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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.
Watch her lengthy, elegant fingers encircle the cup.
A cheetah with azure-blue claws.
He had decided, though, that perhaps she was less creature of the wild than a movie star, albeit one from a different era: the sort appearing in the films of the great Italian directors--Fellini, De Sica, Rossellini, Visconti.
Accordingly, he resisted the sudden urge to show her a picture of Isabella. Proud though he was, there seemed no possible excuse to bring up the topic of a pregnant pigeon to this stellar woman. He simply took notes.
So, armed with her insights, and a fast review of the Scientific Police guidelines, Ercole Benelli had plunged into his mission. And now he eased the poor boxy car onto a sidewalk (parking Neapolitan-style) and climbed out--as did his co-conspirator.
