Spider - Michael Morley [5]
He breathes out. Feels her warmth again, feels that part of her, still inside him – maybe even attached to his own soul.
God it had been exciting. The most exciting, wonderful moment of his life.
And then she had been his. Truly his.
Was it really twenty years ago that all that happened? He could hardly believe it.
My, how time flies so fast.
It only seemed like yesterday that he’d looked across at Sugar’s dead body in the passenger seat and realized that they were joined for ever, as surely as if they were man and wife.
Spider opens his eyes in the dullness of the present day and smiles. Sugar had indeed been special. It was so good to have her back in his life.
5
Georgetown, South Carolina
Fifteen-year-old Gerry Blake and his younger cousin Tommy Heinz couldn’t believe what they were seeing. Day or night, they regularly cut through the graveyard. The old tombstones and creepy church had never held any fears for them.
Until now.
Today, they were in a rush to get to their friend Chuck’s and go fishing with his dad in his boat out on the Black River. They both skidded to a halt on the rough shale path halfway through the churchyard; Tommy stumbled to his knees.
‘Muuutherfucker!’ screeched Gerry, drawing out the obscenity as he’d heard rappers do on MTV.
Tommy was already on his feet, panting like a dog, ready to run for the hills. He’d be out of there just as soon as Gerry came to his senses and got his ass into gear. For a second though, both boys instinctively huddled shoulder-to-shoulder and simply stared. What they saw was already branded into their memories for the rest of their lives.
The grave in front of them had been dug up.
A cheap pine coffin was splintered open and the skeleton of a young woman in a soil-stained dress was upright, resting against the headstone. Blackened bony arms and legs dangled from the filthy cloth. But the image that would haunt the teenagers until their own dying days was that of the head. Or rather, the space where the head should have been.
6
Florence, Tuscany
The psychiatrist in Florence had been as good as her word. Jack had rung her cell phone and, despite being surprised by the call, Dottoressa Elisabetta Fenella had agreed to see him later that very day. The power of the FBI really did cross continents. Jack suspected the big bucks that the Bureau had no doubt promised to pay probably also had some sway.
The ninety-minute rail journey to Florence went quickly, mainly because of the beauty of the countryside that rolled past the dusty window of the airless, rundown and overcrowded carriage. He found himself mesmerized by the vineyards and olive plantations that battled for the best terraces across steep hillsides, drawn to the sunlight but scratching for patches of precious shade. In some places, the sun had scorched the ploughed fields into slabs, making the earth look as if it had been fashioned out of hunks of grey stone. In wetter valleys, golden stone cottages rose from fertile fields like farmhouse bread baking in an oven.
And Tuscany certainly was an oven.
Jack found himself bathed in sweat as the train started to slow down into Florence. He blamed the lack of air-con, but he knew it was something else. Second thoughts.
Second thoughts about facing up to whatever was inside him, whatever memories were powerful and dark enough to scare him even when he was asleep.
The facts, the cold hard facts, came tumbling into his head. The Black River Killings had broken him.
Those weren’t just his words, it was what every crime reporter in America had written after his collapse at JFK.
He’d failed to catch a man who’d murdered at least sixteen young women, and who would murder more. He’d failed.
They’d written that too. Written it so many times that it had stopped hurting. Or so he told everyone.
Maybe it was best if he stayed broken. Broken didn’t mean completely unworkable or totally destroyed, it just meant he wasn’t as good as he once was. Maybe seeing a shrink