Grave Instinct

EIGHT

Home of Daryl Thomas Cahil, Morristown, New Jersey July 14, 2003, several hours later

J.T. had flown in from Quantico to meet here there on Santiva's order. She also learned of an incident report coming out of New Bern, North Carolina, involving a white male in a dark blue van attacking a woman outside a movie theater. The victim had been stabbed with a syringe and her system showed signs of drugs administered to sedate her. The MO sounded eerily similar. Jessica had contacted New Bern police for any information on the type of drug used. Too soon to tell, she was told. She asked for a copy of any sketch of the attacker that might come out of the witness testimony. They promised to forward anything but were doubtful. With Cahil in custody, she again wondered if he had anything at all to do with the Skull-digger murders.

Now she was on the street where Daryl Thomas Cahil lived, staring at his house. From the outside, the small house at 153 Orchard Row in Morristown defied anyone to say it was any different from any other along the ragtag street, where even the trees looked in ill repair. Surrounded by a broken-down chain-link fence with a gate resting on a single hinge, the house was penned in on each side by identical houses. Approaching close, Jessica and J.T. saw the dilapidated shingles, and the peeling paint, and the weathered boards. A rusted out lawn mower had been tucked-motor under-beneath the stairwell of a modest little porch area where two mildew-covered plastic chairs acted as obstacles before the doorway.

Max Strand accompanied Jessica and J.T. along with local FBI field agent Sam Owens. On their second meeting, Jessica found Strand a hefty, muscular man, round, rough-looking, not in the least frail for a man his age only recently out of surgery. Strand's face was a mask of experience, his eyes clearly having seen a lot of gruesome events in his years as a police detective. He appeared stoic and sad at the same time. Owens appeared Strand's opposite in every way. Cahil's residence had been kept a secret by the FBI who had moved him here from Newark. Strand had pulled a lot of strings to learn where in the city of Morristown the man resided.

After introductions were made, Jessica asked, “So, Strand, how do you like having Cahil back on your turf?”

“ You don't understand. When he was relocated initially to Newark, I put in for a job there to be close by in the event he should resume his former habits. So, when he was relocated here, that solved the problem.”

“ If you were on him, how'd he disappear?”

“ He was my obsession, not the department's. Like I told you in Philly, I've been in the hospital. Bypass operation.”

She bit her lower lip and said, “Sorry. Hope all is-”

“ He must've known I was down,” Strand said of Cahil. “We're old adversaries. Frankly, I thought he was done with his old habits, since he's done absolutely nothing after being released other than play games on his computer.”

“ His computer?” asked J.T.

Strand told Thorpe about the computer site, ending with, “And while he goes on about his crimes as if they were the work of a Lord God doing what a god does, there's nothing he can be charged with, even if he is encouraging people to worship as he does.”

“ How do you mean 'worship'?” asked J.T.

“ He's got some strange notions about gaining a glimpse of the cosmic mind-God-through feeding on brains.”

“ He's advocating cannibalizing other people to reach God?” asked J.T. “And he's free to do that?”

“ I haven't plugged in to his site recently, but he's been careful not to be too specific about what kinds of brains his audience should be chewing on. He's opted for meat products in the local grocery freezer and canned goods for a while, but now he's into pasta.”

“ So he's untouchable?”

“ The law has a long way to go to control the Web.” Strand took a deep breath as they walked toward the house together. “Like I said, I'd begun to believe Cahil through with it, until I got word of the murders. They occurred just as I was incapacitated, and I had no access to a computer. No one but a lunatic who might log on could possibly find some sort of 'truth' in Daryl's rantings.”. “How do you feel about him being on the loose now?”

Strand, stretching the full-length of his tall, rugged ex-marine frame, replied with squinting eyes and gnashing teeth. “How do you think I feel? This guy should've been put away for life. I knew he'd be at it again. Just figured it would be in another cemetery, not killing young people outright. That nuthouse they sent him to only graduated the lunatic to the real thing.” The absence of yellow police caution tape indicated that this was no crime scene, and that Owens was moving on the place with a light hand, likely having anticipated Cahil's return-before he had been apprehended in Atlantic City.

“ We kinda tiptoed into the house carefully from the rear. Went in and got out quickly when we located an active credit card number,” Owens said.

“ Didn't trip over any bodies?” asked J.T.

“ Found nothing extreme except the filth. Place is a pigsty, so we decided we'd leave it until you experts arrived. Our guys wanted him apprehended. We thought he might just be down the block at a bar or store. Then we got word you were on your way, so we waited.”

“ And you drew straws to pull this return duty, Sam?” she asked.

His face told her it was true. No one wanted to revisit this horrible place. “Like I said, after we located the credit card number, we got out, hoping to surprise him on his return. When we got news he was picked up in another town, we ceased the stake out, had the lock repaired, gave the landlord a key and kept one for you.”

She squinted, wondering what Owens and the earlier team had accomplished here. He must have read the question in her face.

Owens added, “Sorry, but we found no smoking gun to link him to the Digger killings.”

“ So, what you're saying is you were in and out. No evidence techs or high-tech searches done?” asked Jessica.

“ That's about it. We didn't confiscate any of his belongings, nor did we disturb anything.”

“ Understood,” replied Jessica, her hand out. “I'll take the key, Agent Owens.”

“ Back door,” he repeated, handing her the shiny new key. They followed a narrow and cluttered passageway alongside dirtied basement windows to the rear of the house. As Jessica turned the key in the lock, she wondered if this could indeed be the home of the Digger and/or an accomplice. Could Daryl be the Digger or a coconspirator?

Easing the door open, Jessica held back as the odors from inside assailed her. She steadied herself and pulled the door wide. It creaked and complained-groaned animal-like-as it came to a stop, fully open now to the outside world. A fetid odor combining vermin, stale air, pent-up mildew and rotting fruit wafted past her to attack Strand and J.T., while the young Morristown field agent coughed and covered his nose.

“ Terrible in there,” he muttered. “I warn you all again… watch your step. It's a rat's hole.”

“ We'll be careful,” J.T. replied as he struggled with a pair of rubber gloves. Jessica had already slipped her gloves on, and she offered a pair from her valise to both Strand and the junior agent who had reluctantly entered behind the group.

“ Somebody find a light switch,” suggested Jessica.

J.T. did so, but the switch didn't work. “No lights. Sorry.”

“ We were here during daylight hours. Light wasn't a problem,” said Owens. “Electric company must've shut it down.”

“ But the fridge is operating,” replied Jessica, hearing the hum.

“ Maybe on a generator,” suggested Strand.

A single shaft of light from a streetlamp outside somehow penetrated the kitchen area they walked through. Jessica located her high-intensity penlight, and the others did likewise. The bungalow's floors were completely covered in newspapers, magazines, books and clothing, scattered food containers-pizza and Chinese food boxes everywhere along with filthy towels and linens. Jessica's light explored the kitchen to the humming sound coming from the refrigerator. The small kitchenette reeked of stale odors. Food stains discolored every surface, including walls and ceiling, along with something the color of gray, the color of brain matter, making Jessica gasp. “Owens, your team didn't see this?”

Everyone stared at the end of her beam. “Looks like brain matter,” said J.T.

“ It's only clay,” explained Owens.

“ This some sort of sick departmental joke, Owens, meant to frighten us?” Jessica touched it with her gloved finger, found it sticky to the touch, clinging to her. Sniffing it, she decided Owens was telling the truth. “Clay,” she repeated.

“ This a joke, Owens?” repeated J.T.

“ No, Dr. Thorpe, no. None of us in the bureau put the clay here. It's all over the place. He makes these weird-assed clay models of the brain, and he stuffs them with noodles. And look here.” He opened a kitchen cabinet and his light revealed it stuffed with bags of green-gray noodles.

“ He sells this shit on his Internet website,” explained Max Strand. “Gets the noodles from a gourmet shop downtown.”

Jessica ripped open one of the bags. The pasta was shaped in the form of crosses. “Deitze warned us about all this, but seeing it up close is something else.”

They moved on toward the interior of the house.

Their lights revealed no furniture in the living room area, only a small TV and VCR, along with a makeshift chair of blankets where one might prop against a wall amid the squalor and stench.

“ I don't get it,” said Strand. “If he's got the fridge on a generator, why aren't the lights hooked up to it?”

They ventured forward.

“ Damn sure stinks in here,” said J.T.

“ Coming from a coroner, Dr. Thorpe,” said Owens, “it must be true.”

The few videocassettes Cahil had were copies of TV programs if the labels could be believed-The Learning Channel: Brain Matters. Another was entitled This Is Joe's Brain, and a third read Realms of the Mind.

Owens looked the titles over as well and muttered, “Looks like our boy is still fixated on one thing.”

“ Put these in an evidence bag for me, will you, Owens?”

“ Sure thing, Dr. Coran.”

As Owens alternately protected himself with a handkerchief over the nose and stuffed the cassettes into a large evidence bag, Strand returned. “No generator in the basement. Maybe a fuse blew, but I couldn't find any problems in the box.”

“ He must have the fridge on a generator located somewhere here,” said Owens.

J.T. had wandered off alone, and suddenly he called out from deep in the house, shouting, “In here, Jess!”

The others instantly located J.T.'s flashlight. He had gone exploring through a hallway that led deeper into the nightmare. Along with streetlights that pierced the transparent newspaper-covered windows, the flashlights created an eerie ghostly glow flooding through the house, even as their eyes became accustomed. Careful of every step over the litter-strewn floor, they inched their way toward J.T.'s light, which led them toward a bedroom.

Strand slipped, almost lost his footing but righted himself. “Shit,” he complained. “I think I slipped on some damn clay. I found maybe fifty of those clay brains in the basement workshop.” They reached J.T.'s location, and Jessica saw what had so excited him. In the bedroom with a makeshift tent of blankets, a green glowing light filtering through the tent. Cahil had covered over some furniture against the far wall. J.T. stood pointing at the light, saying, “Look, electricity.”

The others now saw the green light filtering through the weave of the blanket. Removing the blanket, J.T. displayed a chair, a wooden desk and a state-of-the-art computer.

J.T. sat at the computer and said, “Here's his nerve center you were telling us about, Strand.”

“ Wait a minute, this thing's got juice,” said Owens.

“ Selective electricity,” said Jessica. “Food and communication. From the fridge to the computer. It has to be a generator.”

“ Your earlier search didn't uncover the computer?” asked Strand of Owens.

“ I guess it was missed. I didn't know it was in here.”

“ Don't tell me… you didn't get this far.”

“ Agent Donaldson found the credit card bill, and we got out. I just follow orders, and I wasn't in charge.”

J.T. examined the computer hookup. “This is no wireless. He's got electricity in here from some source.”

Jessica immediately went to the nearest wall receptacle and with her gloved hand, she stuck a scalpel deep into it. An electrical spark shot out, jabbing at her. “Son of a bitch. Just for the hell of it, Owens, try that lamp beside you.”

Owens, sniffing at an ammonia stick that Jessica had handed him, tried the lamp with no result.

Jessica stepped to the lamp and put her hand below the shade, learning there was no bulb. “Hold on… wait a minute. Are we stumbling around in the dark because the bastard's too lazy to replace his bulbs?” she asked.

J.T. suggested, “Maybe he abhors light?” “That would figure,” said Strand, eyeballing Owens.

Owens, embarrassed by this turn of events, said, “I'll go back to that pantry in the kitchen, see if there're any bulbs.”

After pushing aside books and papers on the desk J.T., with Strand and Jessica looking over his shoulder, went to work on the computer. “See what I can uncover here.” With that, J.T. got comfortable and began a search. He was locked out; the machine asked for a code word.

“ Three strikes and we're out,” said J.T. “We're going to have to crack it at Quantico if we can't come up with the right code tonight.”

Owens returned, saying, “No bulbs but cans and cans of this stuff.” He held up a can of Hydar's animal brains and hash.

“ Gets it from a specialty deli downtown, buys it by the case,” said Strand, turning his attention back to J.T. and the computer. “Try 'brain food,' “ said Strand.

“ What?” asked J.T.

“ It's a thing with him, brain food. These people who plug into his site swap brain-food recipes.”

“ Then the password could just as well be brain bran or brain clusters or brain cuisine,” countered J.T.

“ Just try it.”

“ Right… right.”

Jessica stared across the filthy room at Owens. “Local FBI never gave Cahil serious consideration as a candidate for the Digger, right?”

“ Ahhh, correct.”

“ Why not?”

He whispered, “Well… Strand there's been crying wolf for so long about this boob, that, well… nobody in the Morristown PD or the local bureau takes Strand seriously anymore. We all thought…”

“ Spit it out, Owens.”

“ We thought it'd be a-you know-a kind of embarrassing joke once Chief Santiva was led down the primrose lane by Strand's obsession over Cahil.”

“ Embarrassing for Santiva, you mean. I see. Local joke becomes national headlines. Somebody in your department have it in for us?”

“ Not you. Your boss, Santiva. Our SAC, Fromme. Over some beef a few years back.”

“ A perfect setup. Santiva doles out valuable man-hours, two M.E.'s and field operatives, and God knows how much in currency on a raid your boss believes is a waste of time. Is that about it?”

The preppy-looking Owens nodded. “What can I say? I work for an asshole. Fromme thought he'd let out enough rope for Santiva to hang himself with the bureau heads. The order was to leave everything intact, for your eyes only. Except I was told-ordered-to give Max a call to bring him in.”

“ I get the picture.” Santiva had said on countless occasions that you could never divorce the FBI from politics. Jessica had briefly met Morristown's Special Agent in Charge Marcus Fromme. The man did have the look of a savagely ambitious politician.

“ Fromme doesn't believe Cahil's the Digger. He wants to discredit Santiva, not you, Doctor.”

“ Should be interesting to see who wins this pissing contest.”

“ It was out of my control. When I heard they'd nabbed Cahil, and that you were on your way here, well… none of us could muster much enthusiasm… consensus was…”

“ I get it, Owens. The picture comes clear now.”

“ From the get-go, as far as Fromme was concerned, we didn't have enough probable cause-a phone call to you from the girlfriend. That's all we were told. Fromme then told me to”-he brought it down to a whisper again-”rope in Max. We all know how Max feels about Cahil. Fromme even arranged for Strand's trip to see you in Philadelphia- at Quantico's expense. He thinks Max is a lunatic for Cahil, obsessed with him.”

“ So he throws Max in as another wrench in the works?”

Owens bit his lower lip and nodded. “Fromme was at Quantico when you all began the chase for the Skull-digger. He never looked under this rock because he never believed Cahil a worthwhile lead, you see.”

Strand, overhearing snatches of the conversation, pulled away from his argument over the possible code word long enough to say, “What're you talking about, Owens? You idiots in the bureau think you're using me? You all know I am the authority on Cahil.”

Jessica held up a hand to him. “It sounds like your case of the New Jersey Ghoul has taken on a life of its own, Detective Strand,” said Jessica, “and for better or worse- the local field office is playing political hockey with our case.”

Strand turned all of his glare toward Owens.

“ Look, Max, every lawman in Morristown's got an opinion on the New Jersey Ghoul,” pleaded Owens. “Most want him to go away and stay away, like it never happened. Like Fromme said in his debriefing, some people embrace the story as if it's a cult manifesto.”

“ Is that what Fromme thinks of me?” asked Strand.

“ Hell, Max, first words outta your mouth when they wheeled you from the ICU were 'where's my laptop.' You wanted to check in with this weirdo's Web page.”

“ Does it make me crazy to see a guy get off after decapitating five children in their coffins? Yes, it makes me a little crazy, Owens.” “Just what Fromme counted on,” said Jessica. “He's gambling.. jockeying for some leverage to gain a better position on the ladder. Likely, he's not working alone. Someone either in D.C. or at Quantico who's after Eriq's head.”

“ I swear, I don't give a damn about any of it,” said Owens. “Most of the men in the department would love nothing better than to be out from under Fromme's so-called leadership.”

“ Well, this setup ought to backfire in his ugly face,” declared Strand, stepping back to J.T., who sat pensive, considering his options regarding the password. Owens slinked off a bit, grateful the confrontation had ended.

Jessica now flashed her light on articles and stacked books on the subject of the human brain. She lifted two of the titles and read them aloud: “Mind and Universe, In the Likeness of God-A Study of the Spirit of the Brain. The Architecture of the Soul-Brain Conduit''

Jessica next lifted and opened a huge book entitled Arcania of Mind and Magic to its index and searched for the word “Rheil,” and not finding it, she spelled it aloud, “R-H-E-I–L.” Turning to the page, she found an ancient photograph of a Dr. Benjamin Artemus Rheil and a discussion of the man obsessed with the island of tissue he discovered during an autopsy of the brain of a diseased woman. After his discovery, he sought this phenomena of the brain out in every autopsy he performed to determine that it did indeed exist inside every human brain-a self-contained small sac of tissue, an island within the mind. Rheil found it slightly larger in the female than in the male, and he noted this as a strange paradox.

“ Try this as a password, J.T.,” she told him, holding out the book. Of course,” said Strand. “Rheil. It's staring us in the face.”

“ Real?” asked J.T.

She spelled it out.

“ Once he cut his deal with the prosecution, Cahil talked about Dr. Rheil during his elocution of the crime to the court.”

J.T. keyed in the name Rheil.

Again he was denied access.

Strand suggested, “Isle of Brain. I-s-l-e-o-f-B-r-a-i-n. Do it.”

“ It's our last chance before a final lockout. Are you sure?” asked J.T.

“ Are you sure, Strand?” Jessica asked, her face creased with doubt.

“ It's how he referred to it back then, again and again.”

“ All right. Go for it, J.T.”

“ If it's wrong, we'll have to take it to the experts at Quantico.” J.T. keyed it in and suddenly erupted. “Bingo! Our friendly neighborhood lunatic's website is coming up on the screen now.”

J.T. scanned several lines off the master page, and then said, “ Brain Matters-Home of the Soul and the Cosmic Mind'-his banner reads. We gotta confiscate all this, Jess.” A comical character looking like a mad professor blipped on the screen, asking, “Got brains?”

“ This guy's something else,” Jessica said as the cartoon image came up on the screen.

“ Do a search, Dr. Thorpe,” said Max.

“ Of what?”

“ Recipes, you gotta see this.”

“ You're serious?”

“ Absolutely.”

J.T. keyed in the word. After fifteen seconds, he replied, “Here we are. Chat room for brain recipes. Brain Kabob, Shrimp Creole and Brains, the ever-popular Brains and Eggs. And here's Brains and Legs-poultry. Damn, here's Beef Bullion Brains, Creamed Spinach is under a whole list of vegetarian brain casseroles, and it goes on. Someone here even sharing a recipe for Brain Brownies and Chocolate Moose.”

“ Forget about the recipes,” said Jessica. “Key in 'island,' 'isle,' 'Rheil'… see what we have there.”

Again J.T. typed into the search box.

“ What is this island of the brain place?” asked Owens.

Now the ancient brain surgeon, Rheil, was depicted on the computer screen as well, along with the article Jessica had seen in the hefty book, scanned and lifted word for word, down to the photograph of Rheil.

“ So this is what the man was searching for when he dug up all those graves,” commented J.T.

“ A bit of gray matter, real estate deep within the cortex.” Jessica leaned in closer.

“ I give you the Island of Rheil,” Strand said. “Finally, someone is paying attention. Take a walk with a lunatic to an island in his mind.”

Owens swallowed hard, regretting the odors going down his throat.

Jessica read aloud from the screen. “Rheil believed that this island of tissue supposedly housed the spirit since it had no apparent physical reason for being-or for being located at the core of the brain, at the geographic center of the cortex. He then concluded that it must have a spiritual reason for being there, since in his words, ‘all things unknowable must then be spiritual’.” Jessica paused and then read the remaining short paragraphs devoted to the man.

“ Daryl conveniently left out that the man's scientific method was questionable to say the least,” said Jessica. “The article he copied this from ended with a good deal of skepticism.”

“ Not included on Cahil's website meanderings,” added Max. “Any disparagement surrounding Dr. Rheil's work and conclusions found no way into Daryl Cahil's thinking.”

Jessica then lifted the book she'd discovered Rheil in and read on. “ 'The drama and flare of Rheil's conclusions, according to contemporaries and colleagues, far outweighed any scientific reasoning or study of the Island of Rheil.' “

“ Check out the footnote,” said Strand, pointing. The book footnoted the feet that Rheil's work had been cut short by an untimely death from a brain fever. In his will, he asked that his own island be removed and preserved for scientific investigation. However, no one continued his study, only adding fuel to the mystery of his strange discovery.

Cahil's own editorializing on Rheil appeared fictitious, that the man not only removed and studied his “finds” but that he consumed them. He pointed out the robustness and content in the man's image at so advanced an age, claiming him more than a hundred years old in the photograph.

“ Daryl fixated on this bogus nonsense,” said Strand, “as he testified at his trial. It's what got to all the shrinks, his telling the court that he actually robbed graves from '89 to '90 for this thing-why he took his dead victim's heads off with him, to dig this sac of tissue out of their brains.”

“ Cahil's courtroom elocution-did it get any press?” asked Jessica.

“ None. Courtroom was sealed from the press. Special arrangement agreed upon by prosecution, the defense and Judge Hiram Skinner. Nobody really wanted this business to fuel headlines for months. It was all so damned bizarre, and the court officials really did want to spare the families any more indignities and harm.” “So it takes on the proportions of a legend, shrouded in mystery,” said Jessica in a near whisper.

“ Hollywood wanted to make a film,” replied Strand. “On any account, no details were released other than a few generalities labeling Cahil as a cannibal, and with the press shut out, all sorts of rampant reporting went on, especially in the tabloids, how he was a sex-lust murderer, which didn't apply, how he was a necrophiliac, you name it.”

Jessica recalled how Lorena Combs, as a high-school student, had gotten the story.

Strand went on. “He replaced the boogeyman; hell, he was the boogeyman. Christ, before Cahil's activities, the dead could assume themselves safe in their graves, but not anymore. Imagine the parents of these departed children learning what had happened to their babies? Like I said, Judge Skinner, with the best of intentions, didn't allow cameras or reporters in the courtroom. Nobody but people directly involved in the prosecution and defense of the case, which included Drs. Gabriel Arnold and a young Jack Deitze on one side, me and my partner, along with Newark detectives on the other.”

“ So the trial transcripts and what Deitze has on him are the only record of his madness?”

“ Until now. He's still thinking the same thoughts only now with live game.”

“ To get at this lump of brain tissue?” J.T. asked, clicking on an icon that opened on a sketch with a caption indicating it was a drawing of the Island of Rheil. “Here it is. Look familiar?”

asked J.T.

It was the first time that J.T. had seen Cahil's drawing to compare it with what they had found inside the victims' skulls. “It does look like the cross,” Jessica muttered into J.T.'s ear, “in a rough kind of way.”

J.T. shook off a shiver and asked, “How mad can men get, Jess?”

“ It would appear as mad as they wanna be.”

J.T. clicked on an icon below the article. The computer screen now filled with a scanned photograph of something oddly shaped like a small filleted fish lying beside a six-inch ruler, measuring approximately two inches. It had the gray appearance of real brain tissue, bulbous at one end, cross shaped at the other. Below it read a caption: Human Rheil, sent to me by the Seeker. May 3, 2003-

“ What the hell is that?” asked Owens, pointing to the screen.

Strand said, “A photograph of this Rheil thing from an actual brain.”

“ From one of the Skull-digger's victims,” suggested J.T.

Jessica gasped and stared at the small strip of brain tissue. “This alone ought to put the man away for life.”

Morristown, New Jersey Early morning

“ DARYL'S website is getting hits from all over the U.S. and the planet, Jess,” J.T. told her.

“ Can you trace them?”

“ Which one? They're coming in at warp speed. We need more help and a focused target.”

A light drizzle had begun around the dark little house vacated by Daryl Thomas Cahil. Jessica had seen that the man's computer was equipped with a digital camera. She asked J.T. to bring up the photographic image of the material Cahil had labeled as a real piece of human brain tissue. “I want another look at it.”

Now she and Strand stood over J.T.'s shoulder, staring fixedly at the fleshy-looking lump in the digitized computer image. The tissue resembled skin peeled and cut away from a raw chicken leg, except that it was gray, tinged with a blueness, J.T. explained, “The blue color is either from being cold, or it's an enhancement made by Cahil-to dramatize it more.”

The tissue sample indeed had roughly the same shape as the cross found left inside the victims' skulls, a perpendicular feeder line, a horizontal connecting line and a bulbous top that was roughly circular in shape. More chilling than anything else was that Cahil represented it as the real thing, taken he told his subscribers, from a living human brain.

“ The Internet,” muttered J.T., “you just don't know what kind of crazoid thing is coming outta cyberspace next.”

“ Cut from someone's medulla oblongata.”

A tired J.T. said, “It's been real, all right…”

“ What're you saying, that we all have this tingler inside us?” asked Owens, who'd hung back, clinging to an ammonia stick.

“ Yes, we do,” replied J.T.

Jessica closely examined the image. Thinking aloud, she said, “If the sonofabitch photographed it here and put it onto his system, is it possible that it's still around here someplace?”

“ If he hasn't consumed it,” countered Strand.

“ If he left it here, he'd have put it on ice,” suggested Jessica, recalling the hum of the refrigerator.

“ In with the Miller Lite,” joked J.T.

She rushed for the kitchen area and tore open the refrigerator in search of the small body part depicted in Daryl's photo. Nothing on the shelves other than a few bottles- olives, pickles, pickled beets and rotted vegetables and cheese. No other dairy products or cold drinks or juices, only a jug of water. She snatched open the freezer and began ferreting for something in the many foil-wrapped, un-marked items there.

“ Find anything, Dr. Coran?” asked Agent Owens from behind her.

“ Help me out here. Anything that looks suspiciously like… like…”

“ Like a brain or a piece of a brain?”

The freezer compartment was stuffed with small items wrapped in newspaper, and Jessica feared the worse. “Anything that isn't chicken, pork, beef or fish, I'll want to examine, no matter how small, you understand?”

“ Mystery meat, I get it.” He went to work with his gloved hands and talked as he did so. “Look, I'm sorry about the false pretenses of my superior, Dr. Coran.”

“ I accept your apology, Owens.” She unwrapped a soup package. He found a bag of peas. They emptied their finds into the crowded sink.

“ I'd just like you to know, I truly am sorry.”

“ Forget about it, Owens, until such a time as I need a favor.” Jessica now unwrapped the intact brain of what appeared a small animal, likely a cat's brain. She placed it gently aside, as Owens gasped on unwrapping a slightly larger brain-most likely that of a dog. “My dear God,” he repeatedly said. “My dear God.”

“ It's not human,” she informed him.

Strand had entered the kitchen and, seeing this, he said, “I see you've located the neighborhood strays. Do you think they have this island of tissue thing in them, too?”

“ They might, but let's stay focused on anything smacking of human brains.”

Jessica told Owens, “Look through all these wrapped goodies, and cull any that look or even smell suspicious.” Out of the corner of one eye, Jessica saw Strand going down into the basement. Jessica called out to Strand, “Let me know if there're any freezers down there, Max.”

“ Gotcha,” he called up.

Strand's light shone on an ill-matched washer and dryer set that dominated the small basement-no freezers or locked storage areas, only an array of boxes, garden and house tools, a small workbench, grease-covered tools and parts, and grimy stone walls, but then he saw the stone wheel and small kiln where Daryl fired his clay brains. It was an elaborate set up of raw materials he'd put together, and on shelves behind it, an array of what appeared to be homemade clay pots, each distinct in one way or another, but these were no pots, but his wares. Some were painted bright colors, while some were left gray, to appear natural. Some were large, others small. Some intentionally stylized or misshapen, others realistic. All could be pried open from the top, and a small area inside left room for the pasta.

Strand moved closer to the finished products for a better look at what appeared a strange hobby even for Cahil. As he neared the clay creations, perhaps fifty in all, he shouted up, “Some hobby Cahil indulged in!”

He pulled out his camera and began taking photos. “Nobody's ever going to believe this.”

Just then Strand heard Agent Owens shouting from overhead. He grabbed three of the brains to hand over to Dr. Coran, one painted, the other two neutral gray, and he rushed back up the stairs and into the kitchen area where he placed the clay brains on a countertop. One of the gray ones, having yet to be fired, suddenly crumbled under Strand's fingers. “Shit,” he cursed.

John Thorpe, having raced from the bedroom, stood alongside Jessica now. The two M.E.'s were busy examining the thing Owens had discovered in the tinfoil that lay thawing out on the counter. “What is it?” Max asked Jessica.

Owens, who stood aside, shaken by his find, said, “I think it's maybe a child's finger.”

But Jessica turned and faced Max Strand, her blanched features solemn. “It's that thing he photographed for the Internet. That Island of Rheil tissue.”

“ The Rheil thing from the computer photo?” asked Strand. “You can nail his ass to the wall now for certain.”

“ You mean this little strip of gray matter is all Cahil fed on?” asked Owens.

“ It would appear that he wasn't quite the cannibal everyone painted him,” replied J.T., poking at the frozen finger-sized, fleshy cross of matter with a pen. “He just went in for this little delicacy.”

“ Whataya mean?” asked Strand, his calm broken. “The bastard cut off and discarded whole heads of dead children; fed them to his dogs, and he consumed human flesh-brain tissue.”

J.T. raised his arms in defeat. “OK… OK… The man's a cannibal no matter how you slice it,” he tried to joke.

“ So… did this tissue come from a child's head or an adult's?” asked Owens.

“ I couldn't hazard a guess except that it corresponds in size to what we read from the book on Rheil. Which means it's probably been taken from an adult brain,” replied Jessica. She turned her eyes back to the counter and stared down at the tissue, icy blue with cold from its sleep inside the freezer and foil cocoon. “It hasn't been in the freezer for too long, probably a month or so.”

“ Right around the time the Digger killings began,” commented J.T. “We need the lab at Quantico, John,” she replied. “We need to match the DNA from this to the victims. We need the brain-imaging program to take a look at this thing in a normal adult brain to make any determinations about its origin. Frankly, until this case, I'd never heard of this brain piece.”

“ Neither had I,” replied J.T.

“ What does it-what's its function? Why is it inside of us?” asked Owens.

“ First one I've actually seen,” said Strand. “I always took it for a hoax Cahil pulled on the court, the doctors and his legion of Web visitors. I never took it for a real item out of here.” He pointed to his own skull. Then he parroted Owens's concern. “What is it inside our heads for?”

Jessica sensed the uneasiness both men felt on learning that something strange and remarkable had been inside their brains all their lives and they had not known it. She didn't know how to answer their questions.

J.T. broke the silence. “No one-and I mean no one- knows what it's in there for, kind of like the appendix in the body… a leftover from previous eons, likely quite as dormant as the appendix.”

“ The appendix,” said Owens, nodding.

Strand said, “You mean it has no use anymore? That whatever it once functioned as has just sort of atrophied?”

“ Something like that, yes.”

“ That's good enough for me,” said Owens.

Strand bit his lower lip, gave it another thought and added, “Makes sense.”

Jessica was glad for J.T.'s comparison as well. She could also now draw a bead on it and put the thing in proportion, she hoped. It was a theory at the opposite pole from that put forth by Daryl Cahil and Dr. Rheil himself. For them, the small organic cross of tissue was hardly dormant; for them, this thing comprised a palace for the soul. Jessica momentarily wondered at the depth to which Jack Deitze could have fallen under the spell of such a theory.

“ Have we got enough now to get out of this goddamn hole?” asked Owens, anxious to get out of Cahil's world.

“ I'm taking possession of this thing,” said Jessica, preparing a formaldyhyde-filled vial and dropping the brain tissue into the vial. “But the man's computer's not going to fit in here,” she indicated her valise. “We'll want any disks, any and all books with titles on the brain, especially any with markers in them. They'll be boxed and sent to Quantico. Can you-”

“ I'll get some help down here,” said Owens, anxious to make amends.

“ If it's no bother. We could use some agents handy with lightbulbs.”

Owens frowned at this. “I'll arrange for help.”

“ Strand,” she said to Max, “you may want to canvass the backyard for any recently turned earth. We may still have a missing woman on our hands, and if this Rheil item doesn't match one of the victims we have, it could belong to Cahil's girlfriend. I noticed women's clothing in one of the closets.”

“ At his trial, I tell you, he spoke in a personality that was a woman. He's quite convincing because he's that rare case-a real schizophrenic. All the same, I'll take charge of a search out back. I need some air anyway.”

Jessica, too, was ready to vacate the morbid sea of squalor and misdirected thought. But first she asked Strand, “Are these clay brains all you found in the basement?” She pointed to the three models of the brain, one cracked and broken, shards of it everywhere, the other two intact, one natural gray, the other painted half chartreuse, half psychedelic orange. Strand demonstrated how the two parts of the brain were detached to reveal the pocket of space inside for the cache of noodles. “There's maybe forty-five or fifty of these things downstairs, with boxes, labels and packing material, but no freezers and nothing smacking of a new false wall or new concrete floor. I got no odor of decay or death, but we might want to get some dogs down there.”

“ Some hobby to pass the time with, huh?” said J.T., examining the wildly painted brain.

“ More like a fixation,” said Max.

“ Yes, a fixation,” Jessica agreed.

“ One of the shrinks at Cahil's trial said he had never seen such an advanced case of hyper… hypro…”

“ 'Hyperprosexia,' I think they call it,” Jessica suggested.

Max nodded. “That's it.” He went carefully toward the exit in search of air. Jessica followed in his wake. Just outside, Max lit up a cigarette and added, “Said even if Cahil could not be proved insane by reason of multiple-personality disorder, that he could easily be proved to have this hyperprosexia thing.”

They looked to the sky for signs of stars, the moon, anything for some respite from this place. “As I remember it from the trial,” Strand continued, “it had something to do with the sheer depth of his obsession with the brain. Course, at the time, I thought it all hogwash. But now… seeing that piece of brain tissue in there.. this Rheil thing…”

“ Hyperprosexia is a term for rigid, undeviating attention of a pathological intensity. It's considered a psychotic condition in which the mind takes hold of an idea with unshakable fixity. It certainly fits the Skull-digger's profile.”

J.T. had followed them out, listening to their conversation. He added, “In layman's terms, it's a morbidly adhered to fixation, like monomania-idk fixe the French call it.”

“ Like I told them in '90,” said Strand, inhaling deeply from his cigarette. “If they ever let this guy out again, he'll go right back to what he did before. Looks like he's cooked it a little differently, but he's still after the same thing. He's only recently displayed the picture of it, I can tell you, or I'd have been on his ass in a flash.”

“ Which of his recent victims-murdered this time around-do you suppose this brain item came from?” asked J.T. “The girl in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia or Florida?”

“ Hopefully it's his last,” said Jessica falling silent, thinking about the second near-abduction incident in New Bern, North Carolina, and trying to square it with the newly discovered evidence against Daryl Cahil. She thought of the female voice on the phone the night she had first heard of Cahil, the voice that had so pleaded for Jessica to take an interest in Daryl as the Digger. Had the first call actually been from Cahil himself while under the control of another personality? Could he be working with an accomplice? Or were both of the failed abductions the work of another man who had no bearing on their case?

Owens had gone out to his car to call for a team of evidence techs to get to the address. He returned now to the rear stairs where the others stood talking.

Jessica told Owens, “Dr. Thorpe will have the honor of overseeing the evidence collection from here on. Right, John?”

J.T. nodded his assent. “I know you need to get to Quan-tico, and picking through this mess… well, it'll take some time. I'll see to it that Cahil's computer will follow you. We're going to need some real experts to delve into the man's website, to determine just how nuts he and his cyberspace connections are. We'll bring in someone from the Cyber Squad and get a fix on anyone out there who has taken Cahil too seriously.” “What for?” asked Strand. “You can't charge them with anything. Hell, he's selling those brains through eBay and Amazon, along with his damned Rheil noodles.”

“ Agreed, but we may just want to put any of his more serious followers on a watch list,” replied J.T.

“ And remember, no one has yet proven that this creep Cahil is in fact the Digger,” added Jessica. “If we learn there's still a killer at large, even though Cahil is in custody, then we may have someplace to start over. That's supposing Cahil has become master to some disciple out there.”

J.T. contemplated the complexities of getting at Cahil's Web list. “We've got a lot of decisions to make. Do we go back six months, a year, two, three? It's all for nothing if we can't force the Internet server to give up the profiles of the people who've logged on. And we're bucking the ACLU here, known for fighting any infringement on Internet users, Jess.”

“ I thought servers didn't want profane garbage on the Net,” said Owens, “that they monitored everything.”

“ Not Cahil's server. They've built a reputation as the bad boys of the Net. Anything goes. That way, they get subscribers,” replied J.T.

“ We'll need a fire-and-brimstone federal judge to get a warrant to open the thing up then,” said Jessica. “I'm sure it won't be a problem for the FBI.”

“ The creep has been influencing a potential audience of billions,” said J.T. “That's got to stop.”

“ Still, good luck getting the Net server to release the information. It won't be easy. I've tried it myself,” said Strand. “It'll take an act of God, Dr. Coran, not the FBI.”

“ Maybe if we can narrow it to people who keep coming back to the well, not to mention we'd like to know if any of the Digger's victims are among the subscribers to Cahil's site, then-” “It's a catch-22, I tell you. Without that list, no court will give you a warrant, but you can't get that list without a damned warrant,” Strand assured her. “Trust me. I've worn myself out pleading for it.”

“ You're dealing with local judges. We'll get our top echelon at Quantico on it,” J.T. assured Strand.

“ Owens, can you drive me to the airport?” Jessica asked.

“ Of course.” She detected a note of happy anticipation in his two-word response.

“ I've got to hook up with Eriq Santiva and meet this guy Cahil, face-to-face.”

“ Wish I had ten minutes alone with him,” commented Strand. “Or at very least help in his interrogation, but I'm not feeling so well, and doctors tell me I need another operation, so I'll be sticking close to home.”

“ Sorry to hear it. Your insights have been extremely helpful, Max.”

“ Just get the confession, Dr. Coran.”

“ Do you think you can get a confession out of him?” asked Owens.

“ With this in my possession”-she held up the formaldehyde-filled vial in which the tissue found in Cahil's refrigerator floated-”we might have the leverage needed to shock him into confessing, yes.” Making certain the cap was properly tightened, she placed it again inside her medical bag.

“ Are you sure you can take that without it having been put through the chain of evidence process?” asked Owens.

“ For once, the kid's right,” added Strand. “You break chain of evidence nowadays and you'll get an O.J. result.”

“ I know you're right, Strand, but I need something to scale and gut this guy with, and this… this is perfect. So, since we conducted the search and seizure under a federal warrant, I'm officially declaring all evidence goes directly to Quantico. That makes our lab there responsible for the chain of custody. We'll take everything but the dog and cat remains, and should a body be located here, you guys can process it and ship it to Quantico.”

“ Leaving us with an animal-cruelty case against Cahil?” asked Owens. “Thanks a heap.”

Strand held back a laugh. “Let Fromme choke on that.”

“ Exactly.” Jessica did laugh.

“ A wise move, Dr. Coran. Do an old detective a favor. Put that bastard away forever this time, will you?”

“ I'll certainly do my best.”

After Jessica Coran got on a flight, leaving New Jersey and the “estate of Rheil” as J.T. had jokingly referred to Cahil's house, Owens and his men canvassed the place another time, while J.T. packed the computer for shipment. Meanwhile, Max Strand oversaw the grid out back to determine if any fresh graves had been dug. Enlisted to help were cadaver dogs. As the dogs worked, Strand wondered again if dogs and other animals had this Island of Rheil in their heads. He asked Owens what he thought of the notion, but Owens said he'd just as soon not give it any more thought.

Strand felt a pull, a kind of fixation on the question. If animals did not, it might prove interesting; if they did, it might prove there could be some credence to the whole idea of where the soul resided, and if not in this small cross of tissue, then where?

With the search turning up nothing untoward in the backyard, Strand said his goodbyes to everyone and walked to his car. Earlier, when Owens was busy and J.T. was occupied, Strand had taken one of the cat brains from the refrigerator. He now drove off with it beneath a coat on the passenger seat beside him. When he got to Ash Pine Park, only blocks away, he stopped the car and got out. He reached in and took hold of the cat brain. Discarding the foil wrapping, Strand held the fist-sized walnut-shaped organ over a water fountain, thawing it under the water. He next pulled out his Swiss Army knife and began hacking away at the little brain. He easily opened up the two hemispheres and began searching for the Rheil tissue inside the medulla ob-longata. These many years of chasing Daryl had left him with some knowledge of where to cut.

He had for many years now monitored Daryl's website. He knew what the man's religion was; and he knew it to be insane. Still, he searched for the island of tissue in the animal brain, curious and wondering.

It was not a pretty autopsy, he told himself as he now cut deeper into the medulla oblongata and a tiny piece of material fell out and into the dirt and grass at Strand's foot. He tossed the rest of the dead brain into the bushes.

Slowly, reluctantly, fighting gravity the entire time, Strand went to his knees over where that small bit had fallen, attempting to find it in the grass, but the thing acted as if alive, hiding, camouflaged in the dry, brittle grass.

Then he saw it, but it wasn't large like the human one, only a fraction of the size. He reached for the thing, and a part of his brain said, Consume it… consume it.

He thought about it, thought how it would taste, how it would feel going down, what it might do to him, whether mad Daryl's claims were true or not. He wondered if it had magical powers or was as magical as one of the blades of grass. Either way, he knew that if he consumed it, the act itself would hold sway over him for the rest of his life. “It's only an animal part,” he said aloud as the wind whipped by and he heard the flutter of trees overhead. The park, an unsavory, broken down piece of real estate the city had for years vowed to clean up, was home to many transients on any given night. Strand searched about himself for his own safety. No one nearby, no one watching him. He didn't see the two figures crouching behind his car.

Strand now held the slippery item in two fingers and was about to consume it when the lead pipe came crashing down into his skull.

Two human vultures living in the seedy park had jumped Strand, leaving him bleeding to death as they tore into his pockets. One wanted to take the car, but the other located his ID and threw it at his companion, shouting, “My God, Danny, we've killed a freakin' cop! Forget the car. We gotta run, now!”

Quantico, Virginia Same morning

Jessica, having returned to Quantico, knew she had to immediately log in the evidence she had placed into a vial from Cahil's Morristown home. She hoped after seeing to the chain of evidence protocol that she might take a moment to drop by her office, look over the mail and say some hellos.

Chief Eriq Santiva met her on the helicopter pad when the FBI chopper landed. It was still early in the morning, and she had gotten little sleep on the chopper, and here he stood, obviously anxious for her to meet with Daryl Thomas Cahil. “Jessica, you look tired. Are you all right? Personally, I couldn't sleep on a chopper if my life depended on it. Was your detour to Morristown helpful?” came Eriq's* volley of questions. “Why isn't Strand with you? He wanted to be here for the kill.” He had watched her climb tiredly from the chopper, her bag at her side. She immediately informed Eriq, “I have to log in evidence gathered at the crime scene in Georgia and at the Morristown location. Did the tire and shoe print casts arrive? Any news from Combs on the victims computer habits?” She finished with a yawn, realizing neither one of them had answers for the other, and then added, “My suitcase is in the chopper.”

“ It's taken care of, Jess. How'd it go in Morristown?” He took hold of her medical bag.

“ That can't be out of my possession, Eriq,” she argued.

“ Can't be out of your sight, and it won't be until we get it inventoried.”

They found the rooftop door and started down a flight of stairs to the elevator.

“ Actually, it went quite well in both Philly and Morristown,” she informed him. “We learned that Cahil has been operating a website since before leaving prison. One that advocates cannibalizing brains.”

“ Wait a minute, are you telling me that while behind bars, while in an asylum for the criminally insane, that Deitze allowed him to start up a website?”

“ Began as a question-answer thing, information on the workings of the brain-his brain in particular. The brain's magical power and magnificence, all that. People asking him about his crime and him responding, all with Jack Deitze's consent.”

“ Really? Don't tell me, this is Deitze's idea of therapy?” asked an amazed Santiva.

“ Before he left prison he had more than a hundred thousand hits,” she informed Eriq. “Second only to Charlie Man-son's many websites, you know, the ones attracting cult followings on college campuses and high schools across the nation.” They boarded the elevator, and she punched the button for subbasement-one, where evidence and lockup were located. Eriq breathed deeply, ending with a sigh. “Yeah… I knew about Manson, but not about Cahil on the Web.”

“ Manson's imprisoned for life but set free on the World Wide Web.

… Jack Deitze thought it a good avenue of release for Cahil, a way to get his reticent patient to open up. Deitze's way was paved by our old friend Dr. Arnold. Deitze characterizes the website as benign.”

“ Benign?”

“ Apparently, he hasn't logged on for a while.” She stepped off the elevator ahead of him, turned and said, “Fact is, the website has been quite informative for our side. It may be enough to nail him. He plastered a photo of a human brain part onto it, and we found the piece he photographed in his freezer.”

“ And you have it with you?”

She slapped her valise. “Yes, I do.”

“ Then we can nail the bastard-and make no mistake about it, he's a disgusting piece of shit, Jess.”

They had arrived at the evidence lockup, a huge room of locked cages with shelves floor to ceiling filled with file boxes and all manner of misshapen objects and items. It looked like the secret back rooms of a large museum.

“ Cahil covers his behind with this veneer of symbolic feeding he goes on about,” began Jessica, “but beneath it, he's advocating that people find some sort of immortality by consuming some mysterious swath of tissue inside the human brain. How else to get at it but through cannibalizing a victim? That's advocating murder.”

Eriq nodded. “If the website is now promoting actually finding and feeding on brain tissue, and we can link him with the Digger killings, then we'll put him away again. This time, we'll get the death penalty.”

“ Yeah… now that he's infected countless others with his lunacy. That Jack Deitze had too much of Gabriel Arnold rub off on him. The man doesn't know what the hell he's released on the world. And probably will never acknowledge the harm he's caused.”

After turning over all the labeled evidence and seeing each officially itemized, she signed off on it all. “I'm keeping hold of this item,” she told the clerk. “It'll need special attention and preservation.”

The clerk stared at what Jessica showed her but asked no more than the number of the label placed on the vial. “So noted,” the clerk finished.

“ I'm going to want this for interrogating the suspect as well,” Jessica told Eriq. When the clerk held out a pen and a release form, Jessica gave the vial to Etiq. He stared more closely at its contents, his face contracting, his nose contorting a bit as he got a whiff of formaldehyde. Santiva swallowed hard and next held it up to the light and peered through the clear plastic at the island of tissue inside. “Some weird shit, Jess.”

“ It might well lead to a confession.”

“ Well, are you ready for a go at Cahil?”

“ First, I really need a pit stop, Eriq. I need to stop at my office and kick back a moment.”

“ Kick back? This is no time to-”

“ Eriq, I've been up and down the southeast, in and out of airplanes and choppers like a yo-yo for the past week, and I never got to sleep last night. I need to touch base with familiar surroundings, get grounded, OK?”

“ All right… OK.”

“ Besides, I want to get an assistant working immediately on DNA from this thing,” she added, taking the vial from him again. “We need to match it to DNA on file for the victims. If it's come from one of them, there's little question that we're on the right track. And I want photos taken of the thing before it deteriorates any further.”

Reentering the elevator, she pushed the button for the eighteenth floor where her newly renovated offices and labs awaited. “Let me have another look at that thing,” Eriq said, taking the vial and holding it up for another look against the light.

They rode up in silence, Eriq continuing to stare at the thing in the vial, strangely fascinated by it. When the elevator door opened, and Jessica stepped out ahead of him, he was still staring at the Island of Rheil.

“ I'll take that back for the time being,” she told him.

“ Wonder why Cahil kept it in his freezer,” he replied as he handed it over.

“ Where else would he hoard it?”

“ I mean… Why didn't he just eat it, you know? If it's what he pries out of his victim's brain…”

“ Who knows what goes on inside such a head?” She unlocked her office and stood with the door ajar, the semi-darkness within inviting.

Eriq added, “But if he's such an addict for this thing?”

She turned on him, asking, “How the hell should I know, Eriq? We're dealing with a psychotic with a morbid fixation. He doesn't have to make sense, now does he?”

“ Easy, Jess. Just thinking aloud. I'll ask him when we get around to him.”

Eriq followed her into her office. She had somehow escaped being seen by any of the lab personnel. She wanted to have some peace before any of the others came after her for one thing and another. Still, it felt good to be home. She buzzed Jere Anderson's desk and asked her to come to her office but to tell no one that she was in the building.

Jere entered, said a quick hello, and got her orders from Jessica. Jessica informed her junior staff member of what she needed done with the strange piece of brain matter in the vial. “Jere, you're in charge.”

“ Thank you for your confidence, Dr. Coran. I won't let you down.”

“ I'm sure you'll handle it in a professional manner, Jere. Now, I'm going to get some much-needed sleep in my office, and I don't want to be disturbed,” she said for Eriq's sake as well as Jere's.

She skimmed through the messages and mail on her desk while Eriq waited in a high-backed cushioned chair. “That computer is being handled with care, right?” he asked her.

“ J.T.'s seeing to it, along with everything gathered at Cahil's place, except material relative to an animal-cruelty case the field office will develop against the suspect.”

“ Animal case?”

“ He had cat and dog brains in his freezer as well.”

“ Are you saying you stuck Marcus Fromme's people with an animal-cruelty case? That's rich… Very good… very good.” He laughed and stood. It had been a long time since she'd heard Eriq laugh about anything, and it made her feel good.

She snatched up a blanket she kept in the office for such occasions and curled up on her couch, thinking Eriq was on his way out. “Give me an hour, maybe two?” she asked.

“ I had copies of the Washington Post and the ever popular Instigator placed on your desk for your return, Jess. They're getting damn nosey and close on our heels.”

She glanced up to see him holding the two newspapers side by side, photo arrays of all the victims, including Winona Miller in Georgia accompanied screaming headlines in both the

tabloid and the legitimate paper. One read: BONE SAW, SCALPEL USED BY SKULL-DIGGER WHILE VICTIMS SUFFERED ALIVE

The other read: BRAIN-EATING BONE SAW SLAYER ELUDES FBI, POLICE

Jessica sat up, scanning the news accounts for any sign that they had knowledge of the cross found on the bodies or anything related to how small a section of the brain had actually been the killer's object. On both counts, the storytellers had nothing. She stood and went to her window, staring out over the Quantico grounds, lush with greenery. “At least the word isn't out on the cross or this Rheil business.”

“ With this kind of sensational case, I'm surprised the other information hasn't leaked,” Eriq replied.

“ In the body of one of the stories, the writer referred to the killer as the 'Brain Snatcher.' The other story referred to him as the 'Brain Cleaver.' Don't they know you have to cleave before you can snatch?” she asked, falling back into the folds of the couch.

“ Cahil had similar news accounts on him when he was brought in. He claims it's the reason he contacted you.”

“ Another reason, you mean? He decided the heat was too much for him.”

“ He claims he's innocent of all charges. That he's not the Digger. That is, when he's not speaking from other personalities.”

“ Yet he's got a piece of someone's brain at home in the freezer.”

“ There's something you ought to know about his 1990 doings, Jess.”

“ Shoot.”

“ When Cahil was first put away, he copped to using the newspaper obits to select his victims. You find any newspapers accumulating at his residence?”

“ Some, you could say,” she facetiously answered.

“ Too bad you didn't find a bone saw. That's what he used in '90.”

“ Yeah, he sounds good for the Skull-digger, Eriq.”

“ Corroborated now by his own website and that piece of flesh you brought in. I'm hoping for the death penalty this time around.”

“ Yeah, he can do an elocution for us,” she replied. “Hopefully, he'll tell the whole story, beginning with his Richmond victim.” If I tell him what he wants to hear, I can get some sleep, she thought.

He blew out a long breath of air, his Cuban features darker than ever. “Morristown was good for our side. We match this tissue you found at his place with any of the victims, and we put an end to it.”

“ I'm banking on Cahil, too, Eriq. Still… some things don't add up.” Can't help yourself, can you? she reproached herself.

“ Ah, you mean the estimated weight on a shoe print in Georgia that may or may not have been made by Cahil? Not to worry. You have human tissue found in his Morristown home.”

“ What more evidence do we need?” she asked, a mock smile coming over her along with a mock sense of relief. “All the same, we need to check his shoes against the prints taken in Georgia, along with his tire treads, if we ever find his van. As for now, Boss, I gotta get a little sleep.”

But Eriq was keyed up, not listening to her. “Since he's been incarcerated, no one else has been murdered in his trademark fashion. Like I said, the new killings started up after-after his release-and he's well aware that this time he may go into the general population rather than a safe, private padded room.”

She closed her eyes and lay her head on a pillow. “Well, I can see you're fatigued. Get some rest. I'll check back in an hour.”

“ Make it two. And thanks, Eriq.” Jessica had curled up in the fetal position on the couch. Eriq smoothed the blanket over her to encompass her shoeless feet. Then he left, closing the door behind him.

She was grateful she'd remembered to unplug the phone on her desk.

A stream of thoughts bombarding its way over rocks of doubt ran through Jessica's restless sleep there in her office. The river of reflection came full circle back to the lunatic Cahil. And the Skull-digger's career had begun only after Cahil had been released. Maybe there was a perfect connection between the two maniacs of 1990 and 2003, the perfect connection being that they were one and the same man- possibly another manifestation of Cahil's multiple-personality syndrome. Spots never change, she told herself.

Yet her unconscious mind hit a snag on its way to executing Cahil, as her sleep self considered the disparity between a killer's lusting after a dead victim and a live one. World of difference, she told herself.

Deitze whooshed into her dream state and said, Children are closer to something Daryl calls the eternal cosmic mind residing in us all; said he had tapped into it through his Rheil thing. Dr. Deitze glanced toward the refrigerator in Cahil's house.

Jessica's dream self asked, So, you think Cahil is at it again?

No… never. I cured him.

He's just twisted his formula, cooked it differently, said Max Strand, forcing his way into the conversation.

His prey are now live young female victims to find oneness and wholeness with his warped idea of the universe and how it works? her unconscious asked in a tone of disbelief.

It's a very real possibility that one of his personalities has branched out, Dr. Coran, added a gray, ashen-looking Max Strand. It's him, all right. I'd stake my career on it. Daryl is the Digger.