The Burial Hour (Lincoln Rhyme 13)

Chapter 55

Amelia Sachs, on her phone, turned back to the room and announced, "I've got the director of the mental hospital in Pennsylvania. She's Dr. Sandra Coyne. Doctor, you're on speaker."

"Yes, hello. Let me understand. You're in Italy? And this is about Stefan Merck?"

"That's right," Sachs said. And explained what her patient had been up to.

The woman reacted with silence, presumably stunned. Finally she spoke. "Oh, my," she said in a husky voice after a moment. "Those kidnappings in Naples. Yes, they made the news here. The stories said the crimes were modeled after one in New York, I think. But it never occurred to us that Stefan might be the one behind them."

Rhyme asked, "What's his diagnosis?"

"Schizophrenic personality, bipolar, severe anxiety disorder."

"How did he escape?"

"We're a medium-security facility. And Stefan had been on perfect behavior since he'd been here. He had grounds privileges and apparently some very careless landscapers left a shovel outside. He found it and dug under the chain link."

"He was committed for attempted murder?"

"At another facility, yes. He permanently injured him. He was found incompetent to stand trial."

Rossi said, "I am an investigator here, in Naples. Please, Doctor. How could he have paid for this, the trip? He has resources?"

"His mother died years ago, his father disappeared. There was some trust money and he's had some relatives visit recently, an aunt and uncle. They might have given him something."

"Can we get their names?" Sachs asked.

"Yes, I'll find them in the files." She took down Sachs's contact information and said she'd send the information as soon as they hung up.

"Is there anything you can think of," Sachs asked, "that might help us understand why he's doing this?"

After a pause, the woman said, "Stefan has his own reality. His world is a world of sounds and music. Nothing else matters to him. I'm sorry to say we don't have the money or authority to give patients like him access to what would help. In Stefan's case, instruments or the Internet. He's told me for years he's starved for sounds. He was never dangerous, never threatening, but something must have pushed him even further from reality." A pause, then she said, "You want to know the kind of person you're dealing with here? In one session he told his therapist he was very depressed. And why? Because he didn't have a recording of Jesus's crucifixion."

Those words resonated with Rhyme. He sometimes imagined walking the grid at famous historical crime scenes, using modern forensic techniques to analyze the crimes. Calvary was perhaps number one on his list.

Sachs asked, "Why Italy? Any connection here?"

"Nothing from his past. But I do know that just before he escaped, in one session, he kept referring to a special woman in his life."

"Someone with an Italian connection? Can we talk to her?"

A laugh. "That would be pretty difficult. It turned out he was referring to a three-thousand-year-old mythological being. Euterpe, one of the nine muses in Greek and Roman lore."

"The muse of music," Ercole said.

"Yes, that's right."

Sachs asked if there were any special foods he might eat, any special interests he had--anything that might help them find stores or places he would tend to go.

She could think of nothing, except to add the curious comment that Stefan didn't care about the taste of food. Only the sound of eating. He preferred crunchy foods to soft.

Hardly helpful, from an investigative perspective.

Rhyme asked if she had pictures of Stefan other than the mug shot.

"Yes, let me find them. Give me an email."

Rossi recited the address.