Viper

70

Grand Hotel Parker's, Napoli The downpour at the burial site had caught Jack without a coat. Back at the hotel he showered, changed and sent his soaked clothes to the laundry. His trousers were so drenched they looked like they'd been made out of crepe paper. Sylvia had called and said she was heading off to the morgue and would see him in the morning, so he settled on the bed and tried to unwind a notch or two.

This case now had the makings of a long one and he couldn't afford to get trapped in it. That meant getting out sooner rather than later – and sooner seemed round about now. The few days he'd promised Nancy it would take had already gone. Christmas was looming. His thoughts turned to his son – still at that incredible age when he believed a fat man in a red suit could land a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer on the roof of a house and then slip down a chimney so narrow you couldn't post a supermodel down it. How beautiful!

Grilled salmon or meatballs and spaghetti? Jack was torn. He'd just about eaten his way through everything room service could offer. He was leaning towards the meatballs when his cellphone rang. He hoped it was Nancy.

'Pronto,' said Jack, rolling his 'r' in his best possible accent, then waiting as usual for his wife to laugh at him.

'Mr King, I'm in reception. Perhaps we could meet downstairs and talk?'

Jack's spine tingled.

Luciano Creed.

Downstairs?

You bet they could talk.

Jack didn't bother answering – or waiting for the lift. He hit the stairs two at a time. Covered four floors faster than an Olympic sprinter on steroids.

Creed was standing near the front desk, wet and stinking. Even if he made a run for it now, Jack could catch him.

'Nice to see you, Jack.' He cracked a yellow-toothed smile and swung out a bony hand.

Jack grabbed it. Not out of friendship, but just to have a firm grip on him. 'Come over here, Luciano. Sit down.' He effectively manoeuvred Creed into a plush wing-backed chair in the reception area. 'Stay still.' He flipped open his phone and dialled. 'Sylvia, it's Jack. I have Creed with me at my hotel. Send a car; I'll bring him to the station.'

His stomach growled. The meatballs would have to wait. Jack said little to Luciano Creed as they waited at the hotel, and even less in the carabinieri car that whisked them back to the barracks.

Creed rattled on about his innocence. Said he'd known they would suspect him because he knew so much about the missing women and because he was unusual, outspoken and honest. They weren't the words that Jack would have used to describe him. He did his best to tune out Creed's monologue. There would be a time to talk – and plenty of it – but not now. He wanted tape machines turning, witnesses present and a proper interview strategy. Another thing was on his mind too, and he needed to call Howie urgently to fix it.

Sylvia met Jack in her office as Creed was shown through to an interview room. Technically, he wasn't under arrest; no charges had been laid and he could walk away at any moment. Or, at least, he could try. If pushed, they'd probably come up with something – perverting the course of justice, suspicion of involvement in an indictable offence – they'd find a sticky label somewhere.

Sylvia crossed her arms and rubbed her hands up and down them. She was tired and cold and needed desperately to warm up and wake up. 'Why now? Why the hell had he turned himself in at this very moment?'

'Timing. He said he'd achieved what he wanted at the press conference. Brought attention to the cases you folks had ignored. And he figured that by now we'd all have worked out that he was a brilliant profiler – his words, not mine – and not a suspect.'

Sylvia snorted a laugh. 'Everything about this guy is suspect.'

'Sure, but – as we both know – suspect doesn't mean guilty. There's a way to finally settle whether he's telling the truth or not. Do you know about LVA?'

She frowned. 'El Vee-ay. Arabic?'

'No. LVA – Layered Voice Analysis. It's voice-sensitive stress-detection software. Developed by Israeli whizz-kids, used by Mossad and security forces in many countries.'

'We have nothing like that. Polygraphs, yes, but even their use is very limited and controlled.'

'My buddy Howie has a laptop rigged with LVA monitoring equipment that's been beefed up to be a near-perfect lie detector. He's the king of this stuff. He's used it everywhere. If I can get hold of him – and that's a big "if" these days – then he can run it from NYC while we interview Creed.'

Sylvia frowned. 'Doesn't Creed have to be attached to it somehow?'

'Nope. It works on voice patterns. It's so sensitive that it can detect even the slightest hesitation, a variance or stress. If we open up a phone line in the interview room and just get Creed to talk normally – discuss things he wouldn't lie about – then we can have a baseline reading to calibrate from and Howie can give us real-time readings and results.'

'So throughout the interview he can tell us whether Creed is lying or not?'

'Exactly.'

'And this is how accurate?'

'Ninety-eight per cent. Beats the pants off the poly.'

'Let's do it.' Sylvia looked pleased. 'Great thing is, because the test is being run outside Italy, I don't even need permission.'

Jack phoned Howie. He was in luck. It was now ten p.m. in Italy, four p.m. in NYC.

It turned out that apart from a couple of Buds with his corn dog lunch, Howie hadn't touched a drop. Sylvia grabbed some files she needed, then headed to IT to fix the connections.

Howie had his Dell up and running before Jack's ass hit the seat opposite Creed. The profiler wore a small, covert, Bluetooth earbud receiver linked to his cellphone that was on an open line to Howie's phone.

Sylvia reminded Creed that the interview was being recorded on tape – but she didn't mention the LVA. She got him to state his full name, age, current address, and asked him again if he wanted a lawyer. He waved her away. 'I'm here to help. I've always been trying to help. I don't need a lawyer.'

Got the baseline and the guy's already lying, Howie whispered in Jack's ear.

'That's not quite right, Luciano, is it?'

Creed stared at Jack. He was shocked to be pulled up so quickly. He reflected. 'You mean the press conference? I suppose you're right. I wasn't trying to help there; I was trying to embarrass you. I hope I succeeded.'

'Why would you want to do that?' asked Sylvia.

'Because for more than a year now I've been trying to get the constipated minds of the carabinieri to look into these cases. But, oh no, you people keep telling me, "Shut up, Luciano. They're not linked, they're not murders, they're just missing people." Well, now you know the truth. You fucked up. They're murders – they're dead people, not missing people -'

'Okay, we get the picture,' interjected Jack. 'You want to help – great. Let's start at the beginning.'

Creed glared across the table. 'Fine. The beginning.'

'Did you have any connection to these women? Other than the research work you did for the carabinieri during your secondment from the university?'

'None at all.'

True, Howie whispered in Jack's ear. He's telling you the truth.

'You never dated any of these women – weren't personally involved with them or had any sexual connection to them?'

'No. None. I never knew any of them.'

LVA reading shows uncertainty – strong hesitation, said Howie.

Jack went back over the same ground. 'What was the sexual link, Luciano? There was something sexual between you and at least one of these girls. What was it?'

Creed looked away and let out a huuh. 'The last one, Francesca, the hot one. I used to jerk off to her pictures. There were some swimsuit shots in the police file – I photocopied them and used to look at them when the urge took me.'

Sylvia looked away so Creed couldn't see her disgust. Jack showed no emotion. 'Back in New York, I found some drawings that you'd made. Sketches you'd done while staying at the Lester. Can you remember them?'

Creed shuffled in his chair. 'Not really. I doodle all the time. I have a creative mind. Why are they of interest?'

He remembers them, prompted Howie.

Sylvia opened one of the files she'd brought and slid across the table the drawing Jack had retrieved and pieced together.

'Not bad,' said Creed looking at the pencil scribblings of vaginas and breasts. He swung it round to get a closer look and smiled. 'Some of my better work actually.'

'And you had some photographs too. Sylvia, perhaps you could remind Luciano of them?'

Her hand slid into the file again and produced more pieced-together pornography. This was a shot of a naked woman cuffed to a metal pole, being whipped and branded with hot irons.

'That kind of stuff turn you on?' asked Jack.

Creed smiled. 'Yeah, it does. Naked women with tight asses and big tits – it hits all the spots.'

Very true, whispered Howie. LVA shows exceptionally high level of arousal and excitement.

'It does for most men,' said Jack, 'but you know that's not what I mean. I mean the violence. You get turned on by the idea of women being tortured?'

Creed's bravado buckled a little. 'Not so much the violence. I – err, I like to see them vulnerable. Women on their knees, women under threat. It's not that unusual.' He read Sylvia's face. She looked an inch away from punching him. 'Hey, you know men like me get knocked back all the time by women like you. How come it's a surprise I might like to see you not looking so smug?'

Jack turned back to Creed. 'You ever indulge these fantasies further than masturbation? Ever deliberately hurt a woman, or have a woman hurt for your own gratification?'

'Listen, I came here to help. Not to answer twenty questions about what turns me on.'

Anxietywise, he's off the score right now, said Howie. Jack held his gaze. A single look that seemed to turn silence into guilt.

'Okay. Sometimes I pay hookers to whip each other, while I watch. They fake being hurt and I like that. I like it a lot.'

Altar boy's telling it straight.

'So, how can you help? What have you got to offer, Luciano?'

Creed slouched forward on his elbows. Jack leaned back as he caught a draught of sour breath. 'You should be looking at these cousins. I saw the stuff in the papers. You should be grilling them like steak. You know how close cousins can be. I reckon -'

Jack cut him off. 'Is that the best you've got to offer, Luciano? We should follow up on stuff that's already made the news stands? Is that how brilliant a profiler you are?'

'I know these cases better than either of you.' Creed reddened. He turned to Sylvia. 'Better than anyone on your team. I've studied every detail for months on end. I know the clubs they went to, the taxi firms they used, the bars they visited, even where they shopped for their clothes. I can save you time and help you narrow down leads. Let me work up a profile with you -'

Jack cut him off again. 'What were you doing on the VA website?'

'You mean the Virtual Academy?'

'Aha.'

'Learning. That's what it's for, isn't it? I was being tutored. Check my grades. Check the hours I logged in. I bet there are not many global students who put in as much time as I did and got scores as good as mine. You and me, Jack, we can be a team.'

Jack had already checked. Creed had made the top ten per cent of students, even though he'd had no right to be there in the first place.

'You shouldn't have been on the site, Luciano,' said Sylvia. 'You told them you were employed full-time by us as a law enforcement officer. You faked references and you routed material through our servers so it would look authentic.'

'So, arrest me for it.'

Sylvia was tempted. Instead, she closed the interview. She and Jack took a break outside while coffee was sent in for Creed. They stood together in the corridor and Sylvia searched for her cigarettes.

'What a creep. I'm really itching to charge him, but what good would it do?'

'Paperwork – and bad publicity. It would create lots of both.'

'Exactly.' She shook the last cigarette out of her packet.

'So, you think he's of any value to your inquiry team?'

'Only dead. I can't, Jack. I know he knows the cases, but I just can't stomach the idea of him being anywhere near me.'

'Then you'll have to let him go.'

'I know.' She lit up and inhaled deeply.

Jack waved away the smoke. 'And warn him.'

'Sorry. I'm going to kick this damned habit when all this is over. To stay away, you mean?'

'Absolutely. This guy crossed a continent to get me involved in this case, and now that I am, he wants to ride shotgun and share the glory. That's what this is all about. He's inadequate and insignificant. Being seen as a champion has made him feel important. He's not going to give that up without a fight.'

Sylvia thought about it as she finished the cigarette and walked back to the room. 'I just want him out of here, Jack. I couldn't integrate him into our inquiry team, you know that. Right now I just want that stinking sonofabitch off my suspect list and out of my interview room.'

Minutes later it was done. Luciano Creed told them they were making a big mistake. And he'd prove it to them. He'd humiliated them once when they'd ignored him, and he was determined to humiliate them again.

He stomped across the courtyard of the police headquarters out into the narrow streets of the small town of Castello di Cisterna. That stupid female Capitano had looked at him like he was dirt and then had virtually thrown him out, rather than accept his offer of help. Crazy bitch. Like she knew what she was doing.

It was no wonder they couldn't solve this case. Fucking amateurs. They couldn't catch a cold, let alone a killer. And King, well, what a disappointment he was turning out to be. Emasculated and impotent. He just went along with whatever that dumb cow of a Capitano wanted. Maybe he was fucking her? Yeah, that would be it. That was the only decent explanation why someone with his kind of pedigree could have lost his senses. Call himself a profiler? A joke. That's what he should call himself. A big fucking joke.

Creed kicked a stone as hard as he could and turned down a rough back street that led towards the town centre. He was without transport. It was late and he was starving hungry. The slops they'd offered him in there hadn't been fit to fatten pigs. He would find an all-night bar in town and eat. First thing in the morning he'd call his contact at the newspaper and then they'd set to work.

With or without carabinieri permission he was going to be involved in this inquiry. They'd been foolish – damned foolish – to choose without.