Spider Read online

  ‘I hope you’re kidding me,’ said Howie.

  ‘I wish I was. A woman’s body parts have turned up all over the western coastline, and from the briefing notes I’ve seen there are certainly enough similarities to put BRK into the reckoning.’

  ‘The hand?’

  ‘The hand,’ confirmed Jack. ‘The left hand is missing and the bone cuts are the same. But there’s more. Victim description also fits our series – dark hair, mid-twenties, slightly smaller than average height, all the usual stuff is in there.’

  Howie grimaced as he tried to weigh up the impact of BRK killing on another continent. ‘Why the hell would BRK be killing in Italy, and at the same time messing around in the US with the body of an earlier victim?’

  ‘You thinking the Italian job is a copycat?’ asked Jack, looking down at his salad bowl and deciding to try the mozzarella, then in the same second remembering the verb mozzare means ‘to cut’.

  ‘That’s hard to buy,’ said Howie. ‘You’d have to believe that the graveyard incident in South Carolina and your case in Italy are both unconnected coincidences happening at almost exactly the same time.’

  ‘Or conversely,’ said Jack, ‘you have to accept BRK is now working on two continents.’

  Suddenly, there was the sound of heavy-fisted banging on Howie’s bathroom door. ‘Howie, you gonna stay in there all day?’ shouted Carrie. ‘I have to go before my Pilates class.’

  ‘You in the bathroom?’ asked Jack. ‘Tell me you’re not doing what I think you might be doing.’

  ‘Right in the middle of it when you rang.’

  ‘Oh, man, too much detail!’ said Jack in the most disgusted tone he could manage.

  ‘Hey, you asked. And you know I can never lie to you.’

  ‘Believe me, Howie, at times like this, it’s okay to lie.’

  ‘Are you gonna let me in there?’ shouted Carrie again.

  ‘Just a minute, Jack,’ said Howie. He turned from the cell phone. ‘Carrie, will you please shut the fuck up for just one friggin’ minute? I’m on the phone to Jack in Italy and I’m on the pan as well.’

  ‘Un-fucking-believable!’ came the reply, and she banged once more on the door before storming off.

  Howie cleared his head and focused again. ‘I’m sorry, buddy, a bit of a domestic waging here. Where were we?’

  ‘Connections,’ said Jack. ‘We were discussing whether there’s a connection between the Kearney incident, BRK and the Italian killing.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s BRK who visited Kearney’s grave,’ said Howie forcefully.

  ‘Sure as in gut sure, or sure as in forensics sure?’

  ‘Bit of both,’ said Howie. ‘He cut Kearney’s head off her corpse and took it away.’

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘Sawed the skull clean off. And before you ask, we don’t have anything back yet on exactly what he used to do that, but it was a saw cut, not brute force or blunt instrument.’

  Jack pictured Sarah Kearney’s desecrated body and felt a bolt of anger shoot through him. ‘Heads aren’t BRK’s style. Okay, he’s decapitated bodies before. Christ, he’s severed every limb and mutilated every body part known to man, but that’s functional not emotional; he did it to dispose of victims, not to take trophies. The hand has always been his thing, his one thing. I’m still not sure this is connected.’

  ‘It’s connected, Jack, trust me.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Jack, sensing he didn’t yet have the full picture.

  ‘We have the head. He mailed it directly to us.’

  ‘To the FBI?’ asked Jack.

  ‘He mailed it to our New York office. Airport boys at International in Myrtle pulled the package as a matter of routine and scanned it.’

  ‘He would have known that they would do that,’ added Jack. ‘No prints I suppose, nothing from AFIS?’

  ‘It’s cleaner than the Pope’s underpants.’

  ‘It’s still not a clincher,’ said Jack, continuing the role of devil’s advocate. ‘I accept that Sarah Kearney’s grave has a special link to BRK. But exhuming the corpse is not in his MO, severing heads is not part of his offender profile and direct contact with the FBI is certainly not his style.’

  Howie knew not to argue with Jack when he was on an analytical roll. ‘You might be right,’ he conceded, ‘but there’s one more thing, something that might alter your view. Whoever did this – BRK or no BRK – they mailed Sarah Kearney’s decapitated skull to you. They put it in a box and addressed it to Jack King, care of the FBI in New York. So you tell me, Jack, why would some random whacko send you the severed head of one of BRK’s victims?’

  34

  Marine Park, Brooklyn, New York

  Lu Zagalsky’s fears rise as she hears the thump of his footsteps coming down the wooden basement stairs, then the click of the key in the lock of the heavy door at the bottom.

  It’s been six hours since she’s seen him, but without being able to look at her watch, it’s seemed even longer. Pain and exhaustion eventually helped her slip into a fitful sleep, which has done little to numb the agony of her broken nose, her scorched throat and aching body. Her sense of night and day is already starting to fade.

  ‘Hello, Sugar,’ he says cheerily, almost as though he were greeting an old friend.

  Lu notices the bandage on his hand, blood staining the side. In his other hand he holds what looks like a drink and a newspaper that she recognizes as a copy of USA Today.

  Spider sees her eyes darting all over him. ‘I’ve been out,’ he explains. ‘I needed a breath of fresh air to calm myself down after what happened between us. I brought you back a vanilla milkshake; I thought you might like something cool and soothing for your throat.’

  He lays the newspaper on the floor, as though covering a damp spot, and sets the shake down on the edge of the bondage table. ‘I’m going to slacken the chains a little so you can sit up again and you can have the drink,’ says Spider, adding with a touch of black humour, ‘but not as much as last time, eh? Old Spider has learned his lesson, and I’m afraid you won’t be free enough to bite the hand that feeds you.’

  Lu’s head roars with pain as he manoeuvres her into an upright position and blood pumps back through her body.

  ‘Sip it slowly,’ he says, angling the straw her way and putting it to her lips.

  She sucks hard and the ice-cool liquid slips comfortingly down her raw throat. Her shrunken belly growls and rumbles its surprise at finally having something to digest.

  ‘Good, good,’ says Spider, taking the shake off her. ‘Now, let’s lie you down again.’ He pushes her forehead back and dips below the bondage table to re-tighten the restraining chains.

  Lu feels better for the drink, and allows herself a moment of brief optimism. He just fed you, Lu. If he’s feeding you, he plans to keep you alive, at least for the time being.

  Spider leans over her again, pulling at the chains, checking their tautness. ‘That shake should make you feel a little better. It will help you settle down for a while now – while I’m gone.’

  Gone? The word sizzled, as though he’d branded her with it.

  ‘That’s right,’ he says, noticing the change in her eyes. ‘I’m going to have to leave you now.’

  Leave me? For where? For how long? Why?

  Spider bends close to her face and points a finger upwards. ‘Look closely at the ceiling and you’ll see a camera.’

  Lu stares at the blackness above her and finally spots the camera lens. A red light is blinking near it, like the eye of a rodent staring down at her.

  Spider twists her head to one side. ‘And over there, there’s another little camera eye watching you.’ He lets go of her. ‘In fact, there are cameras all over the room, watching you all the time. And guess what? Wherever I am, I’ll be watching you too. Isn’t technology a wonderful thing?’ He takes a small black device, about a quarter of the size of a cell phone, out of his pocket.

  Lu can see that there’s a blue light flashing
on it and that it has three different coloured buttons, like the red, green and blue ones on a TV remote.

  ‘This is a blue-toothed trigger device. As I leave here, I will activate several pressure pads on the outside of this basement. Should you try to escape, or should anyone try to get in while I’m gone, the devices will explode and this whole house will become a fireball. Even better than that, no matter where I am, I can dial in a number and press this little red button here and kaboomb! No more Sugar.’

  Lu feels her face drain of what little colour she had left.

  ‘I hope that milkshake was good, Sugar, because it is the last thing you will ever taste. You’re going to get hungry soon. Then you’re going to experience what starvation feels like. And then, after a certain period of time, your body will literally start to eat itself to death. And all the time, I’ll be watching, right up until your last breath.’

  PART THREE

  Tuesday, 3 July

  35

  Rome

  None of the offices smelled more of stale tobacco than that of Massimo Albonetti, head of the Ufficio Investigativo Centrale di Psicologia Criminale, an elite offshoot of the Unita di Analisi del Crimine Violento, modelled on the FBI’s famed National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime in Quantico. Crammed inside Massimo’s nicotine den, in preparation for Jack King’s visit, were Orsetta, case coordinator Benito Patrizio and assistant analyst Roberto Barcucci. In readiness for working with Jack, they were instructed to speak English, not Italian, though they all knew Massimo would be the first to lapse into their native tongue.

  The Director’s desk was cleared of all unrelated papers and files, leaving only a dark green leather-framed ink-blotter, a hard-backed faintly lined notebook, a cheap police-issue ballpoint pen, and a black-and-white photograph of Cristina Barbuggiani’s face that seemed to stare right up at him. Massimo pressed a buzzer on his desk and spoke to Claudia, his secretary, who patrolled the other side of his office like a pit-bull guarding a sirloin steak. ‘Claudia, please bring some water, juices, sodas and a double espresso for me. Grazie.’

  He flicked off the buzzer and gently touched Cristina’s picture before addressing his team. ‘Orsetta, Jack will be staying at the Grand Plaza on Via del Corso. He’s booked in for two nights, please authorize Admin to reserve a third. Have an unmarked car waiting to pick him up from the train station and take him straight there. He should be arriving around ten p.m.’ Massimo thought once more about the transportation for Jack. ‘Don’t let them send an owl, make it a VIP sedan with a driver, I want him fully refreshed by the time he has got through our blessed traffic. The following morning have the same car and the same driver bring him to my office. I’ll probably drop him back at the Plaza myself at the end of the day.’

  ‘I head home that way, Direttore,’ said Orsetta.

  ‘I don’t mind dropping him off myself.’

  Massimo studied her face and thought about teasing her. It was only natural that she’d be intrigued by someone as well thought of as Jack King; come to think of it, he’d probably planted the seeds himself by quoting Jack’s theories during many of his case conferences. ‘Very kind of you, Orsetta. I’ll keep it in mind and call you should I need you,’ he said playfully.

  Orsetta, dressed simply in figure-hugging black trousers and a long-collared white cotton blouse, felt herself blush as Massimo’s brown eyes appeared to x-ray her mind. What the hell, she had decided that Jack King was special and she hoped something special was going to happen when they met again.

  ‘Roberto, have all the translations been finished? My old friend Jack is American; he can barely speak English let alone Italian.’

  ‘Si, Direttore,’ laughed the assistant. He was so young and fresh-faced that Massimo didn’t think the kid had even started shaving. A blessing he should enjoy while it lasted. ‘We have done overviews of the main witness statements, a summary report on the major actions carried out and their results, also a forensics overview, with a run-down on soil and substance analysis. We’re still running traces on the black plastic bags that the body parts were found in. It all takes time and right now we are short-handed.’

  ‘Chase it, Roberto. You need more men, ask now, not in two weeks, when it is too late.’ Massimo fixed his eyes on him, making sure the lesson was being learned.

  ‘I need two more people,’ replied Roberto quickly. ‘Maybe three shifts each?’

  ‘Then you’ll have them, my young colleague,’ said Massimo with a generous smile. ‘What else?’

  Roberto cleared his throat. We have translations of the summaries on fingerprints and DNA, but we have no known matches to any offenders.’

  ‘Then, for the moment, keep looking,’ instructed Massimo, silently cursing the fact that, unlike the FBI, the Italian Forensic Science Service did not have a fully integrated DNA database on which to carry out searches. It had established CODIS, its own highly efficient Combined DNA Index System as far back as 1999 but the national police, the carabinieri and many other public and private bodies continued to have separate databases that were not connected to CODIS. Moreover, the databases were so zealously guarded that often Massimo’s unit had to apply to prosecutors or judges to instruct the owners to release information.

  Massimo tried to put the DNA tangle out of his thoughts and pressed on. ‘We’re all presuming that this BRK is American, and that he is the FBI’s problem and will stay the FBI’s problem. But a murder here in Italy changes all that. It makes it our problem. My problem, your problem, our problem.’ His eyes roamed over them, picking them out one at a time. ‘You all understand me?’

  ‘Si, Direttore,’ they managed, apologetically and not in unison.

  ‘So why Italy?’ continued Massimo, rubbing his big bald head while looking at his team for answers. ‘Come on; give me some of your thoughts.’

  Roberto went first, ‘He’s moved here, this is now his home. His job has brought him to Italy.’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Massimo. ‘Next.’

  ‘Holiday,’ suggested Benito, the case coordinator. ‘Even serial killers have holidays. Perhaps he just had the opportunity to kill while he was here.’

  ‘Next,’ said Massimo.

  ‘Perhaps Cristina Barbuggiani had been on holiday in America and he came over to visit her,’ offered Orsetta.

  ‘Check it,’ said Massimo. ‘Ask her family where she’d recently been on vacation, and whether there were any foreign friends that she spoke of.’

  ‘What if this serial killer turns out to be Italian?’ suggested Roberto. ‘Maybe he came from Rome originally, then moved to America like many Italians do, and now, after a long and illustrious career killing Americans, he has decided to come back home and settle here.’

  ‘Then why kill here?’ questioned Massimo. ‘I could understand a killer, perhaps of Italian blood, coming back to his native home to give it all up, to turn his back on the murders and live out the last of his days in the sunshine, a long and happy way from anyone investigating his crimes. But not to kill here. A dog does not shit in his own basket.’

  ‘I have a dog that shits everywhere, including his own basket,’ argued Benito, stroking a straggly black goatee that Massimo desperately wanted to cut off.

  ‘Good point,’ said Massimo. ‘We should not close our minds to the fact that this man is an exception to all the rules we know, and that he will never stop killing. He is not a burned-out businessman looking for a place in the sun to retire to and rest his old bones in. He is a predator, looking for new prey, thirsting for fresh blood, and perhaps he has decided that Italy is a new hunting ground for him.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s not BRK,’ suggested Orsetta. ‘Perhaps it’s a copycat.’

  ‘I don’t buy that,’ interjected Benito. ‘Two killers on two different continents with the same MO, targeting the same type of victims. It’s a big ask.’

  ‘No bigger than imagining he’s come all the way here just to kill,’ replied Orsetta, her voice rising in defence of her theor
y. ‘I mean, it’s not like he’s short of choice in America, is it? He’s got three hundred million people to choose from, so why on earth would he give up such a rich hunting ground to operate in a country that is alien to him?’

  ‘Okay, we’ll chalk that up as a maybe,’ said Massimo. ‘But, back to my point. Why here? What’s the link?’

  They sat silently, dredging their minds for inspiration. ‘King,’ suggested Orsetta. ‘If it is BRK and not a copycat, then the only link I can think of is Jack King.’

  Massimo frowned. ‘Jack King?’

  Orsetta struggled to build on her suggestion. ‘I’m not saying King is the reason BRK may be killing in Italy, I’m just saying that he appears to be the only link.’

  Benito curled his beard between his fingers. ‘I agree. It’s the only link that I can see as well.’

  Massimo thought they were getting nowhere. ‘Then we are in trouble. If the only connection we can come up with is Jack King, the man I invited to help us, then indeed we have nothing to go on. I want a bottom-up evaluation of all our statements, and I mean all of them. I want every last second of Cristina Barbuggiani’s life accounted for. And let me make this very clear to you. I do not want this sociopath slaughtering dozens of young girls here in Italy. I do not want a second person to die. Do you understand me?’ The looks on their faces told him that they did. ‘Good. First killings in new areas are never perfect. This may be our best chance to catch him. No, let me correct myself. This may be our only chance to catch him. And that is the reason I have asked Jack King to put his own health at risk in order to help us try to catch this monster – this –’ Massimo was stuck for the English words to express the full venom of his hatred for Cristina Barbuggiani’s killer. As he resorted to his native tongue, he respectfully covered the dead girl’s picture with his big hand. ‘Uno che va in culo a sua madre!’

  ‘Motherfucker,’ said Orsetta coolly. ‘The word you’re looking for, Direttore, is motherfucker.’