The Burial Hour

by Jeffery Deaver

  Quiet was never wise. Even the best intentions went away when there was quiet.

  Still, Stefan looked Lilly over, head to toe, and said, "Sure. Let's go."

  Chapter 37

  Skulls.

  Ten thousand.

  Twenty thousand.

  A hundred thousand skulls.

  No. Even more than that.

  Skulls arranged in orderly rows, eye sockets staring outward, triangles of darkness where noses had once been, rows of yellow teeth, many missing.

  This was the place to which Lilly had directed Stefan. The Fontanelle Cemetery in Naples.

  Spooky...

  Oh, you bet.

  It wasn't a burial ground in the traditional sense; it was a huge, forbidding cavern that, Lilly's guidebook explained, had been used as a mass grave site when half the population of Naples had died from plague in the 1600s.

  "And there are rumors that underneath here're more, going back to Roman days. There could be a million skulls under our feet."

  They stood at the entrance, a massive nature-made archway that led into the darkened expanse. This was no longer prime tourist season and the place had few visitors.

  And those who were here seemed to be on missions of devotion, rather than sightseeing. They lit votives, they prayed.

  Spooky...and quiet. Almost silent.

  Well, he'd have to deal with it. Stefan wiped sweat, put the tissue away.

  "You okay?"

  "Fine."

  They walked farther inside, her boots tapping and echoing. Lovely! Reading from her guidebook, she whispered--here was a place to inspire whispers--that Naples was savagely bombed during the Second World War, and this was one of the few places were the citizens could be safe from the Allied planes.

  The lighting was subdued and flames from the candles cast eerie, unsteady shadows of bones and skulls--reanimations of victims dead hundreds, or thousands, of years.

  "Creepy, hm?"

  "Sure is." Though not because it looked creepy. Because of the quiet. The cavern was like a petri dish for Black Screams. A couple of them started to moan. Started to rise. Started to swell within.

  Until he had a thought. A new mission. Good, good.

  The Black Screams faded.

  A new mission.

  Which involved Lilly. And suddenly he was wildly grateful they had met. It was as if his muse had sensed his distress and sent her to him.

  Thank you, Euterpe...

  Of course, he realized, as he'd thought downtown, this was definitely not a good idea. But he also thought: As if I have any choice.

  The failure last night...The swish, swish of the knife at the refugee camp. The spreading blood in the shape of a bell. The nightmares, the sound waves of approaching Black Screams.

  Oh, he needed this.

  He was looking Lilly over carefully. Probably hungrily. Before she caught him, he gazed off.

  Lilly was acting girlish now. Smiling, despite the wall of skulls, the dark eye sockets turned their way. "Hello!" she called.

  The echo danced back and forth.

  Stefan heard it long after she'd turned her attention elsewhere.

  They walked farther into the dim, cool space.

  "Your face," she said.

  Stefan turned, cocking his head.

  "Your eyes were closed. What're you thinking about? Who all these people were?" She nodded to the skulls.

  "No, just listening to things."

  "Listening? I don't hear anything."

  "Oh, there's a thousand sounds. You hear them too but you don't know you do."

  "Really?"

  "There's our blood, our heartbeat. There's our breath. The sound of our clothing against itself and our skin. I can't hear yours and you can't hear mine but the sounds are there. A scooter--that one's hard because it's an echo of an echo. A tapping. Water, I'd guess. There! That shutter. Somebody took a picture. An old iPhone Four."

  "Wow. You can tell that? And it was so far away. I didn't hear a thing."

  "You have to allow yourself to hear things. You can hear sounds everywhere."

  "Everywhere?"

  "Well, not exactly. Not in a vacuum. Not in outer space." Stefan recalled a movie, Alien (not a bad flick, by any means). And the advertising line was: In space no one can hear you scream.

  He told Lilly about this now. And added, "You know in space movies, when you hear ray guns and spaceships colliding and exploding? Well, that's wrong. They'd be completely silent. All sounds--a gunshot, a scream, a baby's laugh--need molecules to bump against. That's what sound is. That's why the speed of sound varies. At sea level it's seven hundred sixty miles an hour. At sixty thousand feet, it's six hundred fifty miles an hour."

  "Wow, that's way different! Because of the thinner molecules?"

  "Right. In space there are no molecules. There's nothing. So if you opened your mouth and vibrated your vocal cords no one would hear you. But say you were with somebody else and he put his hand on your chest while you were screaming, he'd hear you."

  "Because the molecule in his body would vibrate."

  "Exactly."

  "I like it when people're excited about their jobs. When you first said 'sound engineer,' I thought, hm, pretty dull. But you're, you know, totally into it. That's cool."

  Funny when the one thing that makes you crazy keeps you sane.

  He was looking over her now, as she turned and walked closer to an inscription in Latin, carved in stone.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  Her boots.

  This isn't a good idea...

  Stefan said to himself: Leave. Tell her goodbye. It's been fun. Have a nice trip back home.

  But Stefan felt Euterpe hovering over him now, looking out, giving him permission to do what he had to do. Anything to keep the Black Screams away. She'd understand.

  To the right the cave disappeared into a dim recess.

  "Let's go in the back there." He pointed that way.

  "There? It's pretty dark."

  Yes, it was. Pretty dark but completely deserted.

  Stefan wondered for a moment if he'd have to convince her but apparently Lilly believed she was in no danger. He was a little quirky maybe, he sweated a bit much, he was pudgy, but he was a sound engineer who didn't mind conversation and who said interesting things.

  Women always fell for men who talked.

  Oh, and he was an American. How much danger could he be?

  "Okay, sure." A sparkle in her eyes.

  They started in the direction he'd indicated.

  On the pretense of looking around, he fell slightly behind her.

  Hearing her boot soles and heels snapping: Tap, tap, tap...

  He looked around. They were completely alone.

  Stefan reached into his pocket and closed his hand around the cool metal.

  Tap, tap, taptaptaptaptap...

  Chapter 38

  Carl Sandburg.

  "Carl...The poet, right?" Amelia Sachs asked the balding man driving a small, gray Renault.

  The associate of Charlotte McKenzie's, he'd picked her up at Linate Airport, the smaller of the two aerodromes in Milan, closer to the city center. They were in thick traffic.

  "That's right," Pete Prescott told her. "He wrote 'Chicago.'" The legal liaison dropped his voice a bit, to sound poetic, Sachs guessed, and recited the opening lines, about the Hog Butcher.

  "You from there, Chicago?" Sachs didn't know where this was going.

  "No, Portland. My point is the poem might've been about Milan. Milan is the Chicago of Italy."

  Ah. Got it. She'd been wondering.

  "Working, busy, not the prettiest city in the country, not by a long shot. But it has energy and a certain charm. Not to mention The Last Supper. The fashion world. And La Scala. Do you like opera?"

  "Not really."

  A pause. Its meaning: How could someone with a pulse not like opera?

  "Too bad. I could get tickets to La Traviata tonight. Andrea Carelli is singing. It wouldn
't be a date." He said this as if waiting for her to blurt, "No, no, a date would be wonderful."

  "Sorry. I've got to get back tonight, if possible."

  "Charlotte said you're working on the case. The kidnapper."

  "Right."

  "With the famous detective Lincoln Rhyme. I've read some of those books."

  "He doesn't like them very much."

  "At least people write about him. Nobody's going to write novels about a legal liaison, I don't think. Though I've had pretty interesting cases."

  He didn't elaborate--she was pleased about that--but concentrated on his GPS. Traffic grew worse and Prescott swung down a side road. In contrast with this, the trip from Naples to Milan had been lightning-fast. Computer millionaire Mike Hill's driver, a larger-than-life Italian with thick hair and an infectious smile, had met her outside the hotel, where he'd been waiting with a shiny black Audi. He'd leapt forward to take her bag. In a half hour, after an extensive history lesson on southern Italy, delivered in pretty good English and with more than a little flirt, they had arrived at the private aircraft tarmac in Naples. She'd climbed onto the plane--even nicer than the one they'd flown to Italy on--and soon the sleek aircraft was streaking into the air. She'd had a pleasant conversation with one of Hill's executives, headed to Switzerland for meetings. Pleasant, yes, though the young man was a super geek and often lost her with his enthusiastic monologues about the state of high technology.

  Prescott was now saying, "I prefer Milan, frankly, to other cities here. Not as many tourists. And I like the food better. Too much cheese in the south."

  Having recently been served a piece of mozzarella that must've weighed close to a pound, she understood, though was tempted to defend Neapolitan cuisine. An urge she declined.

  He added, "But here? Ugh, the traffic." He grimaced and swung the car onto a new route, past shops and small industrial operations and wholesalers and apartments, many of whose windows were covered with curious shades, metal or mesh, hinged from the top. She tried to figure out from the signage what the many commercial operations manufactured or sold, with limited success.

  And, yes, it did resemble parts of Chicago, which she'd been to a few times. Milan was a stone-colored, dusty city, now accented with fading autumn foliage, although the dun tone was tempered by ubiquitous red roofs. Naples was far more colorful--though also more chaotic.

  Like Hill's swarthy, enthusiastic driver, Prescott was happy to lecture about the nation.

  "Just like the U.S., there's a north/south divide in Italy. The north's more industrial, the south agricultural. Sound familiar? There's never been a civil war, as such, though there was fighting to unify the different kingdoms. A famous battle was fought right here. Cinque Giornate di Milano. Five Days of Milan. Part of the first War of Independence, eighteen forties. It drove the Austrians out of the city."

  He looked ahead, saw a traffic jam, and took a sharp right. He then said, "That case? The Composer. Why'd he come to Italy?"

  "We're not sure. Since he's picked two immigrants, refugees, so far, he might be thinking it's harder for the police to solve the cases with undocumenteds as victims. And they're less motivated to run the investigation."

  "You think he's that smart?"

  "Every bit."

  "Ah, look at this!"

  The traffic had come to a halt. From the plane, she'd called Prescott and given him the address on the Post-it note found at the scene where the Composer had slashed Malek Dadi to death. Prescott assured her that it would take only a half hour to get there from the airport but already they'd been fighting through traffic for twice that.

  "Welcome to Milano," he muttered, backing up, over the sidewalk, turning around and finding another route. She recalled that Mike Hill had warned about the traffic from the larger airport in Milan, thinking: Imagine how long it would take to fight twenty-some miles of congestion like this.

  Nearly an hour and a half after she'd landed, Prescott turned along a wide, shallow canal. The area was a mix of the well-worn, the quirky chic and the tawdry. Residences, restaurants and shops.

  "This is the Navigli," Prescott announced. He pointed to the soupy waterway. "This and a few others are all that're left of a hundred miles of canals that connected Milan to rivers for transport of goods and passengers. A lot of Italian cities have rivers nearby or running right through town. Milan doesn't. This was the attempt to create artificial waterways to solve that problem. Da Vinci himself helped design locks and sluices."

  He turned and drove along a quiet street to an intersection of commercial buildings. Deserted here. He parked under what was clearly a no-parking sign, with the attitude of someone who knew beyond doubt he wouldn't be ticketed, much less towed.

  "That's the place right there: Filippo Argelati, Twenty Thirty-Two."

  A sign, pink paint--faded from red: Fratelli Guida. Magazzino.

  Prescott said, "The Guida Brothers. Warehouse."

  The sign was very old and she guessed that the siblings were long gone. Massimo Rossi had texted her that the building was owned by a commercial real estate company in Milan. It was leased to a company based in Rome but calls to the office had not been returned.

  She climbed out of the car and walked to the sidewalk in front of the building. It was a two-story stucco structure, light brown, and covered with audacious graffiti. The windows were painted dark brown on the inside. She crouched down and touched some pieces of green broken glass in front of the large double doors.

  She returned and Prescott got out of his vehicle too. She asked, "Could you stay here and keep an eye on the neighborhood. If anyone shows up text me."

  "I..." He was flustered. "I will. But why would anyone show up? I mean, it looks like nobody's been there for months, years."

  "No, somebody was here within the past hour. A vehicle. It ran over a bottle that was in front. See it? That glass?"

  "Oh, there. Yes."

  "There's still wet beer inside."

  "If there's something illegal going on, we should call the Carabinieri or the Police of State." Prescott had grown uncomfortable.

  "It'll be fine. Just text."

  "I will. Sure. I'll definitely text. What should I text?"

  "A smiley emoji's fine. I just need to feel the vibration."

  "Feel...Oh, you'll have the ringer off. So nobody can hear? In case anybody's inside?"

  No confirmation needed.

  Sachs returned to the building. She stood to the side of the door, her hand near the Beretta grip in her side pocket. There was no reason to think the Composer had tooled up to Milan in his dark sedan, crunched the bottle pulling into the warehouse and was now waiting inside with his razor or knife or a handy noose.

  But no compelling reason not to think that.

  She pounded on the door with a fist, calling out a reasonable, "Polizia!"

  Proud of herself, getting the Italian okay, she thought. And ignoring that she was undoubtedly guilty of a serious infraction.

  No response, though.

  Another pounding. Nothing.

  Then she circled the building. In the back was a smaller door but that too was barred, with an impressive chain and padlock. She knocked again.

  Still no response.

  She returned to Prescott. "So?" he asked.

  "Locked up nice and tight."

  He was relieved. "We find the police? Get a warrant? You head back to Naples?"

  "Could you pop the trunk?

  "The...oh." He did.

  She fished around and extracted the tire iron.

  "You mind?" Sachs asked.

  "Uhm, no." He seemed to be thinking fast and, perhaps, recalled that he'd never used the accessory, so it wouldn't be his prints on the burglar tool.

  Sachs had decided that the front door--the one for humans, not the big vehicle doors--was more vulnerable than the chain on the back. She looked around--not a witness in sight--and worked the tire iron into the jamb. She pulled hard and the door shifted far enough so that
the male portion of the lock slipped from the female and the door swung open.

  She set the tire iron down, away from the door, where it couldn't be grabbed as a weapon. Then she drew the Beretta and stepped inside fast, squinting to acclimate her eyes to the darkness inside.

  Chapter 39

  How curious what life has in store for us.

  Only a day or two ago he was a tree cop, a badger cop...a fungus cop.

  Now he was a criminal investigator. Working on quite the case. Tracking down the Composer.

  Officers--Police of State and Carabinieri--labored for years solving petty thefts, car hijackings, a mugging, a chain snatching...and never had the chance to be involved in an investigation like this.

  Driving through the pleasant neighborhood near Federico II, the university, Ercole Benelli was reflecting, with amusement, that this actually was the second multiple killer case he had worked (yes, Amelia, I remember: The Composer is not a serial killer). The first crime, however, had involved as victims a dozen head of stolen cattle in the hills east of here. Kidnapping it was too, even if the unfortunates had wandered amiably and without protest into the back of the truck that spirited them away to become entrees and luncheon meat.

  But now he was a true investigator, about to search a crime scene on his own.

  Even more exciting: Ercole was Lincoln Rhyme's "secret weapon," as the famed officer had told him.

  Well, one of the secret weapons. The other was sitting beside him. Thom Reston, the man's aide.

  Unlike the first assignment on the furtive Soames investigation--to Natalia Garelli's apartment--this mission didn't bother Ercole at all. He had, he supposed, caught the bug, so to speak. Thinking that there might in fact be another perpetrator who'd committed the heinous crime and was blaming innocent Garry Soames, he was inspired to do all he could to get the facts. Earlier, he'd cornered an expert. This specialist came in the luscious form of Daniela Canton. The beautiful--and musically savvy--officer was a basic Flying Squad cop but much of what she did, as the first person on the scene, was to isolate and preserve evidence for the Scientific Police, later to come. Naturally, she was the perfect person to ask. They'd sat in the cafeteria of the Questura, over cappuccinos, as the woman had lectured him matter-of-factly about what to look for, how to approach the scene and, most important, how not to contaminate or alter evidence in any way. Or allow others to do so.

  Much of this, it turned out, he'd already learned from Amelia Sachs, but it was pleasant to sit across from Daniela and watch her heavenly blue eyes gazing toward the dusky ceiling as she lectured.