Page 116 of The Grave Artist

She was putting Fisher’s cable TV bill back in when a man’s voice made her jump. “What have we here?”

Selina started to turn but froze when the muzzle of a gun pressed against the side of her neck.

Chapter 56

“So, HK’s got a hacker buddy,” Carmen said. “Any ID information?”

“None,” Heron told her. “Anonymous.”

“Comms still compromised?”

“No. They’re open.”

“Then let’s get started. The police in Florence and Verona. We need to talk to them. I know HSI has an interpreter division. It’s in DC. We can—”

“I speak Italian,” Mouse offered.

Carmen was surprised. “You do? I never knew that.”

“Nobody ever asked.” She rocked on her red Chuck Taylor high-tops. “And, if it’s helpful, Spanish and German, Russian. Mandarin. I’m a little rusty on my Hindi but I can get by. Oh, and Romanian—the closest to true Latin, not church Latin, still being spoken.”

Lord, their assistant was a jewel.

Heron asked, “Which city first: Verona or Florence?”

“Florence,” she said, recalling what they’d learned from forensics. “Su Ling found the art restoration chemicals he might’ve picked up. And Florence seems more ... arty than Verona. At least from what I’ve seen on the Discovery Channel.”

Mouse began giving orders to Declan regarding law enforcement agencies in the Tuscan capital.

On the screen, Tandy laughed. “You know he’s kind of like HAL, don’t you?”

The renegade computer in Stanley Kubrick’s2001.

Mouse frowned. “We’re not sure he likes those references. It might just be he’s not a Kubrick fan in general—you know,Eyes Wide Shut—but to be safe we avoid mentioningA Space Odyssey.”

Tandy blinked. “Noted.”

Declan returned a wealth of information, including several police agencies likely to have been involved in the investigation—if there had, in fact, been one.

“It’s late there,” Heron pointed out.

“If they’re like us, some of them’ll be up. There’s this line some famous cop said, a long time ago. Like a slogan. ‘We never sleep.’”

Declan was in fact-checking mode. “It was not a policeman, Carmen. That was the motto of the National Detective Agency, founded by Allan Pinkerton around 1850. Pinkerton went on to become the head of Lincoln’s Secret Service and—”

“Declan,” Heron muttered. “Stop generating.”

After a dozen calls, assisted by Mouse as interpreter, Carmen was put in touch with Inspector Valeria Fresca with the Polizia di Stato, the Italian police agency tasked with criminal investigation.

Mouse reported that Fresca, who was with the Interregional Directorate of Tuscany, wasn’t surprised by their call. She had been expecting to hear from someone in LA for several days.

“They heard a news report of the killing here and contacted LAPD and DHS.”

Heron broke the news to her that the communications between the Italian State Police, Europol, Homeland Security and LAPD had been compromised.

The call was on speaker and the inspector was, to put it mildly, pissed off. A sharp few words were muttered in Italian.

“Won’t bother to translate,” Mouse said.