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.
“ Let's retire to my office. I have coffee. This will take time.” As she entered his office, she apologized for Santiva's absence. He replied, “Hardly a problem… much better for medical people to understand one another before we go off to others with our theories, wouldn't you say?”
She wondered if what he said was meant as a slap of sorts. She wondered how much Santiva had told him about her suspicions of Cahil. “I suppose so, yes.”
“ Can I pour you coffee?”
“ Black, please.”
He poured for them both. “Take the time to read the report.”
She did so, asking questions as she went. “Cahil admitted to why he robbed the graves of five children? Says here it had nothing to do with the tabloid speculations about necrophilia.”
“ Cahil was not sexually motivated whatsoever to attack his dead victims, no. He wasn't in it to create sex objects of his victims, no. All balderdash.”
“ I was within these walls on several occasions while he was incarcerated, doing my own study, as you recall, Dr. Deitze, just before you took over as Chief of Psychiatry here. Neither Dr. Arnold nor you thought him of interest to my study, yet he harbored these antisocial behaviors? Why was he kept from me?”
“ Hardly kept from you. He was kept in isolation.”
“ And you two worked with him.”
“ Yes, before Arnold's unfortunate end… yes.”
“ I see.”
“ Cahil was never a candidate for your study because he had not actually murdered anyone.”
“ Necrophilia was the sensationalized story, yes. Page one of the tabloids. So, what's the real story?”
“ He cut off the heads in order to take them to a safe place where he could do what he wanted with them. To take his time.” “The safe place being his basement at home?”
“ With a stopover at his place of work, a butcher's shop, where-”
“ Where he could damn well take his time with the victim's head, I'm sure.”
“ Yes… but it was in order to take his time with his true intended prize, the brains of the dead children, Dr. Coran.”
“ Ghoulish, all right… and what did he do with the gray stuff? Breakfast, lunch and dinner?”
“ Not exactly, no.”
“ Blended it in the mixer and drank it with his Ovaltine?”
“ If you'll just listen, Doctor.”
“ Bathed in it?”
“ No.”
“ What then?”
“ To gain his freedom, he had to describe his crimes in detail. He had to give a complete elocution.”
“ Dr. Deitze, what the hell did Cahil use the brain matter for?”
Deitze cleared his throat, sipped at his now-tepid coffee and replied, “The man sincerely believed it would place him in touch with something he called the eternal cosmic mind.”
“ Then he did consume it?”
“ Not all of it, or so he professed in open court. Said it was just a small island of tissue he really cut the head open for.”
“ Small island of tissue?”
“ Discarded the rest of the brain. But to get at this small dab of brain matter, he had to cut deep into the center to pluck it out.”
“ Island of tissue?”
“ Deep at the center, something of an island. Called it the Real Island at his elocution. No one knew what he was talking about, least of all me.” “You were at the trial?”
“ I found him fascinating; I asked to be put on his case, and Dr. Arnold arranged everything and set me up for the case study. I was not long out of psychiatric study at Stanford.”
“ Tell me more.”
Deitze had an overlarge face, uncannily wrinkled with worry lines for one so young. Perhaps this single case was meant as his crowning achievement, and it had taken its toll on him. “It was assumed this object Cahil sought was some imaginary prize, part of his warped fantasy. But later on, during incarceration, I began to listen more closely to Cahil. I dug through old texts and esoteric books on the brain, and I made a stunning discovery. This 'Real Island' he spoke of, it was spelled R-h-e-i-1 after its discoverer, a Dr. Rheil in the late eighteenth century. Cahil wasn't talking about some fiction his mind had concocted but a real-that is tangible-piece of brain matter, Dr. Coran.”
“ I've never heard of this Rheil Island, Dr. Deitze. Is there a formal, medical term for this brain part?”
“ Just Rheil. Rheil dissected hundreds of brains during his lifetime, but only stumbled on his so-called island late in his life. Said it was located in the deepest recesses of the medulla oblongata.
“ The midbrain. Cahil claimed in perfect lunatic fashion how the soul resided there, which had been Rheil's eighteenth-century speculation. Cahil said that in consuming this portion of the children's brains, that he meant to consume the souls of these children in order to be more powerful and in touch with something he called the cosmic mind.”
“ Christ save us all.”
“ I'm only telling you what he told the court, and details he filled in later as I worked with him. At any costs, Cahil had stumbled onto the esoteric teachings of the likely demented Dr. Benjamin Artemus Rheil, and he twisted what Dr. Rheil had to say about the Island of Rheil. My own study into Rheil and his work shows there's next to nothing remaining of the man or his theories, and others have simply chalked up his island as a leftover from our primitive brains. But in Cahil's mind, this small portion paradoxically holds all our spiritual being within, and when you die, you go to this island to await your next journey or voyage or incarnation.”
“ You mean purgatory is all in the mind?”
“ Strange thing is that Cahil would draw pictures of it over and over again.”
“ Purgatory?”
“ No, no, the island itself, and it is roughly similar in appearance to a cross that signifies upright man, the horizon, and the godhead.”
“ Do you have any of his drawings?” asked Jessica.
“ I do… and it coincides with the etchings you located on the dead women killed by the Skull-digger. Your chief sent me the image and asked if it meant anything to me.”
“ Strange coincidence, I admit, but you said you could prove that Cahil is not the killer. It looks the opposite to me, Doctor.”
“ Cahil is being set up. Someone is using him. He's accepted my therapy as his cure, to replace the object of his desire-which violates human morality and all the laws of decency known to mankind-with something acceptable. He now consumes a symbolic diet like many of us consume the host and the body of Christ with the wine and the wafer.”
“ And you think he's remained on his diet since leaving here, Doctor? We all know how many patients go off their meds after leaving here, and we are speaking of a symbolic gesture here, something far more difficult to absorb than a psychoactive pill.”
“ I know he's remained true to his new path.”
“ You want to bet the lives of more young women on that assumption?”
“ It's not… I mean, yes.”
“ Tell me, Dr. Deitze, what did this guy do with the children's leftover heads and the portions of brain he didn't want?”
“ Cahil had been a butcher on the outside. After warming to me, he told me that he ground up and fed the rest of the remaining gray matter, along with the heads, to his dogs.”
“ I see… mixed it all together with the usual bonemeal from his little chop shop of horrors. I'm sure the
