Mortal Fear m-1

by Greg Iles

  Something ripples through my chest, like a pebble dropping into a still pool miles from anywhere.

  “Besides,” he goes on, “Brahma is fucking with my network. My system. I set it up, created it ex nihilo, and he’s treating it like his personal sandbox. Not acceptable.”

  “Have you figured out yet how he got in?” I ask. “How he got the master client list?”

  Miles stares furiously at the table. “No.”

  I find this almost impossible to believe, but I don’t want to press him in front of Drewe. “What about alibis? You must have alibis for at least some of the nights the killings took place. Hell, I can’t remember a night when you weren’t sysoping the network.”

  He gives me a sidelong glance. “I don’t have to be at the office to sysop. You know that. All I need is a laptop and a phone connection. Beyond that, I don’t care to discuss it.”

  Drewe and I share a look. She takes a sip of coffee and says, “Couldn’t you just turn yourself in and put up with whatever hassle they give you until the murderer kills again? That would prove you’re innocent.”

  “It’s not that simple. If I’m arrested, Brahma could decide not to kill again for a while. Or if he kept killing, the FBI could say a copycat had joined the game. They could claim I was part of a group, and try to prosecute me on that basis.”

  “But surely they can’t have enough evidence to prosecute you?”

  Miles shrugs. “There are some lab findings that are consistent with my blood. There’s other stuff as well.”

  “Not DNA?”

  “They can’t have that,” he says sharply. “Not legitimately. But Brahma has successfully planted misleading physical evidence at every murder. I have to assume he knows who I am from EROS. Who’s to say he hasn’t planted something of mine that could give them a DNA sample?”

  “That’s impossible,” Drewe says.

  “Nothing’s impossible. And don’t think the FBI is above juggling samples to create DNA evidence against me, given enough pressure to close this case.”

  He slides some dark sheets from beneath his pile of paper and spreads them faceup across the table like playing cards. “These are the victims.”

  None of us speak. The sheets are laser-printed gray-scale photographs. All six show side-by-side photographs of young women: two blondes, three brunettes, one Indian. In the left-hand photos, the eyes are open and glowing with life, the lips smiling, the hair well fixed; in the right-hand ones the faces-those that are there-are gray and shapeless, the eyes open but blank with glassy stares. One of the right-hand photos shows a decapitated torso, another a head that looks as though it was put through an airplane propeller. One shows a face like something from a vampire film, with wooden stakes protruding from bloody eye sockets. Before we take in too much, Miles sweeps the pages out of sight and says, “I got these out of NEMESIS. I’ve got crime scene photos too, but you don’t want to see them.”

  He’s right. Drewe is still staring at the blank spot where the images lay. After a few moments, she blinks, then rises and pours Miles a third cup of coffee.

  In a remote voice, she asks, “What do the police think drives this man to murder these women?”

  Miles drinks deeply from his steaming cup, finishing with an audible swallow. “The case has been running for five days. Ever since Harper called the New Orleans police and linked Karin Wheat’s murder to six unsolved cases in other parts of the country.”

  “What parts?”

  “Portland, Oregon. New York, Houston, Los Angeles, Nashville, and San Francisco. Of course the first killing was David Strobekker, the man who was murdered for his identity. That was Minnesota.”

  “The first one we know about,” I correct him.

  He nods. “Rosalind May, the kidnapped attorney, was taken from Mill Creek, Michigan. She’s still missing, and there’s been no ransom note.”

  “I think she’s dead,” I tell him.

  “Ditto.”

  “I don’t,” Drewe says, firmly enough to draw looks from both of us. “At least she might not be.”

  “Why do you say that?” asks Miles.

  “A theory I’d prefer to keep to myself right now. How was each of the women killed? I mean, I saw the photos, but what did the autopsies say?”

  Miles watches her from the corner of his eye. Brilliant as he is, he remembers being aced by my wife many times in school. “The first-near Portland-was initially ruled an accidental death. She was a rock climber. Took a fall climbing solo, fractured her skull.”

  “Was she missing her pineal gland?”

  Miles’s eyes narrow. “She was exposed for a couple of days before they found her. Coyotes got to her. She was missing a lot more than her pineal gland.”

  “And the other murders?”

  “Shotgun blast to the face in New York. Strangulation and beheading in Houston. Claw hammer in Los Angeles. Pistol shot in Nashville. Strangulation in San Francisco, with the eyes removed and stakes driven through the sockets.”

  “The pistol shot was also to the head?”

  “Right.”

  “And every woman was missing her pineal gland or her entire head?”

  “It isn’t certain. With the shotgun victim it was impossible to tell. Some victims were missing only part of the gland. But the FBI consensus says yes.”

  “And they assume Karin Wheat was also.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “Karin’s head was found this morning.”

  “What?” I cry. “Where?”

  “Some Cajun fishermen found it wedged in a cypress stump in the Bonnet Carre Spillway. The police figure the killer tossed it out his window while driving across the causeway toward La Place. That means he drove past the airport going out of town. And her pineal gland was missing.”

  “How was it removed?” Drewe asks, her eyes bright.

  “Does that matter?” I ask as the reality of Karin’s death hits me all over again.

  “Of course. Did someone just reach in with a dull spoon and dig it out, or did he know what he was doing?”

  “I don’t know what tool was used,” Miles says. “I didn’t see an actual autopsy report, just an FBI memo. It said the gland was removed through a hole under Wheat’s upper lip. Like Brahma punched through the sinuses and up into the brain.”

  “Jesus,” I mutter.

  “How big was the hole?” Drewe asks.

  Miles checks his papers. “Seven millimeters wide. Damn. That’s pretty small, isn’t it?”

  Drewe is smiling with satisfaction. “That’s it,” she says.

  “That’s what?” asks Miles.

  “All those traumatic head wounds were meant to mask the killer’s real intent. But Karin Wheat’s head was never meant to be found. Her wound gives us the truth.”

  “What do you mean? What truth?”

  “Tell me the angle of the pistol shot that killed the woman in Nashville.”

  Miles consults his papers. “It was fired into the back of her neck at an upward angle, near the first cervical vertebra.”

  Drewe nods and smiles again. “Have you ever seen anyone who was attacked with a claw hammer, Miles?”

  He grimaces. “Have you?”

  “Yes. During my residency. It puts big holes through the skull, and the brain squeezes out through the holes like toothpaste from a tube.”

  Miles and I look at each other in bewildered horror.

  “That seven-millimeter hole beneath Karin Wheat’s upper lip,” Drewe says. “The one that went all the way up into her brain? A neurosurgeon would call that the sublabial transsphenoidal route.”

  “What?” Miles asks.

  “It’s a standard method of removing pituitary tumors. The pituitary gland isn’t that close to the pineal in neurological terms, but in a dead person you could probably punch right through the pituitary and get where you wanted to go.”

  “You’re saying a doctor could be doing this?” I ask.

  “I’m saying a
doctor is doing it. The stakes through the eyes? A surgeon could go through the optic foramen-where the optic nerve passes through the skull into the brain-veer to the midline, and go straight for the pineal. With the claw hammer and the rock fall, he could practically reach in and pull the gland out. The gunshot wound in Nashville? He goes up through the foramen magnum, the big opening in the bottom of your skull, and into the brain. The traumatic wounds cover up his tracks.”

  “The track in Wheat was pretty small,” Miles says. “How do you pull out the gland through such a small hole? Would that be the reason he only got part of it sometimes?”

  “The pineal is about the size of a pea,” Drewe explains. “The problem wouldn’t be getting it out but seeing it at all.”

  “What about a flexible probe with a fiber-optic camera and a cutting tool?” asks Miles.

  “You’re talking about an endoscope. I don’t think they have those for neurosurgery. But I guess you could use any endoscope if the patient was dead. I assume the FBI is looking at doctors as suspects?”

  Miles nods. “But doctors are only part of a much wider suspect group. Every police department has a different theory. The California police are working a cult angle. They’ve seen cult murders in the past where certain body parts were taken. No pineal glands, but adrenals, ovaries, testicles, all kinds of things.”

  “Dr. Lenz pretty much dismisses cult murders,” I tell them. “Almost all of them are committed for some conventional motive.”

  “Baxter has officially classified these murders as normal sexual homicides,” Miles says, “if there is such a thing. All the murdered women were raped after they were dead.”

  A short intake of breath from Drewe.

  “There’s a ton of forensic evidence,” he goes on, consulting his printouts. “Bite marks in some cases, not others. The marks don’t match. In one case they may have been made by a woman. With a couple of victims there was severe skin mutilation. The weird thing is that semen samples were found and analyzed in every case, and with seven victims they’ve found semen from at least four different men. Sometimes near the victim, other times inside the vagina. They’re waiting on DNA tests now. To compare to mine, no doubt.”

  The hair on my forearms is standing. “You mean four men raped each victim?”

  “No, no. Four men spread over all seven cases. Though in two victims there were two different semen samples found.” Miles shakes his head at Drewe. “I know what you’re thinking-one sample from a boyfriend or husband, the other from the killer, right? Wrong. Both samples in each woman were the result of postmortem sex.”

  “Good God,” I whisper.

  Miles takes a sip of coffee. “The problem with physical evidence is that the Behavioral Science people basically use a connect-the-dots approach to murder. They have checklists for cops to fill out. Condition of the body. Restraints, no restraints. Type of weapon. Cause of death. Post-offense behavior. Antemortem rape or postmortem rape? Penetration or just masturbation? All these things produce vastly differing profiles.” Miles sounds almost saddened by the imperfection of the system. “A guy who knows the system can put a few extra dots at each crime scene and distort the picture. If he puts in enough dots-or takes them away-there’s no picture at all.”

  “Like the radically different head wounds,” Drewe says. She pulls at the corner of her mouth with her forefinger. “What about the physician angle?”

  Miles shuffles his papers. “The current Unit profile includes butchers, dentists, doctors, male nurses, taxidermists, veterinarians, even people who’ve worked in slaughterhouses. They figure somebody’s expanding his horizons in new and exciting ways-with help, of course.”

  Drewe wrinkles her mouth in distaste. “Does anyone think just one man might be responsible for the crimes?”

  “Yes, but that presupposes an individual of staggering abilities. He’d not only have to have medical skill and access to things like blood and semen, but also detailed knowledge of law enforcement methods, forensics, locks, security systems, not to mention psychology and computers. It’s hard to picture one man-particularly a serial killer-having that kind of ability.”

  “Why? Wasn’t Ted Bundy a really smart guy?”

  “Not really. I did a Nexis search on serial killers, and I learned a lot. Bundy looks clever compared to the mean of his group-serial killers-but put him on a scale with the general population and he was nothing special. We’re talking about a guy who dug up women he’d killed weeks before to have sex with their corpses. He got a lot of press because he looked halfway preppie and could convince women to trust him. The truth is, most serial killers are genetic debris.”

  “Not Brahma,” I say. “You’ve read some of his stuff, haven’t you? He’s erudite as hell. And he can exploit insecurity like no one I’ve ever seen.”

  Drewe looks at Miles. “You agree with that?”

  “Yes. But I don’t think he’s a doctor. His computer skill level’s too high for that. Some doctors know computers, but not at the level I’m seeing.”

  “So what do you think?” I ask. “You think he’s a hacker?”

  “No. I think he might be a Real Programmer.”

  This silences me.

  “What’s that?” asks Drewe.

  “What Miles used to be. At MIT. People the media call ‘hackers’ get to know operating systems like UNIX and DOS and VMS very well, their design quirks and flaws. But Real Programmers can build operating systems. They’re supercoders. They call it programming on bare metal. They’re the demigods of hackerdom.”

  “The problem with that theory,” Miles interrupts, “is that a Real Programmer killing people doesn’t make sense. We’re talking about a dogmatically nonviolent personality type. His entire life is lived between silicon, metal, and bits. Someone who’s read The Lord of the Rings sixteen times and who’d be glad to spend an evening trying to conjugate Elvish verbs with you.”

  “You’re generalizing,” I tell him. “If this is a sexual thing, it doesn’t matter what his career is. You should know that better than anybody. Brahma doesn’t have control over what’s driving him. He could be a priest, for God’s sake.”

  “I think he does have control,” Drewe says quietly. “Most of the time anyway.”

  I suddenly recall Lenz telling me the same thing.

  “Why?” asks Miles.

  “Because the murders have an ultimate object,” she says. “The pineal gland. And because the killer has expended great effort to conceal that fact.”

  “Keep going.”

  “The fact that the women were raped throws me. But drop that from the equation for a minute. The pineal gland is the primary object because the killer takes it away with him. I mean, if his goal were merely to rape dead women, he could kill just about anybody and do that.”

  “So…?”

  “So the killer is a doctor.”

  Miles looks disappointed. “Proof?”

  “Occam’s razor,” Drewe counters. “It’s the simplest answer, therefore the most likely. You’re resisting it because you’re biased against doctors.”

  “I am not.”

  Drewe laughs. “The killer broke into your computer system and you don’t know how. Therefore, you assume he must be a member of the secret fraternity of the world’s smartest people-those who do what you do. But you’re shortchanging doctors.”

  Miles’s face is red. “I think you’re wrong.”

  “Why else should the killer hide the fact that he’s taking pineal glands? Unless it could somehow lead to him? And who does the pineal lead to? You said there were no cults known for taking the pineal. And in the one victim where there was no major head wound, the gland was removed using a standard neurosurgical approach that, despite the fantasies of the FBI, would not be the likely one chosen by a butcher or dentist.”

  Drewe begins walking around the kitchen, seemingly propelled by the tide of her reasoning. “Look at the areas of expertise you mentioned. Postulate a brilliant surgeon and medicine
is taken care of. Law enforcement is a technical undertaking usually handled by men from… what? The fiftieth to eightieth percentile of intelligence?”

  Miles and I watch her with fascination. The logical ruthlessness of a smart woman can be chilling.

  “Who better than a doctor could plant false biological evidence at crime scenes? He could get blood, urine, semen, stool samples, hair. Locks and security systems are child’s play compared to microsurgery. Human psychology? Again, an experienced physician. That leaves-”

  “Computers,” Miles finishes.

  Drewe stops beside the stove. “Yes. Now please listen, Miles. If I were to drop all my personal prejudices, I’d have to admit that a person like you, a computer genius, could have been a brilliant surgeon had he chosen that path. And because I believe that, I must believe the reverse could be true.”

  He looks unconvinced. “I understand your reasoning, but you just don’t see that in real life.”

  “I’ll tell you why you don’t see computer experts becoming surgeons. Because it requires a minimum of nine, sometimes eleven years of postgraduate training. The learning curve on computers is much shorter. You can jump in and begin working almost immediately, because if you screw up, you’ve only killed a machine or a program, not a person.”

  Miles stares stubbornly at the table.

  “But once you’re really seduced by computers,” she continues, “it’s too late for medicine. You’re into hardware and software, not wetware.”

  Her accurate use of this computer term for the human brain, and by extension human beings, surprises us both.

  “But surgeon as computer expert?” she asks, moving across the floor again. “The stereotype of no spare time in medical school is false. People do get married, have hobbies. If we posit a medical student who had little or no social life but an obsession with computers, I can easily see him attaining the skill level you’re talking about. Especially if he has the aptitude. And a practicing surgeon would have whatever spare time he wanted, plus the money to pursue his obsessions.”

  Miles looks up in defeat.

  “The question,” Drewe concludes, “is what is he taking the pineal gland for? What does he do with it? What does the FBI think?”