She’d laughed. “Make my day!”
Now Massimo Rossi climbed from the front seat of a Flying Squad car. He pressed an earbud deeper into his ear as he listened to a transmission. He straightened. Apparently the team in the rear was ready. He walked to the house and nodded to Michelangelo. The big officer knocked with a fist—Rhyme could hear the blows from this distance—and called, “Polizia. Aprite! Open this door!” And stepped back.
What followed was anticlimactic in the extreme.
No gunshots, no barricades, no battering rams.
The door simply opened and although he was too far away to hear, it was clear to Rhyme that Charlotte McKenzie, from the U.S. Consulate, uttered nothing by way of protest. Nor did she express any surprise. She nodded and held up her arms in surrender. The man standing behind her, Stefan Merck, did exactly the same.
Chapter 56
Michelangelo’s tactical team had cleared the house.
Hadn’t taken long; like most single-family homes in this part of Naples, it was small. The well-worn place had mismatched furniture, most of it a decade old. The feel of a rental.
With the help of two SCO officers, Rhyme’s clever wheelchair surmounted the single step and wheeled into the living room, where Charlotte McKenzie was sitting on a divan with her hands together, as if she’d just put aside her knitting. Rossi and Spiro stood nearby, each on his own mobile, speaking quietly and quickly, the inspector’s face animated, the prosecutor’s stony. Sachs, pulling on booties and latex gloves, headed into the back of the house.
McKenzie glanced at her with the confidence of someone who has hidden all the incriminating evidence off-premises.
We’ll see about that…
The room was warm with yellow light and the air smelled of cinnamon. Stefan stood behind the woman’s chair, looking more bewildered than anything. While McKenzie was not in irons, the serial killer—the faux serial killer—had been cuffed. The tactical policemen who’d helped Rhyme into the apartment kept eyes on the prisoners. They were both dark of flesh, not big—much smaller than their boss, named after the famed artist—but were in sinewy, taut shape and looked prepared to strike fast if they needed to.
Since the police arrived, the kidnapper had said nothing other than one word to Amelia Sachs.
“Artemis.”
A Greek goddess, Rhyme believed, recalling both Ercole’s speculation and the mental hospital director’s comments that Stefan’s crimes had a mythological connection.
He now looked over Stefan carefully. There was nothing unusual about his appearance or expression. He was just another handsome young man, pudgy but more or less fit, stubble just returning to his shaved head, which glistened with sweat. He was dressed in jeans and a Mark Zuckerberg gray T-shirt (this was the term that had been used by Rossi; Rhyme didn’t know, but believed he was some computer guy).
Rhyme noted one curious habit of Stefan. From time to time he would close his eyes and ease his head to the side. Occasionally he would smile. Once, he frowned. At first, Rhyme didn’t understand these gestures and expressions. Then he realized that Stefan was listening. To sounds, it seemed. Not to words or to conversations—only Italian was being spoken and he probably wasn’t fluent, certainly not at the rat-tat speed of the officials in the room.
Just sounds.
But what noises might engage him wasn’t clear. Initially there didn’t seem to be many in the still apartment but, aware that Stefan was so engaged, Rhyme too closed his eyes and filtered out the voices and became aware of one or two sounds, then a dozen, then many more. The clink of Stefan’s handcuff chains. Footfalls of Sachs in the nether regions of the house. A distant siren. A creak of door. A tap of metal upon metal from outside. A tiny whine of floorboard under Spiro’s weight. A buzz of insect. A crick of metal. A skittle of vermin. A hum of refrigerator.
What had been quiet, almost silent, was in fact a smorgasbord of noise.
Spiro disconnected first and spoke to the uniformed officers in Italian. When Rossi was off the phone, he and the prosecutor agreed that Stefan would be taken to a prisoner transport van outside and kept there while Charlotte McKenzie remained here for an interview. Stefan’s part as a serial kidnapper was not disputed, while the woman’s role was not completely known. And there was one very important question that had yet to be answered.
“This way, sir,” an officer said to Stefan, his English languid.
Stefan looked toward McKenzie, who nodded. She then said, firmly, to Spiro and Rossi, “Give him his phone, so he can listen to music. Take the SIM card out if you want, so he can’t make calls. But it’s better if he has music.”
The SCO officer looked quizzically at Spiro, who debated and lifted the young man’s phone from the table, slipped the card out and gave it to Stefan, along with a set of earbuds taken from him earlier.
As they walked away McKenzie said to him, “Don’t say anything to anyone, Stefan.”
He nodded.
Now Sachs returned. She held up four plastic bags. Two contained over-the-counter medicine bottles. Rhyme regarded them. “Yes,” he said. The other bags held shoes. Sachs displayed the tread.
So not all the evidence was elsewhere.
Rhyme could not help but notice, though, that Charlotte McKenzie remained untroubled.
He tipped his head to Spiro, who consulted notes and said, “You will be charged with some very serious crimes, Signorina McKenzie, and we are hoping for your cooperation. We know that you and Stefan Merck were not alone in the farmhouse where you held Ali Maziq and Khaled Jabril. At least two or three of your associates were there. And there is at least one associate inside the Capodichino Reception Center working for you. So, there are several other people whose identities we wish to know, and your cooperation in helping us find them will go a long way. I’m a prosecutor and it is I who make recommendations to the magistrates for charges and for punishments. Now, to let you know where you stand, I will turn to Capitano Rhyme, who has largely built the case against you and Signor Merck.”
Rossi nodded his agreement.
Rhyme wheeled slightly closer. She easily held his gaze. “I’ll lay it out very succinctly, Charlotte. We have evidence placing you at the scene of Stefan’s first kidnapping, in Brooklyn. The cold medicine. Pseudoephedrine.”
Her eyes narrowed but only slightly.
This was the main insight Rhyme had had, the one that prompted his exasperated comment in the situation room not long before.
It’s obvious, isn’t it?
“We thought it was pseudo from meth cooking at the abandoned factory but, no, it was from the medicine you’d been taking for your cold. And, I’m sure, the composition will be the same as that.” He nodded to the bottles in one of Sachs’s plastic bags. “We can get a warrant and take hair samples to verify the presence of the drug in your system.”