Sachs asked, “What’s your opinion, Ms. Cinelli? You’ve talked to him. Is he innocent?”

“It is my opinion that he has exercised bad judgment in the past, living a life too lascivious and bragging about it. And he can have the arrogance of someone with charm and good looks. But I do believe he is innocent of this crime. Garry does not seem like a cruel boy. And someone who would knock out a woman and have relations with her is indisputably cruel.”

“What do you want from us, specifically?” Rhyme asked.

McKenzie looked at Cinelli, who said, “A review of the evidence that has been gathered—the report, I mean. You cannot have access to the evidence itself. And, if possible, you might search the scenes again, to the extent you can. All we need is something to point to another suspect. Not a name necessarily, just the possibility that someone other than Garry committed the crime. To introduce reasonable doubt.”

Mulbry said, “I’ll get the buzz going in the media, and that might help get him released, pending trial.”

McKenzie added, “The jail he is being held in is not a bad one. On the whole Italian prisons are rather decent. But he’s charged with rape. Fellow prisoners despise those suspects nearly as much as child molesters. The Penitentiary Police are watching him but there have already been threats. A magistrate has the power to release him until trial, if he surrenders his passport, of course. Or to place him under house arrest. Or, frankly, if the evidence against him proves irrefutable, to allow him to plead guilty and work an arrangement for safe incarceration, so he may begin his sentence.”

Sachs and Rhyme regarded each other.

Why now…?

He glanced into the lawyer’s open briefcase and saw an Italian newspaper. He didn’t need a translation of the headline to get the gist:

SOSPETTO DI VIOLENZA SESSUALE

Below that was a picture of an extremely handsome collegiate-looking blond man, flanked by police. A Midwestern frat boy. His face was an eerie mix of frightened and bewildered…and cocky.

Rhyme nodded. “All right. We’ll do what we can. But our investigation for the serial kidnapper here takes priority.”

“Yes, certainly,” McKenzie said. Her face blossomed with gratitude.

“Grazie, thank you.” From Cinelli.

Daryl Mulbry said, “About those interviews. Would you—?”

“No,” Rhyme muttered.

Elena Cinelli nodded and offered, “I would recommend against publicly mentioning that Captain Rhyme and Detective Sachs are involved.” To Rhyme, “You must be very discreet. For your own sake. The prosecutor handling the case against Garry is a brilliant man, that’s not disputed, but he can be difficult and vindictive and he is cold as ice.”

Sachs tossed a glance toward Rhyme, who asked the lawyer, “Is his name, by any chance, Dante Spiro?”

“Santo Cielo! How did you know?”

Chapter 27

When will it end? she thought.

And nearly smiled at the absurdity of that question.

It will never end.

This world, her world, was like that abstraction from mathematics class at boarding school so many years, so many lives ago: a Möbius strip, endless.