Grave Instinct

THREE

Duval County, Jacksonville, Florida July 7, 2003

Less than an hour before a fantastic sunset had settled over the city of Jacksonville, but a river of clouds had poured in from the ocean and blotted out everything. The grim darkness had come on like an approaching army. Next came a light silver drizzle, the sort that warned of worse to come. The night sky masked the gray clouds of earlier, now creating a black blotter of the Heavens with only the occasional star winking through.

“ No stargazing tonight.” The hefty black officer named Lamar Plummet shoved his white partner while they sat eating a fast-food dinner in their cruiser. He had been talking about the beautiful sunset before, speaking of it in reverential tones, saying that only God could paint a sky like that. Sipping coffee and chewing on burritos, Duval County sheriffs deputies Wayne Bierdsley and Lamar Plummet groaned in unison as the police band announced a 911 call on a ten-26-cardiac/drowning/asphyxiation. They had just begun a meal break-but the call was for Venetia Wharf on the St. John's River, less than a mile away. Bierdsley tossed his burrito aside and picked up, radioing in a ten-4, adding, “Cruiser 44. We're on it.”

“ Whoa, damn it, Wayne,” muttered Plummer as the car pulled from the curb and coffee spilled over his lap. “Jesus.”

“ You're always complaining, Plummer.”

“ Whataya mean? This stuffs hot as hell.”

“ You just got through saying you were bored out of your gourd, so we get a homicide call and you're pissed?”

“ Just get me there in one piece. Where'd you learn how to drive?”

When they arrived, they found a rank old fisherman arguing with a uniformed harbormaster, who wanted the man and his shrimp boat out of the restricted area. “Abrams, you take that thing off twenty yards, the other side of the fence. Cops can find you there as well as here.”

“ Damn you, fool. Are you deaf? I've got an emergency here, a dead woman caught up in our nets.”

Climbing from their cruiser, the two sheriff s deputies laughed to see the two old men standing pipe to pipe, fists clenched. A third man, well dressed and stepping from one of the yachts joined them, shoulder to shoulder with the harbormaster, curious about Abrams's catch.

The well-dressed man said, “I'm Jervis Swantor. That's my boat there. Can I be of any service? What's the emergency?”

Other yachts-people living on their ships were now gathering outside, having been awakened by all the noise: men arguing, police sirens approaching and uniformed men in boots pounding down the seasoned planks.

“ E)ead girl's body come up in my fishing net, and when I saw what'd been done to her… I called nine-one-one. The poor thing's been robbed of her brain! Gin you imagine that? A hole cut clean through her head, here!” He indicated his forehead with his finger. “I screamed bloody murder, I did. And this old fool wants me to take her back out and come in proper on the other side, but now the deputies are here, they can give the orders, Mr. Harbormaster Blowhard.”

“ Mr. Abrams?” started Bierdsley.

“ Captain, son… Captain.”

“ That shrimper's where the body is?” asked Plummer, rushing ahead, Bierdsley following. Their boots beat an anthem as they rushed down the wooden platform ahead of Captain Abrams to where he'd illegally put his dilapidated shrimp boat in, nose first.

A strident warning from the old fisherman trailed the two Duval County deputies down the ramp to the old man's vessel: “Prepare yourselves for the worst most horriblest thing I ever seen in this life. Prepare!”

“ Can I help here?” asked the lone yachtsman who had rushed out to try to get a look at the dead body. “I'm Jervis Swantor, boat owners' association, and we all pay dearly to use these spots. What's happened?”

“ I told you what happened!” Abrams shouted at the man.

It was the one truly dark spot along the wharf where missing lights added to the overcast sky. “Looks like she's beyond help,” muttered Lamar Plummer, the beefy black deputy.

Bierdsley, a moderately sized, plump white man, stood beside Plummer, still on the wharf. From where they stood, they saw the mermaid like figure caught up in the shrimper's netting. “Yeah, looks bad, and now it's getting crowded. Civilians starting to gather. We'll need back up just to keep them at bay.” He turned to Swantor and asked him to back off. Bierdsley and Plummer had seen floaters before. They imagined it was a suicide, so what was the old man ranting about? Some massive hole in the head? In the dark, they saw nothing of a bullet wound.

“ Let's see what kind of package the old man's got caught up in his net,” Bierdsley calmly said to Plummer as they boarded the bobbing boat.

Getting shakily aboard himself, Plummer asked no one in particular, “Is this boat tied secure? It's bouncing like a cork.” At the same time, Plummer pounded his flashlight in an effort to improve the beam. “Fucking Eveready.”

Behind them, they saw Jacksonville police cruisers lining up, their strobe lights challenging one another. “We beat the Jax boys this time,” said Lamar, laughing. Off to one side of the harbor, the well-to-do yachts-people huddled. Swantor promised the crowd that he'd get to the bottom of this hullabaloo for them all.

The old fisherman had scurried down behind them now, storming off from the harbormaster, and he warned again, “I'm telling you two, it's one awful, awful sight.”

“ Floaters always are,” agreed Bierdsley. “Worst kinda things happen to a body that's been in water too long.”

“ Not to worry, old man,” Plummer assured the captain, his black face becoming all smile as he winked at Bierdsley.

The deputies rocked on their boots aboard the fishing vessel, and from where they stood in their brown uniforms, they could see the broad expanse of US-295 where the bridge spanned the river, and they could see the Jacksonville Naval Air Station. In the opposite direction a patient skyline awaited the eye. A beautiful blue-lit city on the waters of the St. John's River.

Captain Abrams's boat was like any of a hundred others along the Florida coastal waters, plying a trade in the fresh fish markets that lined up to buy their goods. Going aft, the two deputies closed the distance between themselves and the body.

She lay in a curled position, her form seemingly cut into the square pieces of a gingham cloth due to netting she lay in. A few of the fish inside the net with the body remained fresh enough to flop from side to side. Obvious to the deputies, the fisherman's crew had worked to salvage what they could of the most profitable fish-red fin and grouper- leaving some pockets of cod and halibut in the net with the dead girl.

Lamar Plummer ignored the odors and went to his knees beside the crumpled body and net. “Least she's all in one piece and still has her skin, so she's not been in the water for too very long.”

Dark shadow obliterated the face. Wayne Bierdsley moved in closer and stared at the girl's drenched form; her dress had the look of a shrink-wrapped shroud, the net was like an oversized shawl. Then his eyes fell on the dark concave black portion of the white head. In the darkness of shadow, with only the harbor lights on, he didn't know what he was looking at or what to make of it when something strange happened. It must be a hallucination, Bierdsley thought a moment before Plummer said, “Jesus, Joseph and Mary… She's got a third eye, and it's looking right at us.”

Bierdsley saw the eye at the center of shadow along the dead girl's forehead a moment before it disappeared, and for a nanosecond he believed in the supernatural and in mermaids. Then he saw a silver-looking reflection replace the eye. Finally, he located and flipped on his flashlight, placing the beam to the dead girl's forehead. As he did so, he found himself in a graceless motion going to his knees opposite his partner, “Jesus…” escaping his lips.

Both officers gasped in response. The dark blotch was indeed a large cavity the size and length of her forehead; in fact, what ought to be her forehead stood out as a void, and inside the void another dying fish struggled for air in a losing battle. It made Bierdsley wonder what kind of fight the young woman had put up. Now in its death throes, the small cod began to blow out its gills, wink wide and flutter.

“ G'damn old man was right. That is a big sum-bitchin' hole,” Lamar said. “I thought he was talking gunshot. Ain't never seen anything like this, Wayne.”

“ It'd take a cannon to make a hold that big; besides, it's too damn neat around the edges for a gun blast. OK, we gotta get that fish out of the cavity,” Bierdsley insisted.

“ Now wait a minute. It's not our job to go fishing inside somebody's splayed open head for no fish.”

“ Captain Abrams!” shouted Bierdsley.

“ Yes?” Abrams had been standing alongside the deputies the entire time. “What can I do you for?”

“ You got something I can use to spear a fish? Maybe something like clamps?” Bierdsley didn't want to place his hand inside the hole. “How the hell's there room enough for a fish inside her head anyway?”

“ Wayne, you're messin' round with the crime scene when you tamper with shit. You know that, so let the damn fish be.”

“ Close-range sawed-off shotgun, maybe?” asked a man who'd gotten down to the boat before a single Jacksonville cop had. “I come to find out what happened, relay the news to the rest of the people tied-to here.”

Plummer and Bierdsley exchanged a look of exasperation. “We told you, Mr. Swantor, to get back of that police line and stay there. You can't help here.”

A Jacksonville policeman tugged the curious yachtsman back. “You believe that guy?” asked Bierdsley. “Some guys with money think they can get away with anything.”

Another Jacksonville cop came aboard and looked over the body from a safe distance, remaining in a standing position. “You guys need help?” he asked.

“ No… something's just weird here.” Bierdsley hunkered down closer, and he leaned in over the body, flashing the beam ahead.

Lamar added, “She's been cut open somehow like a goddamn can opener was put to her head. Cut clean through the bone.”

The Jacksonville officer pulled out another flashlight and the beam somehow motivated the fish in the victim's head to dart out, which caused the officers to all jolt back and laugh at themselves all at once. Their laughter ceased as they stared at what the lights now revealed.

The forehead was indeed gone, so too was the crown, which had been shaved of hair. A large, half-conical-shaped doorway had been removed from the top of the eyebrows toward each ear and up and over the crown. The cut had gone through the cranial bone. It had created a kind of open trapdoor large enough for a small hand to enter.

Lamar moaned to the dark sky overhead. “Lord God in Heaven.”

Captain Abrams, a Georgia-born fisherman, added, “May God forgive us all.”

“ It's worse,” said Bierdsley. “Take a look inside the hole.”

Lamar fearfully did so.

Bierdsley knew he was near gagging. “Whoever did this, he… he took her brain.”

“ What the fuck for?” asked the Jacksonville cop.

Bierdsley muttered, “Sick fuck.”

More city cops arrived boat side, asking if the deputies needed any help. Lamar was doubled over the keel, puking into the St. John's, garnering laughter from men who had not viewed the body. Bierdsley invited the others aboard to have a closer look. Soon there were several men joining Lamar Plummer in polluting the river.

Word had spread, and next came the sheriff of Duval County, Lorena Combs. She stood tall and sleek in her uniform among the men, and even after looking over the corpse, she held in her dinner. “On the quick, I want this crime scene secured. No one on the boat or near the body until I say otherwise.”

“ But, Sheriff,” complained Captain Abrams, “the harbormaster wants me outta this slip. Me, I gotta get my boat back out to sea. Can't lose another day. Can't you just take the dear little thing off my boat and off my hands?”

“ Take some time off, my friend. Your boat is a crime scene, Captain, and it could be a while. FBI's going to want to see this.”

“ But… but…”

“ Until I say otherwise.”

He scrunched his face up at her and gnawed on his pipe. She simply walked back to her squad car and asked dispatch to put her through to Quantico-FBI Headquarters. As she did so, she saw the harbormaster and a fellow on his arm trying desperately to get closer to the crime scene, rubber-necking as they approached.

“ Christ, do we sell tickets next?” She shouted orders to her men to get all civilians, including journalists, back.

Quantico, Virginia The same night

JESSICA Coran downed her cup of coffee as she worked late into the night, pushing through her office door with her free hand, and thinking about the telephone call she'd had from Richard. He had called from the plane, still en route to China. She smiled with the memory of his voice in her ear.

Stepping into her office, pushing errant curls from her eyes, she instantly realized someone was seated in the semi-darkened room, deep in shadow. She looked up to see Eriq Santiva, her boss. For a long moment they glared at one another like adversaries in a duel. Her highlighted auburn hair contrasted sharply with the white lab coat she wore over her clothes. She pushed past the dark-featured Cuban-American to take a seat behind her desk. She was angry with him for having sent her live-in lover, Richard Sharpe, on another overseas assignment. Somehow Richard's impeccable credentials were always at the center of Eriq's decisionmaking lately.

Eriq stood and paced the room before he again settled into a chair, this time opposite her. She'd just come from an autopsy, her hazel eyes tired and weary. She hadn't expected to find her superior waiting here in her office, impatient for the results of the autopsy, but here he was.

“ Aren't you getting tired of playing gofer for Senator Lowenthal?” she bluntly asked him.

“ I resent that, Jess.”

“ I resent my office being used this way, Eriq. If Lowenthal were not a senator, this case would have never crossed my desk, let alone yours.”

“ Sometimes, Jess, you have to play ball with these guys. Like it or not, the FBI is mired in politics.”

Politics has no business in decisions regarding scientific investigation. We established that years and years ago.”

“ Politics aside, the man is a friend of mine, and he's distraught over his daughter's death, after all, and he wanted the best-you.”

“ Eriq, it's an easy spot. Any pathologist in any hospital in the country could have-”

“ But they didn't at Bethesda! They took it on the doctor's word that his wife had developed complications from some sort of food poisoning.”

“ Yeah, right, food poisoning by strychnine. Something her husband doctor would know all about.”

“ Then you found the murder weapon?”

“ My protocol will be complete by tomorrow. You can fetch it for the senator then.”

“ That'll be fine, Jess.”

“ The wife was killed by person or persons unknown, by use of ingested strychnine poisoning. Not very creative on the husband's part if he did it. Hair and fiber aren't much use since they shared the same space before their estrangement. With no struggle, she left us little to work with.”

“ At least we know it wasn't some mysterious disease or food poisoning that killed her.”

“ The senator will have to pursue it with local police now.”

“ Of course, you're right.”

“ Appears a fairly straightforward murder of one's spouse, as the senator suspected.”

“ I suspected as much, too. If you'd ever met this creep…”

“ Just, please, next time someone puts the screws to you, Eriq, at least talk to me first and level with me. Maybe put someone else on it. I have a backlog of work that would sink an elephant.” “You always told me that any murder is worth your time.”

She took in a deep breath, realizing he was right but not wishing to give in. “That was a long time ago, before the rash of maniacs out there crossing jurisdictions and filleting people, and those crimes need our attention and expertise. Hell… some new psycho every other week, Eriq. Out there raping, torturing and now cutting open people's heads for their gray matter…”

“ I'm afraid there's been a third, Jess.”

“ When? Where?”

“ In Jacksonville, Florida.”

“ Right on the Georgia-Florida line, just as we predicted.”

“ Just got the call. It's the real reason I'm here.”

“ Christ, when did you get the news?”

“ Just got the call while you were in autopsy. I called down; they said you were nearly finished, so I let you finish. I know how you hate to be interrupted during an autopsy.”

“ Yeah, especially one involving pol-a-tics!”

Ignoring her dig, Eriq said, “As you know, we put a call out on the law-enforcement hotline for anything to do with victims missing any or all of their brains in a surgical manner?”

“ Yes, go on.”

“ And we suspected he'd show up in South Georgia or North Florida.”

“ I guess you want me down there?”

“ You're our logical choice, along with J.T.” Jessica had visited the Richmond authorities to get a firsthand account of what they thought of the Brain Thief, as their local papers painted the killer. J.T. had done likewise in Winston-Salem. J.T. had also interviewed a young woman nearly abducted in Fayetteville, learning only that the would-be offender there drove a dark blue van. Little had come of their efforts to find patterns or evidence that might help form conclusions about the killer.

“ Bring back as much photographic evidence as you did on the previous cases. Jess, higher-ups think that you should be devoting all your time to this case.”

“ Figures.” Fatigue whispered in her ear, saying, Run away!

“ And, by the way, your telephone is going to ring right about now.” Eriq looked at his watch and pointed to the phone.

The telephone indeed interrupted them, and Jessica answered. “Dr. Coran. Can I help you?”

“ I certainly hope so,” replied a female voice at the other end. “I'm Sheriff Combs of Jacksonville. I guess your Chief Santiva's informed you of our situation here. I had just seen your request in passing yesterday, and now this… sad business here, and sad to say you people were right. The Skull-digger has come to the Sunshine State.”

“ Skull-digger? Is that what he's being called now?”

“ That's what Winston-Salem's calling him.”

“ Guess I'm out of the loop. Has the body there in Florida been disturbed?”

“ Secured at this point, and if you can come right away, we'll hold off disturbing it any further than it's already been disturbed by my officers. They turned the body for some unaccountable reason; I guess to see if there was any other violence done to the back of the skull.”

“ Was there?”

“ No, the only other notable item was the restraint marks.”

“ Hands, feet, throat and temples?”

“ Hands and feet certainly. Throat and temples… I'm not so sure. How does he restrain the victim by her temples?” “We suspect a viselike head restraint.”

“ My God.”

“ I'm taking a chopper out immediately. Hold on every-thing.”

“ Might have trouble keeping Bulldog Koening off.”

“ Who would be?”

“ Dr. Ira Koening. Our city M.E. Good, stubborn and tenacious man, but he's been backed up due to health problems. Still, he wanted the case when he heard of its uniqueness.”

“ I've met Ira at a number of conventions. I agree, he's a good man. Tell him I look forward to working with him.”

“ Will do. I told him we intended to get FBI assistance, and that you'd be using lab space at the FDLE.”

“ Florida Department of Law Enforcement has labs in Jacksonville now?”

“ We're progressing.”

“ Tell me what you have so for.”

“ A big nothing. Nothing but questions, I'm afraid. The victim's not giving up any clues. Not yet. But she was wearing an expensive summer dress, appears young-perhaps eighteen, nineteen. Not dressed provocatively, not likely a prostitute, no reason we can see that she should have attracted such violence. Then again, who would?”

“ Was she sexually assaulted?”

“ Hard to tell. She came up out of the water in a fisher-man's net in a dress, but that's as far as we've gotten. Wanted your input before anyone else got to the scene.”

“ I'll be there by daybreak.”

“ Once the press gets this, and they will, there's going to be an outcry here for vigilante justice if we don't find some answers,” Combs told Jessica.

“ Anything else you can tell me relative to the body?”

Combs described the details of the discovery of the body and redundantly spoke about the missing organ. She sounded frazzled. She sounded young for such a position. This was likely the single worst case she had ever caught. She repeated herself on everything, ending with, “Press is going to have a field day with this shit.”

“ Yours is the third such victim that we know of, all young women. And I don't think this creep's going to go away anytime soon.”

“ Is he killing women who look alike? Can we warn women with the same general appearance?”

“ Fact is, there's some superficial likeness between the first two victims, physically, I mean. But as to anything else- likes, dislikes, community involvement, economics-no. But they were both white and young and brunette. One was attending a flight-attendant school, the other was a nursing student. Anna Gleason was twenty-one; Miriam McCloud was twenty-two.”

“ That appears to square with the new victim,” said Combs.

“ Still, they differ in the details enough to make us suspect that they could be randomly selected-chance and opportunity murders-but we're not certain at this point, so we're ruling nothing out.”

“ If they are randomly selected, that will make it all the harder to find this creep.”

Jessica sighed deeply and said, “We've run the details of the other two crimes through the historical files of the VICAP system, to see if anything remotely like this has ever come up before. Cases involving people's brains being smashed in, cut into with knives, pitchforks and axes, but nothing like the kind of thing we're seeing here.”

Jessica recalled the first instance of a body that was missing its brain that VICAP had isolated. It had been in Normal, Illinois, in the 1920s. The body had been dumped in a river there. The killer had been a quiet farmer up until the day he murdered his wife and removed her brain and ate it for supper one night. At his execution, he gave a strange statement: “ 'I done it to please the voice inside my head that pleaded it be done until I could not stand it no more.' “ It had been his ailing wife's voice, he claimed. He died in the electric chair.

Jessica told Combs, “These recent killings are serial in nature; either he feels he must kill the same thing over and over, or he feels he cannot get it right, so he keeps coming back for another try, or he simply likes it so much he can't give it up.”

“ Like an addiction.”

“ Sometimes it's more than that. Sometimes it's the only way they can get their twisted, sexual gratification.”

“ Through such horrid violence to another person?”

“ Yes… afraid so.”

“ This guy kills in Richmond and Winston-Salem, and makes an attempt in Fayetteville, and now here. So, he gets around.”

“ We suspect he may be a working as a deliveryman using a van, dark blue, but then again, anyone having a reason to travel the southeast could be him.”

Jessica said goodbye to Combs and looked up at Santiva.

“ Hey, it's your kind of case, Jess.”

“ Death of a third victim from this brain-hunter,” she muttered, her hands racing to her temples.

“ Jess, I've seen brains caved in, I've seen brain knifings, but I've never seen one stolen. Look, I'll put a helicopter on standby for you. Get out of here and get packed.”

“ The crimes in North Carolina and Virginia began what? A month ago now? I wonder why he slowed down, and what lured him to Jacksonville, Florida.” Anyone's guess at this point. Like I said, a helicopter will be waiting for you. Pack and get out there. I'll say good night, and Jess, be careful. You know firsthand that there're a lot of sharks inhabiting Florida waters.”