Page 101 of Return of the Spider

“Detective Sampson and Detective Cross went above and beyond the call of duty bringing these fiends in. And I mean that word,fiends,” Pittman said. “As far as I’m concerned, mimicking serial killers like Son of Sam and the Boston Strangler is fiendish and incomprehensible behavior, a total distortion of human values.”

He took a big breath, then said he was putting us both up for commendations for our “dogged work and commitment to solving the white-van murders.”

There was a lot of congratulations. Even from DetectivesEdgar Kurtz and Corina Straub Diehl, though they came up to us afterward and told us not to get used to it.

“We’re still top dogs around here,” Kurtz said.

“Agreed,” Sampson said. “Just don’t piss on our ankles to prove it.”

That made them both laugh, and they walked away.

We spent the day writing detailed reports of all that had transpired at the farm, in the woods near Eamon Diggs’s home, in his double-wide, and at the state police barracks. I kept coming back to the photographic evidence gathered at the farm, specifically one picture that showed the rear of the white Ford Econoline van.

The shot, by the Pennsylvania state police forensics team, showed the interior of the van with both back doors flung wide. At a glance, it looked like a roadside dump strewn with an inch or two of dead leaves.

But below that light carpet of leaves, there seemed to have been little or no effort to hide what was found in the van: the chunk of scalp, the used latex gloves, and especially the spent .44-caliber-bullet casings. It was like they’d just been tossed in the back as an afterthought following each heinous crime.

Who does that? What kind of mind?

Keeping some sort of souvenir was not unusual. Many of the serial killers I’d interviewed for my doctoral dissertation had kept souvenirs of their victims. But those souvenirs had been safeguarded, at the least, and enshrined more often than not. Yet Diggs and Beech seemed to have been tossing their murder trophies into what was essentially a trash bin.

What was the psychology behind that?

I could not come up with a satisfactory explanation, so I asked Sampson.

“I don’t know,” John said. “Maybe Diggs’s twisted psyche sees it as throwing his victims into the void.”

I thought about that. “Maybe you should be sitting where I am.”

“I’m good right over here, man,” Sampson said and laughed.

Something about the case felt off, but by the time I made my way home, I’d managed to set thoughts of it aside.

Maria opened the front door and stepped way back so I could get past her belly.

“Damon’s got a little sniffle,” she said quietly, shutting the door behind me. “He fell asleep on the couch.”

“How’re you?” I whispered. I kissed her hello and put my hand on her belly. “How’s our little runner?”

“Playing gymnast today,” Maria said. “Doing cartwheels, I think. How about you? Doctor look at your chest?”

“She did, and I’ve got a bruise on my sternum, but I will be fine,” I said, wanting to move on. She’d about flipped when she found out about the arrow.

I took off my coat and followed Maria into the kitchen, where she was preparing shrimp in a red sauce, another amazing recipe from her mother that filled the air with good smells and ordinarily gave me an intense desire to eat. But I was distracted.

Ever intuitive, Maria studied my face as she stirred the sauce. “What are you confused about, mister?”

“Whether we’ve got the right guys.”

“You said the evidence looked ironclad.”

“We’re waiting for labs, but it did and does.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“Why would Diggs and Beech just dump all that stuff in the van like it meant nothing?”

“Maybe they didn’t dump it all. Maybe you’re finding traces of other victims back there. Alex, you need to be happy about this.If the labs back you up, you’re now batting one thousand on your murder cases. I think you need to bring that to Chief Pittman’s attention before you’renotbatting one thousand.”