Jack cut him off. 'BRK has a thing about left hands, not heads. But you're right; it seems too much of a coincidence to believe that two separate killers send dead women's heads to law enforcement organizations at roughly the same time.'
'I agree,' said Massimo, 'and I really hope I'm wrong. I would much rather believe we're dealing with a first-time psycho, than entertain the thought that your infamous serial killer has decided to make Italy his new playground.'
Jack searched his mind for the name of the Italian victim, and felt bad that it didn't come. 'Cristina Bar- Bar -'
Massimo helped him. 'Barbuggiani.'
'Barbuggiani,' continued Jack. 'How was her head delivered to you?'
Massimo raised his eyes in exasperation. 'Not yet fully clear. Our goods bay took possession of a cardboard box. It was passed to the mail room and then one of the clerks, a young woman, opened it.'
'What can your bay tell us?'
'It wasn't signed in, and we can't find anyone to say that they took possession,' answered Massimo, looking embarrassed. 'It's possible that it was just left with other mail in one of the "In" crates. We security-scan all the mail and packages, but not until they are being sorted into the different departments.'
'Do I feel a security review and tightening of procedures coming on?' asked Jack.
'Already under way,' confirmed Massimo. 'There was a courier company stamp on the box, but we've not got anything on them yet.'
'Forensics find anything on either the box or your note?' asked Jack.
'No prints. ESDA testing also came back blank. We're running a trace on the notepaper and the ink.'
Jack shook his head. 'Not much point. It'll be the commonest possible.'
Massimo hoped he was wrong. 'Don't despair too early, my friend. Even the best of criminals make mistakes.'
'Not this guy,' said Jack. 'Let me tell you how he works. Before this son of a bitch does anything, he researches the backside off it. I bet you your life savings that the pen he used to write this pornography is the most commonly used felt-tip pen in America.'
'Or Italy.'
'I bet you a hundred euros it's American. The paper too. Your researchers will draw a blank on all your Italian manufacturers, I promise you, Mass.'
Massimo shrugged. 'Then maybe we discover the paper is a particular batch, issued to a particular region, on a particular date. Your colleagues in the FBI will be able to help us with this.'
'You betcha, they've got whole databases on ink and paper,' said Jack dismissively. 'But I'll guarantee you this as well: BRK knows we'll run those traces, he knows that eventually we will find the factory that produced the ink, the very tree the damned wood came from to make the paper.'
'What are you saying, Jack?'
'I'm saying this. He will have bought the most common paper he could get his hands on, months and months, maybe even years, ago. He'll have bought it for cash, from a giant store, in a city that he no longer has anything to do with, and in the first place was probably only passing through. Even if we trace the day, the date, the time that he purchased it, the information will lead us nowhere.'
Massimo's door opened and Claudia, his PA, came in with the espressos and some small tumblers of water.
'Grazie,' said Massimo. Claudia smiled and left as quietly as a burglar.
'You want this?' Mass held out a cup of coffee to Jack.
'Yeah, I sure do,' said Jack, craving anything that would jolt him out of his moment of pessimism. 'Anyway, the pen and paper aren't the biggest clues.'
'You mean the text?' said Massimo, pulling his chair alongside Jack on the other side of his desk.
'Yeah. He thought long and hard about these words, Mass. What were your first impressions when you read it?'
Massimo turned the paper towards him and read silently. 'Shocking. Cold-blooded. Brutal. How you say in America, "straight to the point", is that right?'
'Yeah, that's right. What else?'
Mass puzzled for a moment. 'Clear – threatening – dangerous.' He started to struggle to add to his list. 'And you? What do you make of it?'
Jack scanned the paper again. 'He's begging for attention. The bold capital letters, the brevity of the note, the use of exclamation marks, the fact that he mentions his own name twice – it all shows that he's craving, almost demanding our attention. As you know, when killers do this, it's usually a sign that they are full of pent-up anger and are bursting to release it. I'd say he's either about to kill again, or maybe has even killed since writing this letter.'
It wasn't a thought that Massimo wanted to consider. His resources were stretched to the limit and another murder would cause mayhem, not just on the Barbuggiani case, but on three other, unrelated ones that he was overseeing. He took out a cigarette, tapped the end of it repeatedly on his desk and asked, 'Will he have found the process of writing the letter arousing?'
'Undoubtedly,' said Jack. 'Not only arousing, but empowering. He'd also be particularly turned on by the waiting process, the anticipation that we would read it.'
Massimo looked down at the letter again. 'I noticed that he spelt buon giorno correctly. Not many foreigners would do that. I think maybe he is an educated man.'
'He's certainly no fool. Check the letter again and you'll see that the grammar, spelling and punctuation are all correct,' said Jack. 'But I think there are two reasons why he is precise and so correct. Firstly, like I've said before, it's not that he's hugely intelligent, it's that he's hugely careful. BRK researches everything he does, meticulously. This guy probably looked up the spelling of buon giorno to make sure he didn't make a mistake. His whole attitude to life is to be careful, to plan, to avoid making that one slip-up that could end his freedom, and that's mirrored in this letter as well.'
'And the second reason?' asked Mass.
'His ego. This is a murderer with the biggest ego on the planet. If you could see egos, then we'd just hire a plane, fly around a bit and pull him in. It would be as easy as that.'
'Why so egotistical?'
'BRK would be mortified if he'd done something wrong and thought we were laughing at him, rather than him laughing at us.' Jack moved the paper closer to Mass. 'Here, look at this.' He pointed out the smiley face. 'Kids use these on e-mails, they draw them as symbols to express that they're happy in an uncomplicated, pure, childish way. The smiley is pretty much the first face a kid gets to draw. By using it, he's showing us that he has no respect for any of our values, and is happy to be seen as a threat to the most precious thing we have, our children. He's using the smiley as a form of intimidation. And now look at this.' Jack ran his finger under the line 'HA! HA! HA!' 'He's going to great lengths to mock us. Note the bold capitals again, and three exclamation marks. That's his way of saying, "I see you all as a joke, don't you get it?" And then there's this, the sickest of lines.' Jack's finger pointed to 'CALL IT A "HEADS-UP" OF WHAT I'VE GOT IN STORE FOR YOU!' The former FBI profiler leant back in his chair. 'He's warning us that he's going to kill again. Why?'
Massimo lit the cigarette, blew out smoke and considered his answer. 'It's a game. Maybe this whole thing is just one giant game for him.'
Jack blinked from the smoke wafting his way. 'You're right, and he wants to make certain that we'll play. I think he's here in Italy, and I'm a hundred per cent sure that he's going to kill again.' At the same time that Jack was meeting Massimo in Rome, American tourist Terry McLeod paid the taxi driver, moved his baggage off the dusty road and snapped the first of his holiday pictures, the outside of La Casa Strada.
'Sure is a pretty place,' he told Maria, as he bowled into the cool reception area and announced his arrival.
'We have you staying with us for just five days. Is that correct, Meester McLeod?' she said in the English that she hoped one day would be good enough to see her compete internationally as a beauty queen.
'That's right. Wish it could be longer. Never been to Tuscany before, it looks really fantastic.' He peered at her name badge. 'Tell me, Maria,
are the owners of this place around? What're their names again?'
'Mr and Mrs King,' said the receptionist, struggling to understand him because he spoke so quickly. 'Mrs King is here, but not Mr King. Would you like me to call her for you?' She picked up the desk phone. 'Are you a friend from America?'
'No, no, don't do that,' he said. 'I'm sure I'll bump into them while I'm here. Lots of time to catch them, let it ride for now.'
Maria looked him over. He was about the same age as Mr King but nowhere near as tall or good-looking. He had a little fat belly that billowed beneath a pink Ralph Lauren polo shirt, like the one she'd hoped to buy her boyfriend Sergio. On closer examination, she noticed it had a thin brown stain running down the front of it, as though coffee or ice cream had dribbled from his machine-gun mouth and caught on his big stomach. 'May I have your passport, please?' she asked. 'And the credit card you wish to use to settle your bill? Breakfast is available until ten thirty and is included in your daily rate.'
McLeod handed over his passport and sized up the receptionist as she photocopied it. She was beautiful. He'd pay good money to have her sent up to his room along with a stack of beer and some decent air-conditioning. Man, Italy may be great on historic buildings but it sure sucked when it came to keeping things cool.
'Thank you,' said Maria.
McLeod smiled at her. 'How do you say that in Italian? Is it the same as in Spanish, gracias?'
'No,' said Maria sweetly, 'not quite. We say grazie.'
'Grat-sea,' he tried.
'Perfetto,' said Maria, deciding it would be rude to correct his slight mispronunciation. 'You are in the Scorpio suite,' she told him, taking a key from a set of hooks on the wall behind her. 'Please go straight down the corridor, here to the right of me, then first left and up some stairs, that's Scorpio.'
'Scorpio,' he repeated. 'Are all the rooms named after star signs?'
'Yes. Yes, they are,' said Maria, now growing tired of him and wishing he would go, so she could return to the magazine under her desk.
'How many are there? In total, how many rooms?'
Maria had to think for a moment. 'Six. No, eight. There are eight rooms in all.'
'Eight,' repeated McLeod, thinking for a minute of how he might be able to persuade the beautiful Maria to spend some time with him in one of them. Later. There would be time for that later. First though, he had a lot of planning to do. Business first – pleasure later.
40
Rome The Cristina Barbuggiani case conference was due to start at two p.m., but Massimo had insisted they took a leisurely 'catch-up' lunch at a restaurant around the corner, explaining that in Italy two p.m. meant any time before four.
The conference was being staged in a dedicated Incident Room and people were chattering loudly and pointing at whiteboards as Jack and Massimo entered. The Direttore introduced Benito, Roberto and the pathologist, Dottoressa Annelies van der Splunder. 'Orsetta Portinari I think you already know,' he said, suppressing the start of a smile.
'Very pleased to see you again, Mr King,' said Orsetta warmly.
'And you, Inspector,' said Jack, a little less enthusiastically. 'Forgive me,' he went on, turning to the pathologist, a tall, plumpish woman in her late thirties with straw-like short blonde hair. 'Your name doesn't sound particularly Italian.'
'You really are a detective,' joked the Dottoressa. 'I'm Dutch. Had the good fortune to fall in love with an Italian and moved here about seven years ago. I worship Rome; this is home for me now.'
'Jack and his wife are also Italophiles,' added Massimo. 'They have a small, but I'm told very exclusive, hotel in Tuscany.'
'Sounds gorgeous,' said the pathologist. 'You must give me details. My partner Lunetta and I are always looking for places for a long weekend away.'
'Lunetta?' interjected Orsetta. 'Lunetta della Rossellina, the fashion model?'
'Yes,' said the pathologist, pleased the name had been recognized. 'Lunetta's love is clothes, and mine is food and wine – as I think you can see.'
'Then Italy is perfect for both of you,' said Massimo diplomatically. 'Dottoressa, Jack has read your report, but I'm wondering if you'd be kind enough to update him on the conversation you and I had last night about Cristina's blood type.'
'Of course,' the pathologist said. 'Do you mind if we sit down? I need to get my glasses to go through some notes.'
The team gathered around a long, plain conference table made of beech and Annelies van der Splunder put on some round wire-framed glasses that Orsetta thought made her look half-headmistress, half-owl.
'The examinations I carried out were on the dismembered limbs, torso, stomach contents and head of a young white, Italian woman in her mid-twenties, who I now know was Cristina Barbuggiani, a citizen of Livorno. The dismembered body parts were delivered to me over a period of about a week, the poor woman's head being the last to arrive for my attention. The decapitated head gave me the most information, and from this I was able to ascertain that Cristina was AB Rhesus negative.'
'That's quite rare, isn't it?' asked Jack.
'Yes, it is. And even though blood typing is my pet subject, I'm afraid it's hard to say exactly how rare in Italy; probably less than nine per cent of the population are of the AB grouping. AB is the rarest and incidentally the newest of discovered blood groups. O is the oldest, it goes back to the Stone Age. A is the next oldest, and has its roots in the farming settlements of Norway, Denmark, Austria, Armenia and Japan. AB, however, dates back less than a thousand years and came about as all the blood groups began to mix in Europe.'
'And the Rhesus factoring?' asked Jack.
Annelies removed her glasses for a moment. 'As I'm sure you know, the D antigen is the most common. If it is present, we describe the grouping as positive. In Cristina, it was missing, therefore she is Rhesus negative. Probably only about three per cent of the population share her blood type.'
'This really helps us,' said Jack, turning to Massimo, 'but only if you can find it on him, or find the scene where BRK cut up Cristina's body. Evidentially, tying her blood to a suspect would be a very powerful argument in court.'
'Yes, but finding the scene?' said Benito, shrugging his shoulders. 'So far it has not been possible.'
'Where have you tried?' asked Jack, non-judgementally.
'We've had to focus mainly on Livorno and the big cities that have strong links with the town and province,' said Benito, 'so we're working out towards Pisa, which is twenty kilometres away, Lucca, forty kilometres, Florence, about eighty and finally Siena, which is about a hundred, maybe a hundred and twenty kilometres away. We're looking at hire car businesses, hotels and guesthouses and even longdistance trucking companies. We are asking them all if they have had to clean any blood from any of the vehicles or property used by recent clients. So far nothing.'
Jack doubted the search would provide anything to build a case on but he understood that they had to go through the motions. Often it was the routine checks, rather than brilliant detective work, that provided critical breakthroughs.
'Let me get this right,' he said, addressing the pathologist again. 'According to your report, you believe the killer kept the head for maybe up to two weeks before he sent it here?'
'Approximately,' said van der Splunder, cautiously. 'Please be careful not to mix up death and decapitation. Death was on, or about, the fourteenth; decapitation and dismemberment were most likely on or around the twentieth.'
'You mean death wasn't through decapitation – he killed her, kept her corpse, then beheaded her?'
'Exactly.'
'How did she die?' asked Jack.
The pathologist flinched. 'I found some evidence of pre-mortem focal bruising on the larynx.'
'She was strangled, or choked somehow?' asked Jack.
'I believe so,' said van der Splunder. 'There was no evidence of ligature strangulation, so I imagine it was done manually. Indeed, some of the marks on the throat are consistent with continuous deep pressure, possibly from a man
's knuckles.'
Jack knew what it meant, and why she had flinched. It would have taken about four minutes to strangle Cristina in this way. He hoped that she'd blacked out after about thirty seconds when her brain became starved of oxygen, but he was sure it would still have been a horribly slow death. Perhaps the most horrible imaginable, with the killer using his hands to choke her to the point of death, then easing up and letting her recover, before choking her again. Jack knew many stranglers who had turned the act of murder into a sexual marathon, indulging their violence in small ebbs and flows, before brutally climaxing with the final fatal pressure of their fingers.
'Care to share your thoughts with us?' said Massimo casually.
Jack shook himself out of the death scene, and returned to the more functional business of the timeline. 'Let's presume BRK was responsible for Cristina's murder and also for the desecration of Sarah Kearney's grave in Georgetown. Given the approximate time of Cristina's death and the recorded time that some kids discovered Sarah's disturbed grave, we should be able to work out the window when he had to fly out of Italy and into America.'
Massimo nodded. 'We are already doing border patrol passport checks on all male US citizens over thirty years of age who entered and left Italy in the last three months. You will be amazed at how many come and go!'
Jack ploughed on. 'Well, if we get this timeline right, we should be able to narrow the focus considerably.' He moved to a whiteboard, picked up a black marker and wrote the key points as he talked. 'Cristina is last seen alive by friends on the night of June the ninth. The day after, the tenth, she's reported missing. She's killed around the fourteenth, but he hangs on to the corpse, keeping it intact for six days, which takes us to the twentieth.' He glanced over to the pathologist and she signalled her agreement with his account. 'On the twentieth he started disposing of the limbs. We have our first public finding of remains two days later, on the twenty-second, and the next significant date is the arrival of Cristina's head at police HQ in Rome on the twenty-fifth, which is examined by the good professor here on the twenty-sixth.' Jack paused to make sure he hadn't made any mistakes. No one corrected him, so he slotted in the last pieces of the jigsaw. 'The FBI thinks he was in the cemetery at Georgetown, South Carolina on the night of June the thirtieth, morning of July the first, so it's reasonable to presume that he may have left Italy on the evening of June the twenty-fifth, or morning of the twenty-sixth, which would have got him into America on the twenty-sixth or twenty-seventh, just a couple of days before the desecration of Sarah's grave.'
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