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 10?.
—Driving dark sedan, no tag, no make, no year.
—Profile: —Motive unknown.
—Evidence: —Victim’s phone. —No unusual calls/calling patterns.
—Short hair, dyed blond. No DNA.
—No prints.
—Noose. —Traditional hangman’s knot.
—Catgut, cello length.
—Too common to source.
—Dark cotton fiber. —From hood, used to subdue victim?
—Chloroform.
—Olanzapine, antipsychotic drug.
—YouVid video: —White male (probably vic), noose around neck.
—“Blue Danube” playing, in time to gasps (vic’s?).
—“? The Composer” appeared at end.
—Faded to black and silence; indication of impending death?
—Checking location where it was uploaded.
Wyckoff Avenue, Bushwick, Brooklyn. Kidnapping Site
—Gasoline accelerant to destroy evidence. No source determined.
—Swept floor, but Converse Con impressions remain.
—Substance trace: —Tobacco.
—Cocaine.
—Heroin.
—Pseudoephedrine (methamphetamine).
—Two additional short, blond hairs, similar to those at scene of kidnapping on 86th Street. —Robert Ellis reports—his girlfriend’s most likely.
—Four pieces of paper. —Passport photo picture.
—Hat and T-shirt, largely burned. —DNA collected, not in database.
—Unable to source.
—Hood, largely burned. —Unable to source.
—Traces of olanzapine (antipsychotic drug).
—Traces of chloroform.
—Musical-instrument keyboard, destroyed. Serial number recovered. Bought with cash from Anderson Music, West 46th Street. No CCTV.
—NetPro Wi-Fi router. —Purchased with cash from Avery Electronics, Manhattan. No video transaction of sale.
—Technology Illumination Industries halogen battery-powered lamp. —Unable to source.
—Broom handle used as gallows. —No friction ridges.
—Unable to source.
—EyeSpy webcam. —Unable to source.
—Upright bass strings (E note), tied together (carrick bend knot), and one in hangman’s noose. —Unable to source.
—Currency exchange receipt.
After reading the charts twice Rhyme sighed, shaking his head.
Ercole asked, “What, Captain Rhyme?”
“It was right there in front of us. The whole time.”
“But what?”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it? Now I’ve got to make a call to America. But in the meantime, Massimo, put together a tactical team. We’ll have to move fast if the answer is what I think it is.”
Forty minutes later, the team was assembled on a quiet street in a residential neighborhood of Naples.
A dozen SCO officers were divided into two groups, each on either side of a door to a modest single-family home, painted mustard yellow. Rhyme could see the glint of the low sun off the equipment of a third team, heading through an alley to cover the back door.
He himself was on the street, his wheelchair parked beside the Sprinter van. Dante Spiro stood beside him, his cheroot, unlit, clamped between his teeth.
Amelia Sachs, he could see, was behind the front entry team, the one on the right, though she’d been told, to her irritation, that she wouldn’t be allowed to join in, if a dynamic entry—that is, six-guns blazin’—was necessary. The leader of the unit, the massive officer named Michelangelo, let her remain in a forward position, though. And he’d given her a bulletproof vest, Polizia printed on the front and back. She wanted to keep it as a souvenir, after the case was over.
When they’d arrived on the scene, Michelangelo had looked Sachs over and, with a sparkle in his eyes, said, “Allora! Dirty Harriet.”