Spider - Michael Morley [49]
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