Sachs said, “Still, even if nobody questioned your cover story, picking Stefan was risky—he was committed for kidnapping, assault and attempted murder.”

“Those are the bald facts,” McKenzie said. “But it’s more complicated than that. A few years ago, while Stefan was an outpatient at a facility in Philadelphia, he saw a male nurse abusing patients, some very disabled. The nurse was reported but the executives at the hospital did nothing about it, and he went on abusing women, but was just more careful.

“Stefan found out where the man lived and broke in. He taped the man to a chair—that was the kidnapping charge—and put homemade earphones on the man. He hooked them to a sound generator and turned up the volume so high that it ruptured the man’s eardrums. He’s permanently deaf.”

“The attempted murder?”

“Apparently if you play sound loud enough for a long-enough period of time, it can be fatal. Stefan’s lawyers claimed that wasn’t his intention. I’m sure it wasn’t. To Stefan, being deaf is worse than dying. His psych evaluation led the judge to rule he wasn’t fit for trial, and he was committed indefinitely.”

“How did you find him?” Spiro asked.

“We wanted a functioning mental patient, with a history of schizophrenic behavior. We searched, okay, hacked medical records. Stefan seemed like a good possibility. The deal you were talking about, Lincoln? I told him if he helped us, I guaranteed he’d be moved to a nicer facility. He’d have access to music, the Internet. He’d get an electronic keyboard. He was starved for his music, for his collection of sounds. He’d be in Harmony if I’d do that, he said.”

Rhyme recalled that Stefan’s doctor, the director of the mental facility, had said much the same.

McKenzie said, “No, Stefan is unsettling but he’s not dangerous. He’s actually quite timid. Shy. He met a girl the other day. He was having an episode, so he went to downtown Naples. The noise, the chaos in the streets helps him. Calms him down. It’s silence that’s bad for him. Anyway, he met this girl. Her name was Lilly. He went with her to the Fontanelle Cemetery—an underground cavern here.”

Rossi and Spiro nodded, obviously familiar with it.

She said, “An unstable person might have hurt her, assaulted her. But you know what he did? He secretly recorded her footsteps. Apparently he loved the sound her boots made in the cavern. After, he drove her home. That’s the kind of ‘danger’ Stefan Merck represents. And, yes, the rifle shots? Only to scare you off.”

Sachs said, “But Garry Soames? He could have been convicted.”

“No. That wouldn’t’ve happened. We have absolute proof that Natalia Garelli assaulted Frieda. As soon as the operation was completed here—”

Sachs shook her head with dawning awareness. “You have the goddamn CCTV video from the hotel across the street.”

McKenzie was nodding. “We hacked the security system and downloaded it, then overwrote their drive. It clearly showed Natalia committed the crime. I’ll send it to the police tomorrow.”