vic. Just because a name wasn't on the list doesn't mean he hasn't taken somebody else."
Beatrice said, "It is so extremely curious, no fingerprints. None at all, excepting for the victims'. It is as if, as you say, Captain Rhyme, he wears the gloves in his sleep."
Spiro scowled. "He makes it difficult at every turn."
"Oh, no," Rhyme said, "the absence of fingerprints is very good for us. Isn't it, Sachs?"
She was staring at the chart. "Uh-hum."
"How do you mean?" Rossi asked.
There was a voice in the doorway, "Ciao." From Ercole Benelli, carting a trash bag with him.
Noting the Forestry officer was smiling at her, Sachs said, "Here's the answer to your question, Inspector."
Rhyme explained, "We had a case a few years ago. A professional hit man. We found his hidey-hole and there wasn't a single print. He wore gloves all the time. But that meant he had to dispose of those gloves frequently--since, of course, they retain prints inside the fingers perfectly. He was unlucky enough to throw them out in a refuse bin two blocks from his place. We found them. We identified him. We caught him. I suspect that's where Officer Benelli has been, searching trash bins."
"Yes, yes, Capitano Rhyme." He lifted the green plastic bag. "I found this in a bin behind an IP station--a petrol station--on the road between Caiazzo and Naples. I'm afraid I wasn't successful as regards the gloves."
He lifted three metal paint cans out of the bag and carefully set them on the table. Rhyme took one sniff and, smelling the astringent scent, scowled. "Methyl isobutyl ketone."
"What is that?" Rossi asked.
In slow English, Beatrice answered. "It is being a solvent. Particular effective in melting latex."
"Yes," Rhyme said.
Ercole said, "There is simply a blue mess, sludge, you say? In the bottom. The gloves have dissolved."
Spiro regarded the Forestry officer. "But you don't look as upset as you might, given the news you have delivered. Are you being oblique intentionally? Do not be coy. Explain."
"Yes, Procuratore. The trash bin that these cans were in had a lid on it, and I found no glove prints on the lid but some fingerprints. From, I hope, where he opened the bin to deposit the cans, never thinking we wou
ld find them." He produced an SD card and handed it to Beatrice. She sat at the computer and called up the images. Ercole had used fingerprint powder--an old standby--to raise the images. They were all partials, some better than others.
Rhyme could see, however, they were not enough for an identification.
But he turned to Beatrice, who nodded knowingly. She had anticipated him. She typed at the keyboard and a moment later another print appeared, in a separate screen, beside the partials from the trash bin. They were the Composer's other prints, pulled from the leaves on the branch where he'd spied on Ali Maziq at dinner the night he was kidnapped at the bus stop.
"This might be a moment or several." She began playing Rubik's Cube with the two sets of prints, trying to place them together, enlarging and shrinking, rotating them, moving them from side to side. The room was silent, every eye on the screen.
She adjusted her elaborate, green-framed glasses, studying it carefully. She spoke in Italian.
Ercole said, "She believes this is the Composer's print, three partials combined into one nearly whole."
Beatrice began to type fast as a machine gun. She said something in Italian. Ercole turned to Rhyme and Sachs. "She has sent it already to Eurodac, Interpol, Scotland Yard, and IAFIS, in the United States." Beatrice sat back but kept her eyes focused like gun muzzles on the print.
Spiro was about to ask a question but Ercole said, "And I asked the owner of the station but he saw no one at the trash bin. And his employees did not either."
The prosecutor nodded with an expression that explained that this was to have been his question. He opened his mouth once more.
Ercole said, "And no CCTV."
"Ah."
After two excruciating minutes, a noise interrupted. A beep from Beatrice's computer. She bent to the screen and nodded.
"Ecco. Il Compositore."
She turned the monitor toward them.
The face of a bearded, shaggy-haired man was on the screen. It was a Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Sheriff's Office mug shot. He was pudgy and stared at the camera with piercing brown eyes.
Below was the text that accompanied the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System report. "His name is Stefan Merck, thirty years old. He's a mental patient, committed indefinitely for assault and attempted murder. He escaped from the hospital three weeks ago."
Chapter 55
Amelia Sachs, on her phone, turned back to the room and announced, "I've got the director of the mental hospital in Pennsylvania. She's Dr. Sandra Coyne. Doctor, you're on speaker."
"Yes, hello. Let me understand. You're in Italy? And this is about Stefan Merck?"
"That's right," Sachs said. And explained what her patient had been up to.
The woman reacted with silence, presumably stunned. Finally she spoke. "Oh, my," she said in a husky voice after a moment. "Those kidnappings in Naples. Yes, they made the news here. The stories said the crimes were modeled after one in New York, I think. But it never occurred to us that Stefan might be the one behind them."
Rhyme asked, "What's his diagnosis?"
"Schizophrenic personality, bipolar, severe anxiety disorder."
"How did he escape?"
"We're a medium-security facility. And Stefan had been on perfect behavior since he'd been here. He had grounds privileges and apparently some very careless landscapers left a shovel outside. He found it and dug under the chain link."
"He was committed for attempted murder?"
"At another facility, yes. He permanently injured him. He was found incompetent to stand trial."
Rossi said, "I am an investigator here, in Naples. Please, Doctor. How could he have paid for this, the trip? He has resources?"
"His mother died years ago, his father disappeared. There was some trust money and he's had some relatives visit recently, an aunt and uncle. They might have given him something."
"Can we get their names?" Sachs asked.
"Yes, I'll find them in the files." She took down Sachs's contact information and said she'd send the information as soon as they hung up.
"Is there anything you can think of," Sachs asked, "that might help us understand why he's doing this?"
After a pause, the woman said, "Stefan has his own reality. His world is a world of sounds and music. Nothing else matters to him. I'm sorry to say we don't have the money or authority to give patients like him access to what would help. In Stefan's case, instruments or the Internet. He's told me for years he's starved for sounds. He was never dangerous, never threatening, but something must have pushed him even further from reality." A pause, then she said, "You want to know the kind of person you're dealing with here? In one session he told his therapist he was very depressed. And why? Because he didn't have a recording of Jesus's crucifixion."
Those words resonated with Rhyme. He sometimes imagined walking the grid at famous historical crime scenes, using modern forensic techniques to analyze the crimes. Calvary was perhaps number one on his list.
Sachs asked, "Why Italy? Any connection here?"
"Nothing from his past. But I do know that just before he escaped, in one session, he kept referring to a special woman in his life."
"Someone with an Italian connection? Can we talk to her?"
A laugh. "That would be pretty difficult. It turned out he was referring to a three-thousand-year-old mythological being. Euterpe, one of the nine muses in Greek and Roman lore."
"The muse of music," Ercole said.
"Yes, that's right."
Sachs asked if there were any special foods he might eat, any special interests he had--anything that might help them find stores or places he would tend to go.
She could think of nothing, except to add the curious comment that Stefan didn't care about the taste of food. Only the sound of eating. He preferred crunchy foods to soft.
Hardly helpful, from an investigative perspective.
Rhyme asked if she had pictures of Stefan other than the mug shot.
"Yes, let me find them. Give me an email."
Rossi recited the address.
A moment later they appeared, a half-dozen images depicting a stout, intelligent-looking young man with perceptive eyes.
Spiro thanked her.
The woman added, "Please, obviously, he's suffered a break, a bad one. But until now, he's always been eminently reasonable. With these kidnappings, he's become dangerous. That's clear. But if you find him please, before you hurt him, just try to talk."
"We'll do our best," Sachs said.
Disconnecting the call, Rossi muttered, "Try to talk? To a man who didn't think twice about sniping at two officers?"
Spiro gazed at the pictures of the kidnapper. In a soft voice he said, "What are you up to, amico mio? How does your assault on these poor souls in New York and in Naples help you find comfort?"
Rhyme, with no interest in that question, was wheeling forward, examining the evidence chart.
Rossi spoke to Daniela Canton in Italian and she pounded the keys. He announced to the room, "I'm sending the pictures to our public information office. They will get them on our website and to the press. The images will go to the other law enforcement agencies too. Soon there will be a thousand officers looking for him."
Rhyme wheeled closer yet to the evidence charts, scanning them. Again and again. The process was like reading a classic novel--every time you pick up the book again, you find something new.
Hoping for some insight, the slightest nudge toward understanding.
But he was hardly prepared for the particular revelation that burst into his thoughts.
At first, he scowled. No, it couldn't be. There had to be a mistake. But then his eyes came to one entry and stopped abruptly. Eyes still on the easel, Rhyme asked in an edgy voice, "Does something up there strike anyone as odd?"
When those in the room looked toward him blankly, he added, "The tread marks and shoe prints."
Sachs barked a surprised laugh. "It doesn't make sense."
> "No, it doesn't. But there you have it."
Spiro understood next: "One of the shoe prints at the farmhouse is the same size as the shoe print at Garry Soames' apartment."
Ercole Benelli added, "And one of the auto treads, the Continental tire that I found at Garry's, is the same as one of those at the farmhouse. How can this be?"
Rhyme said, "Suggesting that the same person who broke into Garry's apartment was at the Composer's farmhouse."
"But Natalia Garelli broke into Garry's," Ercole said.
Rhyme turned to Spiro. "We assumed that. But we never asked her about it."
"You are right. We did not."
Sachs added, "And Natalia didn't blame Garry when we talked to her. She said he was innocent. She wanted the Serbs next door to take the fall."
Rossi touched his mustache and said, "It looks like you didn't cross-contaminate anything, Ercole, with the date-rape drug trace. The two scenes--Garry's apartment and the Composer's lair--are legitimately linked."
Spiro: "But how?"
Lincoln Rhyme said nothing. His attention was wholly on two evidence charts--not ones from Italy, but the first two, describing the scenes in New York.
213 East 86th Street, Manhattan
--Incident: Battery/kidnapping. --MO: Perp threw hood over head (dark, possibly cotton), drugs inside to induce unconsciousness.
--Victim: Robert Ellis. --Single, possibly lives with Sabrina Dillon, awaiting return call from her (on business in Japan).
--Residence in San Jose.
--Owner of small start-up, media buying firm.
--No criminal or national security file.
--Perpetrator: --Calls himself the Composer.
--White male.
--Age: 30 or so.
--Approximately six feet, plus or minus.
--Dark beard and hair, long.
--Weight: stocky.
--Wearing long-billed cap, dark.
--Dark clothing, casual.
--Shoes: --Likely Converse Cons, color unknown, size 101/2.
--Driving dark sedan, no tag, no make, no year.