Grave Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  CHIXWHIX: A photo of a G-D brain part!

  SURREAL: I gotta go take a look. Be right back.

  CHIXWHIX: I'll be waiting. Want to hear your reaction.

  Canton, New York Same night

  DAVID Byrd, superintendent for the Canton Public Schools, pulled his glasses from his eyes and tried to fathom what he was reading on his computer screen. It did not make a lot of sense, but it sounded an alarm in his head. This trash he was looking at might entice young minds. He had been hearing about a strange fascination many of his students at Canton had developed over a computer website. Word of mouth had fueled like a brushfire, and Byrd had pried information out of a problem kid who wore dark clothes, bleached his hair and sported jewelry and a tattoo. As a result, Superintendent Byrd had stayed late at the office to take a look at the Web page.

  The page was filled with strange and disjointed information on the workings of the human brain and its relationship to the more spiritual mind, and how to expand the power of one's own brain by consuming the brains of other “ents” or “units of creation”—from chickens and other animals and even plants that “dream as we do.”

  This immediately disturbed Byrd. He read on, wondering what steps he could take to bring an end to this frightening message board and newsletter, which even reported on the doings of the serial killer known as the Skull-digger the way others kept abreast of baseball and football players.

  He scanned the reports and got to the Webmaster's explanation of why the Skull-digger fed on his victim's gray matter:

  The Skull-digger knows about the cosmic mind. There is a thing we call the universal soul, and a gradation of mind in nature determined by varying degrees of awareness. The Skull-digger is more aware than any of us that there is a potency of mind from atoms to galaxies, and that all units of creation lead us closer to touching God in the sense that we touch on the universal mind. Such a touch or a glimpse will infuse us with a transcendent mind-aura beyond anything we might dream.

  Mind even manifests itself in stone and other inanimate objects from particles to crystals and stars. Higher on the mind scale, we come to the mind that dreams in plants and proto-biological ents like viruses and amoeba. Unlike the inanimate, these ents are characterized by a vital mind devoted to metabolism, growth, reproduction and decay.

  Finally comes the mind we see in animals, operating by means of organized neuro-atomic elements through senses and instinct. These we can consume in a symbolic and sometimes a real sense. In doing so, we have an opportunity to glimpse into the universal cosmic mind from which all minds were formed.

  Superintendent Byrd took a moment to gather his breath and sip his coffee, which had gone cold. He girded himself and read on:

  In other words, your present awareness is only a narrow band in a vast galaxy of mind awareness. You must learn to expand it. You do this by various means, and the Skull-digger is at the farthest end of that scale. You don't have to go out and kill someone for his/her brain in order to expand your conscious awareness of the universal soul. There are safer routes. I know because I spent time in prison for stealing brain matter from graves, but—

  Superintendent Byrd recoiled at this last statement. “These are the rantings of a lunatic,” he said aloud. “I've got to expose this for what it is.” He wondered how widespread this bizarre site had become. He wondered where he might start to voice his objections: local authorities? State or federal officials? Scrolling down, he realized the man's rantings went on for limitless pages. He saw the photo of the Island of Rheil, the supposed center of the soul of an animate being—no, a human being! And he scanned the discussion on what this tissue from the brain meant. It was all madness. He determined to contact the local FBI and have their experts look at this.

  He scrolled back to where he'd left off and read:

  I've served my time, paid my debt to society, and now I seek that higher mind through the use of hunting and killing fair game, and consuming the Island of Rheil of the animal (deer, rabbit, etc.). A noble calling inherited from our ancestors, who were ignorant of the Island of Rheil, and so they barbarically consumed the entire brain. No, to consume the entire brain dulls the impact of what can be found in consuming only the island of the soul. . . .

  Byrd keyed in the order to print the pages he'd just read. As his printer worked, he reached for his telephone. After being left on hold for fifteen minutes on a phone tree, frustrated, he told his story to a field agent in Syracuse, New York, the closest federal agency. The agent said he would look into it and get back to Byrd, that he and every agent in the FBI appreciated such tips in locating the Skull-digger.

  “You misunderstand me. This guy is applauding the Skull-digger and spreading unsafe and insane information to children all over this and other countries through the Internet. It's sick propaganda directed at our children, Agent. No telling how long it's been going on, or how much irreparable damage has already been done. It's a kind of insidious, demoralizing—”

  “We'll make it a priority, sir. I have the dot-com address you've supplied, sir.”

  “It's like nothing we've seen before. Likely a terrorist group behind it, I tell you. We must put an end to it for the sake of America's youth.” “I'll make it a priority, sir, I promise.” The agent hung up.

  Byrd stared at the phone and listened to the dial tone. He wondered if he ought to call the mayor's office, who would in turn call the governor, and maybe then he could get some assurances.

  The wee hours of July 14, 2003

  THE phone awakened Jessica from a sound sleep in her Philadelphia hotel room. It was just past midnight. She had somehow avoided any nightmares, willing herself to find comforting dreams instead. She'd gotten back to the room in Philly early, had eaten room-service food, showered and gone to bed with Jack Deitze's case study of Cahil. She found Deitze's rehabilitation effort and theories questionable, but she focused on what she could learn of Cahil. Amazingly, Strand was right; the former grave robber had begun a website from his isolation ward. Dr. Gabriel Arnold had given Deitze complete authority over Cahil's treatment, and Deitze believed Cahil would benefit greatly from communicating to the world about why he had done what he had and to seek alternative ways to reach the pinnacle of “faith” he so craved.

  The hotel phone continued to ring. She hesitated lifting it off the cradle. As far as she knew, only Eriq and J.T. had the hotel number, and she had turned off her cell phone.

  When she lifted the receiver, Eriq Santiva launched right in with, “We've apprehended Daryl Cahil.”

  “Where?”

  “Where he called you from, Atlantic City, a phone booth near a motel he was at. Traced his whereabouts through a credit card number found in his house in Morristown.” She mentally calculated how long it would have taken Cahil to travel from southern Georgia to Atlantic City and back again to make those two calls. He could not have easily made it in the time allotted. “And the woman? His wife or girlfriend?”

  “Negative. I'm ready to believe what Strand told us, that the female caller was Cahil himself. That part of him that wants to be caught, Jess. We've seen the syndrome before.”

  “All the same, maybe we should alert Atlantic City authorities that we'd be interested in any recent Jane Doe's.”

  “Count on it.”

  “Did they do a search of his van, the beach motel room, along with his Morristown house?”

  “Nothing came of the room search. A quick search of his house was done by our men in Morristown, which turned up the credit card number. He wasn't driving a van—a rental sedan instead. No restraints or cutting tools found either.”

  “We need the tools, Eriq. We need the van.”

  “So far nothing of the sort. The searches have turned up nothing, but I'm still hopeful that a full forensic treatment will turn up something.”

  “How much time do we have on the search-and-seizure order at the Morristown location?”

  “Another twelve hours and it's history.”

 
“I want to see how this guy lives, what he surrounds himself with.”

  “We're having him transported to Quantico for interrogation, but Jess, the creep ... he won't talk to anyone but you.”

  “Me? Why the . . . why me?”

  “That's what he wants. Second to you, he'll only talk to Deitze,*nd none of us wants that, right?”

  “Damn it, why me?” she repeated. “Liked your whiskey voice, I guess. Come on, Jess, he knows your reputation, so he's going to play to that, and he knows you understand his kind.”

  “Lucky me. He's just yanking our chain. He wants another fifteen minutes of fame and publicity, Eriq, could be he's just cashing in on our case.”

  “He's the guy. The Ghoul is the Skull-digger.”

  “Eriq, you sound like Strand. You've already got this guy guilty without the evidence to back it.”

  “All right, just supposing Cahil isn't the Skull guy, he still may well give you some insight into what this latest ghoul is up to, why he's fixated on brain matter. Face it, Jess, with VICAP unable to provide us with anything, Cahil is a go.”

  She didn't care for the sound of so much missing—the van, the restraints, the murderous tools, the height and weight problem—yet the sign left at the crime scenes and the drawings done in prison pointed to Cahil. “Do you really think this could lead to a conviction, Eriq?”

  “It's our best shot so far. I've arranged for a chopper to pick you up at the airport in Philly ... to bring you home.”

  “With a detour to Morristown, have a look-see at what this creep calls home.”

  “All right. I'll meet you when you arrive at HQ. By the way, Jere Anderson asked me to pass along word that yes, the two earlier victims were tattooed with that cross you found in the skull. Only a small portion came up on the slides, but it's unmistakable under the microscope. Good work!”

  “I've gotten hold of a pair of prison drawings that Cahil did. I'm going to forward them. Have our documents experts compare them to the bone etchings.”

  “We'll arrange it.”

  “Is Cahil left-handed?” Matter of fact, yes.”

  They said their goodbyes and Jessica stared up at the ceiling of the hotel room, the fan whirring overhead. She had earlier telephoned Lorena Combs and had left word about Daryl Cahil's website, asking if she could find any evidence that Manning or Miller had ever browsed or used the site. She dared hope they had found the monster, but not even a confession would put him away if they could not prove it.

  EIGHT

  If I cannot bend Heaven, I shall move Hell.

  —VIRGIL, 70-19 B.C.

  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 hi
m 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.”