The Burial Hour (Lincoln Rhyme 13)

"Oh, no," Rhyme said, "the absence of fingerprints is very good for us. Isn't it, Sachs?"

She was staring at the chart. "Uh-hum."

"How do you mean?" Rossi asked.

There was a voice in the doorway, "Ciao." From Ercole Benelli, carting a trash bag with him.

Noting the Forestry officer was smiling at her, Sachs said, "Here's the answer to your question, Inspector."

Rhyme explained, "We had a case a few years ago. A professional hit man. We found his hidey-hole and there wasn't a single print. He wore gloves all the time. But that meant he had to dispose of those gloves frequently--since, of course, they retain prints inside the fingers perfectly. He was unlucky enough to throw them out in a refuse bin two blocks from his place. We found them. We identified him. We caught him. I suspect that's where Officer Benelli has been, searching trash bins."

"Yes, yes, Capitano Rhyme." He lifted the green plastic bag. "I found this in a bin behind an IP station--a petrol station--on the road between Caiazzo and Naples. I'm afraid I wasn't successful as regards the gloves."

He lifted three metal paint cans out of the bag and carefully set them on the table. Rhyme took one sniff and, smelling the astringent scent, scowled. "Methyl isobutyl ketone."

"What is that?" Rossi asked.

In slow English, Beatrice answered. "It is being a solvent. Particular effective in melting latex."

"Yes," Rhyme said.

Ercole said, "There is simply a blue mess, sludge, you say? In the bottom. The gloves have dissolved."

Spiro regarded the Forestry officer. "But you don't look as upset as you might, given the news you have delivered. Are you being oblique intentionally? Do not be coy. Explain."

"Yes, Procuratore. The trash bin that these cans were in had a lid on it, and I found no glove prints on the lid but some fingerprints. From, I hope, where he opened the bin to deposit the cans, never thinking we wou

ld find them." He produced an SD card and handed it to Beatrice. She sat at the computer and called up the images. Ercole had used fingerprint powder--an old standby--to raise the images. They were all partials, some better than others.

Rhyme could see, however, they were not enough for an identification.

But he turned to Beatrice, who nodded knowingly. She had anticipated him. She typed at the keyboard and a moment later another print appeared, in a separate screen, beside the partials from the trash bin. They were the Composer's other prints, pulled from the leaves on the branch where he'd spied on Ali Maziq at dinner the night he was kidnapped at the bus stop.

"This might be a moment or several." She began playing Rubik's Cube with the two sets of prints, trying to place them together, enlarging and shrinking, rotating them, moving them from side to side. The room was silent, every eye on the screen.

She adjusted her elaborate, green-framed glasses, studying it carefully. She spoke in Italian.

Ercole said, "She believes this is the Composer's print, three partials combined into one nearly whole."

Beatrice began to type fast as a machine gun. She said something in Italian. Ercole turned to Rhyme and Sachs. "She has sent it already to Eurodac, Interpol, Scotland Yard, and IAFIS, in the United States." Beatrice sat back but kept her eyes focused like gun muzzles on the print.

Spiro was about to ask a question but Ercole said, "And I asked the owner of the station but he saw no one at the trash bin. And his employees did not either."

The prosecutor nodded with an expression that explained that this was to have been his question. He opened his mouth once more.

Ercole said, "And no CCTV."

"Ah."

After two excruciating minutes, a noise interrupted. A beep from Beatrice's computer. She bent to the screen and nodded.

"Ecco. Il Compositore."

She turned the monitor toward them.

The face of a bearded, shaggy-haired man was on the screen. It was a Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Sheriff's Office mug shot. He was pudgy and stared at the camera with piercing brown eyes.

Below was the text that accompanied the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System report. "His name is Stefan Merck, thirty years old. He's a mental patient, committed indefinitely for assault and attempted murder. He escaped from the hospital three weeks ago."