Spider

'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.'