“It’ll be fine. Just text.”

“I will. Sure. I’ll definitely text. What should I text?”

“A smiley emoji’s fine. I just need to feel the vibration.”

“Feel…Oh, you’ll have the ringer off. So nobody can hear? In case anybody’s inside?”

No confirmation needed.

Sachs returned to the building. She stood to the side of the door, her hand near the Beretta grip in her side pocket. There was no reason to think the Composer had tooled up to Milan in his dark sedan, crunched the bottle pulling into the warehouse and was now waiting inside with his razor or knife or a handy noose.

But no compelling reason not to think that.

She pounded on the door with a fist, calling out a reasonable, “Polizia!”

Proud of herself, getting the Italian okay, she thought. And ignoring that she was undoubtedly guilty of a serious infraction.

No response, though.

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 entrées and luncheon meat.