Robert Walker - Grave Instinct

“ Something like that, yes.”

“ That's good enough for me,” said Owens.

Strand bit his lower lip, gave it another thought and added, “Makes sense.”

Jessica was glad for J.T.'s comparison as well. She could also now draw a bead on it and put the thing in proportion, she hoped. It was a theory at the opposite pole from that put forth by Daryl Cahil and Dr. Rheil himself. For them, the small organic cross of tissue was hardly dormant; for them, this thing comprised a palace for the soul. Jessica momentarily wondered at the depth to which Jack Deitze could have fallen under the spell of such a theory.

“ Have we got enough now to get out of this goddamn hole?” asked Owens, anxious to get out of Cahil's world.

“ I'm taking possession of this thing,” said Jessica, preparing a formaldyhyde-filled vial and dropping the brain tissue into the vial. “But the man's computer's not going to fit in here,” she indicated her valise. “We'll want any disks, any and all books with titles on the brain, especially any with markers in them. They'll be boxed and sent to Quantico. Can you-”

“ I'll get some help down here,” said Owens, anxious to make amends.

“ If it's no bother. We could use some agents handy with lightbulbs.”

Owens frowned at this. “I'll arrange for help.”

“ Strand,” she said to Max, “you may want to canvass the backyard for any recently turned earth. We may still have a missing woman on our hands, and if this Rheil item doesn't match one of the victims we have, it could belong to Cahil's girlfriend. I noticed women's clothing in one of the closets.”

“ At his trial, I tell you, he spoke in a personality that was a woman. He's quite convincing because he's that rare case-a real schizophrenic. All the same, I'll take charge of a search out back. I need some air anyway.”

Jessica, too, was ready to vacate the morbid sea of squalor and misdirected thought. But first she asked Strand, “Are these clay brains all you found in the basement?” She pointed to the three models of the brain, one cracked and broken, shards of it everywhere, the other two intact, one natural gray, the other painted half chartreuse, half psychedelic orange. Strand demonstrated how the two parts of the brain were detached to reveal the pocket of space inside for the cache of noodles. “There's maybe forty-five or fifty of these things downstairs, with boxes, labels and packing material, but no freezers and nothing smacking of a new false wall or new concrete floor. I got no odor of decay or death, but we might want to get some dogs down there.”

“ Some hobby to pass the time with, huh?” said J.T., examining the wildly painted brain.

“ More like a fixation,” said Max.

“ Yes, a fixation,” Jessica agreed.

“ One of the shrinks at Cahil's trial said he had never seen such an advanced case of hyper… hypro…”

“ 'Hyperprosexia,' I think they call it,” Jessica suggested.

Max nodded. “That's it.” He went carefully toward the exit in search of air. Jessica followed in his wake. Just outside, Max lit up a cigarette and added, “Said even if Cahil could not be proved insane by reason of multiple-personality disorder, that he could easily be proved to have this hyperprosexia thing.”

They looked to the sky for signs of stars, the moon, anything for some respite from this place. “As I remember it from the trial,” Strand continued, “it had something to do with the sheer depth of his obsession with the brain. Course, at the time, I thought it all hogwash. But now… seeing that piece of brain tissue in there.. this Rheil thing…”

“ Hyperprosexia is a term for rigid, undeviating attention of a pathological intensity. It's considered a psychotic condition in which the mind takes hold of an idea with unshakable fixity. It certainly fits the Skull-digger's profile.”

J.T. had followed them out, listening to their conversation. He added, “In layman's terms, it's a morbidly adhered to fixation, like monomania-idk fixe the French call it.”

“ Like I told them in '90,” said Strand, inhaling deeply from his cigarette. “If they ever let this guy out again, he'll go right back to what he did before. Looks like he's cooked it a little differently, but he's still after the same thing. He's only recently displayed the picture of it, I can tell you, or I'd have been on his ass in a flash.”

“ Which of his recent victims-murdered this time around-do you suppose this brain item came from?” asked J.T. “The girl in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia or Florida?”

“ Hopefully it's his last,” said Jessica falling silent, thinking about the second near-abduction incident in New Bern, North Carolina, and trying to square it with the newly discovered evidence against Daryl Cahil. She thought of the female voice on the phone the night she had first heard of Cahil, the voice that had so pleaded for Jessica to take an interest in Daryl as the Digger. Had the first call actually been from Cahil himself while under the control of another personality? Could he be working with an accomplice? Or were both of the failed abductions the work of another man who had no bearing on their case?

Owens had gone out to his car to call for a team of evidence techs to get to the address. He returned now to the rear stairs where the others stood talking.

Jessica told Owens, “Dr. Thorpe will have the honor of overseeing the evidence collection from here on. Right, John?”

J.T. nodded his assent. “I know you need to get to Quan-tico, and picking through this mess… well, it'll take some time. I'll see to it that Cahil's computer will follow you. We're going to need some real experts to delve into the man's website, to determine just how nuts he and his cyberspace connections are. We'll bring in someone from the Cyber Squad and get a fix on anyone out there who has taken Cahil too seriously.” “What for?” asked Strand. “You can't charge them with anything. Hell, he's selling those brains through eBay and Amazon, along with his damned Rheil noodles.”

“ Agreed, but we may just want to put any of his more serious followers on a watch list,” replied J.T.

“ And remember, no one has yet proven that this creep Cahil is in fact the Digger,” added Jessica. “If we learn there's still a killer at large, even though Cahil is in custody, then we may have someplace to start over. That's supposing Cahil has become master to some disciple out there.”

J.T. contemplated the complexities of getting at Cahil's Web list. “We've got a lot of decisions to make. Do we go back six months, a year, two, three? It's all for nothing if we can't force the Internet server to give up the profiles of the people who've logged on. And we're bucking the ACLU here, known for fighting any infringement on Internet users, Jess.”

“ I thought servers didn't want profane garbage on the Net,” said Owens, “that they monitored everything.”

“ Not Cahil's server. They've built a reputation as the bad boys of the Net. Anything goes. That way, they get subscribers,” replied J.T.

“ We'll need a fire-and-brimstone federal judge to get a warrant to open the thing up then,” said Jessica. “I'm sure it won't be a problem for the FBI.”

“ The creep has been influencing a potential audience of billions,” said J.T. “That's got to stop.”

“ Still, good luck getting the Net server to release the information. It won't be easy. I've tried it myself,” said Strand. “It'll take an act of God, Dr. Coran, not the FBI.”

“ Maybe if we can narrow it to people who keep coming back to the well, not to mention we'd like to know if any of the Digger's victims are among the subscribers to Cahil's site, then-” “It's a catch-22, I tell you. Without that list, no court will give you a warrant, but you can't get that list without a damned warrant,” Strand assured her. “Trust me. I've worn myself out pleading for it.”