Grave Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  Some conjectured that he turned the brains into mementos of the kills, preserving each and so reliving the crimes over and over. Others in the profiling group said that he might be drying them out, pounding them into a fine powder in order to smoke the brains. Still others thought he might be bathing in the awful prize of his murder, turning them to oil as an aphrodisiac to rub onto his body. No one knew for certain just what use the monster made of the gray matter, and thus far no connection had been made between his two victims other than they were both chosen to die in a hideous manner—the vault protecting their brains cut into while they were yet alive.

  Together Jessica and J.T. made their way to the meeting called by Chief Eriq Santiva. Jessica and J.T. had seen the autopsy results on the two victims only in passing and only via paper and photos. They had been on standby to drop whatever they were doing and report to Quantico's D-30, the largest, state-of-the-art debriefing room in the building. They were to come with anything they had on the Anna Gleason and Miriam McCloud cases—two cases so striking in similarity, they were immediately linked to one offender. The brutal killer called to mind no one Jessica had ever dealt with in the past, for his ghoulish need proved as horrific as any brutality that she had encountered in her career as a medical examiner and FBI agent. This particular monster wanted only one thing of his victims—their brains.

  He took nothing else from them . . . nothing but their lives.

  J.T. stopped at a bay of coin-operated machines for a Snickers and a cup of coffee, complaining of the date he'd missed the night before. “Sandy's already got some hare brained notion that I'm seeing someone else. This is going to kill our relationship.”

  Jessica frowned and shook her head. “I'm not so sure you two are a good match, anyway, John.”

  John Thorpe, in wire-rim glasses, still retained his boyish features and a shock of hair habitually covered his forehead. “Whataya mean? Not right for each other?”

  “You're a scientist, she's a Presbyterian minister.”

  “So?”

  “Seems a bit unusual.”

  “She is that. ...”

  Jessica asked him to get her a cup of black coffee as well, and then she hustled Thorpe onward. The two old friends and colleagues hurried for the arena-sized debriefing room.

  “You look as if you're going to church yourself,” he commented on her appearance. Jessica wore her auburn hair at shoulder length, complimenting her heart-shaped face and piercing hazel eyes. She had removed her lab coat to display her well-cut, gray-green suit.

  “You lij^” she replied. “I mifft look like hell in winter.”

  “Not at all . . .”

  She had been busy on other pending cases when this bizarre case had surfaced. Santiva had the unit locked down in a room for hours the night before in an effort to come up with some ideas about the killer, to develop a profile, and to create a rudimentary victim profile as well. Eriq believed time was of the essence, that the killer would strike again, and after seeing the evidence photos, Jessica agreed. As a result, she hadn't gotten much sleep. Despite this, she wanted to look her best since this was a major case, and since the computer visual linkups went to every field office in the country.

  Chief Eriq Santiva already gaveled the meeting to order and had quickly informed everyone why they'd assembled. “No expense will be spared to catch this butcher,” he said, fists clenched, as Jessica and J.T. entered and quietly found their seats alongside the podium.

  Eriq frowned at them but kept talking. “Headquarters is insisting, people, that every state field office east of the Mississippi be here today in person.” This was met with some boisterous cheers. The Cuban-American Sandra now waved down the crowd and again spoke into the microphone, thanking everyone profusely for hustling to get to Quantico. “You'll notice,” he continued, “the distinct absence of reporters. This is not a briefing for the press, and I want a lid kept on this case. Nothing goes to the press unless it goes through me first. Any leaks, you deal with me!”

  Everyone murmured approval over this.

  “I'm sure by now the rumor mill has given you some idea of the problem child we're here to talk about, ladies and gentlemen. This death in Richmond—” Eriq paused to focus on the slide photo of the victim in profile, the side of her head cleaned of blood by the medical man who’d autopsied her in Richmond, Virginia. Even cleaned, the gaping hole only hinted at the size of the entire hole left in this woman's head. Although this was a mere third of the wound, the black emptiness of it proved terrifying to stare at, but stare everyone did. The wholly unusual nature of the crime displayed on the large screen over Jessica's shoulder made the room gasp in a collective venting of horror. The next photo displayed the frontal shot of the victim, and her wound—a missing forehead and scalp where the skull had been splayed open across the frontal lobe area.

  The collective gasp turned into a collective, disjointed moan, followed by chattering confusion. They had all heard of the case, heard that the victim's brain had been “stolen” from its cranial cradle, but here were numerous shots being shown of the cleaned opening for autopsy. No one had expected this precise an incision. A good portion of the agents in the room had looked for a messy, cracked skull with a huge chasm atop the cranium, the results of a brutal attack from overhead. Most had expected to see the results of a killer's having ripped and torn apart the crown in a passionate, insatiable animal fashion to get at the brain below. As Jessica, J.T. and the unit had learned the night before—and the reason she'd gotten no sleep—nothing could be further from the truth.

  Instead, what stared back at the assembled agents was a huge dark cavity where the victim's forehead and forebrain ought to be. The empty open skull was proof of a dispassionate, deliberate animal at work, a thinking animal.

  “And then in Winston-Salem—” continued Eriq, swallowing hard as another mechanical pulop signaled a new slide had rotated into the viewfinder and was now projected against the screening wall. It proved a slide of such similarity that many took it to be the same victim now held in time against the large screen, her eyes mercifully closed, looking for all the world to be in an angelic repose if not for the satanic wound above the eyes—a rearview-mirror-sized hole in the head.

  For a moment, even Jessica, where she turned in her seat to look over her shoulder, thought it the same victim, Anna Gleason. But no, this slide showed Miriam McCloud, victim number two. The ages were close and there were striking physical similarities in the two women; but it was the sameness of their wounds, like a fulcrum for the eyes, that drew the most attention.

  The deaths had occurred within days of each other, and the authorities in North Carolina did not immediately know of the earlier such slaying in Richmond, Virginia. As a result, the two autopsies were done independent of the other. Only later did someone put the two cases together when a routine program on an FBI computer flagged them as being the same MO. Jessica knew when or if a third such body surfaced that she and J.T. wanted to autopsy the body themselves. Reading the entire case files on the first and second victims, viewing the autopsy photos and speaking with the doctors who had performed the autopsies, had all been heif^^ fill, but Jessica knew it was no substitute for firsthand knowledge.

  Still, with the autopsy results in hand, she had spent many hours attempting to understand what kind of mind could conceive of such a crime. Trying to find reason in a mad hatter's reasoning. The two questions on everyone's mind remained: What is he doing with the brain matter; and why is he performing these deadly operations?

  Behavioral psychologists in the Behavioral Science Unit working to profile the killer kept coming back to a simple case of brain cannibalism. She recalled the words of Dr. Linda Pearlman, a member of the team: “Everyone wants a ready answer to what the madman is doing with the gray matter. Everyone feels it must be for consumption, that this craving is an appetite for cranial matter. For now, since we reilly know nothing to the contrary, we're best served by simply agreeing with the common notion .
.. at least until we learn otherwise.”

  “What does he hope to get from consuming the brains, if that is what he's doing with them?” J.T. asked Pearlman, who sat beside him.

  Jessica stated, “For all we know, given what we see on the streets nowadays, he could be using them as dashboard ornaments.” “Throughout history, all cannibalistic tribes removed the heart and the brains of an enemy,” Pearlman replied, her glasses shimmering on the end of her nose.

  “But this guy's just into the brain.”

  Pearlman put her glasses on the table, rubbed her eyes and added, “Cannibals fed on the heart, believing it the seat of courage, and the brain for its wisdom and power as a force within the fierce enemy derived from a divine source. In consuming these parts, the heart-eater and the brain-eater believes he can take oh the courage and wisdom of a fierce enemy and see into the invisible universal energy of a psychic cosmic mind that binds all matter as one.”

  “Here I always thought the cannibal saw the consumption of such parts as a gesture to affirm the life of the enemy, giving him renewed life inside the victor's own body and mind,” said J.T.

  “That's the common thinking.”

  “I know it's primitive thinking, but given our collective unconscious—that the memories of our eldest ancestors still reside in our genetic makeup)—well, it has a certain passionate power to it, doesn't it?” asked Jessica. “Kind of a quid pro quo?”

  “You could say that, yes. The two reasons do not necessarily negate one another—search for the universal mind and granting respect to one's enemies, or victims in this

  “A tough sell to the crowd,” said J.T.

  Jessica believed that to put forth a formal stand on the killer's rationale so early in the investigation could harm the case more than help. Still, she had to convey to the assembled agents the majority opinion, and everyone had conceded that Dr. Pearlman's had made more sense than any of the other theories that had been put forth.

  The open void of the massive but clearly surgical wound to Miriam McCloud's head had now brought on a deep silence that filled the room. All the agents present pondered the image and their individual response to it.

  Santiva finally broke the silence. “I can't tell you how dangerous this . . . this brain-hunter is, people. And he is working Richmond, our backyard. We have to stop him before he strikes again, if he hasn't already done so. Both victims we know of were dumped in poorly secured watery graves, and found less than forty-eight hours after they were killed.”

  “This is so ... so gross.” Someone moaned in response to the slide. Santiva meant to shock his audience.

  “Dr. Coran and Dr. Thorpe will fill you in on what we have so far,” said Santiva.

  J.T. took the lead, championing Dr. Pearlman's notion for why the killer “stole and presumably consumed the quote 'enemy,' victim that is.”

  Jessica took her cue from J.T. She pushed her seat back and stood to add, “What we have so far, unfortunately, amounts to very little since the offender has been extremely careful to leave no trace of himself. Now as to the incision, and what it tells us about our man . . . This maniac literally carved out a major surgical incision from the scalp, beginning direct center of the scalp or fore crown, here.”

  She used a light pointer against the picture of Miriam McCloud's remains, still up on the screen wall, to indicate where the incision began. As she did so, she noticed a strange marred area on the screen wall, and mentally noted that someone ought to get the screen surface fixed or replaced, since it was a so-called high-tech solution to using a pull-down screen—the wall itself had been treated with a finish made for perfect screening of videos and slides. The marred area in this slide was directly inside the dark hole at the victim's forehead, so it hardly showed. Jessica ignored it and continued. “The killer did leave a little something for us to decipher.”

  J.T. picked it up, adding, “This guy operates like a surgeon. He clears the area where he cuts off any hair, shaving back the scalp and temple areas as well as the eyebrows.” J.T.'s light pointer followed his discussion of the giant missing cranial area, all round the wound. “It's the way he works, ladies and gentlemen, that tells us something about him.”

  “Chemical analysis tells us these red flecks are residue of red marker,” added Jessica, pointing with her laser light to the faint red dots showing up like mini-bloodstains along the cut lines of the bone.

  “And from the depth on the right and left sides of his lines—assuming the killer and not an accomplice made the lines—we can hazard a guess that the killer is left-handed or ambidextrous.”

  “How did you get that?” asked a young agent.

  “Handwriting analysis tells us that the more pressure applied along a constant line from left to right indicates this, rather than the other way around. Perhaps more important, after marking the incision lines, he next sliced into the flesh in the exact same order, side to side from the midpoint to each ear. The pressure again tells us something.” She demonstrated with her laser beam. “Along the crown, then the lower trapdoor cuts, as we M.E.'s call them, from each ear and back to center, ending right between and above the eyes. This creates a kind of door at the forehead and crown, from which the brain is lifted. And again, indications show a left-handed person at work, even our computers blessed this much.”

  “What kind of blade did he use?” asked an agent at the rear.

  “He begins with a scalpel of the type we use in autopsies,” interjected J.T. “The scalpel cuts also indicate a tendency toward more depth on the left side. Then he followed with a bone cutter, a small but powerful circular saw of the sort we use in the autopsy room every day.”

  “Wouldn't that. . . don't those things make a hell of a noise?”

  J.T. nodded. “That they do, particularly when hitting bone.”

  “The final result of the madman's bone saw, ladies and gentlemen,” Jessica said, “was to create an incision going across the forehead above the eyes, thus removing the brow and bone covering the frontal lobe. Once exposed in this manner, well, it becomes relatively easy to reach into the cavity and pluck out the still-attached brain with forceps.”

  J.T. added, “And since our man is not interested in any other organ or any other body part, time itself apparently— or hunger for his object—is of the essence for him. Get into the cranial cavity, get the brain, eat it or pack it away, and get rid of the body. In and out.”

  “This frontal assault on the victim is a medical procedure,” said Jessica, pushing back a strand of hair. “One that allows him to gain access to the entire brain in a relatively short period of time.”

  “Just reach in and remove the brain,” commented someone seated in the front row. “You suppose he takes time to weigh it and bag it like you guys in the lab do?”

  “This identical incision is done in autopsies, yes,” said Jessica. “But we always put the brain back—at least most of it.”

  Again the audience contemplated the slide along with this information. A collective, quiet gasp went about the room. “Get that slide turned off,” Santiva sent out the order. The female civilian aide manning the projector responded by hitting the wrong button, going back two slides to the original slide, showing Anna Gleason's horrendous wound in profile view. Then it ran to Gleason's frontal view, and again Jessica saw the flaw in the screen, a tear, she thought, at exactly or near the same spot, buried in the shadow of the dark cavity. Then the slide disappeared and the lights went up, and the screen wall appeared fine. It must have been something on the print slide, she concluded.

  Eriq thanked Jessica and J.T. for their “invaluable input,” which gave rise to a feeling of hives in Jessica. She knew they had nothing.

  “Any additional photos of the two crime scenes or autopsy information, contact the two jurisdictions, or come by our ready room located down the hall from here.”

  A questioning hand slowly snaked up. “Agent Quinton?” asked Santiva. “What is it?”

  “Has VICAP been sea
rched for similar crimes nationwide?” The agent referred to the FBI's main computer file for the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program.

  “VICAP and every other program we have is in full function on the question. We didn't stop at nationwide. We went worldwide. If this guy has struck before, using the same methods, we will learn about it—when and where. We're praying, of course, that there haven't been any such previous cases sitting in cold case files somewhere out there, but that's why all of you here and on linkups have been notified. Look at your cold cases for any that have not been CAPed. Who knows, it could uncover a lead.”

  “One thing we do know about the killer,” Jessica added from her seat, “he's thorough and competent with his tools.”

  “Can you elaborate on that, Dr. Coran?” asked Quinton. “In both cases, he has lost or left only minuscule brain tissue from his victims. He wants it—his prize—intact, brain stem and all,” Jessica replied. “However, as for leaving anything of himself, sorry. He's crafty and neat about what he brings with him and what he takes away.”

  “As neat as a surgeon, you mean?”

  “We don't want to lock down on that just yet, but yes, he could be a medical professional,” said J.T. “If not, he may have some medical training. Certainly, his tools would suggest that.”