Robert Walker: Grave Instinct

She could hardly believe her thoughts. Mike Sorrento? Why? She recalled Max Strand's strange end, and how even Dr. Deitze had fallen into a fascination with Cahil, and she thought of the hundreds of thousands who logged on to Cahil's website.

She buzzed J.T., catching him still in his office.

“ Jess're you still here?”

“ That computer list of AOC subscribers to Cahil's online brain show…”

“ Yeah, what about it?”

“ Do you have it nearby?”

“ I've got a copy, yes. Prosecutors have the original.”

“ Log ons before and after Daryl's arrest?”

“ Yes. I have 'em, why?”

“ Pull it for me, will you?”

“ Jess, what's this about?”

“ I'm not sure just yet.”

Thorpe located and pulled the list, laying it pound for pound on his desk. He got back on the line. “What now?”

“ Look down the list to the S's.”

He rifled through to the S's. “You want to revisit Swan-tor?”

“ See if you have the name Sorrento listed.”

“ Sorrento? As in Michael Sorrento?”

“ Just do it, John.” In a moment, a breathless John Thorpe said, “No, Sorrento's not on the list.”

She felt a wave of relief wash over her. “Good… that's good.”

“ Of course, he could be using another subscriber other than AOC.”

“ Of course…”

“ Actually, all our field offices use PQ Uninet. If he were say investigating the case, researching, he might log in via Uninet.”

“ Who's got Cahil's computer now, our Cyber Squad?”

“ Watching it like hawks, yeah.”

“ OK, I'll talk to Dana in the morning about this.”

“ About what?”

“ Ahhh, it may be nothing… and unless I have more to go on, I think I'll keep it to myself, John.”

“ More than one agent in a field office logged on while we were monitoring, Jess, out of curiosity, you know. You know how the FBI grapevine works. We also had a few field agents warning us about this dangerous website from tips they'd received. Mike Sorrento may've been among them.”

“ Forget about it tonight, John, and thanks.”

The following day, Jessica pursued it with Dana Morill, and the computer expert left a written message in an envelope by the end of business day. It read:

Yes, Agent M. Sorrento, New Orleans Field Office, logged on August 12, seeking information. Was he researching the case? His inquiries look like a fishing expedition. They date back to just before we confiscated the computer. He never logged on again.

Perhaps he had been fascinated with the case and was researching it against the day that he could contribute to it, but it seemed odd that he had said nothing to her about logging on to the weird website.

When she again looked at the crime-scene files, she looked closely at the photos of Kenyon's body, and the close-ups of his cranial wounds inflicted by the gator. She called J.T. into her office and pushed one of the photos at him. “What do you see?”

He stared for a moment. “A dead man I recognize as Grant Kenyon with his head crushed.”

“ Look closely at the negative space, all darkness inside, like Kenyon's victims. There's no brain inside that head.”

“ As I recall, they said the gator got his brains.”

“ And what, sucked them out through the cracks?”

“ What're you suggesting, Jess?”

“ When I left Kenyon's body, all of it was intact. Some-one at that scene… before this picture was taken, before Dr. Alan Mays, M.E. for New Orleans, made his initial report… someone stole and possibly consumed the brain of the Skull-digger.”

“ This is a hell of an accusation, Jess. This have to do with your questions about Sorrento the other night?”

“ Maybe.”

“ But you can't prove it.”

She bit her lower lip. “I guess I can't. No one can verify it, other than the man who did it.”

“ Suppose Mrs. Swantor somehow got at the body.”

“ Sorrento said he'd guard against any animals getting at it. He volunteered.”

“ You know I trust your instincts, Jess, but this… It's pretty wild.”

“ I'll have to write up my suspicions. Someone's got to keep an eye on Agent Sorrento. And meantime… hope we don't hear of any more brain-snatching murders erupting someplace.” “As in New Orleans?”

Jessica sighed heavily, and in a moment the silence was shattered by the phone. “Yeah, this is Jessica Coran,” she said.

“ Dr. Coran, it's me, Mike Sorrento.”

“ Sorrento… how… how are you?”

“ You're not going to believe this.”

“ I don't know. Try me.”

“ We got something weird going down in my city.”

She took a deep breath. “Go on.”

“ Looks like some bastard's taking up where Kenyon left off. Victim was left without a brain.”

“ Dear God no.”

“ Thought you might like to join us down here on the manhunt. We certainly could use your brain power.”

“ My God… I–I thought we'd seen the last of such horror.”

“ Wish it were so.”

“ When did it occur?”

“ Last night, a college kid named Samantha Poole from Tulane. Head cut is different, but same kind of tool used, a bone cutter-”

The one never found-Kenyon's cutter, she guessed but did not say.

He continued, adding, “This guy just cuts around the entire head, back to front, Dr. Mays tells me. Lifts off the skullcap entirely and appears to eat out of the bowl of the head. Like I said, different but alike. Guess it shouldn't come as such a surprise, not to us, huh?”

She was stunned to hear him say this. He was either guileless or he had taken on Kenyon's sense of arrogant power. “Guess we shouldn't be surprised? What do you mean?” He repeated it. “We shouldn't be surprised, knowing that damned cyber video of Swantor's was beamed across the whole damn planet.”

“ Yeah, agreed… see what you mean now.”

“ Will you come and help us out on this one?”

“ Absolutely,” she said, thinking: Along with an arrest warrant for you! She needed to get her facts together, organize her thinking on this. She needed to inform Eriq of her suspicions, have a discreet background check done on Sorrento, and talk directly to Dr. Brunner and Dr. Mays. She'd get a blowup done of the photos, contact O'Hurley and Joe Konrath for their testimony, and she'd pull the record of Sorrento's visit to Cahil's site. It wasn't conclusive evidence, but when she went to New Orleans, it would be in the company of two U.S. marshals to calmly, quietly arrest the new Skull-digger.?