Grave Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  Impatient, Santiva stormed at Cahil, shouting, “We have scientific ways of determining your guilt, sir. You left your tire and shoe prints in the mud in Georgia when you killed Winona Miller. You left this representation of your fucking Rheil prize”—he jabbed a finger onto the drawing—”on all your victims.”

  Jessica gritted her teeth and muttered to Eriq, “I wanted him to say that, not you, Eriq.”

  Cahil lifted his right foot to show off his jailhouse booties. “They stripped me of my shoes. Are they testing my soles?” he asked with a grimacing smile. “Good, because then you'll know it was me. You've got enough to convict me ten times over, so why the hell're we dancing around here?” He ended by screaming. His face had contorted into another personality. “I really liked that one in Georgia. Winona . . . Her name was Winona, and she was a tasty young morsel.”

  “To whom am I talking?” asked Jessica.

  “Keyhoe . . . I'm Keyhoe, aka the Skull-digger.”

  “If you're the killer, where on the bodies did you leave this mark?” she again pressed the picture of the cross with her index finger.

  “On what was left of their heads.”

  “Can you be more precise?”

  “I could be, but I won't. You people bore me.”

  “Again, do you want to tell us the truth about whose brain tissue was found in your freezer?” asked Eriq, his voice evenly controlled now.

  Keyhoe replied, “Anna Gleason.”

  Jessica realized that Cahil was now simply mimicking what they had already provided him to work with.

  “All the victims had nothing in common, the newspapers said. Said you guys didn't have a clue to connect them. I can tell you what connects them. They all logged on to my website at one time or another. And the killer, me ... I fucking hunted them down through cyberspace.”

  It was startling to hear this, and Jessica wondered if there could be any truth in it—a theory they had contemplated earlier. That the victims were among the hundreds of thousands who'd logged on out of curiosity over the years. And that Cahil had made physical contact with them.

  “Keyhoe's telling you lies,” said Cahil suddenly. “Look, I'm sure I have likely contributed to this killer's thinking, that perhaps he's a disciple who's gone off the deep end. My website attracts a lot of strange people, weirdos, but I didn't kill anyone—not in 1990 and not now. Somebody's framed me, maybe Keyhoe, and you're too stupid to know that!”

  “Which is it, Cahil? You did it or you didn't?” asked Eriq, tiring of the game.

  “If you're telling us the truth now, Daryl, which of your many cyber disciples do you suspect is the Skull-digger. Who do you believe sent you the brain tissue to frame you?”

  “Maybe the Seeker. He's the one I suspected sent me the Rheil. I said so on the site, in the caption I put on the photo of it.”

  Jessica recalled the notation.

  “He's the most outspoken against me, against what I stand for, a symbolic method of glimpsing the eternal mind.”

  “I'm sure of it,” said Eriq sarcastically. “Why don't you let us talk to this Seeker character. Come on, bring him on.”

  “Why didn't you eat it?” asked Jessica. “The Rheil in your possession?”

  “I told you. I only do the symbolic thing now.”

  “Then who would carve your symbol on the victims?” “I told you already, the Seeker.”

  “Why didn't you just eat the evidence?” she pressed again.

  “I saved it for you, as evidence. I read that you were investigating the case, the FBI's most famous.” He paused to study the reaction he'd gotten from them both. Eriq had remained stolid and silent for a moment but now he stood and said, “We're going to book you for all four murders, Cahil! What do you have to say to that?”

  “You've got the right man, but you've also got the wrong man.”

  “Take this piece of human waste back to holding,” Eriq said into the two-way mirror.

  Hanson came in and escorted Cahil out, Daryl protesting his innocence while Keyhoe asked for the death penalty.

  AGAIN they had ended where they had begun, and the day's long interrogation had come to a grinding halt.

  “Listen, Eriq, we have to match the DNA we took from the brain tissue to one victim's DNA. That single test alone may be enough to bury Cahil if it's a match. And I think we should follow up on what he said about all the victims having made contact with his site. Another nail in his coffin. And we need to look at this guy he calls Seeker that—”

  “This Seeker guy is likely another of his personalities. But you're right about checking on the computer habits of the victims.”

  “Lorena Combs is doing just that from her jurisdiction. She's got the cooperation of the Manning family and the Miller family. I'll call and ask how it's going with her. Meanwhile, I'll ask the Cyber Squad to do the same from here as soon as J.T. gets back with Cahil's computer. But I have to tell you, I have reservations about Daryl being our guy. I pictured a larger man with more strength.”

  “How much strength does it take to pump a syringe of Demoral into a woman's arm?”

  “I just don't want us jumping the gun on this, Eriq. We lock down on this guy as the Skull-digger, and maybe the real guy goes free and starts up someplace else—the West Coast or another country even.”

  “You mean this phantom Seeker that Daryl just made up? Jess, we need the Digger in custody, and we need it now.”

  “You have someone in custody. Patience, Eriq. Give us time at least to develop the evidence we have against Cahil.”

  “I guarantee you, as long as we hold him, Jess, the killings will end. I can promise you that much.”

  “Hold him on the animal-cruelty charges. That will keep him in limbo for weeks if not months.”

  “Animal cruelty. The press will laugh in our faces.”

  “You go ahead and charge him as the Digger then, Eriq. Go right ahead. I suspect that's what's going to happen whatever I say or do.”

  “I want you to back me on this, Jess.”

  “I have to exhaust all leads, Eriq, and I have my doubts about this guy being the Digger. You're a gambler by nature, Eriq, always have been. You want to gamble that at least one of his personalities is guilty, but suppose you're wrong?”

  “One of his personalities did it, Jess.”

  “My instincts are screaming otherwise.”

  “I need your backing on this, Jess.”

  “And you'll have it, as soon as I can give it in good conscience.”

  He stormed away from her, obviously as frustrated as she over the direction the case had taken. Cahil had not been shaken by the Rheil tissue in their possession, confusing enough, but he also had given them no real indication he knew where on the bodies the mark had been left by the killer.

  “We both want the same thing, Eriq,” Jessica shouted after his fleeting figure, “to put an end to—” but he was gone.

  A gut-gnawing intuition told her that Daryl simply didn't complete the picture, that he was possibly part of it, but not the whole. Cahil had shown little surprise when they put the sketch in front of him. And, if he truly wanted to confess, why didn't he take full advantage and divulge where on the skull the symbol was left. Why hadn't he known the location? Aside from this, his physical size was wrong. The shoe prints hadn't matched, and no weapon or van had been located. She knew she'd have to put all this in a formal report, and that by tomorrow Eriq would have to sober up and get off this addiction he had for Cahil as the Digger.

  ALTHOUGH she harbored doubts from the moment she'd met him, Jessica had not completely given up on Cahil as a serious contender for the Digger. She reserved judgment, and after Eriq had left the interrogation area, she went back at Daryl later in the day and again asked him tough and uncompromising questions. After this, in spite of Eriq's lust for Daryl as the killer and what they had found in Morristown, she felt even more certain that if Cahil were involved it was not as the Digger but as an accomplice of some sort. Perhaps he arra
nged to set the victims up. She went over everything Cahil had said, and what he'd failed to say about the details of the killings. He had been unable to get the calendar straight, which victim came first, second, third and fourth. Dates were confused. Nothing added up.

  She left headquarters for home, picking up a takeout meal from a Quantico restaurant called Mia's Place. Arriving at her silent house, she placed the food on hold and put in a call to Richard. They had a long conversation, both keeping to light subjects. When he brought up the case she was working on, she changed the subject to his own mission there in China. Everything was going well, he told her and changed the subject to a sporting event he was scheduled to see there. After exchanging words of love, they said goodbye.

  She then called Lorena Combs, asking if she had any news on the computer habits of the Georgia and Florida victims. “Examine the E-mails for this E-address,” suggested Jessica, giving her Cahil's website address. “See if they ever logged on to the site.”

  “So, you're still fixed on the New Jersey Ghoul?” Lorena asked.

  “Not a hundred percent, but if we can make a connection with one of his victims having been in contact, we might more easily get a federal warrant to open and scrutinize all the subscribers to Cahil's site.”

  “I'll see what comes of it,” Combs replied and then said good night.

  Jessica next located J.T. by phone. He finally had gotten back from New Jersey with Cahil's computer. She updated him on their interrogations of Daryl. “I doubt he's our primary target, and I'm beginning to doubt if he's involved at all, other than as a ready patsy.”

  “Funny, Eriq says it went well and that you guys nailed his ass to the wall.”

  “When did you talk to Eriq?”

  “Got a call from him while on the plane back.”

  “Cahil claims that all the victims had at one time or another logged on to his website.”

  “I assure, you, Jess,” he replied, “Cahil could not know that unless the individuals chose to reveal themselves to him by name. He's likely blowing smoke.”

  “Still, there's the possibility, right? Given the sheer numbers logging on, I must assume some foolish people find his computer persona somehow charismatic.”

  “Fact is, anyone can project a charismatic image over the Net. Still, it's unlikely he'd leave word in his correspondence with a victim's actual name for us to find. And like I said, he'd have to convince them to give him personal information, address, meeting place. We'll do best to get our cyber experts to help out here, Jess.”

  “And as for this Seeker guy?”

  “Well, code names can only be traced with help from the server, unless our experts can find a way to hack into the guy's computer.”

  “How likely is that?”

  “Fifty-fifty, depending on what kind of firewalls he's put up.”

  “Give it a try.”

  “Could be this Seeker is just another of Cahil's other selves, you know. If he's as multiple as Eriq says he is, he likely has more than one computer persona as well.”

  “You have been talking to Eriq.”

  “Yeah, I have.”

  “All right, get the computer search underway. Let me know where it leads,” she said.

  “Like Max Strand said, there'll be roadblocks.”

  “Who knows, maybe the server will be cooperative.”

  “Like they were after Nine-Eleven?” J.T. facetiously asked.

  “Maybe they've learned something since then.”

  “I won't hold my breath, Jess. This company in particular guards its subscriber list with a vengeance.”

  They said their goodbyes and Jessica sat upright in bed and ate. While using the remote, flipping through TV land, she picked at her meal. She then took a shower to the sound of argument and laughter on the late-night TV talk show Real Time with Bill Maker. The soothing hot shower eased the tense muscles in her neck and shoulders, and she trusted this would help her to sleep soundly.

  Donning a terry-cloth robe, she returned to the bed, where a second plate, filled with vegetables and fruits, awaited her. Suddenly the TV chatter turned to the Digger. Bill Maher made a grim joke about the Digger, asking why the Skull-digger hadn't gone after the Dolphins in Discovery Cove if he wanted brains. “What's so brainy about the average American woman?” he asked the audience, garnering a wave of groans instead of laughs. Everyone on the show was critical of how the police was handling the case. The public had learned many of the shocking details, except those withheld by authorities. Everyone feared it was the beginning of a long nightmare. “News of FBI involvement,” according to Maher, “has not calmed anyone's brain.”

  Jessica lay her head down and in a moment the TV talk show was replaced by the interrogation room, but it had clouds all around its periphery. She was again grilling Daryl, who wore a Cheshire cat's grin during the entire interview.

  “What's this we found in your house in Newark, Daryl?” she demanded, holding out a small bag filled with seeds.

  “Birdseed,” Cahil announced. “I feed the birds out back of the house.”

  “Other than the house in Morristown, Daryl, is there someplace else you spend time?” asked Jessica.

  “One place else, yes.”

  “And where is it located?”

  Cahil pointed to his head.

  Jessica gritted her teeth, feeling horribly uncomfortable in such proximity to the man. She felt his horrible hot breath on her.

  “Any other physical place outside your head, that we might search?” she pressed.

  He looked absolutely befuddled by this, losing the grin, concentrating on her words to the point she thought his head would explode.

  “Do you reside anywhere else, say in a van, for instance?” asked Jessica.

  “Nah, no other space or place. This is it. ...”

  Jessica studied the man's off-center features and his black-bean pupils to determine if he were lying or not. But there was no life in his eyes, so no reading them. She watched his hands for signs of clenching or cutting himself with his nails. She watched his breathing and his movements for any sign of telltale lying. But there was nothing to read in this man, nothing in his body language, eyes, tone or stance. The system had taught him well. He was as zombielike in this dream as he had been in the actual interrogation.

  “I was very popular when I was in prison,” Daryl said. “Three women wanted to marry me.”

  “Really?”

  “Started out as pen pals. They all proposed marriage. They wanted me to impregnate them, to have my child.”

  I can see why, Jessica thought. “Daryl, have you been in contact with any of these women since leaving prison?”

  “Of course, the ones who're alive.” His grin proved satanically grim.

  “One of them died in Richmond, one in Winston-Salem, the third in Jacksonville, Florida.”

  Jessica started in her sleep, her body involuntarily tensing and releasing, waking her in the process. She knew on awakening that her every instinct insisted that Cahil's confessions—both in real time and in dream time—were lies. Cahil was indeed not the Skull-digger. Some part of him wanted to be the Skull-digger, but that hardly qualified him as the killer.

  That left one of his Web-page visitors, one who had forwarded the brain piece to Daryl. His contributors literally numbered in the hundreds of thousands over a decade. It would be a grueling and time-consuming search, necessitating cooperation among hundreds of agents and from Cahil's Internet server.

  If Combs could find a link between the Manning girl from her computer in Florida to Cahil's website, Jessica felt hopeful that they could get a court order to open up the Internet server's records. Short of that, as J.T. said, they'd have to rely on the hacking skills of their Cyber Squad. She tried to fall back asleep on that hopeful thought, but a phone call awakened her.

  “Dr. Coran . . . Agent Owens in Morristown.”

  “Agent, what is it?” She glanced at the clock which read 11:43 P.M.

  �
�Thought you'd like to hear it from us first.”

  “Don't tell me. They found a woman's body at Cahil's place?”

  “No . . . sorry . . . bad news about Max Strand.”

  “What? What's that?”

  “Max was ... he was killed sometime yesterday in a park a few blocks from Cahil's house. He ... he was bludgeoned to death by a pair of homeless guys in the park. They're in custody, ratting each other out.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “But Max did something strange just before he died. Thought you ought to know about it.”

  “What's that?”

  “He made off with one of the cat brains from Cahil's freezer.” “Made off with it? What the hell do you mean? Made off with it?”

  “Took it with him ... to the park. He cut it open there and kinda . . . kinda, I don't know, threw it around. All of the brain pieces were scattered, as if. . .”

  Jessica tried to picture it. “As if he were searching for something?”

  “Yeah . . . yeah, that's what it looked like. Strange as hell.”

  Searching for something like the Island of Rheil in humans? she wondered.

  Jessica further wondered what this might mean. How many people are to be infected in one manner or another with Cahil's dangerous notions? She thanked Owens and said good night, and somehow the aloneness and the night became larger tenfold.

  TEN

  I am dying of thirst by the side of the fountain.

  —CHARLES D'ORLEANS, 1391-1465

  JOHN Thorpe had tried to relax on his flight back to Quantico, Virginia. He had made mental notes on what he'd found on Cahil's website. He thought that many of the E-mail visitors to the Cahil Web page sounded like teens and preteens at play, getting a kick out of the zaniness of it all. But then many others sounded truly psychotic. Teeny-bopper or psychotic—a hard distinction to make in real life much less in cyberspace. He chuckled.