When she had finished writing, they looked the pad over. Rhyme reflected: Solid work. He would have liked to have samples of the trace from the deck or roof area where the smoking station was located, and from the site of the attack itself. But this was good for starters.

Sachs glanced at the remaining pages of notes in Italian Ercole was staring at, the official report. “Go on,” she insisted kindly. “Please. I want to hear the accounts.”

Ercole apparently hoped he’d be let off the hook by simply translating the forensics. Reciting the witnesses’ and suspect’s statements seemed perhaps, in the young officer’s mind, to move his crime into a different category, misdemeanor to felony.

Reading, he said, “Natalia Garelli, twenty-one, attends the University of Naples. She hosted a party in her flat for fellow students and friends. The victim, Frieda S., arrived at ten p.m. Alone. She remembered drinking and talking with some people—mostly Natalia or her boyfriend—but was a bit shy. She too is a student, just arrived from Holland. She vaguely recalls around eleven or midnight the defendant approaching her and talking. They both had glasses of wine at the table where they were sitting—this is downstairs—and Garry kept refilling her glass. Then they embraced and…limonarono…I do not know.”

“Made out?” Sachs suggested.

“Sì. Made out.” He read more. “It was crowded so they went to the roof. Then Frieda has no memory until four in the morning, waking on the roof of the adjacent building and realizing she’d been assaulted. She was still quite drugged but managed to get to the wall separating the two rooftops. She climbed over, fell and was calling for help. Natalia, the hostess, heard her cries and got her downstairs into the apartment. Natalia’s boyfriend, Dev, called the police.

“Investigators checked the door to the roof of the adjoining building but it was locked and did not appear to have been opened recently. Natalia told police that she suspected Serbian roommates living downstairs in that building—they’d been crude and drank a lot—but the police verified they were out of town. And dismissed anyone else in that building as suspects.

“A few witnesses on the roof—at the table for smoking, the smoking station—saw Garry and Frieda together briefly, walking to an alcove on the roof, where there was a bench, but that is out of sight of the smoking station. Between about one a.m. and two, only they were upstairs. At two a.m. Garry walked down the stairs to the apartment proper and left. Several witnesses reported that he seemed distressed. No one noticed that Frieda was missing. People assumed she’d left earlier. The next day there was an anonymous call—a woman, calling from a pay phone at a tabaccaio near Naples University. After she heard about the attack, she wanted to call the police and report that she believed she’d seen Garry mixing something into Frieda’s drink.”

“And no idea of her identity at all?” Rhyme asked.

“No.” Ercole continued, “The call allowed the inspector to get a warrant to search his flat. That led to the discovery of traces of the date-rape drug on the jacket he’d worn the night of the party and the other articles of clothing.”