Viper

by Unknown

  Martina shook her head. ‘Your car’s gone. Did you know that?’

  Claretta stuck her head out into the wind and saw the empty space. ‘Oh, God. Come in and shut the door. I’ll wake Nico.’

  And she did. But her husband had no idea either. Not about the kids. Not about the car. Nor did Cristiano when Martina called him over.

  Claretta made coffee while they discussed the possibilities: an accident, an elopement, or something less dramatic and romantic – as Nico speculated. Maybe they’d parked somewhere and fallen asleep, run out of petrol, found a party and stayed but hadn’t rung because it had been late. None of them spoke of anything worse. But they all thought it.

  Two hours later Cristiano rang the police.

  41

  Grand Hotel Parker’s, Napoli

  Jack was still asleep at the hotel’s computer terminal when his cellphone rang. It flashed Howie’s number. He mumbled hello and checked his watch. Nine a.m. in Naples, three in New York. ‘You up early or going home late?’

  ‘Just got in,’ growled Howie.

  The big guy sounded dreadful, no doubt plastered again. ‘What happened? You get lost trying to find your way around the whisky bottle?’

  Howie let out a low grunt. ‘No. I was doing fine for sobriety. Then some robbing little punk in an alleyway knifed me in the ass. I’ve spent all night in the ER, having nurses stare at my butt and stitch up the wound.’

  ‘In the ass? Man, I’m sorry. You okay?’

  ‘Fine and dandy. I tell you, buddy, some little fucko nearly speared me right up the ring-hole. The nurse said if he’d put the knife train any deeper into the big dark tunnel then I would have bled to death.’

  Jack screwed up his face in sympathy.

  ‘If you’re laughing, I’ll never talk to you again.’ Then Howie couldn’t help but laugh himself. ‘Okay, so I admit it’s funny. But listen, I think it’ll be a friggin’ year before I can sit down again, and Christ knows how much it’s gonna hurt when I take a shit.’

  ‘Too much detail. But, hey. I really am sorry.’

  ‘Sure. Anyways, despite my personal tragedy – which you see fit to smirk at – I still done good with regards to your man Creed.’

  Jack raised an eyebrow. ‘Above and beyond the call of.’

  ‘Yeah, and don’t you forget it. So here you go…’ Howie growled again as he repositioned himself. ‘Let’s start at the hotel. No guests, no minibar consumption beyond some water, Pringles and two bottles of beer. Room-service dinner – only for one – and breakfast in his room too. Some photocopying and newspapers. You following me?’

  ‘Right alongside. Boring as hell.’

  ‘Sure is, but it gets a might more interesting in a few lines’ time. Remember the hotel receptionist you flirted with?’

  ‘Kind of.’

  ‘Polish woman, Brenda Libowicz, at the Lester. Anyways, she remembers you. I took her for that coffee you didn’t have time for and it paid off a little. Brenda let me go through everything and it seems your friend Creed pretty much had the porn channel on full-time.’

  ‘Old news. I thought I’d told you that?’

  ‘Not that I recall. But there’s more. Movie porn wasn’t his only turn-on. He also spent a lot of time on the Internet.’

  ‘You get browser data?’

  ‘Did Clinton get a blow job?’ Howie pulled over a computer printout that was lying on the table next to his notebook. ‘Creed did several searches on BDSM and watched some real hard-core adult sites. Get this; he specifically searched for dark-haired women who were between seventeen and thirty. He spent an hour on Court TV’s crime library reading stories about killers who buried bodies. He went through all our old friends including John Wayne Gacy and Gary Ridgeway, spent a whole lot of time on the Cleveland Torso murders and then ended up reading everything that was ever written about the Sunday Morning Slasher.’

  Jack stopped him. His mind was hopelessly trying to make connections. It felt like wiring a plug in the dark. ‘That’s ringing all kinds of bells. The Slasher is the Coral Watts case, isn’t it?’

  ‘The one and only,’ said Howie. ‘Coral Eugene Sonofabitch Watts. Killed several young women. Drowned them, strangled them, cut their throats or knifed them dozens of times. And the bastard claimed to have murdered dozens more that the cops never found.’

  Jack finally made his mental connection. ‘Watts buried his victims and that’s why they weren’t found for years and he was able to carry on killing. On top of that, he used to ceremonially burn trophies he took from the bodies.’

  ‘Yep, so you have some clear comparisons there – the missing women, the burials, even some burning.’

  ‘Thanks, buddy, I’d just about joined those dots on my own.’

  ‘Well done. There’s another thing,’ he said, his voice growing flat and worried. ‘Turns out that Creed has had and still does have access to FBI files.’

  ‘Say again.’ Jack hoped he’d misheard.

  ‘One of the Internet cookies I traced was Creed’s log-in to the FBI’s Virtual Academy. Seems that he’s been enlisted as a student of the VA.’

  The Virtual Academy was a global distance-learning site, jammed with information and famed for helping to hone profiling techniques. Access was restricted to the law enforcement world.

  The breach rendered Jack silent.

  ‘You hear me?’ asked Howie.

  ‘I hear you. Only now the dots make a picture that I really don’t like. The thought of a possible offender being deep inside our corridors of knowledge fills me with dread. We need to find out everything this sonofabitch has read or written, and whoever he’s spoken to. And we need to do it fast.’

  42

  Campeggio Castellani, Pompeii

  For a split second Franco Castellani couldn’t work out the cause of the sharp slapping sensation inside his head. Still slow and wasted from the heroin, he gradually realized that the pain was coming from his grandfather’s hand rather than from the after-effects of the drug.

  ‘What in God’s name do you think you are doing? You crazy crazy, child!’

  Franco covered his face. Not that the slaps carried much weight. Rosa. His fingers still smelled of Rosa.

  ‘Sit up! Sit up and tell me that this is not what I think it is. Not what I know it is.’

  Antonio backed off to give him room. Franco forced his eyes open wide enough to see the syringe and the empty plastic packet being dangled above him. The air was hot and stale. Flies buzzed around a dirty plate near his cousin’s bed. Franco finally commanded his legs to move and raised himself into a sitting position. The door jerked open and blinding white light flooded in. Paolo stopped in his tracks, fresh bread and milk in a carrier bag swinging in his hand.

  ‘Get out!’ shouted Antonio.

  Paolo turned on his heels.

  Franco noticed his cousin had been dressed in work clothes. He guessed he’d overslept and his grandfather had come looking for him. ‘It’s heroin,’ he admitted, shielding the light from his face. ‘If you were me, you’d be taking it too. Lots of it.’

  His grandfather slapped him again. ‘Don’t give me this self-pity shit. Be proud of who you are, what you are.’

  Franco put his hands back to his face; this time the blows had stung. ‘What I am? I’m the living dead, that’s what I am.’

  Antonio hit him again. Slapped hard at the boy’s stubborn head. Tried to knock some sense into his thick skull. Then he grabbed him. Shook him and held him. And felt his own tears stream down his face. ‘Franco, you shame yourself with this stuff. You disrespect yourself and your family. We are not junkies. We are not cowards. Whatever life throws at us we raise our heads above it and show the world we are proud to be ourselves.’

  ‘But I’m not, Grandpa. I’m not proud.’ His voice was shaky and his eyes watery. ‘I hate myself and everything that’s happening to me.’

  Antonio held his grandson by the arms. His brown, liver-spotted fingers dug into the thin white forearms
snaked with needle tracks. ‘Don’t do this, Franco. Be a man. Come on; find your self-respect.’

  Franco Castellani searched deep inside himself. There was no trace of self-respect. Only a stinking sump-oil residue of painful memories. His jailbird father, his runaway mother and his current fleapit, hand-to-mouth existence. Finding respect was impossible.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said and kissed the top of his grandfather’s head. ‘I know I disappoint you. Mi dispiace.’

  Before Antonio could reassure him, Franco had pulled away from his grandfather and was gone. Leaving the wind to slam shut the rusty old door of the van.

  43

  Napoli Capodichino

  Salvatore Giacomo’s knees cracked as he bent to pick up the morning mail behind his apartment door.

  It was his fiftieth birthday. Not many people knew that. Even fewer cared.

  The mail included several free newspapers, an electricity bill, but no cards. He sat alone in the kitchen of his one-bedroomed rental. Although he was a couple of blocks back from the busy A56 he could still feel the steady rumble of traffic. He breakfasted on instant coffee and old cheese slices. As he ate, he thought about his half-century on earth. What did it amount to? A little cash in a number of false bank accounts. Run-for-the-hills money. Start-all-over-again dough. He’d never use it. Never spent much, anyway. He didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, didn’t have friends. He just worked and came home. What money the Don gave him went on rent, cheap food and the savings he’d never need. Don Fredo had said to put something away every month, so he’d done that. He’d always done whatever the Don had said.

  Sal guessed he saw Fredo as a father figure. A replacement for his old man. He’d been nine years old when his parents had split up. He still remembered the fearful row; his father slapping his mother’s face and calling her a cheating slut, then storming off. A father one minute. A memory the next. Then strange men came to stay at the apartment, men who looked at him with spiteful eyes. He hated his mother for letting them in. Into the house. Into his father’s bed. It wasn’t long before he ran away. Stayed with friends on the other side of Herculaneum or, in summer, camped out in the parkland around Vesuvius, killing wood pigeons and foxes. Then in his teens his mother disappeared and he pretty much made his own way in life. His brains and his fists helped him survive and stay one step ahead of the law.

  The distinctive horn of the Mercedes sounding in the street shook him from his thoughts. Valsi had arrived and was waiting.

  Sal pulled on the jacket of a navy-blue suit, adjusted his tie in the old tarnished mirror by the front door and, before leaving, checked just one more thing. His weaponry. Sal never opened a door without being ready to deal with anything that was on the other side. It was that level of caution that had got him through the first fifty years of his life, and he hoped would get him through many more years. For that reason, Sal didn’t carry just one gun, he carried two. Matching Glock 19s, snugly concealed in a double shoulder holster. The pair gave him a minimum of thirty rounds of 9mm ammunition. What’s more, if one jammed or got dropped, then that was no shit, he just pulled the other one. If he was caught in a firefight, he could also throw the spare to whoever was with him. The horn sounded again. Capo or no Capo, the fucker could wait. He took a leak, locked up and left the building.

  ‘Sal, you’re slower than a snail,’ shouted Dino Pennestri from the driver’s seat as he approached the car. ‘We should call you Sal the Snail.’

  Giacomo said nothing. He slipped in the back, alongside Bruno Valsi, who greeted him with a curt ‘Buon giorno.’

  They drove in silence for about a minute. Valsi shifted in his seat so he was half facing Sal. He wore an open-necked black and blue striped shirt and had a cream suit jacket across his lap. ‘I’ve got a little surprise for you,’ he deadpanned.

  Sal waited. Valsi tilted his eyes down to the jacket on his lap. Between the folds of cream cloth something smooth and shiny caught Sal’s eye. Unmistakably, it was the barrel of a pistol.

  ‘Given that it’s your birthday, I’d thought I’d do something truly memorable.’ Valsi flicked away the sleeve of the jacket and Sal could see that his right hand was wrapped around the pistol, his index finger already inside the guard and across the trigger.

  For a moment all sound seemed to have been sucked out of the air inside the car. No one dared breathe.

  Then the laughter in the Mercedes nearly tore the roof off.

  Sal the Snake was the only one not splitting his sides.

  ‘It’s yours, you old fool,’ said Valsi. He spun the pistol round so Sal could take it off him. ‘It’s a present. A limited edition Ultimate Vaquero. It’s been in the family for years.’

  Up front, Tonino Farina and Dino Pennestri were roaring so loudly that Pennestri had to pull over so he didn’t crash the car.

  ‘Happy birthday, Sal.’ Valsi leaned over and embraced him. In the brief clinch, he smelled the older man’s fear. A victory in itself. ‘It’s a point-thirty calibre, a little more unusual and special than the forty-five. The grip is made of white pearl and you’ll see the barrel and trigger are bejewelled. Go to a dealer, you won’t get change out of three thousand euros.’

  ‘Grazie mille. It is bellissimo.’ Sal checked the chamber. He was glad to find it empty.

  ‘It’s a gift from my wife and me,’ said Valsi. ‘She gave me a card to give you too.’

  Sal watched as he slid a beige envelope out of the inside of his folded jacket. The envelope and the card were the type that only a woman would buy. Thick, expensive card. A simple artistic picture of a beautiful Fall sunset on the front and no printed message inside, so she could write her own. In a beautiful hand she had written quite simply: Happy Birthday ‘Uncle Sal’, may your own Fall and Winter be the most beautiful seasons of your life. Love and best wishes, Gina x.

  Valsi could see that for the first time his wife had signed only her own name. He was just the delivery boy. Fucking bitch. ‘I’m not one for sentiment,’ he explained with disdain, ‘but I am one for pleasure. So, my very old friend, we’re taking you to Bar Luca for a celebratory lunch.’ He produced a thick wad of fifty-euro bills from his pants pocket. ‘Today, I’m gonna pay for all the champagne you can drink. All the food you can eat. And all the whores you can fuck. That is, presuming you can still drink and fuck at your age.’

  ‘I don’t drink,’ said the Snake.

  ‘Then you can watch us. We’ll celebrate for you!’ Valsi slapped his shoulder.

  Farina and Pennestri broke up again. Sal made an effort to smile. Deep down he was thinking about how dangerously close he’d come to killing Valsi when the snot-nosed little punk had pulled the piece on him.

  44

  Stazione dei carabinieri, Castello di Cisterna

  Sorrentino’s minor splash in the newspapers provided the murder squad with a surprising opportunity. Somehow the story was attracting growing national interest. Maybe the nation had a heart after all. Anyway, Sylvia Tomms saw it as a clear chance to keep the case in the public eye and maybe flush out more information. Perhaps, even, the killer himself. With this in mind she scheduled a press conference for the end of the day and hoped to persuade Francesca’s parents to attend and make a public statement.

  The inquiry was gathering pace and she needed a brief pause to gather her thoughts. She skipped lunch and took a short walk into the small town of Castello di Cisterna. Missing women, a burned corpse, a dead foetus, no witnesses, an untrustworthy ego-bloated scientist and a murder squad that was exhausted before it had even started.

  It was like trying to catch cats.

  Once she got an investigative focus on one or two aspects, the others escaped her attention and started causing problems.

  Was she out of her depth? There were certainly male colleagues who hoped she was. But she didn’t think so. This plainly wasn’t going to be the run of the mill inquiry everyone had first thought. Better than that, it was going to be a real challenge. A test of wits as well as techni
ques. She could raise her game. She was good at not being frightened. Good at facing up to big problems and nibbling away at them until she found bite-sized solutions. And she had Jack. He seemed smart enough to come up with a break for them. Experienced enough to pull her through the unfamiliar quicksands of what she feared may well turn into a serial murder inquiry. Her bosses had scoffed when she’d asked for the profiler, but she knew he’d be of value.

  It was raining again by the time she walked the last half-mile back to the barracks, but she was so focused she didn’t even notice. By early afternoon she had the inquiry team fired up again and locked into the drudgery of sifting statements and checking information. Patience and precision were Sylvia’s key tools. Never rush. Never miss anything.

  Jack arrived for the three p.m. briefing and afterwards retreated to a spare office to make his daily call home. No matter where he was, or what he was doing, Jack always broke from events to phone home and speak to his wife and son. Last year’s ordeal with the Black River Killer had been a stark personal reminder of how precious his family was, and how much the young boy needed regular contact with his father.

  ‘How you doing, big guy? You been having fun with Gramps and Grandma?’

  Zack’s voice was full of excitement. ‘Guess what? Gramps took me to play baseball. He says Santa might bring me a real pitcher’s glove and real bat for Christmas. D’you think he will, Daddy? Do you?’

  Jack told him there was a real good chance that Santa would do that. He flexed his left hand as they talked and felt an ache run from the palm to the elbow. Nerve damage that still hadn’t healed properly. Another souvenir from his hunt for the Black River Killer. A twinge that always returned whenever he was tired and stretched. ‘Has Mommy been good, or has she been spending money again?’

  ‘She’s been spending. And she and Grandma have been drinking wine too.’