Grave Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  Phillip had slowly emerged and had pushed Grant to sample and feed on the bodies he would autopsy at the morgue. So he had, on occasion, sampled human brain tissue. Then he slipped up badly during the Allandale autopsy the night his problems began with Erdman and the hospital.

  That night he had devoured the brain in his office, washing it down with wine.

  “No doubt, Emily's put out a missing-person's report on you by now,” suggested Phillip, causing Grant to jump in his seat and swerve. I should've faced Emmie; should've told her I needed some time alone.”

  Phillip sanguinely said, “Little Hildy will soon be having another birthday.”

  Grant had always felt estranged from others. His entire life had been spent in a kind of numb dullness that kept him an emotional cripple, and he felt certain that it all had to do with his mother and father, not just the upbringing but something in the poisonous gene pool they had together created. A passing road sign read:

  New Orleans—59

  Today, he had climbed from bed determined to control Phillip's insatiable appetite for killing and consuming the gray matter of his victims. Now he felt the urge at every turn, as with accepting the stand-in at the bus stop in Mobile. In fact, wherever he looked nowadays, he saw a possible feeding. Phillip wasn't as choosy as he had once been.

  Each new encounter now—a maid, a waitress, a clerk— any passing soul, save the decrepit and aged, would do. “What happened to your standards, your list?” he asked Phillip.

  “I sense our time is running out. We've had to lower standards. That ought not to be hard for you, Grant.”

  “Stop calling me that.”

  “Shall I call you by your father's name?”

  “No!”

  “Huh, should I call you 'Phil'?”

  “You sonofabitch,” cursed Grant.

  “Even if I did disguise my voice and tone, boy, you're still somewhere inside this head, boy. You had to know it was me, Corey, son.” “Shut up! Shut up! You damn demented old bastard.” To drown out Phillip, he snatched on the radio and turned it to its highest level, nearly blowing a speaker.

  The old couple running the restaurant had looked too much like his parents, and the old woman kept eyeballing him, as if she knew everything about him. The phone on the wall hadn't rung, and growing impatient, he had asked the old woman, “How damn much longer's your husband going to take with my van?”

  She'd replied, “Saw the old man finishing up, but he's got no phone in the garage. We can only afford the one line.”

  “I gotta go out there and check on him, you mean?”

  She nodded. “Need me a nap,” muttered the old woman, a phrase she had repeated ad nauseam. She then asked him, “Just where you heading, young man?”

  He had seen too much interest paid him at Lou and Lew's motel, restaurant and body shop, this mom-and-pop operation in the middle of nowhere. Using a small snub-nosed .38 Smith & Wesson, one he always kept tucked away, he leapt up and terrified the old woman. He led her to the register, opened it and tore out the larger bills.

  Her arms flailing like wings, she cried out, begging, “Please, mister, take whatever you want, but please not our lives! Please!”

  “Shut up,” he'd shouted, a fistful of her hair now a tow-line as he forced her out back to visit her husband in the shop. Chickens scrambled to get out of the way, raising noise, so that the old man saw them coming. Obviously, the woman hadn't lied about the phones. He had no way of contacting help, except for his CB radio. With a shotgun in one hand, he tried to hail someone on the CB.

  Unable to get anyone on the radio, the old man in overalls and paint bravely came at him with the huge shotgun, but Grant gave him a choice. “She gets a bullet through the head if you don't drop that damned thing.”

  “You give her up to me, then!”

  “Deal.” Grant viciously pushed the old woman into him, and the old man grabbed hold of her as both went down to the earthen floor.

  He forced them onto their knees, snatched all the money in a second register here, and said, “Now, you two sweethearts can take a long nap.” He then put a single bullet through each head.

  “It'll look like a robbery murder. Keep the locals busy,” he said to the dead and to Phillip, “if we leave their goddamn brains intact.”

  Phillip didn't argue this time. “Old brains carry toe much disease,” he muttered.

  Grant took time to open and pour paint all over the garage and the bodies. He emptied some twelve to thirteen gallons of different colors, creating a rainbow of the place. He believed this would confuse anyone wondering about the killer of Lou and Lew's pigsty.

  He then climbed into his now dark green rather than blue van and tore from the body shop. A lone red pickup with an old man in it was just pulling into the restaurant's gravel lot.

  That had been less than two hours before, and now he saw the steeple-top skyscrapers of New Orleans coming into view on the horizon. He'd be safe here for a while, he told himself, if he could control Phillip.

  Quantico, Virginia July 23, 2003

  OVER the next few days, Jessica, J.T. and their team began taking portions of the tips by state and encrypting them onto the ACC program—the Automated Cross-Check software developed specifically for such a massive search.

  They began the painstaking effort of searching for common names on VICAP and other lists of known offenders against the thousands of uninvestigated tips, hoping something would shake out from the mix. Adding to the cauldron what little they knew of the killer's approximate height, weight, race and vehicle, they further reduced the possible suspects.

  The process proved tedious and time-consuming, as many of the field agents worked on their own clock; the process was also hardly cost-effective as it took a great deal of time to download all the reports coming in from across the nation. In the meantime, Jessica had grown increasingly impatient for the court order to open Cahil's enormous list of patrons. The delay had everyone on edge.

  Amassing the information that Jessica wanted—more than five thousand unanswered tips in the Skull-digger case—proved daunting. They were scattered over hundreds of field offices, some as far away as Oregon. However, the first dividing up was done geographically, whittling the list down from the massive pile sent in from each field operative. Naturally the southeastern states, where the killings had begun, were by far the largest in number of tips.

  After working all afternoon, Jessica and J.T. took a moment's break in her office, and she began to talk about her frustrations, all of which he shared. Then the conversation turned to Cahil's patrons.

  “Tell me, J.T., what is it inside people that make them so curious about cannibalism and brain eating, about grave-robbing gray matter from dead children, about a monster like Cahil?”

  He sipped at a cup of cold coffee and replied, “What prompts otherwise intelligent people to open that gruesome Web page and spend hours there? Some dark corner of the human psyche, I suppose.”

  She raised her own cup, drank from it, and said, “As much as we've seen over the years, I suppose we ought to be used to seeing the worst in people.”

  “We ought to, yes.”

  “But this . . . this ... It makes me think of the scam artists who, days after the World Trade Center attacks, began bottling and boxing up dirt and debris from the rubble of thousands of lives to sell at whatever price they could get.”

  “A slap in the face to all decency and humanity otherwise displayed at Ground Zero.”

  They had embarked on a long journey, the first step in reinvigorating the investigation. They were only hours into it, knowing it would take days and a great deal of luck. And while Cahil remained in custody, and would likely stay put for some time, the real murderer remained at large. And since no other victims had been found since Mobile, a low-level buzz among the people working overtime on the case had begun. Everyone wondered if Mobile had not been a copycat killing after all.

  Eriq Santiva suddenly entered the room, followed by t
he head of the FBI, Director Thomas Hinze. Santiva remained silent while Hinze blasted away. “I just got a copy of your DNA analysis on the brain tissue found at Cahil's residence, and it matches the Gleason woman killed in Richmond. Given the date, I'd like to know why it took so long to get to me? That's strong evidence linking Cahil to her murder, wouldn't you say, Dr. Coran?”

  “Yes, it is but—”

  “And I have a copy of your protocol sent to Santiva here on the last victim located in Mobile, Alabama. She didn't have the mark of this Island of Rheil thing on the backside of her skull or anywhere else. Chief Santiva here tells me that you had informed him that the killing in Alabama was the exact same MO—identical. Says he has only now learned it wasn't. What kind of games are you two playing, Dr. Coran, Dr. Thorpe?”

  “Director . . . Chief, it's my report, not J.T.'s,” she said, standing now to keep from cowering beneath them.

  “Aren't we all on the same team here, people?” asked Hinze.

  J.T. said, “I'm as much to blame as Jessica, sir. I kept silent about it, too.”

  “Only at my request,” she countered J.T. and turned to Eriq. “Look, I know in my gut that one of Cahil's Web buddies set him up.” Her tone matched her look of defiance. “You know my instincts about this kind of thing are good. That I'm good at what I do. Just let me do my job.”

  Santiva said, “Jess, I think you two made a grave error in Mobile.”

  “How so?”

  With an upraised hand, Hinze stopped Santiva from answering. “This just isn't panning out, Dr. Coran. Thorpe here has monitored the Web page to no avail. We've got hundreds of agents working overtime on a hunch. We need to cut our losses, indict this Cahil person, and get on.”

  “We're in too deep for that,” she countered.

  “We've wasted too much time on this case, and I think it's time you came to the same conclusion, Dr. Coran.”

  “We're not halfway through the tips yet, Director.”

  “If the Skull-digger were still out there, he'd have struck again. We'd know about it conclusively. This murder in Mobile was a copycat.”

  “I don't think so. Our profile all along said that the Digger could not control his urge after a few days, remember?” “Unless he's become more disciplined,” suggested Hinze. “And incarceration has that effect!”

  Jessica added, “What if the latest body just hasn't surfaced yet?”

  “Do you two have any idea how much hot air's breathing down my neck right now?” asked Hinze. “Besides, suppose for a moment you're wrong, Dr. Coran, and you and I know you've been wrong before—”

  She thought of mistakes made in Chicago that had gotten her friend and mentor, Otto Boutine, killed. She thought of mistakes she'd made in tracking Mad Matthew Matisak, and the trail of bodies he had left in his wake, and how she had almost gotten herself killed on more than one occasion.

  Hinze, a tall, imposing figure, continued talking over her thoughts. “Suppose the woman in Mobile . . . that her killer goes free, this Citizen X—because we decide it's the work of the Skull-digger. And instead, it's just some guy using the same MO to cover his tracks!”

  It had been known to happen more often than officials cared to inform the public. How many murders were tacked on to a serial killer list might even surprise a criminal judge.

  “We're set on this course, Director. We are investigating another theory, that the Digger is one of Cahil's website junkies. We know his online name—the Seeker.”

  The director paced the room. “All right. Chief Santiva tells me you have a thing for this guy that Cahil pointed out early on. But he also tells me Cahil's page has not heard anything from the Seeker. Isn't that right? And there's a theory that the Seeker and Cahil may be one and the same. Santiva is beginning to think so, aren't you, Eriq? Tell her.”

  Eriq cleared his throat and replied, “That thought has been discussed, yes, but I have to stand with Dr. Coran's assessment. We need to keep the investigation open until we can follow the leads we've uncovered to a conclusion we can all live with, sir.”

  “We're still hopeful that we'll hear from this Seeker character when he checks in again with Cahil's page,” added J.T.

  “The guy who calls himself the Seeker argues that Cahil has no special knowledge of where the soul resides in the brain, argues against the Island of Rheil being of any consequence. And Cahil claims this person sent the brain tissue from Anna Gleason to him.”

  “Through field ops, we raided a Richmond PO box this Seeker guy used for surface correspondence, but the guy used phony identification.”

  J.T. then hefted a computer printout in his hands. “I did locate an interesting old letter from the Seeker to Cahil. It's about the Seeker's childhood, all about slaughtering animals on a farm, but it includes slaughtering them for their brains. He doesn't give any details as to time or place or his identity except for a first name—”

  “Which is?”

  “Corey,” J.T. replied. “You might find it interesting if gruesome reading.”

  Jessica added, “I think maybe we ought to go after a discovery warrant on this guy alone, take our chances with the roll of the dice.”

  “Too late for that,” said Santiva. “I wrote the order for full disclosure of every user.” Eriq and the director now stood over Jessica's shoulder and scanned the data J.T. had handed her.

  “Still we can put him at the top of the list.” Jessica pushed back in her chair and tried to calm her nerves. It had appeared for so long now that no one stood with her save J.T., but she realized now that Eriq firmly backed her as well, despite his earlier doubts.

  Eric and the director left, and J.T. soon followed their lead. Left alone, Jessica stared down at the collected E-mail letters from the Seeker. She had mumbled a goodbye to J.T. but her eyes and mind were focused on the letter describing the Seeker's upbringing. “I know you're out there, whatever you care to call yourself—Seeker, Corey, Satan.”

  JESSICA Coran stood over a team of men and women sifting through the computers in the computer analysis section of the FBI at Quantico. She nervously paced, holding on to reams of information coming out of their new investigation. She remained anxious to get word from a judge that AOC had been made to comply with the FBI request to open up the subscriber lists visiting Cahil's website. But so far, nothing forthcoming. Everyone on the team felt stymied.

  Daryl Cahil's name had come up so far as the only three-way match among the civilian tips, the VICAP program and, of course, on his own website. He remained the only known user still, and would so long as AOC continued its fight with the FBI. The court battle had brought out curious reporters, and AOC, happy with the publicity it was now garnering, wanted nothing more than to fight for the rights of their customers—to drag the publicity out. This also dragged into the light the whole story of Cahil's arrest, his website and the AOC controversy and what it had to do with the Skull-digger case. This only caused a flood of hits on Cahil's website, causing more problems for the team's monitoring efforts—adding to the nightmare.

  Meanwhile, all the other users logging on remained unknowns. Cross-referencing with Cahil's website log-on code names proved useless. But they had learned that the Seeker and a handful of others had faithfully logged on for years, and that in fact, the Seeker was among the first to contact Cahil while he remained in jail. Santiva relentlessly pursued the federal court judge to get AOC to open its files on the E-mail addressees. The result had been a long, anxiety-ridden delay. In its arguments, AOC cited that many of the logons came from hotels and libraries, as well as private homes, and that what the FBI wanted was tantamount to invasion of privacy and against the public's right to assume they had privacy as upheld by the AOC's contract with the public.

  The bad news from AOC was called in from a female representative of the company, a spokesperson. Jessica had immediately asked the AOC representative if she would at least pinpoint which users had logged on from libraries and hotels in Richmond, Winston-Salem, Jacksonville, Sa
vannah and Mobile on specific days and nights. The representative stood firm, spouting policy, adding, “Only in the event of a terrorist attack can we lay aside the principle of privacy to our customers.”

  “There is a serial killer on the loose, looking for his sixth victim!”

  The phone clicked dead.

  Jessica had even contacted Dr. Jack Deitze, Cahil's keeper while imprisoned, and pleaded for information on anyone contacting Cahil via U.S. mail or phone before he began his website. Neither Dr. Deitze nor anyone else at the facility could help her, as records kept on U.S. mail addresses coming into the prison were not kept beyond ten years. They'd been destroyed two years before. Phone logs likewise.

  FBI code-breakers continued to work on Cahil's hard drive. Meanwhile, several hundred other names had also made a two-way match-up between VICAP and civilian tips, and this formed the long list Jessica now held in her hands. She pulled a chair alongside Dana Morrill, a bright young computer aide, and she said, “Using these two-way matches as your starting point, cross the list with the words 'island,' 'isle,' 'soul,' 'brain,' 'mind,' 'doctor' and R-h-e-i-1,' “ she said, spelling out the last word. As an after-thought, she added the word “butcher.” She recalled that in Cahil's pitiful little biography he had once been a butcher.

  J.T. had been on a well-earned break, but now he reentered the unit and saw that Jessica appeared as much in hot pursuit of the leads as before. He came near and whispered, “Jess, we just got a report out of a place called Hardscrabble, Mississippi, of an elderly couple murdered at a body shop— a freshly painted van was involved. You said we should be on the lookout for an escalation in violent and erratic behavior.”

  “Where's this place located?”

  “Some seventy or so miles from New Orleans. A crossroads between Biloxi and New Orleans, right off 1-10. Police are suspicious it could be our guy, since there's evidence of a freshly redone van. Like I said, it occurred at a shop run by this elderly couple—both shot to death. A dark green van was seen leaving the place.”