Robert Walker - Grave Instinct

“ Is what there?” asked Stoffel, inching closer.

At first Jessica had trouble finding it, but then it came into focus. The circle atop the horizontal and perpendicular lines forming a cross of sorts, roughly scratched into the bone at the back of the skull. As Jessica stared at it, a realization hit her, and Lorena saw it.

“ What is it, Jessica?”

“ I just remembered something that might be important. Several weeks ago at Quantico we were shown slides of the first two victims, and I noticed some imperfection on the screen in the grainy blowups. At least, I thought it was the screen. Santiva was impressing the hideous nature of the crimes on his agents. The photos of the violence done to each of the first two victims were external, but looking back now…”“The marks were present?”

“ Perhaps when one or more of the shots was taken, maybe the flash revealed some indication of the mark. But I'll have to verify that.”

“ What is it?” asked Stoffel, staring over Jessica's shoulder. “Some cult ritual thing?”

“ It's a sign of some sort, a signature the killer leaves behind,” explained Combs. “The mark is absolute proof it's the same killer. Milt, this is strictly taboo. Nobody outside law enforcement can know. It could be the Holy Grail to solving the case.”

“ No one but the three of us knows at this point, Deputy Stoffel,” Jessica added, lying to him. “If it leaks out, it can't be used effectively when and if we ever get this monster into an interrogation room.”

“ Understood.”

“ I've got to call Quantico, have an associate take a closer look at the photos of the first victims. I may have been staring at this evidence and simply missed it kltogether in the photo array.”

“ You wouldn't have been looking for it at the time,” countered Combs. “No one who autopsied the bodies reported it; obviously, no one saw it.”

“ It must mean something to the killer, a kind of cryptic code of his intent or motive.” Jessica got on her cellular phone and contacted headquarters. Unable to get Eriq on the line, she opted for Jere Anderson, a young female assistant in the lab, who asked cheerily, “How're you, Dr. Coran? We miss you around here.”

“ Same here, Jere. Look, I need your help. I need you to review those slides Henrietta Wyans has of the two brain cases. The ones used at the briefing last month.”

“ Anything you need… anything I can do, sure,” Jere replied. “Shoot.” Jessica told Jere specifically what to look for in the slides and exactly where she must focus on the wounds to the victims.

She told the young assistant about her suspicion that the mark might have been on the previous victims, but that it had been missed during the autopsies.

“ Are you going to order exhumations on-”

“ No, no! The families have been through enough.” In her mind's ear she heard J.T.'s voice repeating what he'd said earlier in the day: We're not going to get a court order to disinter two bodies on a hunch, Jessica.

“ No, no digging up anybody, Jere,” she repeated, “but I do want a fine-tooth exam of the photo evidence-the blowup slides.”

“ Right… right, for corroboration that the mark was left inside the skulls of the other two.”

“ If you can't establish both, then one. I'm eighty percent certain I saw something on at least one of the slides.”

“ OK, Dr. Coran. I'm on it.”

“ Jere, it may be nothing, a wild goose chase but we have to-”

“ Doctor, I'll chase this one for you. No problem. We all want to see this creep go away, and if there's any slight chance I can help from this end, of course, I will.”

“ Thanks, Jere, and in case I miss you, report your findings to Chief Santiva as soon as possible.”

“ Understood.” After goodbyes, they broke contact.

Jessica then went to work gathering blood, tissue, fiber and hair samples.

Combs, watching Jessica work, asked, “I doubt seriously if anyone in the Savannah area has a laser-guided scalpel, Jessica.”

“ No… not necessary since we have the one bone fragment. We'll just make sure this one photographs clearly.” Combs was kneeling beside Winona's body now. Insect activity-ants in particular-had already become a problem, especially around the large wound to the head-the single most obvious sign that this was the work of the same killer who had so recently struck in Jacksonville.

“ Let me have another look at this thing,” said Stoffel, placing on a pair of glasses and kneeling in toward the body. After a moment, he asked, “What do you think this mark means, Dr. Coran? Looks awfully strange indeed.”

Jessica asked Stoffel for his pen and pad. The deputy obliged, and she quickly drew the sign of the etched cross.

“ Ain't that the Lutheran cross?” asked Stoffel.

“ Right now… we're unsure what it means, Deputy. It could be important to the killer or simply left behind to throw us off.”

Combs, still on one knee across the body from Jessica, asked, “How? How did he lure her in? How did he find her, and how did he target her?”

“ You could ask that of all his victims,” replied Jessica. “At the moment, we don't know. Nothing specifically links the victims. Other than their ages and the horrible nature of their deaths, they have little in common.”

“ Yeah, they all got their brains sucked out, and they all got this mark put on them,” replied a solemn Stoffel, stabbing the crude drawing of the cross on the pad.

Public library, Savannah, Georgia July 12, 2003

NURSE Susan Thorn aspired to be a doctor. She had been taking classes part time, and to maximize her time, she had taken to the Internet for help. In her anatomy class, she had arrived at the frightfully difficult chapter on the human brain, and she had to know everything she could about it before the exam. Signing on to the computer as Twisted-Nurse, she had been cruising for information for sometime now.

She'd seen some weird stuff on the Net, but there was one website in particular that spoke of the cosmic soul being housed in the brain. Some of the talk on the site had gotten into cannibalizing animal and human brains, which she chalked up to juveniles at play on the Web. While the site had at first promised to be useful, not long into it, she decided it must be for comic-book readers. She logged off and soon found something more professional, and from there Susan Thorn began taking notes from what she read: The medulla oblongata serves as the organ of communication between the spinal cord and the rest of the body. In the embryonic state, it is called the brain bag-the centers that govern such autonomic functions as breathing, heartbeat, regulation of blood vessels, body temperature and certain reflexes of swallowing.

This is more like it, Susan told herself. Still, something about the other site nagged, like a little cyber voice, calling her back. She held firm to her initial conviction, however, stayed with her study, and read on:

Projecting a little in front of the medulla is a wide band of nervous tissue forming a bridge over the two halves of the cerebellum called the pons Varolii. This along with the medulla forms the brain stem.

In the brain stem lies a network of nerves known as the reticular formation-millions of neurons in a matrix of fibers, from which long branches are sent out to every part of the body. Thus, it participates in every neural function; so it coordinates and filters information in the brain.

It is the center of arousal and wakefulness, regulating awareness. Anything that might put the reticular formation out of action would result in coma or death. Lying longitudinal along the brain stem is the raphe system, active during sleep. Anything destroying the raphe system results in chronic insomnia.