The Burial Hour

by Jeffery Deaver

  --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?).

  --"(c) 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."

  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 tha
t 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."

  An inquiring glance at Spiro, who said, "Most easily."

  How calm she was. Like a soldier who'd been expecting to be captured by the enemy.

  "On the subject of hair, you have a short cut, dyed blond. Forgive me, but Ms. Clairol is involved, isn't she? We found similar strands at the Brooklyn kidnap site and on Robert Ellis's phone. I'm sure they'll be consistent with yours."

  If she displayed any expression, she seemed curious how Rhyme and the others had unraveled the story. But only mildly curious.

  Rhyme wasn't there yet, however. "Now, we have evidence placing you at Stefan's farmhouse here. Your shoes." Gazing at another of Sachs's evidence bags. "Looks like those tread marks're the same as prints at Stefan's. There'll be trace in the treads associated with the soil there."

  He held up a hand, to nip quiet an impending question. "Please? I'll finish. Let's talk about the other charge against you: wrongfully implicating Garry Soames for sexual assault. And interference with judicial process." Another look at the law enforcers, a questioning furrow of brow.

  Rossi said, "It would be interference with a police investigation--on the same pitch. And accusing someone of a crime wrongfully is a separate offense in Italy. Quite serious. As Amanda Knox learned."

  Rhyme resumed. "Shoes again: These'll match the prints left outside Garry's window. And Ercole has collected soil from the site, which...well, again we'll check against trace in the shoes.

  "Now, tire treads. A car mounted with Continental 195/65R15s tires had been parked behind Garry's apartment. And a car mounted with Continental 195/65R15s had been parked at the farmhouse. And there's a car mounted with Continental 195/65R15s parked a block away. A Nissan Maxima, with U.S. diplo plates on it, checked out to you from the embassy in Rome. The Nissan, by the way is parked next to Stefan's car, a two thousand seven Mercedes 4MATIC, mounted with the Michelins we've found at all the scenes.

  "So. The Composer case and the Garry Soames case are linked. You are involved in both. Why? Because when you heard we had come from New York to help the police here, you knew you had to stop us, or at least slow us down. I'm not sure how you learned about the rape and that Garry was one of the people being questioned but it was easy enough: monitoring, or hacking, the Italian police reports, I'd imagine. You broke his bedroom window and sprinkled date-rape drug residue inside. You made the anonymous call implicating him. Then you called us in with a sob story about an innocent young American student wrongly arrested. To keep us distracted from searching for Stefan.

  "And when that wasn't enough, you got your boy the hunting rifle. Stefan used that to 'discourage' us. Slow us down. I'm sure he wasn't shooting to hit anyone, just to make us think that he was willing to kill police, make us wary."

  He grimaced and felt true regret. "I might've tipped to it a bit earlier: The shoe that Stefan lost struggling with Khaled Jabril's wife also had the date-rape drug on it. We--rather unfairly, I admit--gave one young officer hell for cross-contamination. But when I realized how diligent he'd been, I wondered if the Composer had been near a source of the date-rape drug. And obviously he had: you.

  "And why did I start thinking about all of this in the first place?" Rhyme paused. Perhaps it was overdramatic, but this seemed appropriate. "It was the names, Charlotte. The names on the list." He turned to Dante Spiro.

  "Yes, yes, Signorina McKenzie. At the farmhouse Detective Sachs found a list of the names of the victims Stefan was targeting. Ali Maziq, Malek Dadi and Khaled Jabril. Their names, their mobile numbers and the locations of the sites he was going to place them for his hanging videos. That is not how serial killers behave. No, you recruited Stefan to kidnap those men specifically. And why?"

  Rhyme filled in the pause with: "Because, of course, you're a spy." He frowned. "I assume you people still call yourselves that, don't you?"

  Chapter 57

  Charlotte McKenzie's face continued to reveal nothing.

  Rhyme originally thought that she was feigning innocence but that wasn't accurate, he realized. Hers was the expression of someone who, though guilty as sin, didn't care if she'd been nabbed or not. That image from before, a captured solider, came to mind again. With this qualification: a soldier who had already accomplished her mission.

  Rhyme said, "I spoke to an FBI agent in New York an hour ago. I asked him to make some calls. I was particularly interested to know about a legal liaison officer with the State Department named Charlotte McKenzie. Yes, there was. But a little more digging and he hit a dead end. No specifics, no C.V. other than a generic resume. Which is exactly what happens, he told me, in a quote 'official cover' situation. Somebody apparently working for State is actually working for the CIA or another security agency. Legal liaison is a frequent official cover.

  "I asked him to see about any U.S. security operations in Italy. A blank there too but he did find out at least that there'd been a lot of encrypted communications into and out of Naples. To and from some new government agency called the AIS. Alternative Intelligence Service, based in northern Virginia.

  "Well, my theory: You're a field agent for this AIS and were assigned to interrogate three suspected terrorists in Italy, who'd come here from Libya, pretending to be asylum-seekers. It's happened before--an ISIS terrorist was arrested by Italian police in a refugee camp in Bari, the Puglia region--just last year."

  Her eyes said, Yes, I know. Her mouth was silent.

  "Now, I'm guessing the Alternative part of your organization means you use unusual methods to detain and
interrogate your suspects. You came up with the idea of using a serial killer as a cover for extraordinary rendition and interrogation. Somehow you learned about Stefan and thought he'd be a good pick for your project. You and another officer met with him in the hospital--pretending to be his aunt and uncle--and cut some kind of deal with him.

  "The first snatch--in New York, the one the little girl witnessed--was fake all around. The victim was a fellow agent. You needed to make it seem like Stefan was really psychotic, with no particular interest in refugees. I thought that that kidnapping seemed odd. The vic's girlfriend never getting back to us. Robert Ellis never seemed particularly upset about nearly being hanged by a crazy man." Rhyme tilted his head to the side. "You had to be concerned that we were getting close to Stefan, when he was in the factory. Did you pull Fred Dellray and the FBI off the case? Make any phone calls to Washington?"

  She said nothing, her eyes revealed nothing.

  Rhyme continued: "After that prelude, you set up Stefan over here, you and others in your team. And you went to work tracking the terror suspects, then kidnapping them and interrogating them in the farmhouse."

  Rhyme turned to Spiro: "Your pattern is now clear, Dante."

  "It is, yes. Finally. Now, that is our case. And it will all go before the court. Allora, Signorina McKenzie, we need the names of your associates. And we need you to admit that this is what has happened. Since no one died at your hand, and the kidnap victims were apparent terrorists, the punishments for you and your co-workers will not be extreme. But, of course, punishments there must be. So, what have you to say?"

  At last, after a considered moment, she spoke. "I need to talk to you. All of you." Her voice calm, confident. As if she were the person who'd convened this meeting. As if she were the one in charge. "Everything I am about to tell you is hypothetical. And in the future I'll deny every sentence."