Spider

by Unknown

  ‘I wonder about what he’s doing, who he might share his life with, how he manages to live with himself. How normal he may be, or appear to be.’

  Fenella knew he was self-censoring, holding back the full force of what was filling his thoughts. ‘And do you think about how he actually felt while committing those acts?’

  ‘No, not as much as I used to,’ he answered. ‘When I was working on the case, I used to think about that a lot. We are trained to think like that, to put ourselves in the shoes of those we hunt. We have to think how they think, feel how they feel, and understand what it’s like to do what they do.’

  ‘And what do you think it’s like?’

  ‘For them? What do I think scum like BRK feel when they do these things?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jack’s face hardened. ‘I think, for them, the experience is amazing. Godlike. They literally have the power of life and death. And that, for the BRKs of this world, killing is the ultimate thrill. Nothing on earth compares to it and, once they have experienced it, they are addicted as surely as if murder were a narcotic.’

  The flashbacks came again: blood splatters, floaters in the river, fingertip searches. Jack mentally dammed the flood of images.

  Fenella leant forward on the couch and lowered her voice. ‘You don’t sound judgemental. How do you do that?’

  ‘Do what?’ He gave her a puzzled look.

  ‘Suppress the disgust, the repulsion that you must feel?’

  Jack was thrown for a minute. The honest answer was that he didn’t feel anything any more. The endless diet of homicidal horror had bludgeoned his senses into dullness. But how could he say that out loud and not sound inhumane? How could he admit that victims and killers had ceased being people and had been reduced in his mind to objects and puzzles, a mere algebra of violence? ‘It’s a good question,’ he conceded. ‘To be judgemental would be to blinker myself as an investigator, and I can’t afford to do that. I can’t afford any killer or rapist I interview to see any sign of that. Whatever they’ve done, however they’ve taken a life, I have to show them that I’m there to understand why they did it, rather than condemn what they’ve done.’

  Fenella noted that he still spoke, and to a large extent behaved, as though he were an FBI agent. It was something she’d come back to, perhaps at another session, if indeed there was one. ‘I want to move on now to the exact content of your nightmares. Are you comfortable doing that?’

  Jack shifted defensively in his seat. ‘You going to go all Freudian and Jungian on me?’

  ‘Maybe a little. Freud described dreaming as “the royal road to the unconscious” and I think it’s a route worth going down.’

  ‘Then, let’s go.’ Jack was surprised to see that he’d clasped his hands and was bracing himself. He felt his temperature rise and his heartbeat quicken. He closed his eyes for a second and stared into the grey-black eggshell darkness of his mind. ‘I’m at an autopsy. It’s being held in the middle of a night, in some dead-end town I’ve never been to before. It’s not my case; the cop in charge has asked me to step in at the last minute. We’re all downstairs, in some kind of basement; looks more like a cellar in a house than an autopsy room. It’s cold and has the sweet stink of old sump oil and running damp. The walls are brick and painted white, the floor is black and hard and your feet crunch when you move, as though you are walking on broken glass. Rusty pipes run along the ceiling and hiss and rumble in a way that makes you think they are going to break and burst at any minute.’

  She noted the vividness and starkness of his language, how even in his dreams Jack had a sharpened sense of observation, was aware of sounds, smells and even things under his feet that he couldn’t see.

  ‘The ME’s working like crazy, almost as though he’s a surgeon trying to save a life, rather than a pathologist methodically opening up a body. He’s moving so quickly around the slab I can’t see who he is. Every time I reposition myself to try to say something, the guy shifts on to another part of the body. The girl on the slab is sixteen-year-old Lisa Maria Jenkins, BRK’s last known victim. She’d been butchered like a piece of meat. Head, hands, legs, feet, all cut off. Her left hand was never discovered, BRK had kept it as a trophy. But in the dream, Lisa’s intact; looking as beautiful as her last birthday picture, when her long brown hair was tied back in a pony-tail.’

  Jack struggled to go on. Clearly the cognitive experience was troubling him, but Fenella did nothing to fill the silence or give him a way out. He pinched his eyes for a second, then continued. ‘As I look at her face, I realize something’s wrong. She’s still breathing. I shout “Hey, look, look, she’s alive!’, but the ME ignores me and just carries on cutting her open, pulling intestines and organs out of a huge cavity in her stomach. Suddenly, the pipes break free from the wall and start pouring blood on to the floor, as if they’re giant veins. I’m screaming now, “Stop! For Christ’s sake, stop cutting her, she’s alive!” But he blanks me. As I rush around the table to try to get hold of him he runs the buzz saw across her neck, decapitating her. I recognize him now. I realize why he’s been dodging me, not letting me see his face.’

  ‘You say you recognize him. Who is it, Jack?’

  He raised his head and stared straight at her. ‘It’s me. The monster in my dreams is me.’

  It was Fenella’s turn to sit in silence, pen motionless on the notepaper.

  ‘Tell me, please tell me; how can I control these nightmares?’

  Fenella’s heart went out to him. She understood his dilemma and it was a dark and dangerous one. ‘Jack, you already have control. The level of lucidity you describe indicates that you deliberately trigger these thoughts. Subconsciously you want to see these things, you have a need to re-examine the case that you walked away from and, in the absence of new evidence, your imagination is inventing it.’

  Jack was staring at the floor. He nodded slowly. He understood now, but what was the way out? ‘What exactly do I have to do to stop them?’

  The psychiatrist waited until he raised his eyes to look at her. ‘You already know that, don’t you?’

  And he did.

  Jack fully understood that he could choose to stop the nightmares any time he wanted. But he could only do so by admitting to himself that his personal hunt to catch the Black River Killer really was over.

  13

  FBI Field Office, New York

  Special Agent Howie Baumguard sat at his desk, losing a messy hand-wrestling competition with a deli lunch. The bagel spewed salmon out of one side and low-fat cheese out of the other. He licked the cheese away but the salmon hit his paperwork before he could juggle it into his hungry mouth. He’d missed breakfast and had been forced to cancel a lunch appointment, so right now the bagel and a blisteringly hot Americano figured top of his list of life’s priorities. Howie was carrying too much weight, not just for his own liking but also for that of Carrie, his size-zero, Botox-addicted wife, who’d pronounced that either the ‘love handles’ went or Howie could start learning how to cook for one on the few cents she’d leave him after she sued his fat ass for all the alimony she could get.

  Not many people would have been able to even think about eating when faced with what was on Howie’s desk, but the FBI man had seen much worse and eaten much more. The pictures had been sent in by the cops over in Georgetown and downloaded and printed up by Admin. The glossies were good CSU shots, cold and brutal in their framing but hugely informative. Wide angles set the scene, first from out on the streets that surrounded the cemetery. Then there were ‘aerials’, high views, presumably from the nearby church, that showed the layout of the graves. Gradually the shots got closer to the desecration. They were framed wide-angle, then medium close-up, big close-up and finally damned near microscopic.

  Howie’s chubby fingers struggled to pick up the stray salmon. Finally, he caught it and then accidentally wiped the grease residue on a mid-shot of Sarah Elizabeth Kearney’s decapitated corpse. Poor kid, thought Howie, dabbing away
the grease, just twenty-two when she was butchered. If she’d lived, she would have been forty-two today, probably with a daughter of her own and maybe even grandkids. What kind of sick fuck would rob someone of their future like that? And more to the point, what even sicker fuck would dig her up two decades later and pull the skull off her skeletonized corpse? Howie shook his head in disbelief. To the best of his knowledge, twenty-first-century grave-robbing was damned unusual stuff. On the rare occasions that it happened, the perp was usually some whacked-out druggie, maybe a weird devil worshipper or, every now and then, an extremely disturbed husband who simply couldn’t accept that his wife was gone for ever. Local cops always tried to hush up these kinds of cases and the newspapers usually played ball on the latter.

  But there would be no chance of keeping this one quiet. No siree, the press wires were already buzzing like a queen bee at mating time. Seemed a Georgetown hack had got lucky with some photographs of his own. The little weasel had no doubt got a tip-off from the cops or ambulance crews, or maybe had even been listening in to the 911 comm’s traffic. Anyway, he’d netted himself an exclusive and the pictures were now J-pegging their way across the news world and banking him some big bucks.

  Howie looked at one of the hack’s shots, forwarded to him by Billy Blaine, a tame NYC journo who ran a press agency and often traded favours with the feds. The shot was certainly a good one. Howie wiped his fingers again and held up the print that had been faxed through to his office. Even though it was a telephoto ‘snatch’, it was rock steady, with no blur or shake. Nodoubtthe guy had used one of those new fangled stabilizers that cost more than most people’s cameras. Howie was always teasing the CSU boys that hacks took better pictures and this was no exception. It had been shot low-angle between the headstones, so you could just see flashes of out-of-focus graves and a glint of sunshine from behind the photographer, but no sign of the cops and crime-scene tape that must have been making the shot incredibly difficult if not damn near impossible. Despite all the problems, everything that mattered was razor sharp, perfectly exposed and absolutely in focus. Smack, bang, centre of the frame was Sarah Kearney’s headless skeleton, grotesquely propped against her headstone.

  Howie shook his big head again. The picture had a truly shocking power. He held it out at arm’s length, not because he had vision problems, but so he could imagine he was actually at the crime scene and had stepped back for a more considered look. Shit, thought Howie, if Steven Spielberg ever made horror movies then this was the kind of shot he’d take. It was out on its own, a real spine-tingler and too gruesome for the TV news channels. The Internet had no such scruples though; it was already top of the virals and had beaten the download record set after Saddam’s hanging.

  Howie took a hit of the Americano and turned his mind to Jack King. It had been nearly two months since they’d spoken, and even then it had only been small talk. Howie had been deliberately careful to avoid anything that might have scratched at old sores. ‘How you doin’? How’re Nancy and little Zack? Did you read about the Yankees star that got busted in Queens?’ Guy stuff that kept their cop bonds and personal friendship alive. They’d been through hell together and Howie wasn’t going to let the mere matter of a continent and six hours’ time difference stand between him and his ex-boss. But now he was going to have to call Jack and tell him about the wacko shit going on at Kearney’s grave. He needed to warn him that any minute all the stuff about him and his breakdown was likely to be back in the press again. Hell and damnation. Would this case never go away?

  Howie Baumguard looked at the photographs again and knew what Jack would say. He knew it, just as sure as he knew that one day his stick-insect wife would leave him for a younger, fitter, more-at-home guy. No doubt about it, this was the work of one particular man, the work of BRK, the killer that he, Jack and all the rest of FBI’s finest had never managed to catch.

  14

  Montepulciano, Tuscany

  Ispettore Orsetta Portinari parked her car and, despite heels slightly too high and far too fashionable for most female detectives, walked elegantly up the steep cobbles and slabs of the Corso, the historic main street of Montepulciano.

  Orsetta’s friend Louisa had promised coffee, pictures of her sister’s new baby and eighteen months’ worth of unheard gossip. It seemed a good way to pass the time until the damned ex-FBI guy returned from wherever he was and called her. Madonna porca! His wife had been trouble; no wonder the man was spending time away from her. She must be hell to live with. Orsetta bought flowers and Tuscan cherries from a market stall and was within a hundred metres of her friend’s home when her phone rang.

  ‘Pronto,’ she said, catching it just before the message system kicked in.

  ‘Inspector Portinari?’

  ‘Sı.’

  ‘This is Jack King. My wife says you called to see me.’

  She stepped out of the sun into a shaded doorway. ‘Aah, Signore King, grazie. Thank you for calling me. My boss, Massimo Albonetti, he is in Belgium at the moment, at a Europol meeting, and he sent me to see you –’

  ‘Massimo?’ interrupted Jack, sounding surprised. What does that old goat want?’

  ‘Scusi?’

  Jack laughed. ‘Apologies. Mass and I go back some. We spent a lot of time at the Academy, back when you guys were first interested in VI CAP – the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. You work for him?’

  ‘si,’ confirmed Orsetta, instantly picturing her six-teen-hours-a-day workaholic boss calling her into his dark office, rubbing his chubby bald head, chainsmoking and handing out files without even looking up. ‘Yes, I work very hard for him.’

  Jack imagined that was true. Massimo was a bulldog of a man. He was physically and mentally muscular, and when he got his teeth into something he didn’t let go, even if he exhausted his teams in the process. ‘Are you in CID, CSU, profiling or what?’

  Orsetta looked down at her new shoes, dusty from the walk and in need of a loving shine. ‘I work in a special department attached to our national Violent Crime Analysis Unit. Briefly, we are called behavioral analysts, but yes, I am what you call a psychological profiler.’

  Jack understood. Police forces relabelled departments to suit the whim of whatever particular politician was pulling the purse strings at the time. ‘I’ve heard worse names,’ he said. ‘But, Detective, as I’m sure you know, I’m not here on holiday. I’ve retired now, I help my wife – who, by the way, you seem to have upset – run a hotel out here. I’m no longer in the Job, so why the call?’

  Orsetta mentally cursed the wife again. ‘Massimo, I mean Direttore Albonetti, he said forget about that. Said you would never retire.’

  Jack laughed again. ‘He said that?’

  ‘Well no, what he actually said was: “Jack King is no more retired than I am. Jack King cannot even spell the word retire.”’

  Jack fell silent. Massimo was right. He might no longer be putting in a twelve-hour day in New York or spending the night looking at crime-scene reports, but his brain was still clocking-on and doing the shifts. ‘What does he want?’

  A moped carrying two teenagers throttled its way uphill and drowned out the conversation. ‘Scusi?’ shouted Orsetta, covering one ear.

  ‘Massimo, what does he want?’

  ‘I have a file here,’ explained Orsetta, shouting above the scooter. ‘A murder of a young woman that he thinks you can help us with. Are you back at your hotel, Mr King? I can drive over and show you.’

  Jack looked at his watch. It was five p.m. and he still had to get across Florence to catch the train back to Siena. ‘No, I’m not. I won’t be back in San Quirico until very late tonight. I’m in Florence, so I’m still a few hours away from you.’

  Orsetta was keen not to let him slip through her fingers. ‘Mr King, the case we want you to look at, it is west of Florence, not too far. If you stay there, I can come and meet you. Please book into a hotel for the night, my office will be happy to pay any costs you incur.’

&n
bsp; Jack paused and wondered how he could break the news to Nancy. She would go ape. He decided to do it anyway. The prospect of being involved in an active criminal case was simply too hard to resist.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You’ve got twenty-four hours of my time. I’ll call you when I’ve booked in somewhere.’

  Orsetta punched the air. ‘Grazie,’ she said.

  As Jack said goodbye, she clicked the phone off and gave one rueful glance towards the house of the friend whom she hadn’t seen for eighteen months, and now probably wouldn’t see again for another year and a half. Still, Orsetta had got her man. As she walked carefully back down Montepulciano’s steep and winding road, she spotted an old woman asleep on a hard-backed chair by an open front door, a red shawl around her neck. Orsetta gently placed the flowers and cherries at her feet and walked away. As she did so, she wondered whether Jack King looked anything near as sexy as he sounded.

  15

  Sofitel Hotel, Florence, Tuscany

  Jack always got Nancy three specific things on anniversaries – something to wear, something to eat and something to read. The three choices were designed to play on her senses of sight, touch and taste, and Jack liked to think he had the imagination to make some pretty interesting purchases. Something to wear was once a pink winter anorak, not too romantic until she put her hand in the pocket and discovered the plane tickets to Sweden and the booking at the Ice Palace where they were to spend the following week. This year Something to wear was red and lacy and he hoped it would awaken the magic of years gone by. Something to eat had traditionally been a visit to a new restaurant, except for the year when the local amateur players were putting on Romeo and Juliet. A flash of his gold shield in the right places had enabled him to hire the set for the afternoon, ship in violinists and pizza and have the two leading cast members perform extracts between the courses. True, it had been more comic than romantic, but it still rated as memorable. This year, well, he was leaving the food side up to Paolo, who had promised to do something gastronomically pornographic with white truffles and Italian brandy. Something to read had always been the easiest. Sometimes it had been a book that summed up their relationship. Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus had started the trend and occasionally Nancy had been cheeky enough to put in her own specific orders, asking for works by foreign poets with names he’d never heard of, like Szymborska and Saint-John Perse. This year, Jack had just hurriedly completed his trinity of gifts and was heading into the Sofitel on Via de Cerratani with an English translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. He hadn’t really looked inside, but knew Dante was Tuscan and a medieval poet, so he reckoned his lucky find was relevant enough to prove popular.