"Yes," Rhyme said. "To find out where he was when he was at dinner."
"Precisely. They will let me know soon."
Sachs asked, "What does he have to say?"
"He remembers very little. He believes he was blindfolded much of the time. He awoke in the reservoir and his kidnapper was gone."
Unsmiling Beatrice--as womanly round as a Botticelli model--walked from the laboratory to the situation room.
"Ecco." She held up a few printouts.
Ercole picked up a Sharpie and stepped to the board. She shook her head, adamantly, and took the marker from his hand. She glanced at Rossi and spoke.
Ercole frowned, while Rossi laughed. He explained, "She has said the Forestry officer's handwriting is not the best. He will read the results of the Scientific Police's analysis in English and she will write it on our chart. He will assist her in translation."
As the man read from the sheets, the woman's stubby fingers skittered over the pad on the easel in, yes, it was true, quite elegant handwriting.
"The Composer" Kidnapping, Viale Margherita, 22, Naples
--Site: Roman aqueduct reservoir.
--Victim: Ali Maziq. --Refugee, temporarily housed at Paradise Hotel, Naples.
--Minor injuries to neck and throat from strangulation.
--Minor dehydration.
--Disorientation and memory loss from drugs and lack of oxygen.
--Trace from clothing of Victim: --Variant of drug, amobarbital.
--Residue of liquid chloroform.
--Clay-based dirt, source unknown.
--Footprints: --Victim's.
--Converse Cons, Size 45, same as at other scenes.
--Bottle, containing water. No source determined.
--Nokia phone, prepaid mobile (sent to Postal Police for analysis), EID number indicates bought for cash two days ago at tobacco store on Viale Emanuele. Phone short-circuited in water spill upon entry to site. SIM card revealed five calls earlier in day from one number, prepaid, no longer active. --DNA on phone (sweat, most likely). --Matches that of Composer.
--Trace of olanzapine, antipsychotic drug.
--Small amount of sodium chloride, propylene glycol, mineral oil, glyceryl monostearate, polyoxyethelene stearate, stearyl alcohol, calcium chloride, potassium chloride, methylparaben, butylparaben.
--Duct tape. No source determined.
--Cotton cloth, used as gag. No source determined.
--Noose, made of two musical instrument strings, E string for double-bass instrument. Similar to noose from crime scene in New York used on victim Robert Ellis.
--Bucket, common. No source determined.
--Lock and hasp, barring front door. Common. No source determined.
--Wooden rod, improvised gallows. Common. No source determined.
--No fingerprints, other than Victim's. Smudge marks suggest latex gloves.
--Related: Uploaded video on NowChat video posting service, four minutes, three seconds, depicting Victim, noose. Music playing: "Waltz of the Flowers" from The Nutcracker and human gasping (possibly Victim's). --Postal Police attempting to trace upload, but use of proxies and virtual private networks is slowing search.
Beatrice then taped up a dozen crime scene photographs of the water reservoir where Maziq had been held, as well as the entryway to the old building, the aqueduct and the musty brick basement.
Ercole stared at the pictures of the reservoir, which seemed to depict a medieval torture chamber. "A grim place."
Rhyme said nothing to the Forestry officer but scanned the chart. "Well, I mentioned crazy. I didn't see how right I was."
"What is that you mean, Captain Rhyme?"
"You see the sodium chloride, propylene glycol and so on?"
"Yes. What is that?"
"Electroconductive jelly. It's applied to the skin for electroconvulsive shock treatments for psychotics. Rare nowadays."
"Could the Composer be seeing a mental doctor here?" Ercole asked. "For those treatments?"
"No, no," Rhyme said. "The procedure takes time in the hospital. It's probably from the same place where the Composer got the antipsychotic drug: a U.S. hospital. He's functioning well enough, so I'd guess he had the treatment a few days before the New York attack. And what's amobarbital? Another antipsychotic?"
Sachs said, "I'll check the NYPD database." A moment later she reported, "It's a fast-acting sedative to combat panic attacks. It was developed a hundred years ago in Germany as a truth serum--it didn't work for that but doctors found it had a side effect of quickly calming agitated or aggressive subjects."
Many bipolar and schizophrenic patients, Rhyme knew from past cases, were often racked with anxiety.
Another figure stepped slowly into the doorway. It was Dante Spiro, who scanned everyone with an expressionless face.
"Procuratore," Ercole said.
The prosecutor cocked his head and wrote something in his leather-bound book.
For some reason, Ercole Benelli witnessed this with concern, Rhyme noted.
Spiro slipped the book away and reviewed the evidence chart. He said only, "English. Ah."
Then he turned to Sachs and Rhyme. "Now. Your involvement in this case is to be limited to these four walls. Are you in agreement, Inspector?" A nod toward Rossi.
"Of course. Yes."
"Mr. Rhyme, you are here by our grace. You have no authority to investigate a crime in this country. Your contributions to analyzing the evidence will be appreciated, if they prove helpful. As they have, and I acknowledge that. And any thoughts you might have about the Composer's frame of mind will be taken into account too. But beyond that, no. Am I understood?"
"Perfectly," Rhyme muttered.
"Now one more thing I wish to say. On a subject that has been raised before. Extradition. You have lost jurisdiction over the Composer and his crimes in America, while we have gained it. You will wish to try for extradition but I will fight it most strenuously." He eyed them for a moment. "Let me please give you a lesson in the law, Mr. Rhyme and Detective Sachs. Imagine a town in Italy called Cioccie del Lupo. The name is a joke, you see. It's not a real place. It means Wolf Tits."
"Romulus and Remus, the founding of Rome myth," Rhyme said. His voice was bored because he was bored. He stared at the newsprint pads on the easel.
Ercole said, "The twins, suckling on a wolf."
Rhyme corrected, absently, "The female suckles, the baby sucks."
"Oh. I didn't--"
Spiro cut Ercole short with a glare and continued to Rhyme: "The legal lesson is this: Lawyers from America do not win cases in Cioccie del Lupo. Lawyers from Cioccie del Lupo win cases in Cioccie de Lupo. And you are Americans firmly in the city center of Cioccie del Lupo at the moment. You will not win an extradition, so it will be better for you if that thought vanishes from your mind."
Rhyme said, "Maybe we should concentrate on catching him. Don't you think?"
Spiro said nothing but slowly withdrew his phone and sent a text or email.
Rossi stirred a bit, uneasy at the exchange.
Ercole said, "Procuratore, Inspector, I have a thought and I would like to pursue it."
After a moment Spiro put his phone away and lifted an eyebrow toward the young man. "Si?"
"We should set up surveillance at the place where we found Maziq. The entrance to the aqueduct."
"Surveillance?"
"Yes. Of course." Ercole was smiling at Spiro's apparent inability to see what was obvious to him. "There has been no press announcement. The police have left the area. There is tape on the door, but you must get close to see that. He might return to the scene of the crime and when he gets within the area, slap! We can arrest him. When I was there I noted hiding places across the street where one could remain concealed."
"You don't think that would be a waste of our resources--which we know are more limited than I would hope for."
Another grin. "Not at all. Waste? How do you see that?"
Spiro flung his arm in th
e air. "Why do I even bother? Is that what you do in the woods, as a Forestry officer? Disguise yourself as a stag, a bear? And wait for a poacher?"
"I just was..." Then Italian trickled from his mouth.
Rhyme glanced at the doorway and noted that another officer stood in the hallway, watching the exchange. He was a handsome young man, dressed quite stylishly. He was studying Ercole's blushing face with a neutral expression.
"I simply thought it made sense, sir."
Rhyme decided to end the mystery. "He will not be back."
"No?"
"No," Spiro said. "Tell him why, Mr. Rhyme."
"Because of the water that spilled when you and Sachs opened the door."
"I do not understand."
"Do you see what the water drenched?"
Ercole looked toward the pictures. "The phone."
"The Composer set up the table and the items on it very carefully. Anyone opening the door--especially quickly--would knock the bottle of water over, shorting out the phone."
Ercole closed his eyes briefly. "Yes, of course. The Composer would call every fifteen minutes or so and as long as the mobile rang he knew no one was there. When he called and it was dead, he would realize that someone had breached the door. And it was unsafe to return. So simple, yet I missed it."
Spiro cast a glance down his nose at Ercole. Then he asked, "Where is Maziq now?"
"A protective cell," Rossi said. "Here."
"Forestry Officer," Spiro said.
"Yes, sir?"
"Make yourself useful and find our Arabic-speaking officer. I am interested in that substance, the electroconductive gel."
"Allora..." Ercole fell silent.
"What do you wish to say?"
The officer cleared his throat.
Rhyme broke in again. "Our supposition was that it was from the Composer. He's taking antipsychotic drugs, so we assumed he'd undergone ECS treatment."
Spiro replied, "That is logical. But it's not impossible that Maziq was being treated in Libya for a condition. And I would like to eliminate that as a possibility."
Rhyme nodded, for it was a theory that he had not considered, and it was a valid one.
"Si, Procuratore."
"And that other substance, amobarbital?" Spiro gazed at the chart.
Sachs told him it was a sedative the Composer took to ward off panic attacks.
"See if Maziq has ever taken that too."
"I will go now," Ercole said.
"Then go."
After he'd left, Rhyme said, "Prosecutor Spiro. It's rare that someone knows the raw ingredients of electroconductive gel." Rhyme had concluded that's what the ingredients were, before the prosecutor had arrived.
"Is it?" Spiro asked absently. His eyes were on the chart. "We learn many things in this curious business of ours, don't we?"
Stepping outside the situation room, Ercole Benelli nearly ran directly into Silvio De Carlo, Rossi's favorite boy.
The Stylista, the Fashionista of the Police of State.
Mamma mia. And now I will endure the comments.
Will De Carlo snidely remark on my mopping up spilled mineral water too, or just the most recent dressing-down by Spiro?
More Forestry Corps comments?
Zucchini Cop. Pig Cop...
Ercole thought for a moment about walking past the young man, who was again dressed in clothing that Ercole not only couldn't afford but wouldn't have had the taste to select, even if he'd been given the run of a Ferragamo warehouse. But then he decided, No. No running. As when he was young and boys would torment him about his gangly build and clumsiness at sports he'd learned that it was best to confront them, even if you ended up with a bloody nose or split lip.
He looked De Carlo in the eye. "Silvio."
"Ercole."
"Your cases going well?"
But the assistant inspector wasn't interested in small talk. He looked past Ercole and up and down the corridor. His rich brown eyes settled on the Forestry officer once more. He said, "You have been lucky."
"Lucky?"
"With Dante Spiro. The offenses you have committed..."
Offenses?
"...have not been so serious. He might have cut your legs out from underneath you. Stuck you like a pig."
Ah, a reference to the Forestry Corps.
De Carlo continued, "Yet you received what amounted to a slap with a glove."
Ercole said nothing but waited for the insult, the sneer, the condescension, not knowing what form it might take.
How would he respond?
It hardly mattered; whatever he said it would backfire. He would make a buffoon of himself. As always with the Silvio De Carlos of the world.
But then the officer continued, "If you want to survive this experience, if you want to move from Forestry into Police of State, as I suspect you do--and this might be your only opportunity--you must learn how to work with Dante Spiro. Do you swim, Ercole?"
"I...yes."
"In the sea?"
"Of course."
They were in Naples. Every boy could swim in the sea.
De Carlo said, "So you know riptides. You never fight them, because you can't win. You let them take you where they will and then, slowly, gently you swim diagonally back to shore. Dante Spiro is a riptide. With Spiro, you never fight him. That is to say, contradict him. You never question him. You agree. You suggest he is brilliant. If you have an idea that you feel must be pursued and is at odds with him then you must find a way to achieve your goal obliquely. Either in a way that he can't learn about, or one that seems--seems, mind you--compatible with his thinking. Do you understand?"
Ercole did understand the words but he would need time to translate them to practical effect. This was a very different way of policing than he was used to.
For the moment he said, "Yes, I do."
"Good. Fortunately, you're under the wing of a kinder--and equally talented--man. Massimo Rossi will protect you to the extent he can. He and Spiro are peers and respect each other. But he can't save you if you fling yourself into the lion's mouth. As you seem inclined to do."
"Thank you for this."
"Yes." De Carlo turned and started to walk away then looked back. "Your shirt."
Ercole looked down at the cream-colored shirt he had pulled on this morning beneath his gray uniform jacket. He hadn't realized the jacket was unzipped.
"Armani? Or one of his proteges perhaps?" De Carlo asked.
"I dressed quickly. I don't know the label, I'm afraid."
"Ah, well, it is quite fine."
Ercole could tell that these words were not ironic and that De Carlo truly admired the shirt.
He offered his thanks. Pointedly he did not add that the shirt had been stitched together not in Milan but in a Vietnamese factory and was sold not in a boutique in the chic Vomero district of Naples but from a cart on the rough and rugged avenue known as the Spaccanapoli by an Albanian vendor. The negotiated price was four euros.
They shook hands and the assistant inspector wandered off, pulling an iPhone, in a stylish case, from a stylish back pocket.
Chapter 21
Not in Kansas anymore.
Walking down the residential portion of this Neapolitan street--dinnertime and therefore not so crowded--Garry Soames thought of this cliched line from The Wizard of Oz. And then he whispered it aloud, glancing at a young brunette, long, long hair, long legs, conversing on a cell phone, passing by. It was a certain type of look, and she returned it in a certain way, eyes not exactly lingering, but remaining upon his sculpted Midwest American face a fraction of a second longer than a phone talker would do otherwise.
Then the woman, the epitome of southern Italian elan, and her swaying, sexy stride, were gone.
Damn. Nice.
Garry continued on. His eyes then slipped to two more young women, chatting, dressed as sharply--and as tactically--as any hot girl on the Upper East Side in Manhattan.
Unlike Woman One, a moment ago, th
ey both ignored him but Garry didn't care. He was in a very good mood. And what twenty-three-year-old wouldn't be, having exchanged his home state of Missouri (sorta, kinda like Kansas) for Italy (Oz without the flying monkeys)?
The athletic young man--built like a running back--hitched his heavy backpack higher on his shoulder and turned the corner that would take him to his apartment on Corso Umberto I. His head hurt slightly--a bit too much Vermentino and (Heaven help him!) cheap grappa at his early supper a half hour ago.
But he'd earned it, finishing his class assignments early in the afternoon and then wandering the streets, practicing his Italian. Slowly, he was learning the language, which had at first seemed overwhelming, largely because of the concept of gender. Carpets were boys, tables were girls.
And accents! Just the other day he'd raised eyebrows and earned laughs when, at a restaurant, he'd ordered penises with tomato sauce; the word for male genitalia was dangerously close to penne, the pasta (and to the word for bread too).
Little by little, though, he was learning the language, learning the culture.
Poco a poco...
Feeling good, yes.
Though he would have to rein in the late-night parties. Too much drinking. Too many women. Well, no, that was an oxymoron; one could not have too many women. But one could have too many possessive and temperamental and needy women.
The kind that he, naturally, ended up bedding all too often.
Naples was far safer than parts of his hometown of St. Louis but instinct told him he probably shouldn't sleep over in strangers' apartments quite so much, waking to the girl, bleary-eyed, staring at him uncertainly, muttering things. Then asking him to leave.
Just control it, he told himself.
Thinking specifically of Valentina, a few weeks ago.
What was her last name?
Yes, Morelli. Valentina Morelli. Ah, such beautiful, sexy brown eyes...which had turned far less beautiful and far more chilling when he'd balked at what he'd apparently suggested as they lay in bed. It seemed he'd told her--thank you, Mr. Vino--that she could come to the United States with him, and they could see San Diego together. Or San Jose. Or somewhere.
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