Robert Walker - Grave Instinct

“ But we've got nothing on him.” While Jessica felt some unnamable nagging sensation at the base of her skull creep down her spine, she knew they had nothing but gut instincts to go on. Not enough for a next step. “I just don't like the guy.”

At the end of the dock ramp, Jessica suggested, “Lorena, I think you should do a thorough background check on our Mr. Jervis Swantor.”

Back at the Duval County Sheriff s Office, Jessica spent time with the first officers on the Manning scene to get their first impressions of the condition of the body, but she also really wanted to know what they had thought of Mr. Swantor. Both officers thought him strange and overbearing that night. Officers Plummer and Bierdsley were leaving as Lorena Combs came into the temporary office given to Jessica. She had the background check in hand. “It's Dr. Jervis Swantor, retired GP.”

“ Doctor? That makes him even more likable.”

“ Maybe that explains why he thought he could help that night, assuming he thought the victim in need of medical attention.”

“ So, why didn't he tell Plummer or Bierdsley or any of the other officers that he was a doctor?”

“ I can't say. All we know for certain is that he was very interested in getting a good look at the dead girl, as if he wanted to know precisely how she died.”

“ What else did you find out?”

“ The check revealed a run-in with the law that involved a messy domestic dispute, sometime before his divorce. It got a little violent,” said Combs.

“ How so?”

“ He had roped her to a tree and was threatening her with a meat cleaver the size of Rhode Island when the police arrived.”

“ Where did this occur?”

“ Someplace called Grand Isle, Louisiana, where they lived at the time.”

“ And Swantor's also a doctor. Wonder why he was so modest about that,” asked Jessica, scanning Combs's report.

“ Well… he's not a surgeon. Aren't surgeons the big-headed ones?”

“ Heavily invested in computer and tech stocks, but his picks all went south right before his marriage did.”

Jessica called Santiva and, putting him on speakerphone with Lorena and herself, asked that he have Swantor's name run through the VICAP program. In a half hour, Santiva phoned with the news.

“ We ran his name and his record reflects the single domestic disturbance warrant, that's all. How good does this guy look to you for the Skull-digger?”

“ Only so-so. He's not a surgeon, and he doesn't drive a van. Though we've only assumed that since our shaky near-victim eyewitness in Fayetteville put him in a van, and then we outfitted that van with restraints and tools as his killing ground, based on the autopsy findings. Suppose the killer drove a rental van to his boat, and the boat was the site of restraints and the killing ground?”

“ But said you had a thorough look all over his yacht, and he you the grand tour without your having to ask.”

“ Suppose he reserves another boat for his butchery?”

“ Sounds like you're reaching, Jess.”

Jessica exchanged a look with Lorena. “It occurred to me, yes, but-”

Eriq cut her off. “You said the guy is or was a general practitioner. Would he know how to make those cuts we've called-what was it-precise, professional, surgical? Although, I suppose, he could learn to cut a hole like that from one of those god-awful pathology books of yours, couldn't he?”

“ I suppose his good intentions act might actually be genuinely motivated out of a concern about the Mannings and the girl. He even talked about getting a fund started in the girl's name.

“ Could be he's one of those rare individuals we seldom see, Jess, a good, caring, wanna-be-helpful, OK person? So rare, we forget that we've ever seen one.”

“ Maybe you're right.”

Lorena piped in, “It's just that both Jessica and I got the same vibes off him. Maybe he's not the Skull-digger, but he's got something strange about him. I've put a watch on him.” “Maybe he is just a pompous ass… makes himself feel better by setting himself up as a spokesperson for the rest of the community on the wharf,” said Jessica.

Lorena added, “He claimed he was representing them someway, but the neighbors are pretty much in agreement they didn't gram him any such authority, and most see him as a self-important mini-potentate out there at the wharf, and he's only been docked there for a week!”

Jessica said, “If he's been plying the coast prior to tying up at Jacksonville… Well, it just points out that if he isn't the killer, then maybe he is in someway trawling for victims as an accomplice.”

“ Don't tell me, the ex-wife is the killer,” Santiva's tone gave the remark a less than serious tweek. “And he's going to blow both their covers out of a curiosity over something he already knows has happened?”

“ All right… We're just saying that he may bear watching,” suggested Combs.

“ What about this Daryl Cahil character, Eriq? Anything you find useful there?”

“ Are you kidding? He's a gold mine, Jessica. He could well be our man.”

“ Based on?”

“ Based on timing.”

“ Timing?”

“ The creep was released a few months ago, after almost twelve years in the detention center. These brain theft crimes began after his release, and Richmond's not that far from Morristown.”

“ Released from where?” she asked while Combs's tall body leaned in an effort to hear more about this possible break in the case.

“ From the Federal Penitentiary for the Criminally Insane in Pennsylvania. I think you know the facility,” Eriq replied. Jessica indeed knew the Pennsylvania facility well. She had placed some of its most notorious inmates there. She had also interviewed more than 160 lunatic killers at the facility in an effort to learn how a sociopath became a sociopathic killer, and what their thinking was like, and how they lured victims, and in some cases where bodies that had been missing for years might be found. But she recalled nothing about Cahil. Perhaps due to his not having actually murdered anyone.

“ You're telling us this guy's resumed his previous behavior after being released?” asked Combs. “What a surprise. Released after twelve years?” she asked. “What happened? Overturned on appeal? Some technicality of arrest or seizure? What? And who is this guy, and why's his record got you so excited?”

“ Slow down, Sheriff Combs,” replied Eriq. “The guy's been on psychoactive drugs for twelve years, and he was a model prisoner, got religion, all of it, the whole nine-”

“ I get the picture, but-”

“ Been in the facility since late 1990. He was the head shrinks model project; that's why you never heard of him. He was a test case for a theory of rehabilitation that Dr. Jack Deitze was championing, and he didn't believe that FBI access and studies about sociopaths fit Daryl Cahil's particular aberration, because he hadn't actually murdered anyone. Remember, he fed off dead people he dug up.”

“ Then he was at the facility while I was doing my study, and now

… only a few months before the Skull-digger shows up in Richmond, Dr. Deitze proclaims Daryl cured and releases him? Coupled with the call naming him-”

Jessica had told Combs about the call, but she'd characterized it before as a crank call.

Eriq said, “Maybe 'cured' isn't exactly the right word.” You mean, it's most likely that his cure and release all had to do with the success of Dr. Deitze's study, I presume.”

Combs added, “Must be an impressive particularized case study-cured of grave robbing tendencies.”

Jessica shook her head. “No… cured of feeding on the brains of dead children.”

Combs, hearing this, winced and swallowed hard. This was the first time she'd heard of Cahil's crimes.