An inquiring glance at Spiro, who said, “Most easily.”

How calm she was. Like a soldier who’d been expecting to be captured by the enemy.

“On the subject of hair, you have a short cut, dyed blond. Forgive me, but Ms. Clairol is involved, isn’t she? We found similar strands at the Brooklyn kidnap site and on Robert Ellis’s phone. I’m sure they’ll be consistent with yours.”

If she displayed any expression, she seemed curious how Rhyme and the others had unraveled the story. But only mildly curious.

Rhyme wasn’t there yet, however. “Now, we have evidence placing you at Stefan’s farmhouse here. Your shoes.” Gazing at another of Sachs’s evidence bags. “Looks like those tread marks’re the same as prints at Stefan’s. There’ll be trace in the treads associated with the soil there.”

He held up a hand, to nip quiet an impending question. “Please? I’ll finish. Let’s talk about the other charge against you: wrongfully implicating Garry Soames for sexual assault. And interference with judicial process.” Another look at the law enforcers, a questioning furrow of brow.

Rossi said, “It would be interference with a police investigation—on the same pitch. And accusing someone of a crime wrongfully is a separate offense in Italy. Quite serious. As Amanda Knox learned.”

Rhyme resumed. “Shoes again: These’ll match the prints left outside Garry’s window. And Ercole has collected soil from the site, which…well, again we’ll check against trace in the shoes.

“Now, tire treads. A car mounted with Continental 195/65R15s tires had been parked behind Garry’s apartment. And a car mounted with Continental 195/65R15s had been parked at the farmhouse. And there’s a car mounted with Continental 195/65R15s parked a block away. A Nissan Maxima, with U.S. diplo plates on it, checked out to you from the embassy in Rome. The Nissan, by the way is parked next to Stefan’s car, a two thousand seven Mercedes 4MATIC, mounted with the Michelins we’ve found at all the scenes.

“So. The Composer case and the Garry Soames case are linked. You are involved in both. Why? Because when you heard we had come from New York to help the police here, you knew you had to stop us, or at least slow us down. I’m not sure how you learned about the rape and that Garry was one of the people being questioned but it was easy enough: monitoring, or hacking, the Italian police reports, I’d imagine. You broke his bedroom window and sprinkled date-rape drug residue inside. You made the anonymous call implicating him. Then you called us in with a sob story about an innocent young American student wrongly arrested. To keep us distracted from searching for Stefan.

“And when that wasn’t enough, you got your boy the hunting rifle. Stefan used that to ‘discourage’ us. Slow us down. I’m sure he wasn’t shooting to hit anyone, just to make us think that he was willing to kill police, make us wary.”

He grimaced and felt true regret. “I might’ve tipped to it a bit earlier: The shoe that Stefan lost struggling with Khaled Jabril’s wife also had the date-rape drug on it. We—rather unfairly, I admit—gave one young officer hell for cross-contamination. But when I realized how diligent he’d been, I wondered if the Composer had been near a source of the date-rape drug. And obviously he had: you.