After relocking the medicine cabinet he returns to the bedroom and sits on the edge of his coffin-like bed. He nurses the hand and checks the bandage, then turns on a small portable television beside him. The set crackles into life but there's no picture on the screen, just a fog of sizzling grey static.
The first channel he tunes to throws up a black-and-white picture of the road outside his house. The screen is split into four. The top two shots show wide-angle views of all approach roads to the house, coming from east and west. The lower two pictures feature tighter shots of the outside of the garage and the front door. The framing has been precisely calculated to capture the head and shoulders of any callers and the cameras have fully remote tilt, pan and zoom facilities to track any movements. Spider presses the remote control again, and once more, four quarter-frame black-and-white pictures fill the screen. Camera One shows the basement in an extra-wide shot. The black plastic on the walls, ceiling and floor have lowered the light level so much that it's impossible to see where one surface ends and another begins. The result is that the prostrate body of Lu Zagalsky appears to be floating in the middle of space. Of all the camera shots, it's this one that Spider loves most. He imagines her in the total, never-ending darkness of afterlife, suspended there for ever – eternally his. The next shot comes from an overhead camera, fixed to a 'hothead', a special device that allows the lens to rotate 360 degrees as well as zoom in and out. The third and fourth cameras are set at much lower angles. Camera Three is fixed behind Lu's head and looks down her body. Camera Four is a reverse angle, positioned at the same height as Camera Three but looking up her body from a line along her left foot. From his remote control, Spider is able to direct his own deathly video show, pulling in every imaginable combination of wide shots, close-ups, zooms, pans and tilts of his victim.
He creeps in on Lu's face.
The picture goes soft as the auto-focus kicks in and takes a second to get the correct focal length and exposure rates. The remote-control box also has a digi-pic facility which allows him to freeze-frame shots and download them to store or make digital printouts.
Spider watches her for a minute or two, his eyes locked on hers. He tries to get inside her mind, tries to imagine what is going on in her head as she lies there, naked and vulnerable in almost virtual darkness. He notices that she doesn't blink, that her body is no longer riddled with fear. He suspects that mentally she is removing herself from the scene, using some form of crude meditation to block out the reality of what is happening to her.
Or what is going to happen to her.
Spider fires off a couple of digi-pics that he thinks will at a later date be both pleasurable and useful for him, and then he switches the screen view to his favourite shot on Camera One.
The Lidocaine is making him feel groggy. He knows it'll last two to three hours before wearing off. He cradles his injured hand and lies down on his side in the coffin bed. The bed feels good, he is ready to rest. He reaches out his undamaged hand and strokes the glass of the TV screen next to him.
She looks so beautiful down there.
So wonderfully peaceful.
So nearly dead.
33
West Village, SoHo, New York Howie Baumguard's all-time favourite movie scene was in Pulp Fiction: the part when Vincent goes to the toilet during a stakeout at the apartment of runaway boxer Butch and then Butch unexpectedly appears in the doorway with a Mac-10 and blows the hitman away while his pants are still around his ankles. Like most boys, even those in their mid-thirties, Howie is hooked on toilet humour. But what he told people killed him most about this scene was the sheer realism of it. As a cop who had found people dead on the pan (one heavy drug-user and one geriatric Mafioso with a heart condition), he loved the fact that Tarantino 'has the balls to tell it how it is'. Fittingly, Howie was taking his regula-as-clockwork morning dump, just as his cell phone rang. Now usually Howie would take one peek at the user display and forget about it until a more opportune moment. But as this call showed an Italian prefix, he automatically jammed the phone to his ear.
'Baumguard residence, how the fuck can I help you?'
Jack's laugh rolled down the line before he answered. 'Well, Mr B, glad to find you're up bright and early. How're you doing?'
'Early bird gets to bite the head off the friggin' worm, you know me, boss.'
Jack let the 'boss' remark slide. He guessed the big guy had been saying it for so long that he still hadn't managed to kick the habit. 'Well, when you've finished your bowl of worms and Cheerios, maybe you can let me in on why you've been calling my beloved wife? You and she got some kind of thing going? Maybe she found a way into your heart at last?'
'Right through my ribcage, that's the only way your wife would like to get into my heart.'
They both laughed. Then Jack hit a more sombre tone. 'Seriously, buddy. I got told a bit about your call. Nancy said it was serious.'
Howie swallowed his last chuckle. 'Yeah, it is. Man, we've been through some weird stuff together, but what I'm about to pitch is going to stump even you.'
'Hang on,' said Jack, as Nancy entered the bedroom with a silver tray of food covered with a crisp cotton napkin. Jack looked up and instinctively put a hand over the mouthpiece. 'Thanks,' he said, and his mind flashed back to their row.
Nancy said nothing, but as she put the tray on the bed she managed a half-smile before leaving.
'Jack, you still there?' shouted Howie, from thousands of miles away.
'Yeah,' said Jack. 'I'm sorry about that; Nancy's just brought me some food. Where were we?'
'Remember Sarah Kearney, the BRK victim buried back in Georgetown?'
'Yeah, sure do,' said Jack, pulling off the napkin and looking at the salad bowl of rocket, sliced tomatoes and succulent mozzarella fior di latte that Paolo had probably made only a few hours ago. 'She was a local girl, wasn't she? No kin, but I think I read that the local community took care of her service and buried her?'
'That's right, they did,' said Howie. 'And now it damned well looks like they could have saved their money. Some sick fuck, maybe BRK, has been back and dug her up.'
The blood froze in Jack's veins. 'You sure? You don't think it's vandals, some local crackheads?'
'No. You can't take enough crack to make you do what this sicko did. He dug up the coffin, got out the poor kid's bones and then sat her up against the headstone.'
'Posed it?' asked Jack, wondering whether BRK was taunting the FBI by the way he had left the skeleton, knowing the press would soon be around to take photographs.
'Looks that way. Some kids going fishing found her.'
Jack pushed a cherry tomato around the bowl with his fork but he was already losing his appetite. 'What the fuck would he want to do that for?'
Howie shrugged. He'd asked himself the same question. 'Beats me. We know these fucks get off by revisiting their crime scenes, sitting by their victims' graves and stuff, but digging up bones, well, that's in a different league to the one I'm used to.'
Jack wasn't convinced that it had been done for sexual kicks. 'Maybe he's trying to attract our attention?'
'Then he's doing a fucking good job,' Howie scoffed.
'You remember Massimo Albonetti?' asked Jack, deciding he should introduce the Italian case he'd been asked to help with.
Howie had to think for a second. 'Yeah. Cop from Rome, went on to head up their profiling unit. Weren't you and he tight for a while?'
'We were. I like him, he's a good guy, and he's just asked for some help on a case that has much more than a passing similarity to BRK's handiwork.'
'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.'
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