Spider

Howie could sense the frustration of his Italian counterpart. 'No problem. I'm sure you guys will get to the bottom of it. I just wanted to check out what similarities or differences there were between the way your package was delivered in Italy and the way we got ours over here.'

Massimo nodded at the giant Howie on the conference screen. 'I understand your point. More significant though, I think, is a note we discovered in our package. It was left for us inside the head of the victim. Jack and I have spent much time discussing this note, and he already sees great importance in its content.'

'There's a copy coming over to you,' said Jack, taking his cue. 'In brief, here's what it says: "Buon giorno Italian police!" Folks, please note that he spells buon giorno correctly and ends the sentence with an exclamation mark.'

Both Howie and Fernandez made notes.

'"Here is a gift for you, with love from BRK,"' continued Jack. 'He makes the clear claim that he is BRK and then ends the sentence with a point and again there are no spelling or grammar mistakes. The next line is a sizzler, get yourselves ready for this. He says "Call it a 'heads-up' of what I've got in store for you!" Heads-up hyphenated and again the exclamation mark. The language is simple, literate and there is a huge emphasis on trying to impress and engage us.'

'And is this all handwritten, or typed?' asked Howie.

'Handwritten,' answered Jack, 'but in block capitals, so the experts won't get much from his style.'

'We'll throw it over Manny Lieberman's desk when we get the copy in,' said Howie. 'He'll pick something up, he always does.'

'Any sign-off, a PS, or anything like that?' asked Fernandez unemotionally.

'Ha, ha, ha,' said Jack.

'I'm sorry, say again?' queried Fernandez, not sure if Jack was mocking her.

'The letters H and A – HA – he wrote them three times, and in capitals, and with an exclamation mark after each,' said Jack.

'Sure loves those exclamation marks,' said Howie. 'It's like he got a box of them for Christmas.'

'Then, he finished off with a smiley face and the letters BRK,' said Jack. 'So that's the second time in this short note that he's tried to tell us that this is all BRK's work.'

'You mean he's trying too hard?' asked Fernandez. 'Do you think this is a BRK copycat, Jack, rather than the real McCoy?'

'Mass and I have talked quite a bit about this, and we can't rule out that possibility,' said Jack. 'Though to be honest, I'm not sure it matters. Either way, we have a deadly psycho on our hands.'

Massimo raised a hand, 'Or two deadly psychopaths.'

'You're right,' said Jack, fixing his eyes on Howie on the screen. 'There are certainly similarities between the BRK's files and the new Italian case, but we can't lose track of the fact that there are big differences too.' Jack turned to Massimo. 'Okay if I give some bullet points on this?'

Mass nodded his consent, so Jack continued. 'Victimology looks right for BRK. Cristina was a slim woman who appeared to be in her mid-twenties. As we know, he likes long, dark hair. He never goes for short-haired victims, so he has an image fixation here, meaning the victim represents a real person in his life. We're thinking usual suspects – ex-girlfriend, former wife, first love, mother, grandmother; some woman out there is the model for the victims he selects.'

'It's the old love – hate see-saw again, eh?' said Howie.

'Exactly,' confirmed Jack. 'Some offenders pick certain victims to kill because they represent people they hate but for some reason, usually psychological, they are powerless to harm that actual person. It's Kemper-like.' Everyone nodded, remembering the classic case of American serial killer Ed Kemper who was mentally bullied by his oppressive mother. Instead of killing his parent, he murdered his grandmother and grandfather, then a long list of co-eds at the school where his mother worked, even burying some of their heads in land beneath his mom's bedroom window and then making private fun of her, by telling her how all the girls at school really looked up to her.

'The big difference for me,' continued Jack, 'is the head thing. We're pretty certain BRK took trophies from his victims and we're fairly sure these amounted only to the left hand of the women he murdered.'

Fernandez looked down and wriggled the fingers of her left hand, grateful to see all the joints working and intact, including the one where her wedding ring had almost refused to come off despite her yanking at it like a cowboy on the back of a bronco.

Jack held up his own hand, as he finished his point. 'We can't prove the significance of this, but maybe it's because the left hand is somehow more representative of female fidelity; after all, it's the wedding-ring hand.' He fingered the gold band that encircled his own finger and for a fleeting second thought of Nancy, falling confetti and the day they had married almost eleven years earlier. 'Then again, it may be something not so romantic. The left hand may play a part in his life because he or a woman he once loved had a disfigured left hand. We just don't know, so we shouldn't jump to conclusions. That said, heads are something entirely new. He's removed heads from victims before, but never kept them for any reason, not even as trophies.'

'But these are not really trophies,' said Massimo, thoughtfully. 'He had no intention of keeping these body parts. Surely it was more an egotistical action, in keeping with the note he sent? It seems more like a show of strength to me, like he was looking to make sure he got our attention.'

Jack wasn't so sure. 'There's a lot of psychological debate about what a trophy actually is. Some experts say that just taking anything away from the crime scene, even a button or tiny piece of jewellery, makes it a trophy. It's a prize, something the killer has won in their own emotional and sexual battle to take a life and they keep it as a reminder of the elation they felt. There's now widespread evidence of serial killers taking stuff from their victims and not keeping it for very long. Often, they "gift" it elsewhere; they pass stuff on to charity shops or give it to a family friend or neighbour. It's a repulsive thought, but they clearly get a kick out of putting part of a brutal crime scene into the hands of innocents.'

'Also, they grow bored with it,' added Howie. 'Some of them are like teenagers buying their first pornographic magazine. The first time, they're afraid and excited and it takes all their courage to go shop for it. Then they buy regularly and amass a collection; eventually they start throwing old mags out and need much harder stuff to light their fire.'

'Your line of expertise?' whispered Fernandez, a little too loudly for only Howie to hear.

'Back to the point,' said Jack, rescuing his buddy. 'I buy the egotist angles, that's certainly all over the note, but not the idea that this guy is after publicity. He's not a headline hunter. That theory would stand up if he'd sent the heads to the press, but he didn't, he deliberately sent them to law enforcement offices, so it's much more like he's throwing down a challenge to us.'

'We all need to spend a lot more time on the note,' added Massimo. 'As Jack said, we will be sending a copy over to you, and I'm sure we'll be having a much longer discussion about this.' He turned his left wrist to check his watch and couldn't help thinking of the saw cut across the same joint on Cristina Barbuggiani. 'As time is moving on, let's briefly discuss item number four, the package that contained the head that I am told is of Sarah Kearney, one of BRK's earliest – maybe even first – victims.'

'Okay,' said Howie, unfastening his shirt cuffs and rolling up his sleeves in a businesslike manner. 'I don't want to get everyone too excited, but we've got some good news. We've got a healthy trail on the delivery of the package. It was shipped through Myrtle International by a company called UMail2 Anywhere. Turns out they're a very small courier company, just local to Myrtle Beach, and we've found who the pick-up boy was.'