Robert Walker - Grave Instinct

“ Not in the least. Just doing my job.”

Pennsylvania Federal Penitentiary for the Criminally Insane, outskirts of Philadelphia 4:15 P.M., July 13, 2003

Eric had failed to show up, leaving Jessica on her own to deal with Dr. Johnathan “Jack” Deitze. Furious, she had telephoned Santiva only to learn that he'd gone to Atlantic City, New Jersey, on a lead in the Skull-digger case. She pictured his search there motivated out of a sense of desperation. He must have a great deal of pressure on his back at the moment to stand her up and leave her alone with Deitze. She told Henrietta in no uncertain terms that her boss was to get in touch with her as soon as possible. Henrietta conveyed the last of Eriq's message to Jessica: “You are to meet a Detective Maxwell Strand at the penitentiary. The two of you can interview Dr. Deitze.”

“ Strand? I don't know any Strand.”

“ He'll be looking for you.”

The facility was a gleaming new and sleek structure back in the '70s when it'd been built, but its age was beginning to show in small ways, from poor windows to cracks in the tiled floors leading through the massive lobby where a pair of security guards walked her through a tired metal detector. A man in a suit watched her give up her two guns and come through the detector with unusual interest, and he asked, “Dr. Coran? Dr. Jessica Coran?”

“ Yes.”

The tall, stout man with thin gray hair looked too old to be a working police detective. “I'm Strand.”

“ Are you with the Philly police?”

“ No… Retiring Morristown PD in a couple of months. I worked the Cahil case with my partner. We apprehended Cahil in the act.”

“ What more can you tell me about our target?”

“ Nobody knows more about him than I do, but Deitze will tell you he does.”

She sensed there was no love lost between the cop and the shrink. “So, fill me in.”

“ Full name is Daryl Thomas Cahil, aka the Ghoul, age thirty-six. Apprehended in Morristown after things became too hot in Newark for him. Caught red-handed in the disinterred grave of a child named Amiee Lee Pheiffer by my partner, Reed, and me. Cahil was only twenty-three at the time.”

“ How much does he weigh?”

“ Kinda slight from his photo, which I've sent copies of to your boss, who's likely forwarded it on to every law-enforcement agency in the southeast by now. Weighs maybe 155 maybe 160.”

“ Did you send a picture of him at twenty-three years of age?”

“ No, I've kept him under surveillance since his release, up until a few weeks ago. I had a bout with some trouble that put me in the hospital. But the photo's current.” He slid a photo from a file he carried. Jessica looked at the sunken-faced, small man in the picture. He didn't look large enough for the image she'd had of the Skull-digger. His weight, he's got to weigh more, she was thinking of the prints found in Georgia.

“ Height?”

“ Five-ten.”

She told him of the shoe print find at the latest murder scene. “It's from a guy who's at least 175 to 180, possibly one hundred and ninety pounds, Detective Strand.”

“ Prints at a crime scene can be unreliable.”

“ The officer in charge was very thorough and professional. And Cahil can't have changed his foot size or his height, so… Then there's the thing about how leopards don't change their spots.”

“ You mean a ghoul can't graduate to live prey?”

“ He dealt in dead bodies, not live ones, right? Like his height and weight, his MO and his fantasy aren't likely to change.”

“ Unless it has developed into something else. Hell, he had nearly thirteen years to tweek it.”

“ Our current ghoul makes dead bodies; he doesn't dig them up. Other than the brain theft, there's not a lot of similarities here between what Cahil was convicted for, and what the Skull-digger has done.”

“ But that's just it. Cahil lost more than twelve years. He's now making up for lost time. He could well be the Skull-digger, still in search of this 'island' thing, this 'real thing.' “

She had no idea what he meant, but she asked, “Then why isn't he in custody, Detective?”

“ He will be as soon as we can locate him. Place is under surveillance at the moment and an order for his arrest has been issued. I took the liberty and asked your field operatives in Jersey to haul him in on suspicion, just to see if he was there, but he's not, which tells me he's elsewhere.”

“ Where is 'elsewhere'?” “Possibly in Atlantic City, as your mysterious phone calls suggest.”

“ Santiva told you about the calls?”

He nodded.

She knew the way to Deitze's office; it had been Gabe Arnold's before Matisak had hooked him up to a dialysis machine in the infirmary and drained him of every ounce of blood. Jessica hadn't returned here in almost nine years, and she'd forgotten about the constant wail of madmen behind these walls. Fortunately, she needn't go through lockup for her purposes today. Her groundbreaking study on socio-paths, done here back in the early '90s, had become required reading at the FBI Academy.

Strand struggled to keep pace, a bad leg plaguing him. She slowed in response.

“ Can you verify that he's actually been out of town, and if so do his vacations coincide with the killings?”

“ Neighbors verify that he's been out of town, but no one can say where or for how long. He's a recluse, and he timed his disappearance to coincide with my operation and hospital stay.”

“ Was he living with anyone in Morristown?”

“ I've seen a woman come and go, but it's him… one of his personality manifestations.”

“ He's schizophrenic?”

“ Multiple personalities. So, in a sense, yes. A woman resides there with him. I suspect the first call you got, the female caller, was this manifestation. So, you can stop worrying about her safety.”

“ He has no wife? No girlfriend who lives elsewhere, maybe out of town, maybe down the street or in Atlantic City?”

“ None. He has no interest in anything smacking of normal, Dr. Coran.”

Jessica imagined the pressure Eriq must have been under from both above and from this man to place someone- anyone-in custody for the Skull-digger's heinous crimes. “I want to believe this is the guy as much as you do, Detective-that we're closing in on the bastard, but I have to be careful.”

“ Are you preaching the book to me?” he asked and then laughed.

“ I'm sorry. I've been down a lot of dead ends recently.”

“ I'm sure you have.”

One of the guards at the greeting desk must have called up to Deitze's office because he stood outside the door, waving her forward while telling Detective Strand that he would speak only to Dr. Coran.

The two men glared so hard at one another that Jessica feared each would be turned to stone. Obviously, they had some bad history between them. “I'll speak to Dr. Coran alone or not at all, Strand,” declared Deitze.

Strand whispered in her ear, “Watch him. He's a liar.”

Jessica had met Deitze at various law-enforcement functions, but they had never spent any time together, and what little she knew of him, she didn't care for. He was an overbearing, self-aggrandizing sort who, she believed, would sell his mother for a chance to be published in a major medical journal.

The first thing he extended to her was his published paper on Cahil's treatment, and secondly, his sweaty hand. “The paper is on Cahil, although I used a fictitious name. If you will, Dr. Coran, read it thoroughly, you will find Cahil harmless and incapable of the skullduggery and butchery of this so-called Brain Thief who takes human life. If Cahil is involved at all, it is only peripherally and not of his own choosing.”

“ What do you mean by that?” she asked.