He had for many years now monitored Daryl's website. He knew what the man's religion was; and he knew it to be insane. Still, he searched for the island of tissue in the animal brain, curious and wondering.
It was not a pretty autopsy, he told himself as he now cut deeper into the medulla oblongata and a tiny piece of material fell out and into the dirt and grass at Strand's foot. He tossed the rest of the dead brain into the bushes.
Slowly, reluctantly, fighting gravity the entire time, Strand went to his knees over where that small bit had fallen, attempting to find it in the grass, but the thing acted as if alive, hiding, camouflaged in the dry, brittle grass.
Then he saw it, but it wasn't large like the human one, only a fraction of the size. He reached for the thing, and a part of his brain said, Consume it… consume it.
He thought about it, thought how it would taste, how it would feel going down, what it might do to him, whether mad Daryl's claims were true or not. He wondered if it had magical powers or was as magical as one of the blades of grass. Either way, he knew that if he consumed it, the act itself would hold sway over him for the rest of his life. “It's only an animal part,” he said aloud as the wind whipped by and he heard the flutter of trees overhead. The park, an unsavory, broken down piece of real estate the city had for years vowed to clean up, was home to many transients on any given night. Strand searched about himself for his own safety. No one nearby, no one watching him. He didn't see the two figures crouching behind his car.
Strand now held the slippery item in two fingers and was about to consume it when the lead pipe came crashing down into his skull.
Two human vultures living in the seedy park had jumped Strand, leaving him bleeding to death as they tore into his pockets. One wanted to take the car, but the other located his ID and threw it at his companion, shouting, “My God, Danny, we've killed a freakin' cop! Forget the car. We gotta run, now!”
Quantico, Virginia Same morning
Jessica, having returned to Quantico, knew she had to immediately log in the evidence she had placed into a vial from Cahil's Morristown home. She hoped after seeing to the chain of evidence protocol that she might take a moment to drop by her office, look over the mail and say some hellos.
Chief Eriq Santiva met her on the helicopter pad when the FBI chopper landed. It was still early in the morning, and she had gotten little sleep on the chopper, and here he stood, obviously anxious for her to meet with Daryl Thomas Cahil. “Jessica, you look tired. Are you all right? Personally, I couldn't sleep on a chopper if my life depended on it. Was your detour to Morristown helpful?” came Eriq's* volley of questions. “Why isn't Strand with you? He wanted to be here for the kill.” He had watched her climb tiredly from the chopper, her bag at her side. She immediately informed Eriq, “I have to log in evidence gathered at the crime scene in Georgia and at the Morristown location. Did the tire and shoe print casts arrive? Any news from Combs on the victims computer habits?” She finished with a yawn, realizing neither one of them had answers for the other, and then added, “My suitcase is in the chopper.”
“ It's taken care of, Jess. How'd it go in Morristown?” He took hold of her medical bag.
“ That can't be out of my possession, Eriq,” she argued.
“ Can't be out of your sight, and it won't be until we get it inventoried.”
They found the rooftop door and started down a flight of stairs to the elevator.
“ Actually, it went quite well in both Philly and Morristown,” she informed him. “We learned that Cahil has been operating a website since before leaving prison. One that advocates cannibalizing brains.”
“ Wait a minute, are you telling me that while behind bars, while in an asylum for the criminally insane, that Deitze allowed him to start up a website?”
“ Began as a question-answer thing, information on the workings of the brain-his brain in particular. The brain's magical power and magnificence, all that. People asking him about his crime and him responding, all with Jack Deitze's consent.”
“ Really? Don't tell me, this is Deitze's idea of therapy?” asked an amazed Santiva.
“ Before he left prison he had more than a hundred thousand hits,” she informed Eriq. “Second only to Charlie Man-son's many websites, you know, the ones attracting cult followings on college campuses and high schools across the nation.” They boarded the elevator, and she punched the button for subbasement-one, where evidence and lockup were located. Eriq breathed deeply, ending with a sigh. “Yeah… I knew about Manson, but not about Cahil on the Web.”
“ Manson's imprisoned for life but set free on the World Wide Web.
… Jack Deitze thought it a good avenue of release for Cahil, a way to get his reticent patient to open up. Deitze's way was paved by our old friend Dr. Arnold. Deitze characterizes the website as benign.”
“ Benign?”
“ Apparently, he hasn't logged on for a while.” She stepped off the elevator ahead of him, turned and said, “Fact is, the website has been quite informative for our side. It may be enough to nail him. He plastered a photo of a human brain part onto it, and we found the piece he photographed in his freezer.”
“ And you have it with you?”
She slapped her valise. “Yes, I do.”
“ Then we can nail the bastard-and make no mistake about it, he's a disgusting piece of shit, Jess.”
They had arrived at the evidence lockup, a huge room of locked cages with shelves floor to ceiling filled with file boxes and all manner of misshapen objects and items. It looked like the secret back rooms of a large museum.
“ Cahil covers his behind with this veneer of symbolic feeding he goes on about,” began Jessica, “but beneath it, he's advocating that people find some sort of immortality by consuming some mysterious swath of tissue inside the human brain. How else to get at it but through cannibalizing a victim? That's advocating murder.”
Eriq nodded. “If the website is now promoting actually finding and feeding on brain tissue, and we can link him with the Digger killings, then we'll put him away again. This time, we'll get the death penalty.”
“ Yeah… now that he's infected countless others with his lunacy. That Jack Deitze had too much of Gabriel Arnold rub off on him. The man doesn't know what the hell he's released on the world. And probably will never acknowledge the harm he's caused.”
After turning over all the labeled evidence and seeing each officially itemized, she signed off on it all. “I'm keeping hold of this item,” she told the clerk. “It'll need special attention and preservation.”
The clerk stared at what Jessica showed her but asked no more than the number of the label placed on the vial. “So noted,” the clerk finished.
“ I'm going to want this for interrogating the suspect as well,” Jessica told Eriq. When the clerk held out a pen and a release form, Jessica gave the vial to Etiq. He stared more closely at its contents, his face contracting, his nose contorting a bit as he got a whiff of formaldehyde. Santiva swallowed hard and next held it up to the light and peered through the clear plastic at the island of tissue inside. “Some weird shit, Jess.”
“ It might well lead to a confession.”
“ Well, are you ready for a go at Cahil?”
“ First, I really need a pit stop, Eriq. I need to stop at my office and kick back a moment.”
“ Kick back? This is no time to-”
“ Eriq, I've been up and down the southeast, in and out of airplanes and choppers like a yo-yo for the past week, and I never got to sleep last night. I need to touch base with familiar surroundings, get grounded, OK?”
“ All right… OK.”
“ Besides, I want to get an assistant working immediately on DNA from this thing,” she added, taking the vial from him again. “We need to match it to DNA on file for the victims. If it's come from one of them, there's little question that we're on the right track. And I want photos taken of the thing before it deteriorates any further.”
Reentering the elevator, she pushed the button for the eighteenth floor where her newly renovated offices and labs awaited. “Let me have another look at that thing,” Eriq said, taking the vial and holding it up for another look against the light.
They rode up in silence, Eriq continuing to stare at the thing in the vial, strangely fascinated by it. When the elevator door opened, and Jessica stepped out ahead of him, he was still staring at the Island of Rheil.
“ I'll take that back for the time being,” she told him.
“ Wonder why Cahil kept it in his freezer,” he replied as he handed it over.
