Jeffery Deaver - The Burial Hour

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 US. 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:

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?’

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 Möbius 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.