Viper

Claretta made coffee while they discussed the possibilities: an accident, an elopement, or something less dramatic and romantic – as Nico speculated. Maybe they'd parked somewhere and fallen asleep, run out of petrol, found a party and stayed but hadn't rung because it had been late. None of them spoke of anything worse. But they all thought it.

Two hours later Cristiano rang the police.

41

Grand Hotel Parker's, Napoli Jack was still asleep at the hotel's computer terminal when his cellphone rang. It flashed Howie's number. He mumbled hello and checked his watch. Nine a.m. in Naples, three in New York. 'You up early or going home late?'

'Just got in,' growled Howie.

The big guy sounded dreadful, no doubt plastered again. 'What happened? You get lost trying to find your way around the whisky bottle?'

Howie let out a low grunt. 'No. I was doing fine for sobriety. Then some robbing little punk in an alleyway knifed me in the ass. I've spent all night in the ER, having nurses stare at my butt and stitch up the wound.'

'In the ass? Man, I'm sorry. You okay?'

'Fine and dandy. I tell you, buddy, some little fucko nearly speared me right up the ring-hole. The nurse said if he'd put the knife train any deeper into the big dark tunnel then I would have bled to death.'

Jack screwed up his face in sympathy.

'If you're laughing, I'll never talk to you again.' Then Howie couldn't help but laugh himself. 'Okay, so I admit it's funny. But listen, I think it'll be a friggin' year before I can sit down again, and Christ knows how much it's gonna hurt when I take a shit.'

'Too much detail. But, hey. I really am sorry.'

'Sure. Anyways, despite my personal tragedy – which you see fit to smirk at – I still done good with regards to your man Creed.'

Jack raised an eyebrow. 'Above and beyond the call of.'

'Yeah, and don't you forget it. So here you go…' Howie growled again as he repositioned himself. 'Let's start at the hotel. No guests, no minibar consumption beyond some water, Pringles and two bottles of beer. Room-service dinner – only for one – and breakfast in his room too. Some photocopying and newspapers. You following me?'

'Right alongside. Boring as hell.'

'Sure is, but it gets a might more interesting in a few lines' time. Remember the hotel receptionist you flirted with?'

'Kind of.'

'Polish woman, Brenda Libowicz, at the Lester. Anyways, she remembers you. I took her for that coffee you didn't have time for and it paid off a little. Brenda let me go through everything and it seems your friend Creed pretty much had the porn channel on full-time.'

'Old news. I thought I'd told you that?'

'Not that I recall. But there's more. Movie porn wasn't his only turn-on. He also spent a lot of time on the Internet.'

'You get browser data?'

'Did Clinton get a blow job?' Howie pulled over a computer printout that was lying on the table next to his notebook. 'Creed did several searches on BDSM and watched some real hard-core adult sites. Get this; he specifically searched for dark-haired women who were between seventeen and thirty. He spent an hour on Court TV's crime library reading stories about killers who buried bodies. He went through all our old friends including John Wayne Gacy and Gary Ridgeway, spent a whole lot of time on the Cleveland Torso murders and then ended up reading everything that was ever written about the Sunday Morning Slasher.'

Jack stopped him. His mind was hopelessly trying to make connections. It felt like wiring a plug in the dark. 'That's ringing all kinds of bells. The Slasher is the Coral Watts case, isn't it?'

'The one and only,' said Howie. 'Coral Eugene Sonofabitch Watts. Killed several young women. Drowned them, strangled them, cut their throats or knifed them dozens of times. And the bastard claimed to have murdered dozens more that the cops never found.'

Jack finally made his mental connection. 'Watts buried his victims and that's why they weren't found for years and he was able to carry on killing. On top of that, he used to ceremonially burn trophies he took from the bodies.'

'Yep, so you have some clear comparisons there – the missing women, the burials, even some burning.'

'Thanks, buddy, I'd just about joined those dots on my own.'

'Well done. There's another thing,' he said, his voice growing flat and worried. 'Turns out that Creed has had and still does have access to FBI files.'

'Say again.' Jack hoped he'd misheard.

'One of the Internet cookies I traced was Creed's log-in to the FBI's Virtual Academy. Seems that he's been enlisted as a student of the VA.'

The Virtual Academy was a global distance-learning site, jammed with information and famed for helping to hone profiling techniques. Access was restricted to the law enforcement world.

The breach rendered Jack silent.

'You hear me?' asked Howie.

'I hear you. Only now the dots make a picture that I really don't like. The thought of a possible offender being deep inside our corridors of knowledge fills me with dread. We need to find out everything this sonofabitch has read or written, and whoever he's spoken to. And we need to do it fast.'

42

Campeggio Castellani, Pompeii For a split second Franco Castellani couldn't work out the cause of the sharp slapping sensation inside his head. Still slow and wasted from the heroin, he gradually realized that the pain was coming from his grandfather's hand rather than from the after-effects of the drug.

'What in God's name do you think you are doing? You crazy crazy, child!'

Franco covered his face. Not that the slaps carried much weight. Rosa. His fingers still smelled of Rosa.

'Sit up! Sit up and tell me that this is not what I think it is. Not what I know it is.'

Antonio backed off to give him room. Franco forced his eyes open wide enough to see the syringe and the empty plastic packet being dangled above him. The air was hot and stale. Flies buzzed around a dirty plate near his cousin's bed. Franco finally commanded his legs to move and raised himself into a sitting position. The door jerked open and blinding white light flooded in. Paolo stopped in his tracks, fresh bread and milk in a carrier bag swinging in his hand.

'Get out!' shouted Antonio.

Paolo turned on his heels.

Franco noticed his cousin had been dressed in work clothes. He guessed he'd overslept and his grandfather had come looking for him. 'It's heroin,' he admitted, shielding the light from his face. 'If you were me, you'd be taking it too. Lots of it.'

His grandfather slapped him again. 'Don't give me this self-pity shit. Be proud of who you are, what you are.'

Franco put his hands back to his face; this time the blows had stung. 'What I am? I'm the living dead, that's what I am.'

Antonio hit him again. Slapped hard at the boy's stubborn head. Tried to knock some sense into his thick skull. Then he grabbed him. Shook him and held him. And felt his own tears stream down his face. 'Franco, you shame yourself with this stuff. You disrespect yourself and your family. We are not junkies. We are not cowards. Whatever life throws at us we raise our heads above it and show the world we are proud to be ourselves.'

'But I'm not, Grandpa. I'm not proud.' His voice was shaky and his eyes watery. 'I hate myself and everything that's happening to me.'

Antonio held his grandson by the arms. His brown, liver-spotted fingers dug into the thin white forearms snaked with needle tracks. 'Don't do this, Franco. Be a man. Come on; find your self-respect.'

Franco Castellani searched deep inside himself. There was no trace of self-respect. Only a stinking sump-oil residue of painful memories. His jailbird father, his runaway mother and his current fleapit, hand-to-mouth existence. Finding respect was impossible.

'I'm sorry,' he said and kissed the top of his grandfather's head. 'I know I disappoint you. Mi dispiace.'

Before Antonio could reassure him, Franco had pulled away from his grandfather and was gone. Leaving the wind to slam shut the rusty old door of the van.