Robert Walker - Grave Instinct

They arrived on the necessary floor, and Sorrento escorted her to where the two dead policemen lay under scrutiny while doctors performed simultaneous autopsies. During the autopsies, Jessica stepped into the room where doctors worked over Labruto. They had taken blowup shots of the tire treads imprinted across his uniform. Jessica held up a large file she'd taken from a briefcase, while a white-templed, heavyset man in his late fifties, Dr. Alan Mays, objected.

“ You can't burst into an autopsy, young lady, without proper clothing, gloves, mask! Do you have any idea how many bacteriologic hazards can be floating around in here?”

Sorrento stepped in, saying, “She ought to know, Doc. She's the M.E. from D.C.”

“ Quantico, Virginia, actually. FBI… Dr. Jessica Coran.”

The man stepped back and examined her, nodding. “Still, you should know better.”

“ I wanted to catch you before you disappeared. I urge you to compare the tire marks left at the kill scene in Georgia with the tire marks left on Labruto's body.”

“ Of course, that can be done, but it will take time.”

“ What time? Just compare the photos.”

“ We don't have a tire expert on staff. Lost him months ago. We'd have to call someone in from outside.” Jessica replied, “I'm just looking for an eyeball confirmation at the moment, something I can do on my own. The experts can verify it later. For that, it's just a matter of putting them side by side below a magnifying glass. I've done it many times.”

“ You're a tire tread analyst?”

“ I've worked closely with the best. Look, we just want to know if it's even close, if we are on the trail of the same man here. There's a possibility we have a second killer mimicking the Digger.”

“ I see.”

“ When we get the van itself out of the Mississippi, then we'll have a three-way comparison. At that point, we can turn it all over to the experts.”

“ All right.” Dr. Mays relented, turned to his assistant with the camera and instructed him to go with Dr. Coran and “appease” her.

The young male assistant gave her a half smile and said, “Come with me then, Dr. Coran.”

Dr. Mays's assistant took Jessica and the camera down a long corridor. “I'll rush developing, and we'll see if this will help,” the eager-to-please assistant said.

A half hour later they placed the tire treads side by side beneath a high-powered microscope. While Labruto's marks were far smaller and less defined, curving away with the contour of his body, Jessica found significant markers to indicate the tread writing was from the same tires. “Now a real expert can go to work identifying the tires to manufacturer and lot number and serial number.”

After this, she and Sorrento drove past the Federal Bureau of Investigation offices in New Orleans. The NOPD and local bureau offices were in close proximity, and everyone in the city who wore a badge of any sort seemed bound together by this manhunt. By now everyone had learned that a tugboat crew pushing a huge barge had reported seeing a van trapped in the river. She had brought a laptop computer with her, wishing to remain in direct contact with J.T. for any further developments at Quantico, but also wishing to have the capability of logging on to Cahil's website for any new digital film of her prey.

The unmarked FBI car now bounced along on a back road of dirt and sand that followed the contours of the Mississippi-a winding, twisting path that was at once treacherous and beautiful and strangely fog-laden under a dull gray sky. It was ten in the morning. She imagined how dangerous it must be along the narrow road at night. The rains of the night before had pitted the dirt road, and each turn of the tires threw up mud as they neared the site of the van crash.

“ Harbormaster at the marina where Swantor may have been says a guy named Swift, booked through the week and disappeared overnight without leaving a manifest,” said Sorrento. “He may be your Dr. Swantor.”

“ Wait a minute. You've already been to this marina?”

“ Like I said, it was down from where the van was found. And you mentioned Swantor to us, and that he might have a marina address, remember?”

“ Yeah, right. Look, the boat didn't happen to be named Lands End, did it?”

“ You got it.”

Jessica again recalled how the computer video of Grant Kenyon had bounced, as if on a boat sitting atop choppy water. “It's time I told you something, Michael.”

“ I knew there was something you're holding back. What is it?”

She informed him of the computer images sent to Cahil's site back at Quantico. “It's why I've brought my laptop, in case he contacts us again.”

“ We've got the Coast Guard looking for his call numbers, and they've tried to hail him on the maritime frequencies, but no response. Here I was thinking that Kenyon clubbed the guy, buried him with the van, and took his boat.”

“ He's either harboring Kenyon, or he's holding him hostage for reasons only he knows. Either way, Kenyon has been drugged.”

They sped along the river road, sirens wailing.

“ Interesting… brain-eater meets wanna-be. They have a falling out, and it looks like Swantor has the upper hand, but where is Selese Montoya?” Sorrento wondered aloud.

“ She's likely going to be found, that is most of her, in the van.”

“ Guess we'll all know more when we dredge up that green monster from the muck.”

They drove on and Sorrento asked, “Have you ever visited New Orleans for fun? Not the job?”

“ A convention once, two murder cases now. No, I guess not.”

“ You don't remember me, do you?” asked Sorrento.

“ No… I mean, maybe. You do look somewhat familiar,” she lied.

“ You don't have to spare my feelings, Dr. Coran.”

“ I just mean that I speak at countless bureau functions and teaching situations involving hundreds if not thousands of would-be law-enforcement people in and out of the bureau each year. Maybe we met briefly at-”

“ I met you your last visit to the city, Dr. Coran.” He swerved the car and for a second, she thought he meant to kill them both. “Sorry… a turtle in the road.”

“ You're taking me back a few years, when I cornered and killed Mad Matthew Matisak here.”

He lifted an index finger and replied, “And helped end the career of the Queen of Hearts killer as well! Don't sell yourself short. I was on the Hearts case but then so was every eager young agent in the bureau,” he reminded her. “Just relocated from Iowa at the time. So I was pretty far down the totem pole, certainly not in the spotlight like you. Not sure I ever want to be.”

“ You're in it now with this case,” she countered.

A voice came over his radio, hailing him. He lifted the microphone and said, “This is Sorrento. Go, Dispatch.”

“ Patching Lieutenant Besant through, sir.”

“ Nick Besant's the NOPD officer in charge out at the scene,” he told Jessica. “We have a presence there, too.”

Besant's voice buzzed from the radio. “Work crew's finally got a secure hold on the van, and it's being hauled up from the river. We're pretty sure it's Kenyon's. Dark green Chrysler, maybe a '97. Has a stolen plate on it that doesn't match the one Labruto and Doyle called in, but we suspect he changed it out.”

“ Seconds away, Nick. I have a forensics expert with me from D.C., Dr. Coran. She's been on the case since the get-go”

“ The crew has the van's nose over the water now. Don't worry. We have Dr. Brunner and his team on hand. They'll do a thorough job, but you'll also have time with the van and its contents.”

Sorrento grit his teeth, but he calmly said, “Thanks for the cooperation, Nick.”

“ Don't mention it, Mike.”