Jessica logged off. “We've got to locate that fucking yacht,” Jessica told Sorrento.
“ They've got every available boat in the Guard looking for it, along with the NOPD water police by now, I'm sure,” he replied. “Doctor, if it's out there, we'll find it.”
“ Why aren't we getting any aerial help from Coast Guard choppers, Captain?” she asked Captain Jon Quarels. “They're used to such conditions.”
“ Bad weather-related problems south in the Gulf. Everything's been diverted there for rescue operations. Looks like a hurricane on the way.”
She stepped away from Quarels and huddled with Sorrento. “Something doesn't feel right. Swantor's too smart for this,” she said. “He's got to be planning some sort of getaway that involves another vehicle. He's got to know how hot that boat is right now.”
“ Yeah, I've thought about that possibility myself,” re-plied Mike Sorrento. “But I don't think he'll abandon ship until he's finished his sick little game.”
“ Unless,” she replied.
He saw that her eyes had grown large. “Unless what?”
“ Unless he intends to go down with the ship.”
“ A double-murder and suicide. Not until after his last installment…” Sorrento softly said.
“ Can't we get any more speed out of this thing?” she asked the captain. “A woman's life is at stake.”
“ We're surveying the shore and every rock and island in the river, Dr. Coran. We don't want to miss anything,” replied the captain. “Nor do we want to run aground.”
“ What about that helicopter?”
“ They're trying to find us one, but I can make no promises.”
“ What kind of an outfit is this?” Jessica shouted. “Should I request one from the Army, the Navy?”
“ Take it easy, Jess,” cautioned Sorrento. “Let's go below, have a cup of coffee to settle our nerves,” he suggested, guiding her outside and on deck.
Jessica relented, knowing she needed settling. “Damn it, he's going to feed her to that mad dog if we don't locate him and stop him.” Why… What's Swantor getting out of all this?” he asked as they went down a flight of stairs.
“ I'd be guessing but… it seems like he's gone into competition with Kenyon, to outdo Kenyon's horror with his own.”
“ And to die at the top of his form?”
“ All this spawned from the mind of Daryl Thomas Cahil and his Internet lunacy.”
Jervis Swantor had pushed his craft to its limit and had burrowed in at the swamps that would eventually spill out near Grand Isle. To evade capture, he had used one of the old canals cut during the Civil War by black regiments for U. S. Grant. Few people knew of the canal and even fewer knew how to maneuver in the swamps. He had fed the woman and spent the rest of the evening racing from authorities and hiding. There were a thousand directions and waterways and islands in the swamp, but one place in particular where he could find refuge-his former home at Grand Isle, the boathouse there-and then he could introduce Kenyon to his ex-wife, Lara.
But for now it was time to feed Kenyon.
Darkness had descended over the swamp, along with another beautiful blue fog saying a long hello to Swantor where he stood on deck. He opened a small hatchway and looked down at Kenyon, who lay on his bed, his fists pounding at his sides. The camera never left Kenyon, and he had to know that by now.
Swantor opened a second small hatch and stared down at the woman named Selese. She had tried to work on his sympathies, giving him her name, where she lived, names of relatives, even her dog's name, Ronnie, but he had only listened dispassionately, never stepping before the cameras. His face and presence would only be felt after the great event was filmed. This was mere rehearsal, he kept telling Selese. Lara would be the real show.
Swantor went below and shut down the filming in Kenyon's room. He then entered with a key to Kenyon's shackle, tossing it to Kenyon. All the while, he held the gun on the other man, telling him, “Pick up your bone cutter and tool kit and go into the other room for your mind meal, Grant.”
“ You don't have to keep me chained up,” Kenyon pleaded. “We ought to be able to trust one another.”
“ You'd kill me at the first opportunity. I have no illusions about that, Grant.”
“ But I wouldn't.”
“ Shut up and do as I say!” Swantor indicated the gun in his hand. “You must be starved. Aren't you hungry?”
“ I am… that I am.”
“ Go then, feed.”
Swantor locked Kenyon and Selese Montoya in the cabin together. As he made his way toward the living area, Swantor heard the woman's uncontrolled screams. Selese continued to scream hysterically as Swantor watched the viewing screen and set up the computer to send to Cahil's website. A part of him grew fascinated, and he slowed to watch it all unfold as he filmed it. He keyed in the necessary strokes and beamed it directly to the world. He added a special message to the screen for the FBI woman who had contacted him:
You and the rest of the world are going to enjoy this.
He imagined all the people who would see the film, duplicate it and forward it on to others. It represented a kind of immortality for Swantor.
Swantor had given Kenyon no Demoral to work with, but Phillip didn't care. In order to make her hold still, he knocked her unconscious. Then the Digger had gone immediately to work, shaving the woman's head, marking her fore scalp with bold red lines and lifting his scalpel over her closed eyes. With his left hand, Kenyon worked deftly, cutting down to bone. With the first bloody incision, Selese awoke and immediately screamed, and realized what Kenyon was telling her: “I only want your brain.” Knowing now what he was doing to her, she pleaded for help from anyone on the other side of the camera lens.
From his seat at the controls, watching, Swantor smiled and said, “I beseech thee! I beseech thee!”
He then watched Selese swoon before fainting altogether from blood loss.
Swantor could not have been happier with the results. His camera had caught every blood spatter, every deft movement of the doctor's hands. And Swantor, now the Webmaster, zoomed in to display a close-up of the disfigured forehead. Now the camera recorded as Kenyon's bone saw came to life. Its mechanical whirr created a terrifying sound in this context, and an even more horrifying noise as it made its screaming, grinding path through the skull-shattered shards of glass ground in a mixer.
“ I give you the Skull-digger,” said Swantor, recording his master of ceremonies voice. “Finally, the star of his own show…”
“ I hope you're enjoying this, Swantor!” Kenyon shouted as he placed the bone cutter to Selese's forehead again, making the final, methodical cut in his medically delicate manner. The computer had been told to blip any mention of Jervis's name. His own fifteen minutes of fame would come at his own choosing, in time.
The computer camera next captured Kenyon plucking the cut window of flesh and bone from the forehead and discarding it. The camera then showed him lifting his surgical tongs, opening them, plunging them into the window he'd created, and plucking forth the brain. He held it up to the camera eye. Like sweetmeats prised from a crustacean.
“ Is this what you want, you bastard? Is it?” He bit into the brain matter, tearing away a portion, devouring it half chewed. He repeated this again and again, his hands slick with blood and brain fluid.
Swantor reveled in what he filmed, clicking off the audio and saying through the intercom, “Perfect… perfectly executed, Dr. Kenyon. This will make us both great men!”
Kenyon as Phillip devoured the last of Selese's brain. As he did so, Swantor said over the intercom, “I'll have another for you soon.”
The camera left the bloody mouth of the killer and focused on the body of Selese Montoya, slowly making its way from her toes, along her legs, to torso, neck, lower face and then to the black rectangle created in the empty skull.
“ This is going out live, Kenyon, to the world. Take a bow.”
Grant cried out,
his mouth still bloody, raging at the camera. “Let me out of here now, Swantor! Let me out!”
“ Audio's off, Dr. Kenyon. No one can hear you.”
The captain of the cutter, on which Jessica and Sorrento traveled, stood looking out over the broad expanse of the river. A cruise ship made up to look like an old-time paddle-wheeling riverboat passed them by, tourists waving from every deck and chair, a gleaming diamond-colored chandelier winking at them from the windowed restaurant aboard. The gaiety of the riverboat stood in stark contrast to the work at hand aboard the Coast Guard cutter. “Imagine the guy's insurance premium if that damn floating restaurant should go down out here in this fog,” he said to Joseph Konrath, his first mate.
Jessica and Sorrento returned to the bridge, and the captain greeted them and then said, “I've checked in again and again with boats downriver and no one's seen him. But I have an idea.”
“ What's that, Captain?” asked Sorrento.
“ Reports from here to Pilottown-end of the river-say that no one has spotted this yacht. That's just too unbelievable, unless he's taken another tack.”
“ What tack? North, you mean?” asked Jessica.
“ Well, he may have used one of the old canals to cut from the river to a bay area.”
“ The canals? What canals?” asked Jessica.
Quarels took them to a nautical map on the wall. “We are about here, the canal I have in mind is right here,” he said, pointing just ahead. “Leads west into the bay and some swamplands.”
“ Isn't that the fastest way to get to the Grand Isle area?” asked Sorrento. This guy has some real estate there and most animals do run back to their lairs when chased.”
“ Show me where Grand Isle is, Captain,” asked Jessica.
Quarels pointed it out, a small dot on the map to the southwest of their position. “It's just a hunch, but when Sorrento asked about Grand Isle before, I recalled the canal up ahead. Just a hunch, but I think it may be the reason why no one's seen our man.”
Jessica turned to Sorrento and said, “Grand Isle, of course. He's got to be heading there, Mike.” She then said to Quarels, “We had a local lawman check there yesterday, and he found no sign of Swantor in the area, but all that's changed now.”
“ Follow the course of the canal, Captain,” said Sorrento.
“ All right. We'll do just that, but the storm's going to pound us in there, and we have a skeleton crew.”
“ Back in Florida, Swantor made some passing remark that his wife got the house, and he got the boat. Perhaps the house in question is on this Grand Isle,” said Jessica.
“ Mansions, high living,” said the captain. “That's Grand Isle.”
“ Combs's background check on Swantor had the house in contention.”
Sorrento rubbed his chin. “Swantor's ex-wife, maybe she still resides there on the island.”
“ His ex.” They all fell silent.
“ You thinking what I'm thinking?” Sorrento asked.
“ That he intends on feeding his ex to Kenyon?”
“ If so, what's he need Selese for?”
“ I don't know, maybe to… to keep Kenyon in line?”
“ My God.”
Jessica wondered at the curious irony, if her long, circuitous chase after the Skull-digger should end on an island.
“ Under normal circumstances, I'd radio for assistance, bring up another cutter to go around the boot at Pilot town, surround the island,” suggested Captain Quarels. “But reports are bad all along the coast at the Gulf, and I can't get any help, not at the moment.”
“ We'll keep trying,” said Konrath. “But reports of flooding problems south of us are keeping all crews busy.”
“ Rains preceding Hurricane Alice,” said Quarels.
“ What about helicopters?” asked Jessica.
“ Sorry, they tell me that all our helicopters in this sector've been diverted to the coast until they know what's going to happen there. It's a category four, with several waterspouts. Already had a ship in the Gulf swamped by this thing, so they're expecting additional rescue efforts will be necessary.” It was getting stormy here, as well. When Jessica and Sorrento had made their way back up to the pilothouse, the wind had whistled down the length of the boat, swirling and eddying about them, threatening to send them overboard. The western horizon had been ablaze with beautiful colors at dusk, but now it'd become late, and darkness had suddenly come on with the storm front, clouds blotting out moon and stars.
Jessica drew an imaginary line on Quarels's Mississippi River map with her index finger the distance to Grand Isle. “How many hours?” she asked Quarels.
“ Three perhaps in good weather. Can't say in this.” He nodded to the black windows ahead of them.
They drank coffee under the light of the pilothouse and watched as a deluge of rain began pouring over them. The powerful winds made the ship shiver.
Jessica said, “He's facing worse weather if he is south of us. We have to make better time, and hope he's had to slow down.”
“ When we get into the center of the canal, we'll open her up,” Quarels promised. Then he invited them to look on at the sonar and radar screens. According to the equipment aboard, the cutter began a wide turn into a sharply cut canal, its banks like walls sketched in thin green lines. Jessica tried to imagine them by day.
Now they headed into deep backwater swamp. “I wonder how much your fugitive is relying on the weather,” Quarels said to them. “Normally, in a dry season, some of these canals might not be deep enough in sections. Lot of boaters get hung up on sandbars in them. But if he's been monitoring the weather… well, he's planned this thing out, that's certain.”
The canal took them west first through a back bay area that Captain Quarels had pinpointed on the map. He showed them how it would sharply turn again south. Jessica and Sorrento were studying the nautical map of the area when Jessica's phone rang.
She stepped away, taking the call. “Jess, it's me, John.”
“ What's is it, J.T.? Any good news? I could use some good news.”
“ Unfortunately, SquealsLoud has gone through with it, Jess. The Montoya woman was handed over to Kenyon, and the other madman filmed the entire thing. It's a horror movie beyond anything I've ever seen.”
“ And it's playing on Cahil's website?”
“ As we speak, and God knows where else. You can access it if you want to, but I'd leave it alone, Jess.”
She looked across at Sorrento and the captain. “He's already killed his captive. We're too late to help her.”
Sorrento wrapped his arms about himself and rocked. The captain took in a deep breath of air and bit his lower lip, shaking his head.
“ It's on the computer as a graphic film. The entire event, according to my partner in Quantico.”
“ Are you going to open it? Take a look at it?” asked Sorrento.
“ I hate giving the bastard the satisfaction, but we might draw some clues from it,” she replied angrily. She went to her laptop, opened it and logged on to the Internet. She found his E-mail waiting.
Sorrento stood beside her, placed an arm on her shoulder and said, “Steady yourself.”
“ I'd like to see what kind of a maniac we're chasing as well,” added Quarels.
Jessica opened the media E-mail, and the three of them watched the scene unfold in stark dread. From the wheel, First Mate Joe Konrath watched his controls but intermittently looked over his shoulder at the computer screen as well. When the bone cutting began, Jessica looked away. The men remained fixed on the sight, disbelieving it at the same time that they witnessed it.
“ My God in Heaven,” said Quarels.
“ Poor woman,” added Sorrento. “We've got to nail these two bastards.”
In all her years with the FBI, Jessica had never seen anyone actually executed before her eyes. She had never even gone to a federal or state prison to watch an execution. This murder brought about by Swantor was meant to shock, and it did.
/> “ If he reaches Grand Isle and finds his wife, he'll do the same to her,” Jessica projected. “We need to contact police there. Have someone get the ex-Mrs. Swantor out of there if she's on the island.”
She shut down Swantor's horror show. She then asked Sorrento to contact this man Potter at Grand Isle and attempt to get word that Swantor was on his way there, ending with, “And warn Mrs. Swantor to leave at once.”
Sorrento explained that the island was police free, but that it was serviced by a Sheriff Danby Potter, a one-man police force from a small town on the mainland, Lewistown. “Station house is the size of a phone booth. The isle gets mail service from Lewistown, too.”
“ Just summerhouses, recently developed land,” said Quarels.
Jessica said, “We've got to get the wife's phone number. Warn her he's coming for her.”
Sorrento got on his phone and contacted Lewistown police, reminding Sheriff Danby Potter of who he was and asking, “Is Mrs. Swantor on the island?”
“ She is… or was when I went out there yesterday, yes.”
“ We're chasing the Skull-digger, Sheriff.”
“ My Lord…” “And we fear Mr. Swantor is involved. I need the phone number to the house on Grand Isle.”
“ I always said that Jervis Swantor was some kind of puddinghead. I'll get that number for you.”
Sorrento heard Potter ferreting through paper for the number. “I got the number!” He read it off to Sorrento and quickly added, “I'm damn confused by you people. I checked out the place early this morning, a second time. Mrs. Swantor was there, so far as I could tell alone, no sign of that Dr. Swantor or his yacht. You asked me to ascertain his whereabouts, but the missus, she claims not to know or care so long as her check's on time.”
“ We believe he is on his way there now, Sheriff, and to say that she may be in danger is an understatement.”
“ So you fellas suspect Swantor's the Skull-digger now. I can't believe it, but you know, I can at the same time.”
“ Please, listen, Sheriff. It's a little more complicated than-”
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