From all the log-on names and E-mail addresses, they created their list of possible suspects. It numbered in the thousands and had to be refined down.
AOC, America On Cyberedge, was the Internet server, but getting such a fringe Internet server to cooperate by allowing the FBI access to so many files proved useless without a special search warrant that named the suspect or suspects in question. It was as Strand had predicted, a catch-22. Even the federal judges Jessica had spoken to and pleaded with wouldn't go near it—right to privacy—unless the FBI could prove a state of imminent danger to substantial numbers of people existed. And with word getting around law-enforcement circles that Cahil was in custody, it had proven impossible to find a judge who believed any danger still existed.
The search-warrant request had to be amended to make a case for the FBI's need of a watch list being created from Cahil's website for future possible crimes against humanity. One old federal judge went so far as to tell Jessica, “Sorry, but I can't justify opening private records of hundreds of thousands of citizens to FBI scrutiny on the basis of a single victim in Florida having logged on to this man's website. Nor on the supposition of future possible criminal suspects. Especially since, as I understand it, you have this man in custody for the murders anyway.”
“But, Your Honor—” Jessica began to protest.
“Not on the basis of one person using this site, can I open everyone's lives to your agency. We have trampled on enough civil liberties for a decade in allowing you people access to combat terrorism. Now you want the same latitude for murder cases?”
Finally, news of her failed attempts had gotten back to Eriq who marched into Jessica's ready room, where a row of computer experts worked on Daryl's website, while others worked phones and files. The walls were plastered with photos of the victims, names, dates, times and places. Maps with pins in them spoke of the geography of the crimes.
“I'm shutting you down, Dr. Coran,” Eriq announced to her and all the assembled people. “It's time you cease and desist from any further investigation of this case. We're going with Cahil as the Digger. He'll be indicted this afternoon.”
Jessica shook her head. “You've got to give us more time.”
“It's over, Jess. I've taken hell from everyone above because it's taken this long to indict Cahil on more than dog-and-pony crimes.” Then the phone rang. It was from the FBI field office in Mobile, Alabama, an agent named Ben Lowery. There authorities had found a floater in the water with her head cut open and her brain removed.
As she listened to the words, Jessica's insides fell. She had known this call was coming; she had braced for it. She knew it would prove her right, but she felt horrible in the bargain.
She turned on the speakerphone here in the task-force ready room, and she asked, “Agent Lowery, would you mind repeating what you just said to my team?”
Lowery did so to a solemn audience.
“Keep the scene intact until my team arrives. Don't disturb a thing. We'll be there as soon as possible.” She then hung up and stared at the small group that had been left to pursue the case.
“Well, so much for Cahil as the Digger,” said J.T., summing up everyone's initial reaction.
“A hollow victory.” Jessica's gaze immediately met Eriq Santiva's.
Eriq looked as stricken as anyone. “Be out of here to Mobile within the hour. I'll make arrangements.”
Shortly after, Jessica and John Thorpe were on their way to an FBI jet bound for Mobile, where Jessica recalled Santiva's words to her, “If it does indeed prove the work of the same killer, with Cahil behind bars, I promise you one thing. I will personally go back to the federal court system for the warrant to get AOC to open its goddamn files to us.”
JESSICA and J.T. settled into the small special transport Cessna six-seater. They taxied to the runway and, having immediate clearance, were soon racing toward the sky. Jessica loved the exhilaration of takeoff.
“If this is our guy and not some copycat, Jess,” said J.T. with an upraised hand, “then he's moved considerably west.”
“Yeah . . . you're right. He worked along the east coast, now maybe he's heading southwest, changing his hunting grounds.”
“If it's him.”
“After all the faulty, misfit evidence, J.T., you don't hon-estly believe that Cahil is guilty.”
“I believe that Cahil is insanely nuts.”
“Agreed, which makes him an easy target to set up. I just feel it.”
“Instincts?”
“Call it what you will.”
“If the Manning girl was in touch with Cahil, it could mean that his other victims were as well. They could have accessed through computers other than those at home.” J.T. had left the capable team of computer experts to monitor Cahil's website and continue checking on those possibilities.
“The libraries I traced the Seeker to won't allow us access either, not without a court order. Public policy.”
“Yeah, I recall they pulled the same argument following the Nine-Eleven attacks.”
“Might as well try to relax and get some rest,” he sug-gested, handing her a cup of tea brewed for them.
“Thanks, and you're right.” She stared out at the darkness of the never-ending sky.
GRANT Kenyon had wrestled with himself for a month before he had killed again. He knew that taking another life would risk their capture, his and Phillip's, a sure end to any future. But Phillip had become insatiable. It made no difference to him. Like a junky, all he wanted was the stuff to end his craving, and if it meant throwing away a well-orchestrated plan to implicate Daryl Cahil, then so be it, according to Phillip.
He knew all the good reasoning in the world would not stop Phillip. The geography of his brain had been divided from the day of his birth, he supposed now as he sat in a restaurant drinking coffee. It was a Cajun place in a rural town in Mississippi and they had brains and eggs on the menu as the specialty of the house. He had ordered them.
“What kind of brains are in those eggs?” he asked the rough-looking, matronly waitress, who appeared to do all the work. No one else remained in the place. It was nearly 10 A.M. and the breakfast crowd had come and gone.
“What kinda brains you looking for?” she replied.
“It says the house specialty.”
“Pork brains, mister.”
He nodded. “Pig brains.”
“Hog brains. That OK?”
“Hogs'd mean they were full grown, adult?”
“Yes, that's right.”
“OK, thank you, I'll have some. Wouldn't sit right, my eating little baby piglet brains.”
“I reckon you're some kind of animal activist type, huh?”
“Actually, yes.” He lied to appease the woman, who went off for his order. She seemed almost happy, he believed, because she thought she had so penetrated his mystique.
He laughed at the woman.
WHEN they arrived in Mobile, Jessica and J.T. rushed from the airport to the crime scene, a patch of desolate sand and weed beneath a bridge straddling Mobile Bay, where the body had washed ashore. They were met by Police Chief Randall Boyd, a short, stout man whose uniform buttons looked to be near exploding against his barrel stomach.
Apologizing for Agent Lowery's absence, Special Agent Harry Douglas of the local FBI also greeted them, informing them that a member of Boyd's deputies had been able to ID the victim already.
“Deputy Joy Kirchner,” said Chief Boyd, “did some good work. She hauled in a homeless guy she saw rifling through a trunk in an alleyway near the Greyhound station. She took it for stolen. It had a picture ID in one of the flaps, and it matches our victim here, along with a library card from Linville, Tennessee. Name's Sharon Ashley.” He pointed to the prone figure beneath the sheet below the bridge.
“Her ticket has her arriving from Nashville at 8:45 P.M. last night,” said Agent Douglas. “She was spotted here by a fisherman at 6 A.M. this morning. My men have contacted her parents in Tennessee. She's .
. . she was a runaway.”
Jessica gave a moment of thought to the reason or reasons the girl might have run away and straight into the waiting hands of the Skull-digger. She wondered if some of the girls had been lured to their deaths via the Internet, or if the killer routinely staked out bus stations for his prey.
“She was from a rural town fifty or sixty miles from Nashville, where she caught the bus to Mobile,” Boyd informed them. “Word is, she had no relatives in Mobile, so no one knows who she met at the station—if anyone.”
“Authorities up in Nashville,” began Agent Douglas, “say she spent all her free time at the library in her hometown of Linville, but the damned library will not give the authorities a look at the girl's E-mails. They'll only do it if ordered by a court.”
“Then let's get one!” shouted Jessica, frustrated by the dead ends.
“It's in the works,” replied Douglas.
J.T. and Jessica now stepped closer to the covered body and Agent Douglas said, “She's just a kid, younger than the other victims.”
Boyd said, “Parents are driving down.”
Agent Douglas then said, “Most awful sight I've seen in my thirty years with the bureau.” With that he removed the sheet covering the corpse. Staring down at yet another mask of mutilation, Jessica felt a wave of weary sadness envelop her. She turned away for a moment, gathering her courage, wondering anew how anyone could so brutalize another human being.
J.T., meanwhile, gritted his teeth and clenched his jaw and fists. Jessica, shaking off her emotions as best she could, went to work. J.T. followed her stoic lead.
She pulled out a tape recorder and spoke into it as she examined the body. After reciting the date, locale, name, race and approximate age of the victim, Jessica added, “Again a young woman, this time still in her teens, staring back, vacant-eyed, vacant of forehead, vacant one brain.” Overhead noise from a number of fighter jets reminded them of how close the Pensacola Naval Air Station stood.
“Maybe some creep from the base,” said Boyd.
The bridge overhead lay down a dense shadow over the body, like a thick paint stroke. Jessica took out her penlight and shone it into the open cavity of the cranium, searching for the symbol at the back of the skull.
“Is it there?” whispered J.T.
She breathed deeply, her forehead creased with confusion. “No ... no it's not.”
“Then it may not be him. It could be—”
Boyd supported J.T.'s stance. “Maybe it's some lunatic on shore leave from one of those gunboats out there.” He pointed out at the huge, horizontal buildings along the other shore—naval ships, battleships. J.T. whispered, “Maybe it's a copycat killing, Jess.”
She disagreed. “No, it's him, all right, the same hand at work. Microscopic analysis of the bone cutting will tell us for certain, but I just feel it's him.”
“But the fact there's no mark inside the skull . . .”
“Other than that, it's exactly him. He wants us to think it's a copycat killing, by leaving something crucial out. He couldn't help himself. Don't you see, John?”
“It's just another way to throw us off, make us think he's not at work here, you think?” replied J.T. “But if he wanted to do that, why precision cut the brain out? Why not use a goddamn ax?”
“Something tells me if we look microscopically at the lines and cuts, we will find the identical hand at work here, identical saw striations against the bone, J.T.” She took a rag and a solution from her bag and wiped the wounds of blood. “Now look, here and here,” she added, pointing at the red marker lines about the cut bone. “Same emphasis to the left.”
“Without lab confirmation, you can't know that it's the same hand at work here, not for certain, Jess.”
“I know it in my bones, J.T.”
“Take your bones to a courtroom. Look, what're you going to tell Eriq? About the missing signature mark on the inside base of the skull?”
She failed to answer J.T. directly. “Look at her—the victim's wounds are identical in every other measure. Down to the binding marks at the hands, feet, throat and head. It's the work of the same man, using the same equipment. I'd stake my professional reputation on it.”
“But Santiva will want to know about the mark inside the cavity. If it's there or not, before he issues that warrant request. What are you going to tell him?” “That it's the work of the same man.”
“That's risky, Jess. You're putting your—or should I say our careers on the line, lying to a superior.”
“Regardless, John, it's our chance to get the federal order we need against AOC. Look, you've got nothing to do with this decision. It's all mine. As far as you know, I told you the mark was found.”
Police Chief Randall Boyd and Agent Douglas had stepped off and were conferring together. Boyd now sauntered in his bowlegged fashion back over to their conversation, asking, “Well? Is it the work of the same guy as over in Jacksonville and Savannah?”
“It is,” Jessica firmly replied. “Victim number five.”
Boyd eased off and now Agent Douglas joined them, saying, “I took the liberty of contacting Jacksonville, courtesy you know—let them know we have another brain snatching.”
Boyd pulled out a sketch of the suspected killer, a composite made up of two possible witnesses now, the Fayetteville woman and the street beggar. “The sketch looks nothing like that creep you have locked up in Virginia, that Cahil guy,” said Boyd.
“How do you know what Cahil looks like?” she asked Boyd.
“Douglas here had a likeness of him.”
“Is that true, Agent Douglas?” she asked the field agent.
“There was an old press picture of him from his first trial. Everyone's assumed he's the Skull-digger, so our office had the pictures made up.”
“For what possible reason?”
“Public relations, to show that the FBI got their man, but now it appears it isn't so.”
“Yeah, I'd say any case against Cahil has been blown out of the water with poor Sharon here,” she replied. “So, Dr. Coran, what advice do you have to offer?” asked Boyd.
“He has never struck in the same place twice, so he's likely on the move already, most likely heading due west, on 1-10. I'd like you to alert all law enforcement due west that the Skull-digger may be in their jurisdictions in the coming days, maybe hours.”
“Unless he's reversed himself,” suggested Boyd.
She ignored this, adding, “Forward this suggestion with the artist sketch and description of the van he uses. And please don't confuse the witness sketch with Cahil's photo.”
“Sounds like a good idea.”
Jessica then got on her cell phone and contacted Eriq. “It's his work, Eriq. I'd stake my career on it.”
“Then a renewed request for a federal warrant to get AOC to open up Cahil's lists is on its way.”
“We'll need more manpower to make contact with all of the John Doe's contacting that Web page of Cahil's. Can you get us the help we need?”
“OK . . . you told me so. I'm heading to court, and I'm keeping your team together. That's the best I can do right now. I've got personnel stretched to the limit on other cases, and there's been another bomb explosion on a college campus that we're tracking down.”
“I need more manpower, Boss.”
“I can give you half of your Behavioral Science Unit on a part-time rotation, but I can't promise any more . . . not at this time.”
“I have an idea. What if we just seek a warrant for this guy calling himself the Seeker, Eriq?”
“Gamble on the say-so of Cahil?”
“If it's him, the Skull-digger, then it will have paid off.”
“And if it isn't? You might speed up the process to a dead end.” “Scale the warrant down to this guy alone, and maybe we'll get some cooperation,” she countered.
“But if we're wrong about the Seeker, what are our chances of getting another warrant for all the other people on the list?”
She
breathed deeply. “You're right. It's a gamble either way. We push for one breach by AOC for one individual, or we continue to push to open them all in a massive search for their whereabouts and send agents to every suspicious address.”
She hung up to find J.T. in her face. “Well ... I hope this doesn't backfire in our faces, Jess. Lying to the chief. . .”
“I didn't exactly lie. He didn't specifically ask about the symbol inside the head.”
“So a lie of omission.”
“I believe I'm right on this, John.”
“All right,” he relented. “So . . . what do we do now?”
“One thing we don't do is sit it out here until another victim surfaces. It's time we stalked this guy before he stalks and kills another young woman.”
“Then it's back to Quantico and the computer trail.”
“We'll turn this crime scene over to Douglas with strict instructions that the red marker and bone cuts be microscopically filmed and sent to us in Quantico immediately.”
“Think Douglas will go for that?”
“You ever meet a field op who wasn't eager to have it his way?”
J.T. nodded knowingly. “Then let's explain it to him and get back to the E-trail connection.”
ELEVEN
They flee from me, that sometime did me seek With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.
—SIR THOMAS WYATT, 1503-1543
Hardscrabble, Mississippi July 21, 2003
GRANT Kenyon lingered over breakfast, finding it not half bad with the hot coffee. He again thought of his last contact made with Cahil's website. He'd gotten through to the website, but something was up. Cahil was backed up, not answering. Perhaps Phillip's plan, as the Seeker, to implicate Cahil was actually unfolding. Maybe Daryl and his website had been busted, and he was in custody for the murders Phillip had committed with Grant's assistance. It was for this reason that Grant had argued with Phillip to stop killing, so that Cahil would be brought to trial for the deaths, and then Grant could go back to his old life in New Jersey.
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