Spider - Michael Morley [48]
‘Right through my ribcage, that’s the only way your wife would like to get into my heart.’
They both laughed. Then Jack hit a more sombre tone. ‘Seriously, buddy. I got told a bit about your call. Nancy said it was serious.’
Howie swallowed his last chuckle. ‘Yeah, it is. Man, we’ve been through some weird stuff together, but what I’m about to pitch is going to stump even you.’
‘Hang on,’ said Jack, as Nancy entered the bedroom with a silver tray of food covered with a crisp cotton napkin. Jack looked up and instinctively put a hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Thanks,’ he said, and his mind flashed back to their row.
Nancy said nothing, but as she put the tray on the bed she managed a half-smile before leaving.
‘Jack, you still there?’ shouted Howie, from thousands of miles away.
‘Yeah,’ said Jack. ‘I’m sorry about that; Nancy’s just brought me some food. Where were we?’
‘Remember Sarah Kearney, the BRK victim buried back in Georgetown?’
‘Yeah, sure do,’ said Jack, pulling off the napkin and looking at the salad bowl of rocket, sliced tomatoes and succulent mozzarella fior di latte that Paolo had probably made only a few hours ago. ‘She was a local girl, wasn’t she? No kin, but I think I read that the local community took care of her service and buried her?’
‘That’s right, they did,’ said Howie. ‘And now it damned well looks like they could have saved their money. Some sick fuck, maybe BRK, has been back and dug her up.’
The blood froze in Jack’s veins. ‘You sure? You don’t think it’s vandals, some local crackheads?’
‘No. You can’t take enough crack to make you do what this sicko did. He dug up the coffin, got out the poor kid’s bones and then sat her up against the headstone.’
‘Posed it?’ asked Jack, wondering whether BRK was taunting the FBI by the way he had left the skeleton, knowing the press would soon be around to take photographs.
‘Looks that way. Some kids going fishing found her.’
Jack pushed a cherry tomato around the bowl with his fork but he was already losing his appetite. ‘What the fuck would he want to do that for?’
Howie shrugged. He’d asked himself the same question. ‘Beats me. We know these fucks get off by revisiting their crime scenes, sitting by their victims’ graves and stuff, but digging up bones, well, that’s in a different league to the one I’m used to.’
Jack wasn’t convinced that it had been done for sexual kicks. ‘Maybe he’s trying to attract our attention?’
‘Then he’s doing a fucking good job,’ Howie scoffed.
‘You remember Massimo Albonetti?’ asked Jack, deciding he should introduce the Italian case he’d been asked to help with.
Howie had to think for a second. ‘Yeah. Cop from Rome, went on to head up their profiling unit. Weren’t you and he tight for a while?’
‘We were. I like him, he’s a good guy, and he’s just asked for some help on a case that has much more than a passing similarity to BRK’s handiwork.’
‘I hope you’re kidding me,’ said Howie.
‘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