as he asked them to call him, went immediately to work, as the other two suited-up doctors looked on. Ira had obviously handled the laser before. In a matter of minutes, with no noise whatsoever, no markers or scalpels, he had removed the silver dollar-shaped bone fragment with the design etched in it. The laser mechanism had a long needlelike arm with a catch basin at its tip, which Ira had positioned to catch the thick chip of bone, and the procedure was complete. It had taken only two and a quarter minutes. It would take J.T. an hour to reconstruct the inner wall.
“ An excellent job… perfectly done. My compliments, Dr. Ira,” said Jessica.
“ It's hardly my accomplishment. Our thanks to science, Dr. Coran. With the explosion in medical technology, I imagine a time when someone will invent a mechanism that will record and play back our dreams!”
“ I've never heard of that one, Doctor,” replied Jessica, “but you're probably right.”
“ They'll turn the human mind into a DVD player.” He laughed lightly at his own words. “Of course, we won't be around to see the day… but perhaps that's as it should be…”
Jessica looked overhead. In the viewing gallery, she saw Combs and Cutter. The two appeared all right with the compromise that Dr. Ira had worked out by using the laser.
Later in the day, with the bone chip secured in a polyethylene bag, Jessica had arranged for print copies of the sign left by the killer to be made and distributed. The information was also sent to Quantico for dissemination there. The unusual symbol and its placement might lead to something tangible.
She still had to await toxicology and serology reports, but she imagined they would find the same as in the earlier cases-high levels of Demoral, nothing more.
How many people in the state were using Demoral as a sleep aid, she wondered. The killer used it to induce compliance until his victim's own shock mechanisms kicked in. Shock as a merciful savior come to rescue her with the first screaming touch of the bone saw, and the smell of her own skull being cut as she lay helplessly strapped down, her head, hands and legs in restraints.
Jessica must get her thoughts off the awful details of the case for a time, to ease her mind and rest her brain. Easier said than done at nightfall in the Ocean View Inn, she quietly determined. Still, she willed the case away and continued willing it away, searching the eternal blue-green sea in her mind's eye for peace and comfort from where she stood on the fourteenth floor balcony.
When the phone rang, she came in from the pleasingly warm, salt-filled ocean breeze, lifted the phone and brought it onto the bed with her, but she couldn't bring herself to lift the receiver. Instead, she closed her eyes and allowed it to ring on while her thoughts continued where she and Richard languidly existed among stars lying amid the depths of the ocean in a dream world, until consciousness suddenly told her that a telephone wasn't part of her dream state. The phone remained insistent, floating just above her lap in the ocean water, and just out of Richard's reach. It continued to ring, and still her eyes remained closed, yet she saw all the coral colors of the sea and the beautiful creatures of the deep.
Eyes still closed, wondering how many precious minutes she'd been asleep, it occurred to her that the call might be from Richard in China-in the real world. She bolted upright and lifted the receiver, saying into the phone, “Yes? Yes? Who is it?”
The phone kept ringing but no one was on the other end. She abruptly hung up, but the ringing continued. She finally realized it was her cell phone, tucked in her pocket. She tore it out and again asked, “Who is it?”
A woman's voice answered. “Never mind who it is. I have information regarding the Skull-digger.” The voice proved grating on Jessica's nerves, running the length of her spine like fingernails against a chalkboard.
“ Who is this?” she repeated. “How did you get this number?”
“ Shut up and listen.”
Jessica caught her breath and did as told.
“ I know who the Skull-digger is, and he will not stop until you people put him away again.”
“ Again?” Crank call, Jessica thought. She checked the time. Just after midnight. Must be a full moon. But how did the woman get her cell number?
“ I owe a debt, and I want to pay it in full,” said the strident voice on the other end. “I know it's him.”
“ You can file a formal complaint with your local law-enforcement-” “Shut up, you stupid bitch! His name is Daryl Cahil. He lives in Morristown, New Jersey, after being run out of Newark-nobody wants a ghoul in their town, and that's what Daryl is, a ghoul. He was put away as the New Jersey Ghoul by the local authorities but they're working with him now! They arranged for his release just this year!”
“ The Jersey Ghoul?”
“ The son of a bitch once tried to cut my head open for my brain, so I should know he's the one you're after.”
“ He threatened to cut out your brain? Is he your husband or your boyfriend?”
Jessica remained calm and skeptical, having heard this scenario many times now from confessors and accusers who'd come forth for official absolution of their sins-the usual crowd that only wanted to make something of themselves, even if it was a reputation for mass murder or for having shared a bed with one. Both accusers and confessors had shown up at Jacksonville PD, at the FDLE, at the Sheriff s Office, as well as at the doorstep of every law-enforcement agency in the southeast and across the nation. And now somehow one had gotten hold of her private number.
“ He used to do children, for God's sake!” shouted the woman. “I was at his trial, which they closed to the press and cameras out of respect for the grieving parents. I know he took their heads in order to eat their brains.”
“ He murdered children?”
“ Robbed them of their brains, I tell you. He dug up dead children out of their graves… for their brains.”
Jessica tried to picture the image, but it was too awful to contemplate. “Look, ma'am, the Skull-digger kills young women in their early twenties, and he hasn't robbed any graves so far as we know, so perhaps-”
The woman's cracking voice interrupted. “I once thought him innocent by reason of insanity, you know? Morbid obsession, you know? And that he was redeemed, cured, after all, when… when they released him.”
“ Who are they and from where did they release this man-what did you say his name was? And while we're at it, do you have a name and an address?”
“ Never mind me. My name's to be kept out of it. I'm of no consequence, and besides, I don't intend on becoming tomorrow's deadline… Get it, 'deadline' instead of 'headline'?”
Jessica imagined the caller would like nothing better than notoriety, that this alone prompted her call. She must have worked extremely hard and acted extremely well to have gotten Jessica's cell number. Still, Jessica decided it was best to placate the woman, get her off the phone, get back to sleep and change her number tomorrow.
“ All right, does he have a name and address where we can find him, ma'am?”
“ Daryl Thomas Cahil, 153 Orchard Row, Morristown, New Jersey. Now, what're you people going to do about it- him, I mean?”
Jessica gave the woman a final shot at her fifteen minutes of fame. “And what is your name and current address, ma'am?”
“ No way… he'll find me.”
Jessica took a deep breath, blinked sleepily and asked, “Do you have a place to go? To get away from him tonight?” She assumed it was a case of battered-woman syndrome.
“ I left him when he threatened me, and no sooner'n I left, he did it to somebody else! I read about the killings in Virginia and North Carolina, and then I saw the news coming out of Florida about that poor girl down there. I tell you, — it's Daryl's work.”
“ OK, all right… if you know this man's secrets… if you know he's the killer, what private message has he sent to us, Ms. Ahhh..?”
“ Private message?” She sounded utterly confused.
“ Can you tell me what it is and where it's located on the Florida victim's body?”
The caller, faced with this question, abruptly hung up, and Jessica said, “Just as I suspected.” She knew her phone had logged the caller's number, and a glance showed it to be a New Jersey exchange. She'd look into it further tomorrow, she told herself. While statistics and common sense told her it was just a nuisance call, a small portion of her mind asked “What if? The killer profile did have him living with a woman, maintaining a semblance of normalcy, while undergoing some recent traumatic event in his life. Still, with so many “sightings” of the Brain Thief
