Sachs asked, "Why was Garry implicated?"
"The police received an anonymous call that he seemed to have mixed something into the victim's wineglass. We haven't been able to find out who this person is. On the basis of that call, the police searched his flat and found traces of a date-rape drug. Like roofie?"
"I'm familiar," Rhyme said.
"And a blood test after the attack revealed that Frieda S. had the same drug in her bloodstream."
"The same drug? Molecularly identical? Or similar?"
"Yes, an important question, Signor Rhyme. But we don't know yet. The samples from his bedroom and in the victim's blood went to the main crime scene facility in Rome for full analysis."
"When will the results be back?"
"It might be weeks. Maybe longer."
Rhyme asked, "In Garry's bedroom? You said the police found trace. Was it pills?"
"No. The apartment was searched carefully. Just residue." The lawyer added, "And on the jacket from the party were traces of the victim's hair and DNA."
"They were making out," Charlotte McKenzie said. "Of course those were there. The date-rape drug, though, well, that's problematic."
Cinelli continued, "Then there was DNA found vaginally. Not Garry's DNA, though. Frieda had been with other men recently, she admitted. That might be the source. Her other partners will be tested too."
"DNA tests of the others at the party?"
"In progress." A pause, then she added, "I will say I have talked to a number of people--friends and fellow students of his. They report that Garry fancies himself quite the lover. He has apparently been with dozens of women--and he has been in Italy only a few months. He has no history of being, you might say, coercive. Or using date-rape drugs. But he has rather a large appetite sexually. And has bragged about his conquests. And there have been incidents where he was, let us say kindly, irritated when a woman rejected him."
"Irrelevant," Sachs said.
"No, I'm afraid it is not. Our trials, in Italy, are not as limited as in the U.S. Questions about character and prior behavior--whether or not criminal--are admissible and can, sometimes, be the pivotal factor in deciding innocence or guilt."
"Did they know each other before this?" Sachs asked. "Frieda and Garry."
"No. And she knew few others at the party. Only the host and hostess, Dev and Natalia."
"Would anyone have a motive to implicate him?"
"He said there was a woman who grew furious when he reneged on an offer to take her to America. A Valentina Morelli. She is from near Florence. She has not returned my calls. The police seem uninterested in her as a suspect."
"Where is the investigation now?" Rhyme asked.
"Just beginning. And it will take a long time. Trials in Italy can last for years."
It was the community liaison officer, Daryl Mulbry, who said, "The press are all over this. I'm getting requests for interviews every hour. And newspapers have already convicted him." A glance toward McKenzie. He said, "We want to push back with positive publicity, if you can find anything that even hints someone else was the attacker."
Rhyme had wondered what a PR officer was doing here. He supposed the court of public opinion was as universal as DNA and fingerprints. The first person to be hired by a rich criminal in the United States, after his lawyer, was a good spin doctor.
Sachs asked, "What's your opinion, Ms. Cinelli? You've talked to him. Is he innocent?"
"It is my opinion that he has exercised bad judgment in the past, living a life too lascivious and bragging about it. And he can have the arrogance of someone with charm and good looks. But I do believe he is innocent of this crime. Garry does not seem like a cruel boy. And someone who would knock out a woman and have relations with her is indisputably cruel."
"What do you want from us, specifically?" Rhyme asked.
McKenzie looked at Cinelli, who said, "A review of the evidence that has been gathered--the report, I mean. You cannot have access to the evidence itself. And, if possible, you might search the scenes again, to the extent you can. All we need is something to point to another suspect. Not a name necessarily, just the possibility that someone other than Garry committed the crime. To introduce reasonable doubt."
Mulbry said, "I'll get the buzz going in the media, and that might help get him released, pending trial."
McKenzie added, "The jail he is being held in is not a bad one. On the whole Italian prisons are rather decent. But he's charged with rape. Fellow prisoners despise those suspects nearly as much as child molesters. The Penitentiary Police are watching him but there have already been threats. A magistrate has the power to release him until trial, if he surrenders his passport, of course. Or to place him under house arrest. Or, frankly, if the evidence against him proves irrefutable, to allow him to plead guilty and work an arrangement for safe incarceration, so he may begin his sentence."
Sachs and Rhyme regarded each other.
Why now...?
He glanced into the lawyer's open briefcase and saw an Italian newspaper. He didn't need a translation of the headline to get the gist:
SOSPETTO DI VIOLENZA SESSUALE
Below that was a picture of an extremely handsome collegiate-looking blond man, flanked by police. A Midwestern frat boy. His face was an eerie mix of frightened and bewildered...and cocky.
Rhyme nodded. "All right. We'll do what we can. But our investigation for the serial kidnapper here takes priority."
"Yes, certainly," McKenzie said. Her face blossomed with gratitude.
"Grazie, thank you." From Cinelli.
Daryl Mulbry said, "About those interviews. Would you--?"
"No," Rhyme muttered.
Elena Cinelli nodded and offered, "I would recommend against publicly mentioning that Captain Rhyme and Detective Sachs are involved." To Rhyme, "You must be very discreet. For your own sake. The prosecutor handling the case against Garry is a brilliant man, that's not disputed, but he can be difficult and vindictive and he is cold as ice."
Sachs tossed a glance toward Rhyme, who asked the lawyer, "Is his name, by any chance, Dante Spiro?"
"Santo Cielo! How did you know?"
Chapter 27
When will it end? she thought.
And nearly smiled at the absurdity of that question.
It will never end.
This world, her world, was like that abstraction from mathematics class at boarding school so many years, so many lives ago: a Mobius strip, endless.
Rania Tasso, in a long gray skirt and high-necked long-sleeve blouse, strode to the front of the Capodichino Reception Center. At the moment buses, three of them, sat packed with men, women, children whose faces were dark--both of color and with uncertainty and fear.
Some of those visages were taut with sorrow, too. The weather in the Mediterranean had not been bad in the past week but the boats they had sailed on, from Tunisia and Libya, from Egypt and Morocco, much farther away, had been pathetically inadequate. Ancient inflatables, rickety wooden vessels, rafts meant for river transit. Often the "captain" was less competent than a cabdriver.
A number of these unfortunates had lost someone on the harrowing trip. Family, children, parents...and friends too, friends they had made on the journey. Someone in her employ at the camp (she couldn't recall who; people tended not to stay long in the business of asylum-seeking) had said the immigrants were like soldiers: people thrown together by impossible circumstance, struggling to complete their mission and often losing, in an instant, comrades to whom they'd become vitally attached.
Rania, the director of the Capodichino Reception Center, was giving orders, endlessly. Because the work to be done here was endless. She marshaled all her troops: the paid Ministero dell'Interno employees, the volunteers, the police, the soldiers, the UN folks and the infrastructure workers, being firm, though patient and polite (except perhaps with the insufferable celebrities who had a habit of jetting in from London or Cape Town for a photo opportunity, bragging to the press about their
donation, then jetting off to Antibes or Dubai, for dinner).
Rania walked around a massive pile of life preservers, orange and faded-orange, piled like a huge, squat traffic cone, and ordered several volunteers to board the buses to dispense bottled water. The month of September had not proved to be a respite from the heat.
She surveyed the incoming stream of unfortunates.
A sigh.
The camp had been intended for twelve hundred. It was now home to nearly three thousand. Despite the attempts to slow immigration from North Africa--primarily Libya--the poor folks kept coming, fleeing rape and poverty and crime and the mad ideology of ISIS and other extremists. You could talk about turning them back, you could talk about setting up camps and protective zones in their origin countries. But those solutions were absurd. They would never happen.
No, these people had to escape from the Land of No Hope, as one refugee had referred to his home. Conditions were so dire that nothing would stop them fleeing to beleaguered settlements like hers. This year alone nearly seventy thousand asylum-seekers had landed on Italian soil.
A voice intruded on her troubled thoughts.
"There is something I would like to do. Please."
Rania turned to the woman, who had spoken in Arabic. The director scanned the pretty face, the deep-brown eyes, the faint hint of makeup on the light-mocha skin. The name...? Ah, yes, Fatima. Fatima Jabril. Behind her was her husband. His name, Rania recalled, was Khaled. The couple whose intake she herself had processed just the other day.
In the husband's arms lay their sleeping daughter, whose name she'd forgotten. Fatima apparently noted the director's frown.
"This is Muna."
"Yes, that's right--a lovely name." The child's round face was surrounded by a mass of glossy black curls.
Fatima continued, "Earlier, I was outspoken. The journey was very difficult. I apologize." She glanced back at her husband, who had apparently encouraged her to say this.
"No, it's not necessary."
Fatima continued, "We have asked and have been told that you are the director of the camp."
"That's right."
"I come to you with a question. In Tripoli I worked in health care. I was a midwife and served as a nurse during the Liberation."
She would be talking, of course, about the fall of Qaddafi and the months afterward, when the peace and stability, so long anticipated and so bravely fought for, had vanished like water in hot sand.
"Liberation"--what a mockery.
"I would like to help here in the camp. So many people, pregnant women, about to give birth. And sick too. The burns."
Sunburn, she meant. Yes, a week on the Mediterranean with no protection took a terrible toll--especially on young skin. And there were other diseases too. The camp's sanitation was as good as it could be, but many refugees were racked with illness.
"I would appreciate that. I will introduce you to the medical center director. What are your languages?"
"Other than Arabic, some English. My husband." She nodded to Khaled, who gave an amiable smile. "He is good with English. We are teaching Muna both languages. And I am learning Italian. An hour a day at the school here."
Rania nearly smiled--the girl was only two, and bilingual instruction seemed a bit premature. But Fatima's eyes were hard and her mouth taut. The director plainly saw that the woman's determination to help, and to be granted asylum and assimilate, was not a matter for humor.
"We have no way to pay you. No funds."
Fatima said quickly, "I don't wish to be paid. I wish to help."
"Thank you."
The refugees were mixed when it came to generosity. Some--like Fatima--volunteered selflessly. Others remained reclusive and a few were resentful that more was not being done for them or that the asylum-seeking process took so long.
Rania was telling Fatima about the medical center facilities when she happened to look through the fence and saw something that gave her pause.
Outside, amid the hundreds of those milling about--reporters, family members and friends of the refugees--a man stood by himself. He was in the shadows, so she had no clear image of him. But it was obvious he was staring in her direction. The thickset man wore a cap, the sort American sports figures wore, a cap you didn't see much in Italy, where heads went mostly uncovered. His eyes were obscured with aviator sunglasses. There was something troubling about his pose.
Rania knew she had incurred the anger of many people for her devotion to these poor people. Refugees were hugely unpopular among certain segments of the population in the host countries. But he was not standing with the protesters. No, his attention--which seemed focused on Rania herself--appeared to be about something else entirely.
Rania said goodbye to Fatima and Khaled and pointed to the medical facility. As the family walked away, Rania pulled her radio off her hip and summoned the head of security--a Police of State captain--to meet her fifty meters south of the main gate.
Tomas radioed back immediately saying he was coming.
He arrived just two or three minutes later. "A problem?"
"A man outside the fence. Something odd about him."
"Where?"
"He was by the magnolia."
She pointed but the view was blocked by yet another refugee bus crawling along the road.
When it passed, and the view was clear once again, she could see the man no more. Rania scanned the road and fields bordering the camp but found no trace.
"Do you want me to call a team together?"
She debated.
A voice from the office called, "Rania, Rania! The shipment of plasma. They can't find it. Jacques needs to talk to you. Jacques from the Red Cross."
Another scan of the roadway. Nothing.
"No, don't bother. Thank you, Tomas."
She swiveled about, to return to her office and cope with yet another cascade of crises.
Endless...
Chapter 28
Don't really want it to deflect us too much from the Composer, do we now, Sachs? But it's a curious case. An intriguing case."
Rhyme, referring to the Garry Soames matter.
She gave a wry laugh. "A landmine of a case."
"Ah, because of Dante Spiro? We'll be careful."
They were in their secondary situation room: the cafe across the street from the Questura. Sachs, Rhyme and Thom. Rhyme had tried to order a grappa but Thom, damn it, had preempted him with sparkling water and coffee for everyone. How was he going to acquire a taste for the liquor if he was denied access?
In fairness, however, the cappuccino was good.
"Ah, here we go."
Rhyme noted the lanky figure of Ercole Benelli stride from the police headquarters toward the cafe. He spotted the Americans, crossed the street, stepped past the Cinzano barrier and sat down on a rickety aluminum chair.
"Hello," he said formally, the tone revealing his curiosity. The young officer was, of course, wondering why Sachs had called and asked to meet out here.
Rhyme asked, "Has Beatrice found any prints on the plant leaves or any trace from the Composer's surveillance outside the restaurant near D'Abruzzo?"
Ercole grimaced. "The woman is quite insopportabile. You say, intolerable?"
"Yes, or insufferable."
"Si, insufferable is better! I asked her several times of her progress and she glared at me. And I wished to know if you can fingerprint the bark of a tree. An innocent question. Her expression, frightening. As if saying, 'Of course you can! What fool doesn't know that?' And can she not smile? How difficult is that?"
Lincoln Rhyme was not one to turn to for sympathy in matters like this. "And?" he asked impatiently.
"No, nothing, I'm afraid. Not yet. She and her assistants are working hard, however. I will give her that."
Ercole ordered something from the waitress and a moment later an orange juice appeared.
Rhyme said, "Well, we have another situation we need help with."
"You have
more developments about our musical kidnapper?"
"No. This is a different case."
"Different?"
On the small table before them Sachs was spreading out documents: copies of the crime scene reports and interviews regarding the rape Garry Soames was accused of, provided by the lawyer he and his family had retained.
"We need translations of these reports, Ercole."
He looked them over, shuffled through them. "How does this connect to the Composer?"
"It doesn't. Like I said, it's another case."
"Another...?" The officer chewed his lip. He read more carefully. "Yes, yes, the American student. This is not one of Massimo Rossi's cases. It's being run by Ispettore Laura Martelli." He nodded at the Questura.
Rhyme said nothing more and Sachs added, "We've been asked by a State Department official to review the evidence. The defendant's lawyer's convinced the boy is innocent."
Ercole sipped his orange juice, which--like most non-coffee beverages in Italy, Rhyme had observed--had been served without ice. And Coca-Cola always came with lemon. The Forestry officer said, "Oh, but, no. I cannot do this. I am sorry." As if they'd missed something blatantly obvious. "You do not see. This would be un conflitto d'interesse. A--"
Rhyme said, "Not really."
"No. How is that possible?"
"It would be, no, it might be a conflict of interest if you were working for the Police of State directly. But you are, technically, still a Forestry officer, isn't that right?"
"Signor Rhyme, Capitano Rhyme, that is not a defense that will be very persuasive at my trial. Or will stop Prosecutor Spiro from beating me half to death if he finds out. Wait...who is the procuratore?" He flipped through the pages. And closed his eyes. "Mamma mia! Spiro is the prosecutor. No, no, no. I cannot do this! If he finds out, he will beat me fully to death!"
"You're exaggerating," Rhyme reassured, though he admitted to himself that Dante Spiro seemed fully capable of a blow or two.
Difficult, vindictive, cold as ice...
"Besides, we're simply asking you to translate. We could hire someone but it will take too long. We want to look over the evidence quickly, give our assessment and get back to the Composer. There's no reason for Dante to find out."
The Burial Hour Page 17