Robert Walker - Grave Instinct

Eyes still closed, wondering how many precious minutes she'd been asleep, it occurred to her that the call might be from Richard in China-in the real world. She bolted upright and lifted the receiver, saying into the phone, “Yes? Yes? Who is it?”

The phone kept ringing but no one was on the other end. She abruptly hung up, but the ringing continued. She finally realized it was her cell phone, tucked in her pocket. She tore it out and again asked, “Who is it?”

A woman's voice answered. “Never mind who it is. I have information regarding the Skull-digger.” The voice proved grating on Jessica's nerves, running the length of her spine like fingernails against a chalkboard.

“ Who is this?” she repeated. “How did you get this number?”

“ Shut up and listen.”

Jessica caught her breath and did as told.

“ I know who the Skull-digger is, and he will not stop until you people put him away again.”

“ Again?” Crank call, Jessica thought. She checked the time. Just after midnight. Must be a full moon. But how did the woman get her cell number?

“ I owe a debt, and I want to pay it in full,” said the strident voice on the other end. “I know it's him.”

“ You can file a formal complaint with your local law-enforcement-” “Shut up, you stupid bitch! His name is Daryl Cahil. He lives in Morristown, New Jersey, after being run out of Newark-nobody wants a ghoul in their town, and that's what Daryl is, a ghoul. He was put away as the New Jersey Ghoul by the local authorities but they're working with him now! They arranged for his release just this year!”

“ The Jersey Ghoul?”

“ The son of a bitch once tried to cut my head open for my brain, so I should know he's the one you're after.”

“ He threatened to cut out your brain? Is he your husband or your boyfriend?”

Jessica remained calm and skeptical, having heard this scenario many times now from confessors and accusers who'd come forth for official absolution of their sins-the usual crowd that only wanted to make something of themselves, even if it was a reputation for mass murder or for having shared a bed with one. Both accusers and confessors had shown up at Jacksonville PD, at the FDLE, at the Sheriff s Office, as well as at the doorstep of every law-enforcement agency in the southeast and across the nation. And now somehow one had gotten hold of her private number.

“ He used to do children, for God's sake!” shouted the woman. “I was at his trial, which they closed to the press and cameras out of respect for the grieving parents. I know he took their heads in order to eat their brains.”

“ He murdered children?”

“ Robbed them of their brains, I tell you. He dug up dead children out of their graves… for their brains.”

Jessica tried to picture the image, but it was too awful to contemplate. “Look, ma'am, the Skull-digger kills young women in their early twenties, and he hasn't robbed any graves so far as we know, so perhaps-”

The woman's cracking voice interrupted. “I once thought him innocent by reason of insanity, you know? Morbid obsession, you know? And that he was redeemed, cured, after all, when… when they released him.”

“ Who are they and from where did they release this man-what did you say his name was? And while we're at it, do you have a name and an address?”

“ Never mind me. My name's to be kept out of it. I'm of no consequence, and besides, I don't intend on becoming tomorrow's deadline… Get it, 'deadline' instead of 'headline'?”

Jessica imagined the caller would like nothing better than notoriety, that this alone prompted her call. She must have worked extremely hard and acted extremely well to have gotten Jessica's cell number. Still, Jessica decided it was best to placate the woman, get her off the phone, get back to sleep and change her number tomorrow.

“ All right, does he have a name and address where we can find him, ma'am?”

“ Daryl Thomas Cahil, 153 Orchard Row, Morristown, New Jersey. Now, what're you people going to do about it- him, I mean?”

Jessica gave the woman a final shot at her fifteen minutes of fame. “And what is your name and current address, ma'am?”

“ No way… he'll find me.”

Jessica took a deep breath, blinked sleepily and asked, “Do you have a place to go? To get away from him tonight?” She assumed it was a case of battered-woman syndrome.

“ I left him when he threatened me, and no sooner'n I left, he did it to somebody else! I read about the killings in Virginia and North Carolina, and then I saw the news coming out of Florida about that poor girl down there. I tell you, — it's Daryl's work.”

“ OK, all right… if you know this man's secrets… if you know he's the killer, what private message has he sent to us, Ms. Ahhh..?”

“ Private message?” She sounded utterly confused.

“ Can you tell me what it is and where it's located on the Florida victim's body?”

The caller, faced with this question, abruptly hung up, and Jessica said, “Just as I suspected.” She knew her phone had logged the caller's number, and a glance showed it to be a New Jersey exchange. She'd look into it further tomorrow, she told herself. While statistics and common sense told her it was just a nuisance call, a small portion of her mind asked “What if? The killer profile did have him living with a woman, maintaining a semblance of normalcy, while undergoing some recent traumatic event in his life. Still, with so many “sightings” of the Brain Thief across the southeast, why go looking for the killer in New Jersey? It was sometimes impossible to separate those tips worthy of attention and those merely hallucinatory, or separating outright fantasy and lies from legitimate leads.

Since the voice on the phone had not proven her case well, Jessica returned to her night's sleep. However, as she lay there, she wondered about the grave-robbing remarks, how this Cahil character had supposedly stolen brain matter from the graves of children. She thought it just ghoulish enough to be true as opposed to some macabre film or horror novel. Maybe it did bear some looking into…

Unable to sleep, the strange phone call reverberating in her head, despite her attempts to dislodge it, Jessica rang Chief Eriq Santiva at home. “What've we got in the way of interesting hits on VICAP, Chief? Anything we might like to investigate in connection with the brain takings?”

“ What time is it?” “Just past one A.M. Sorry to bother you so late, but I'm afraid this creep is only going to escalate his attacks.” She looked down at her rumpled clothing and realized she hadn't eaten since lunch. She'd been asleep for several hours when the strange call had disturbed her. “What do we have, Eriq?”

“ Nothing strong or I would've called you.”

“ Yeah, of course you would have. Sorry.”

“ Something bothering you, Jess? Aside from what you found on the inside of the Manning girl's head today?”

She described the unusual call, and he listened attentively. Eriq then said, “I do recall something about a guy on a yearlong grave-robbing spree. Nineteen eighty-nine to ninety, I believe. They called him 'the Ghoul' or 'the New Jersey Ghoul.' Caught digging up kids and making off with their heads.”

“ How many graves did he disturb?”

“ Four, I think… Yeah, four graves, four heads… never recovered… A fifth one, he was caught in a seven-year-old's desecrated grave. Sick sonofabitch was put away in an asylum as I recall. All handled by the Jersey authorities with local bureau help, but Quantico was never involved, either directly or indirectly.”

“ I suppose there's a logical reason as to why it didn't come up on the VICAP search?”

“ Nature of the search question, maybe. We were looking for brain thefts, brain consumptions, brain batterings, not decapitated kids. A lot depends on what the locals did with the information, and as I said, Jersey wasn't keen on our involvement at the time. Consequently, even the local bureau wasn't kept abreast, so maybe it never got to VICAP at all, and if it did… like I say, likely under beheadings or grave robberies.”