Mortal Fear

by Greg Iles

  “Here he is,” says Drewe, announcing my arrival. When the guy turns around, it takes me a minute to understand what I am seeing. My skin heats with apprehension. Impossibly, incredibly, from beneath the bill of the Treflan cap beam the brilliant blue eyes of Miles Turner.

  “Like the haircut?” he asks.

  “You crazy son of a bitch.”

  His mouth breaks into a wide smile. I glance at the window to make sure the curtains are drawn, but Drewe has already taken care of it. “How the hell did you get here?”

  “He almost gave me a coronary,” Drewe snaps.

  Miles makes an effort to look contrite. “The place is surrounded. I had to use an unorthodox entry.”

  My puzzlement speaks for itself.

  “The bomb shelter,” Drewe explains. “He came through the tunnel in the backyard.”

  This I can’t believe. “You came through the old tunnel? In the dark? Mice and roaches and God knows what down there?”

  “No choice. I moved fast. You know how I feel about closed spaces.”

  With the initial shock wearing off, Drewe’s anger boils over. “My back was to the stove when he popped the latch on the trapdoor in the pantry. I almost dumped hot chicken broth all over myself.”

  “How did you get here so fast?” I ask, still not believing my eyes.

  Wisely directing his attention to Drewe, Miles points at our kitchen table and silently asks permission to sit.

  She nods grudgingly.

  He sits the way a man sits after ten hours’ plowing behind a mule. After taking a moment to collect himself, he says, “I rode the train to Newark Airport. Paid cash for a Delta ticket to Atlanta under a false name. In Atlanta I bought a ticket on a commuter flight to Mobile under another name. Then I gave a Mobile cabbie fifty bucks to take me to a juke joint where charter pilots hang out. It took about thirty minutes to find a guy who would fly me up here. Cost me fifteen hundred bucks. He thought I was running coke or something.”

  “Where did you land? Yazoo City?”

  “Hell no. We found a grass strip about two miles north of here.”

  “I saw you! A turboprop plane? Looked like a new crop duster?”

  He nods and laughs.

  “You landed at the old Thornhill place? That strip is still good?”

  “It’s not good, but it’s usable. I saw the sheriff’s cars from the air. There’s one parked to the east of you, another to the west, out of sight. From the strip I walked turnrows till I got within a half mile of your place. Then I went down on my hands and knees, below the cotton. I’m glad the bomb shelter wasn’t locked. They can see your front and back doors with field glasses.”

  “I don’t understand this,” says Drewe. “Who’s after you?”

  “The FBI put out a warrant for his arrest,” I explain.

  “But why?”

  “A lot of reasons,” says Miles. “All bullshit. The warrant probably says obstruction of justice.”

  “It does.”

  “You both have some explaining to do,” Drewe says.

  “Lenz called today,” I tell Miles. “He thought you’d run here. I told him he was crazy. I didn’t think you’d ever come back.”

  “It wasn’t easy.”

  “What happened when the vault opened at EROS?” His malicious delight shines through his fatigue. “I told you they were guarding that vault like the tomb of Christ, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why do you think I chose that simile?”

  “Because the time lock was set for seventy-two hours?”

  “You’re half right. What did they find after the stone was rolled away from Jesus’ tomb?”

  “Nothing?”

  Miles grins. “Nada.”

  “But you told me Jan sealed the vault when the FBI showed up with the search warrant.”

  “What did you think? She rolled a two-hundred-pound file cabinet in on a dolly? The files are on disk, man. Portable hard drive. Updated daily and then dumped to the master drive.”

  “Where’s the master drive?”

  “On the Sun workstation that sits in the file vault.”

  “Son of a bitch. She ran in there and plugged in the drive, then locked the vault?”

  “Uh-huh. And one hour later, after Agents Moe, Larry, and Curly took up station at the vault door, I downloaded every byte of information through the fiber-optic cables that run out of a discreet hole in the floor of the vault. I exported them to a computer off-site, then remotely wiped out everything on the Sun.”

  “Just like Brahma did in Dallas.”

  “I didn’t blow it up, but I definitely put that puppy into Helen Keller mode. Great minds think alike.”

  “Jesus, don’t say that.”

  “Who’s Brahma?” asks Drewe.

  “The guy who’s killing these women,” I answer.

  “That’s what Miles calls him. The FBI calls him UNSUB, for ‘unknown subject.’ ”

  She gives Miles a look of distaste. “You name a serial killer after a god? I guess he’s your hero or something.”

  “No. But I do admire his skill.”

  “You look wiped out,” I cut in, stating the obvious in an attempt to head off useless squabbling.

  Miles rubs both hands through his new flattop and sighs. “I’m as tired as a pair of jumper cables at a nigger funeral.”

  Drewe and I gape at each other: this slur from the most liberal white boy who ever left Mississippi. But Miles is grinning under the Treflan cap. “Just practicing my cover,” he says. “I guess being a redneck is like riding a bicycle.”

  “You were never a redneck.”

  “My dad was.”

  This easy reference to his father surprises me. “How long have you been awake?”

  “Three, four days.”

  “How did you get out of the EROS offices? Weren’t Baxter’s people all over the place?”

  “It wasn’t hard. Just before the vault opened, I switched shirts with one of my long-haired assistants. Then I went into the bathroom with a pair of scissors and a Ziploc and lopped off most of my hair. When the vault opened and the shit hit the fan, my assistant made a break for the front door, just as I’d told him to. While they chased the long-haired guy wearing black, I slipped out through Jan’s private exit, got into a service elevator and hasta la vista, baby.”

  “You’re whacked, man. You’re nuts.”

  “You want some chicken and dumplings?” Drewe asks with her usual practicality.

  Miles laughs again. “Since I haven’t had any for at least ten years, I might as well. What I really need is some coffee, though. A whole pot. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

  His eyes wander toward the pantry. There are two cases standing by the door. One is an expensive briefcase, the other a large leather computer bag with multiple compartments.

  “What’s all that?” I ask.

  Drewe sloshes water into the coffeemaker.

  “The whole stinking thing,” Miles says softly. “The whole case. As much as I could get, anyway. Police reports, FBI interview transcripts, e-mail, lab findings, you name it.”

  “Don’t even tell me where you got that shit.”

  “I’ve got to.” His eyes glaze with sudden desperation.

  “I need your help.”

  “To do what?”

  “To save myself.”

  Chapter 25

  Miles has already drunk two cups of coffee, Drewe and I one each. It took me that long to recount my experiences with the FBI, even with heavy editing. I dwelt mostly on the tragic raid in Dallas and played down Lenz’s plan of luring the killer to the Virginia safe house. Miles seems more concerned with the psychiatrist’s suspicion that he might be the killer. I admit that Lenz still suspects him, but before I can qualify my words, Drewe starts asking questions about the murder victims.

  In answer, Miles opens his briefcase on our kitchen table. Inside are neatly banded stacks of laser-printed paper covered with the hieroglyphics of c
ommand-line communications between computers. In short, Drewe and I are looking at a cornucopia of the fruits of virtuoso computer hacking.

  “I have a lot of information here,” he says, squeezing back into the narrow space between the table and the wall. “I started as soon as the deaths were confirmed. It’s not nearly everything, but what I have is color coded. Green for city police reports. Orange for crime lab findings. Blue for witness interviews. Red for general FBI stuff—”

  “You’ve been into the FBI’s computer?” I interrupt.

  “Computers, plural. Their acronym for the case is ERMURS—for EROS murders.”

  “No wonder they want to arrest you. Have you broken into their personal e-mail system?”

  “I’ve seen it. Got some printouts here. I’ve also been in the National Crime Information Center computer, and some new thing called NEMESIS. Stands for Nonlinear Evaluation/Manipulation of Evidence System. That’s the only system they have that’s really elegant, and it’s not officially online. The rest are crufty as hell.”

  “But why take these risks?” Drewe asks. “Can’t you just keep your head down until this is all over?”

  “No. Because Baxter and Lenz aren’t going to catch Brahma any time soon. And in the absence of real leads, the great god Momentum will cause them to cast around for the most likely suspect. In their book that’s me.”

  “But—”

  “The only way for me to get these guys off my back is to catch Brahma myself.”

  Something ripples through my chest, like a pebble dropping into a still pool miles from anywhere.

  “Besides,” he goes on, “Brahma is fucking with my network. My system. I set it up, created it ex nihilo, and he’s treating it like his personal sandbox. Not acceptable.”

  “Have you figured out yet how he got in?” I ask.

  “How he got the master client list?”

  Miles stares furiously at the table. “No.”

  I find this almost impossible to believe, but I don’t want to press him in front of Drewe. “What about alibis? You must have alibis for at least some of the nights the killings took place. Hell, I can’t remember a night when you weren’t sysoping the network.”

  He gives me a sidelong glance. “I don’t have to be at the office to sysop. You know that. All I need is a laptop and a phone connection. Beyond that, I don’t care to discuss it.”

  Drewe and I share a look. She takes a sip of coffee and says, “Couldn’t you just turn yourself in and put up with whatever hassle they give you until the murderer kills again? That would prove you’re innocent.”

  “It’s not that simple. If I’m arrested, Brahma could decide not to kill again for a while. Or if he kept killing, the FBI could say a copycat had joined the game. They could claim I was part of a group, and try to prosecute me on that basis.”

  “But surely they can’t have enough evidence to prosecute you?”

  Miles shrugs. “There are some lab findings that are consistent with my blood. There’s other stuff as well.”

  “Not DNA?”

  “They can’t have that,” he says sharply. “Not legitimately. But Brahma has successfully planted misleading physical evidence at every murder. I have to assume he knows who I am from EROS. Who’s to say he hasn’t planted something of mine that could give them a DNA sample?”

  “That’s impossible,” Drewe says.

  “Nothing’s impossible. And don’t think the FBI is above juggling samples to create DNA evidence against me, given enough pressure to close this case.”

  He slides some dark sheets from beneath his pile of paper and spreads them faceup across the table like playing cards. “These are the victims.”

  None of us speak. The sheets are laser-printed grayscale photographs. All six show side-by-side photographs of young women: two blondes, three brunettes, one Indian. In the left-hand photos, the eyes are open and glowing with life, the lips smiling, the hair well fixed; in the right-hand ones the faces—those that are there—are gray and shapeless, the eyes open but blank with glassy stares. One of the right-hand photos shows a decapitated torso, another a head that looks as though it was put through an airplane propeller. One shows a face like something from a vampire film, with wooden stakes protruding from bloody eye sockets. Before we take in too much, Miles sweeps the pages out of sight and says, “I got these out of NEMESIS. I’ve got crime scene photos too, but you don’t want to see them.”

  He’s right. Drewe is still staring at the blank spot where the images lay. After a few moments, she blinks, then rises and pours Miles a third cup of coffee.

  In a remote voice, she asks, “What do the police think drives this man to murder these women?”

  Miles drinks deeply from his steaming cup, finishing with an audible swallow. “The case has been running for five days. Ever since Harper called the New Orleans police and linked Karin Wheat’s murder to six unsolved cases in other parts of the country.”

  “What parts?”

  “Portland, Oregon. New York, Houston, Los Angeles, Nashville, and San Francisco. Of course the first killing was David Strobekker, the man who was murdered for his identity. That was Minnesota.”

  “The first one we know about,” I correct him.

  He nods. “Rosalind May, the kidnapped attorney, was taken from Mill Creek, Michigan. She’s still missing, and there’s been no ransom note.”

  “I think she’s dead,” I tell him.

  “Ditto.”

  “I don’t,” Drewe says, firmly enough to draw looks from both of us. “At least she might not be.”

  “Why do you say that?” asks Miles.

  “A theory I’d prefer to keep to myself right now. How was each of the women killed? I mean, I saw the photos, but what did the autopsies say?”

  Miles watches her from the corner of his eye. Brilliant as he is, he remembers being aced by my wife many times in school. “The first—near Portland—was initially ruled an accidental death. She was a rock climber. Took a fall climbing solo, fractured her skull.”

  “Was she missing her pineal gland?”

  Miles’s eyes narrow. “She was exposed for a couple of days before they found her. Coyotes got to her. She was missing a lot more than her pineal gland.”

  “And the other murders?”

  “Shotgun blast to the face in New York. Strangulation and beheading in Houston. Claw hammer in Los Angeles. Pistol shot in Nashville. Strangulation in San Francisco, with the eyes removed and stakes driven through the sockets.”

  “The pistol shot was also to the head?”

  “Right.”

  “And every woman was missing her pineal gland or her entire head?”

  “It isn’t certain. With the shotgun victim it was impossible to tell. Some victims were missing only part of the gland. But the FBI consensus says yes.”

  “And they assume Karin Wheat was also.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “Karin’s head was found this morning.”

  “What?” I cry. “Where?”

  “Some Cajun fishermen found it wedged in a cypress stump in the Bonnet Carre Spillway. The police figure the killer tossed it out his window while driving across the causeway toward La Place. That means he drove past the airport going out of town. And her pineal gland was missing.”

  “How was it removed?” Drewe asks, her eyes bright.

  “Does that matter?” I ask as the reality of Karin’s death hits me all over again.

  “Of course. Did someone just reach in with a dull spoon and dig it out, or did he know what he was doing?”

  “I don’t know what tool was used,” Miles says. “I didn’t see an actual autopsy report, just an FBI memo. It said the gland was removed through a hole under Wheat’s upper lip. Like Brahma punched through the sinuses and up into the brain.”

  “Jesus,” I mutter.

  “How big was the hole?” Drewe asks.

  Miles checks his papers. “Seven millimeters wide. Damn. That’s pretty
small, isn’t it?”

  Drewe is smiling with satisfaction. “That’s it,” she says.

  “That’s what?” asks Miles.

  “All those traumatic head wounds were meant to mask the killer’s real intent. But Karin Wheat’s head was never meant to be found. Her wound gives us the truth.”

  “What do you mean? What truth?”

  “Tell me the angle of the pistol shot that killed the woman in Nashville.”

  Miles consults his papers. “It was fired into the back of her neck at an upward angle, near the first cervical vertebra.”

  Drewe nods and smiles again. “Have you ever seen anyone who was attacked with a claw hammer, Miles?”

  He grimaces. “Have you?”

  “Yes. During my residency. It puts big holes through the skull, and the brain squeezes out through the holes like toothpaste from a tube.”

  Miles and I look at each other in bewildered horror.

  “That seven-millimeter hole beneath Karin Wheat’s upper lip,” Drewe says. “The one that went all the way up into her brain? A neurosurgeon would call that the sublabial transsphenoidal route.”

  “What?” Miles asks.

  “It’s a standard method of removing pituitary tumors. The pituitary gland isn’t that close to the pineal in neurological terms, but in a dead person you could probably punch right through the pituitary and get where you wanted to go.”

  “You’re saying a doctor could be doing this?” I ask.

  “I’m saying a doctor is doing it. The stakes through the eyes? A surgeon could go through the optic foramen—where the optic nerve passes through the skull into the brain—veer to the midline, and go straight for the pineal. With the claw hammer and the rock fall, he could practically reach in and pull the gland out. The gunshot wound in Nashville? He goes up through the foramen magnum, the big opening in the bottom of your skull, and into the brain. The traumatic wounds cover up his tracks.”

  “The track in Wheat was pretty small,” Miles says.

  “How do you pull out the gland through such a small hole? Would that be the reason he only got part of it sometimes?”