fathom what he was reading on his computer screen. It did not make a lot of sense, but it sounded an alarm in his head. This trash he was looking at might entice young minds. He had been hearing about a strange fascination many of his students at Canton had developed over a computer website. Word of mouth had fueled like a brushfire, and Byrd had pried information out of a problem kid who wore dark clothes, bleached his hair and sported jewelry and a tattoo. As a result, Superintendent Byrd had stayed late at the office to take a look at the Web page.
The page was filled with strange and disjointed information on the workings of the human brain and its relationship to the more spiritual mind, and how to expand the power of one's own brain by consuming the brains of other “ents” or “units of creation”-from chickens and other animals and even plants that “dream as we do.”
This immediately disturbed Byrd. He read on, wondering what steps he could take to bring an end to this frightening message board and newsletter, which even reported on the doings of the serial killer known as the Skull-digger the way others kept abreast of baseball and football players.
He scanned the reports and got to the Webmaster's explanation of why the Skull-digger fed on his victim's gray matter:
The Skull-digger knows about the cosmic mind. There is a thing we call the universal soul, and a gradation of mind in nature determined by varying degrees of awareness. The Skull-digger is more aware than any of us that there is a potency of mind from atoms to galaxies, and that all units of creation lead us closer to touching God in the sense that we touch on the universal mind. Such a touch or a glimpse will infuse us with a transcendent mind- aura beyond anything we might dream.
Mind even manifests itself in stone and other inanimate objects from particles to crystals and stars. Higher on the mind scale, we come to the mind that dreams in plants and proto-biological ents like viruses and amoeba. Unlike the inanimate, these ents are characterized by a vital mind devoted to metabolism, growth, reproduction and decay.
Finally comes the mind we see in animals, operating by means of organized neuro-atomic elements through senses and instinct. These we can consume in a symbolic and sometimes a real sense. In doing so, we have an opportunity to glimpse into the universal cosmic mind from which all minds were formed.
Superintendent Byrd took a moment to gather his breath and sip his coffee, which had gone cold. He girded himself and read on:
In other words, your present awareness is only a narrow band in a vast galaxy of mind awareness. You must learn to expand it. You do this by various means, and the Skull-digger is at the farthest end of that scale. You don't have to go out and kill someone for his/her brain in order to expand your conscious awareness of the universal soul. There are safer routes. I know because I spent time in prison for stealing brain matter from graves, but-
Superintendent Byrd recoiled at this last statement. “These are the rantings of a lunatic,” he said aloud. “I've got to expose this for what it is.” He wondered how widespread this bizarre site had become. He wondered where he might start to voice his objections: local authorities? State or federal officials? Scrolling down, he realized the man's rantings went on for limitless pages. He saw the photo of the Island of Rheil, the supposed center of the soul of an animate being-no, a human being! And he scanned the discussion on what this tissue from the brain meant. It was all madness. He determined to contact the local FBI and have their experts look at this.
He scrolled back to where he'd left off and read:
I've served my time, paid my debt to society, and now I seek that higher mind through the use of hunting and killing fair game, and consuming the Island of Rheil of the animal (deer, rabbit, etc.). A noble calling inherited from our ancestors, who were ignorant of the Island of Rheil, and so they barbarically consumed the entire brain. No, to consume the entire brain dulls the impact of what can be found in consuming only the island of the soul…
Byrd keyed in the order to print the pages he'd just read. As his printer worked, he reached for his telephone. After being left on hold for fifteen minutes on a phone tree, frustrated, he told his story to a field agent in Syracuse, New York, the closest federal agency. The agent said he would look into it and get back to Byrd, that he and every agent in the FBI appreciated such tips in locating the Skull-digger.
“ You misunderstand me. This guy is applauding the Skull-digger and spreading unsafe and insane information to children all over this and other countries through the Internet. It's sick propaganda directed at our children, Agent. No telling how long it's been going on, or how much irreparable damage has already been done. It's a kind of insidious, demoralizing-”
“ We'll make it a priority, sir. I have the dot-com address you've supplied, sir.”
“ It's like nothing we've seen before. Likely a terrorist group behind it, I tell you. We must put an end to it for the sake of America's youth.” “I'll make it a priority, sir, I promise.” The agent hung up.
Byrd stared at the phone and listened to the dial tone. He wondered if he ought to call the mayor's office, who would in turn call the governor, and maybe then he could get some assurances.
The wee hours of July 14, 2003
The phone awakened Jessica from a sound sleep in her Philadelphia hotel room. It was just past midnight. She had somehow avoided any nightmares, willing herself to find comforting dreams instead. She'd gotten back to the room in Philly early, had eaten room-service food, showered and gone to bed with Jack Deitze's case study of Cahil. She found Deitze's rehabilitation effort and theories questionable, but she focused on what she could learn of Cahil. Amazingly, Strand was right; the former grave robber had begun a website from his isolation ward. Dr. Gabriel Arnold had given Deitze complete authority over Cahil's treatment, and Deitze believed Cahil would benefit greatly from communicating to the world about why he had done what he had and to seek alternative ways to reach the pinnacle of “faith” he so craved.
The hotel phone continued to ring. She hesitated lifting it off the cradle. As far as she knew, only Eriq and J.T. had the hotel number, and she had turned off her cell phone.
When she lifted the receiver, Eriq Santiva launched right in with, “We've apprehended Daryl Cahil.”
“ Where?”
“ Where he called you from, Atlantic City, a phone booth near a motel he was at. Traced his whereabouts through a credit card number found in his house in Morristown.” She mentally calculated how long it would have taken Cahil to travel from southern Georgia to Atlantic City and back again to make those two calls. He could not have easily made it in the time allotted. “And the woman? His wife or girlfriend?”
“ Negative. I'm ready to believe what Strand told us, that the female caller was Cahil himself. That part of him that wants to be caught, Jess. We've seen the syndrome before.”
“ All the same, maybe we should alert Atlantic City authorities that we'd be interested in any recent Jane Doe's.”
“ Count on it.”
“ Did they do a search of his van, the beach motel room, along with his Morristown house?”
“ Nothing came of the room search. A quick search of his house was done by our men in Morristown, which turned up the credit card number. He wasn't driving a van-a rental sedan instead. No restraints or cutting tools found either.”
“ We need the tools, Eriq. We need the van.”
“ So far nothing of the sort. The searches have turned up nothing, but I'm still hopeful that a full forensic treatment will turn up something.”
“ How much time do we have on the search-and-seizure order at the Morristown location?”
“ Another twelve hours and it's history.”
“ I want to see how this guy lives, what he surrounds himself with.”
“ We're having him transported to Quantico for interrogation, but Jess, the creep… he won't talk to anyone but you.”
“ Me? Why the… why me?”
“ That's what he wants. Second to you, he'll only talk to Deitze,*nd none of us wants that, right?”
“ Damn it, why me?” she repeated. “Liked your whiskey voice, I guess. Come on, Jess, he knows your reputation, so he's going to play to that, and he knows you understand his kind.”
“ Lucky me. He's just yanking our chain. He wants another fifteen minutes of fame and publicity, Eriq, could be he's just cashing in on our case.”
“ He's the guy. The Ghoul is the Skull-digger.”
“ Eriq, you sound like Strand. You've already got this guy guilty without the evidence to back it.”
“ All right, just supposing Cahil isn't the Skull guy, he still may well give you some insight into what this latest
