With a smile, Ercole said to her, "Yes, of course. From a library or a college or a historical society."
Rhyme turned to him and his eyebrow rose.
Ercole hesitated and said, "Is that wrong? It was just a suggestion."
Rossi said, "I think, Ercole, that Captain Rhyme is not questioning your thought--which is a good, if obvious, one--but your delay in providing such maps."
"Oh, yes, yes, of course."
Sachs told him, "Go online. We don't have time for you to prowl though libraries like The Da Vinci Code."
Must have been a book, Rhyme supposed. Or movie.
Sachs asked Beatrice, "You mentioned the underground passages here. Are there walking tours?"
"Yes," she replied. "My sister's children, we are going on such tours. Several, three times."
"Ercole," Rhyme called, "download all those tour routes too."
"Yes, I will. You mean so that we can eliminate those areas from our underground search. Of course he would avoid places with tourists."
"I want to orient myself. A map of the city. We need a map."
Rossi spoke to Daniela, who vanished then returned a moment later with a large foldout map. She taped it to the wall.
"How are we coming, Ercole?"
"I...There are quite a few underground areas of the city. I didn't realize how--come si dice--how extensive the passages are."
"As I was saying," Beatrice offered to Ercole.
"Some are contradictory. Indicated on one map but not another."
"I would think certain underground areas will have been filled in, construction," Rossi said. To Rhyme, Sachs and Thom he said, "This is a problem in Italy. A real estate man wishes to build an office or apartments and as soon as the excavation is started, a Roman or--here often--a Greek ruin is discovered, and all construction comes to a stopping."
"Give me something to work with, Ercole. We need to get on this."
"I have some, a few passageways, old buildings, grain storage warehouses, even some caves that are promising." He looked up. "How do I print?" he asked Daniela.
"Here." She leaned over him. She typed and a moment later, the Hewlett-Packard in the corner came to life. Rhyme didn't know why he was surprised--perhaps because he was in an ancient city, looking at ancient maps; wireless printing routers seemed out of place.
Sachs fished the pages from the tray and handed them to Daniela. Rhyme instructed, "Draw the passages on the map."
"Tutti? All of them?"
"Except the ones that seem to be bricked off."
In her firm, swift strokes, she outlined the networks.
Rhyme said, "Now add public works. Sewers. But just the older ones, from historical maps. Old shit, remember? And open, not enclosed, pipes. The Composer stepped in the trace."
The young officer began a new search. The maps Ercole found were obviously incomplete but they showed some sewage sluices that had been in operation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Daniela put these on the map.
"Okay, now eliminate the walking-tour routes," Rhyme instructed.
Ercole printed out the website information from "Underground Naples, See History Up Close!" and a half-dozen others. Daniela noted the routes and marked off any that coincided with the passageways and sewers they'd found.
Still, miles and miles of places to stash the victim remained.
Rossi said, "And an area where prostitutes worked, you were suggesting?" He looked at Giacomo, who gazed at the map and said, "I have patrolled--you would say in vice squad--many of the areas where working women and men are found, the Spanish Quarters, Piazza Garibaldi, Corso Umberto, Gianturco, Piazzale Tecchio--the San Paolo stadium, Via Terracina, Fuorigrotta, Agnano and Corso Lucci. These are active now. The Domiziana--or now Domitiana--area, north and west of Naples, was known historically for prostitution, and still is. But it's very congested and the population is mostly immigrant. It would be hard for the Composer to get his victim there. And no underground passages are nearby."
Rhyme said, "Circle the first areas you have mentioned, Officer."
Giacomo took the marker from Daniela and did so.
This narrowed down the number of passageways and chambers to about two dozen.
"What are they exactly," Sachs asked.
Rossi said, "Roman roads and alleyways and sidewalks before they were built over. Tunnels for delivery of merchandise to avoid the congested streets. Water reservoirs and aqueducts. Grain warehouses."
"Water?"
"Yes. The Romans built the best water delivery infrastruttura in the world."
Then Rhyme called, "Beatrice, you found limestone and lead?"
She didn't understand, and Ercole translated.
"Si. Yes, we did. There it is, you can see."
"Were the old Roman aqueducts limestone?"
"Yes, they were and, as you are suggesting, I believe, the pipes...shifting the water, transporting the water to the fountains and the homes and the buildings, were lead. Now replaced, of course, for healthy reasons."
"Ercole, maps of Roman water supplies?"
This document was readily available in the historical archives.
Ercole handed the printout to Daniela. He pointed to the document and said, "Here I have ten Roman water-holding chambers in the areas we have marked. They are like large wells or silos, round. These were connected to aqueducts coming into the city from the north and west. Some of them are large municipal reservoirs, twenty by twenty meters, and some are those serving smaller areas or individual homes, much smaller. When the supply of water became more modern, and pumping stations were created, many of these reservoirs were converted to warehouses and storerooms. Doors and windows were carved into the walls."
Daniela marked them.
Rhyme: "I want to see the video again."
The image came onto the screen once more. "Look at the wall, the stone. Is it a water reservoir?"
"It might be." Ercole shrugged. "Carved stone. Stained with what might be water marks. And if converted, it could have had a doorway cut for access. There, that shadow suggests there is a doorway."
Sachs said, "We've narrowed it to nine or ten locations. Can we do a search of them all? Get a hundred officers?"
Rossi seemed uncomfortable. "We do not have the resources I would like." He explained that there'd just been reports of potential terror attacks in Italy and other parts of Europe recently and many officers had been pulled off non-terror crimes.
Rhyme had the video played once more: the stone, the noose, the unconscious victim, his chest rising slowly, the trickle of dust, the--
"Ah. Look at that." His voice was a whisper. But everyone in the room turned to him immediately. He grimaced. "I saw it before but didn't think a damn thing of it."
"What, Rhyme?"
"The dust and pebbles, falling from the wall."
Sachs and Ercole spoke simultaneously. She: "Subway!" He: "Rete Metropolitana!"
"A train's shaking the walls. Ercole, quick, what lines run through the areas we've marked?"
He called up a subway system schematic on the laptop. Looking it over, Daniela drew the transit lines on their working map.
"There!" Rossi called. "That water reservoir, the small one."
It was a room about twenty by twenty feet, at the end of an aqueduct. It was accessed by a passageway that ran to a street by a square on Viale Margherita.
Giacomo added, "I know that area. That reservoir would be in the basement of an old building, now abandoned. Prostitutes could have used the passages years ago, yes."
"Abandoned," Rhyme said. "So the doors might be sealed with the lock and chain the Composer cut through; that's the rust and the slices of metal."
"I'll call the SCO," Rossi said.
Daniela offered: "Servizio Centrale Operativo. Our SWAT force."
Rossi spoke for several minutes, giving firm orders then hung up. "The central office is assembling a team."
Sachs met Rhyme's eyes. He nodded.
She asked, "How far away is that?" She stabbed the map, the entrance around which Daniela had drawn a red circle.
"No more than a few kilometers from us."
"I'm going," Sachs announced.
After a brief hesitation Rossi said, "Yes, certainly." He looked to Giacomo and Daniela, and the three had a brief conversation in Italian.
Rossi translated, "Their vehicle is with other officers. Ercole, you drive Detective Sachs."
"Me?"
"You."
As they started for the door, Rhyme said, "Give her a weapon."
"What?" Rossi asked.
"I don't want her in the field without a weapon."
"That's irregular."
We are not people who are well with irregularness...
"She's an NYPD detective and a competitive shooter."
Rossi considered the request. Then he said, "I am not aware of the agreement we have with the United States but I authorized gendarmes in pursuit of a criminal from France to enter Campania armed. I will do the same now." He vanished and returned a few minutes later with a plastic pistol container. He jotted the number from the case onto a form and opened it. "This is a--"
"Beretta ninety-six," she said. "The A-one. Forty caliber." She took it and pointed it downward, moving the slide slightly to verify it was empty. She took two black magazines and the box of ammunition that Rossi had also brought.
"Sign here. And where it says 'Rank,' and 'Affiliation'--those words there--write something illegible. But please, Detective Sachs, do not shoot anyone if you can avoid it."
"I'll do my best."
She scrawled where he'd indicated, slipped in a mag and worked the slide to chamber a round. Then, making sure it was on safe, she tucked the weapon into her back waistband. She hurried to the door.
Ercole looked from Daniela to Rossi. "Should I--?"
Rhyme said, "Go! You should go."
Chapter 18
That's it?" Amelia Sachs asked as they ran from the Questura. "That's your car?"
"Yes, yes." Ercole was beside a small, boxy vehicle called a Megane, soft blue, dusty and dinged. He began to walk to her side and open the door for her.
"I'm fine." She waved him off. "Let's go."
The young officer climbed into the driver's seat and she dropped into the passenger's.
"It's not much, I'm sorry to say." He gave a rueful smile. "The Flying Squad actually had two Lamborghinis. One was in an accident a few years ago so I'm not sure if they still have both of them. It's a marked police car. What a--"
"We should move."
"Of course."
He started the engine. He put the shifter in first, signaled to the left and looked over his shoulder, waiting for a gap in traffic.
Sachs said, "I'll drive."
"What?"
She slipped the shifter into neutral and yanked up on the brake, then leapt out.
Ercole said, "I should ask, do you have a license? There are probably forms to be filled out. I suppose--"
Then she was at the left-hand door, pulling it open. He climbed out. She said, "You can navigate." Ercole scurried around the car and dropped into the other seat and she settled into the right, not needing to adjust the seat's position; he was taller and it was as far back as it might go.
She glanced at him. "Seat belt."
"Oh. Here, no one cares." A chuckle. "And they never give you a ticket."
"Put it on."
"All right. I will--"
Just as it clicked, she slammed the gears into first, fed the engine a slug of gas and popped the clutch, darting into a minuscule gap in traffic. One car swerved and another braked. Both honked. She didn't bother to look back.
"Mamma mia," Ercole whispered.
"Where do I go?"
"Straight on this road for a kilometer."
"Where're your lights?"
"There." He pointed to a switch. The headlights.
"No, I mean the flashers. You have blue here, in Italy?"
"Blue? Oh, police lights? I don't have them--" He gasped as she zipped into a space between a truck and a trio of motorcyclists. "This is my personal car."
"Ah. And how much horsepower? Eighty?"
Ercole said, "No, no, it's closer to a hundred, one ten, in fact."
Be still my heart, she thought, but said nothing. Amelia Sachs would never tarnish anyone's image of his own wheels.
"You don't have flashers in your personal cars?"
"The Police of State might. Inspector Rossi and Daniela. I am, as you know, with the Forestry Corps. We do not. At least none of the officers I work with do. Oh, we are to turn soon."
"Which street and which way?"
"Left. That one up there. But I didn't prepare. I am sorry. I don't think we can get over in time."
They got over in time.
And took the ninety degrees in a screaming second gear. He gasped.
"Next turn?"
"Half a kilometer, to the right. Via Letizia."
He inhaled harshly as she accelerated to eighty kph, weaving into and out of all four lanes.
"Will they reimburse you, the Police of State?"
"It's only a few euros for the mileage, hardly worth the effort of the forms."
She'd been referring to repairing the transmission but decided not to bring that up. Anyway, how much damage could a hundred horses do to a tranny?
"Here is the turn."
Via Letizia...
The road grew congested. Rear ends and brake lights loomed.
She was skidding to a stop, using both brakes, inches from the jam.
A blast of horn. Nobody moved.
"Hold your badge up," she told him.
His smile said the gesture would do no good.
She hit the horn again and guided the car over the curb and along the sidewalk. Furious faces turned toward her, though the expressions of some of the younger men switched from indignant anger to amusement and even admiration when they noted the insane driver was a beautiful redhead.
She breached the intersection and turned as Ercole had instructed. Then roared forward.
"Call," she instructed. "See if the--what's the name of your tac outfit again?"
"Tac?"
"Sorry. Tactical. See where they are."
"Oh, SCO." He pulled out his phone and placed a call. Like most of the conversations she'd heard so far, this one unfolded lightning-fast. It ended with a clipped, "Ciao, ciao, ciao, ciao..." He gripped the dash as she shot between two trucks and said, "They're assembled and on the way. It should be fifteen minutes."
"How far are we?"
"Cinque. I mean--"
"Five." Sachs was grimacing. "Can't somebody be there any faster? We'll need a breaching team. The Composer would have locked the doorway or gate again. He did that in New York."
"They'll probably think of that."
"Tell them anyway."
Another call. And she could tell from the tone, if not the words, that there was nothing to do to expedite the arrival of the tactical force.
"They have hammers and cutters and a torch."
A fast shift, fourth to second. She punched the accelerator. The engine howled.
A phrase of her father's came to mind. A bylaw of her life.
When you move they can't getcha...
But just then: A blond teenager, his long curls flying in the breeze, steered a peppy orange scooter through a stoplight, oblivious to any traffic.
"Shit."
In a blur of appendages, Sachs used the gears, the foot brake and the hand brake to decelerate and then skid around the Honda, missing the kid by inches. He didn't even notice. Sachs saw he wore earbuds.
Then first gear, and they were on their way once more.
"Left here." Ercole was shouting over the screams of his laboring engine.
It was a narrow street they were speeding along. Residential--no stores. Pale laundry hung above them like flags. Then into a square around a tiny anemic park, on whose scarred benc
hes sat a half-dozen older men and women, a younger woman with a baby carriage and two children playing with scruffy dogs. It was a deserted area and the Composer could easily have slipped the victim out of his car and underground without anyone's seeing.
"There, that's it," he announced, pointing to a shabby wooden doorway in the abandoned building Giacomo Schiller had referred to. This, like all the building facades nearby, was covered with graffiti. You could just make out the faded sign: Non Entrare.
Sachs brought the Megane to a stop twenty feet from the door, leaving room for the tactical officers and ambulance. She hurried out. Ercole was close behind her.
Jogging again. But carefully. Sachs kept a close monitor on her legs--she suffered from arthritis, which had become so severe she'd nearly been sidelined from her beloved profession. Surgery had removed much, if not all, of the pain. Still, she always stayed mindful. The body can betray at any moment. But now, all functioned smoothly.
"You're new to this, right? To entry."
"Entry?"
That answered the question.
She'd learned enough. "First, we secure the site, make it safe from hostiles. It doesn't help the victim, even if he's seconds away from dying, if we die too. Okay?"
"Si."
"When it's clear, we try to save him, CPR, open airways if we can, apply pressure to stop bleeding, though I don't think blood loss is going to be a problem. After that we secure the crime scene to preserve evidence."
"All right...Ah, no!"
"What?"
"I forgot the booties. For our shoes. You are supposed to--"
"We don't wear those now. They're too slippery. Here."
She dug into her pocket and handed him rubber bands. "On the ball of your feet."
"You carry those with you?"
They both donned the elastic.
"Gloves?" he asked. "Latex gloves."
Sachs smiled. "No. Not in tactical situations."
The door, she was surprised to see, was barred with the cheapest of locks and a hasp that was affixed to the wooden door and frame with small screws.
She dug into her pocket and the switchblade was in her hand. Ercole's eyes went wide. Sachs smiled to herself as the thought occurred that the weapon was Italian--a Frank Beltrame stiletto, a four-inch blade, staghorn handle. She flicked it open and in one deft move pulled the bracket away from the wood, then tucked the knife away.
Holding her finger to her lips, she studied Ercole's nervous, sweaty face. Some of the consternation was from the harrowing drive; the source of the remainder was clear. He was willing, but he was not battle-tested. "Stay behind me," she whispered.
"Yes, yes." Which came out more as a breath than words.