The Burial Hour (Lincoln Rhyme 13)

"We're not sure. Since he's picked two immigrants, refugees, so far, he might be thinking it's harder for the police to solve the cases with undocumenteds as victims. And they're less motivated to run the investigation."

"You think he's that smart?"

"Every bit."

"Ah, look at this!"

The traffic had come to a halt. From the plane, she'd called Prescott and given him the address on the Post-it note found at the scene where the Composer had slashed Malek Dadi to death. Prescott assured her that it would take only a half hour to get there from the airport but already they'd been fighting through traffic for twice that.

"Welcome to Milano," he muttered, backing up, over the sidewalk, turning around and finding another route. She recalled that Mike Hill had warned about the traffic from the larger airport in Milan, thinking: Imagine how long it would take to fight twenty-some miles of congestion like this.

Nearly an hour and a half after she'd landed, Prescott turned along a wide, shallow canal. The area was a mix of the well-worn, the quirky chic and the tawdry. Residences, restaurants and shops.

"This is the Navigli," Prescott announced. He pointed to the soupy waterway. "This and a few others are all that're left of a hundred miles of canals that connected Milan to rivers for transport of goods and passengers. A lot of Italian cities have rivers nearby or running right through town. Milan doesn't. This was the attempt to create artificial waterways to solve that problem. Da Vinci himself helped design locks and sluices."

He turned and drove along a quiet street to an intersection of commercial buildings. Deserted here. He parked under what was clearly a no-parking sign, with the attitude of someone who knew beyond doubt he wouldn't be ticketed, much less towed.

"That's the place right there: Filippo Argelati, Twenty Thirty-Two."

A sign, pink paint--faded from red: Fratelli Guida. Magazzino.

Prescott said, "The Guida Brothers. Warehouse."

The sign was very old and she guessed that the siblings were long gone. Massimo Rossi had texted her that the building was owned by a commercial real estate company in Milan. It was leased to a company based in Rome but calls to the office had not been returned.

She climbed out of the car and walked to the sidewalk in front of the building. It was a two-story stucco structure, light brown, and covered with audacious graffiti. The windows were painted dark brown on the inside. She crouched down and touched some pieces of green broken glass in front of the large double doors.

She returned and Prescott got out of his vehicle too. She asked, "Could you stay here and keep an eye on the neighborhood. If anyone shows up text me."

"I..." He was flustered. "I will. But why would anyone show up? I mean, it looks like nobody's been there for months, years."

"No, somebody was here within the past hour. A vehicle. It ran over a bottle that was in front. See it? That glass?"

"Oh, there. Yes."

"There's still wet beer inside."

"If there's something illegal going on, we should call the Carabinieri or the Police of State." Prescott had grown uncomfortable.

"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.