known the location? Aside from this, his physical size was wrong. The shoe prints hadn't matched, and no weapon or van had been located. She knew she'd have to put all this in a formal report, and that by tomorrow Eriq would have to sober up and get off this addiction he had for Cahil as the Digger.
Although she harbored doubts from the moment she'd met him, Jessica had not completely given up on Cahil as a serious contender for the Digger. She reserved judgment, and after Eriq had left the interrogation area, she went back at Daryl later in the day and again asked him tough and uncompromising questions. After this, in spite of Eriq's lust for Daryl as the killer and what they had found in Morristown, she felt even more certain that if Cahil were involved it was not as the Digger but as an accomplice of some sort. Perhaps he arranged to set the victims up. She went over everything Cahil had said, and what he'd failed to say about the details of the killings. He had been unable to get the calendar straight, which victim came first, second, third and fourth. Dates were confused. Nothing added up.
She left headquarters for home, picking up a takeout meal from a Quantico restaurant called Mia's Place. Arriving at her silent house, she placed the food on hold and put in a call to Richard. They had a long conversation, both keeping to light subjects. When he brought up the case she was working on, she changed the subject to his own mission there in China. Everything was going well, he told her and changed the subject to a sporting event he was scheduled to see there. After exchanging words of love, they said goodbye.
She then called Lorena Combs, asking if she had any news on the computer habits of the Georgia and Florida victims. “Examine the E-mails for this E-address,” suggested Jessica, giving her Cahil's website address. “See if they ever logged on to the site.”
“ So, you're still fixed on the New Jersey Ghoul?” Lorena asked.
“ Not a hundred percent, but if we can make a connection with one of his victims having been in contact, we might more easily get a federal warrant to open and scrutinize all the subscribers to Cahil's site.”
“ I'll see what comes of it,” Combs replied and then said good night.
Jessica next located J.T. by phone. He finally had gotten back from New Jersey with Cahil's computer. She updated him on their interrogations of Daryl. “I doubt he's our primary target, and I'm beginning to doubt if he's involved at all, other than as a ready patsy.”
“ Funny, Eriq says it went well and that you guys nailed his ass to the wall.”
“ When did you talk to Eriq?”
“ Got a call from him while on the plane back.”
“ Cahil claims that all the victims had at one time or another logged on to his website.”
“ I assure, you, Jess,” he replied, “Cahil could not know that unless the individuals chose to reveal themselves to him by name. He's likely blowing smoke.”
“ Still, there's the possibility, right? Given the sheer numbers logging on, I must assume some foolish people find his computer persona somehow charismatic.”
“ Fact is, anyone can project a charismatic image over the Net. Still, it's unlikely he'd leave word in his correspondence with a victim's actual name for us to find. And like I said, he'd have to convince them to give him personal information, address, meeting place. We'll do best to get our cyber experts to help out here, Jess.”
“ And as for this Seeker guy?”
“ Well, code names can only be traced with help from the server, unless our experts can find a way to hack into the guy's computer.”
“ How likely is that?”
“ Fifty-fifty, depending on what kind of firewalls he's put up.”
“ Give it a try.”
“ Could be this Seeker is just another of Cahil's other selves, you know. If he's as multiple as Eriq says he is, he likely has more than one computer persona as well.”
“ You have been talking to Eriq.”
“ Yeah, I have.”
“ All right, get the computer search underway. Let me know where it leads,” she said.
“ Like Max Strand said, there'll be roadblocks.”
“ Who knows, maybe the server will be cooperative.”
“ Like they were after Nine-Eleven?” J.T. facetiously asked.
“ Maybe they've learned something since then.”
“ I won't hold my breath, Jess. This company in particular guards its subscriber list with a vengeance.”
They said their goodbyes and Jessica sat upright in bed and ate. While using the remote, flipping through TV land, she picked at her meal. She then took a shower to the sound of argument and laughter on the late-night TV talk show Real Time with Bill Maker. The soothing hot shower eased the tense muscles in her neck and shoulders, and she trusted this would help her to sleep soundly.
Donning a terry-cloth robe, she returned to the bed, where a second plate, filled with vegetables and fruits, awaited her. Suddenly the TV chatter turned to the Digger. Bill Maher made a grim joke about the Digger, asking why the Skull-digger hadn't gone after the Dolphins in Discovery Cove if he wanted brains. “What's so brainy about the average American woman?” he asked the audience, garnering a wave of groans instead of laughs. Everyone on the show was critical of how the police was handling the case. The public had learned many of the shocking details, except those withheld by authorities. Everyone feared it was the beginning of a long nightmare. “News of FBI involvement,” according to Maher, “has not calmed anyone's brain.”
Jessica lay her head down and in a moment the TV talk show was replaced by the interrogation room, but it had clouds all around its periphery. She was again grilling Daryl, who wore a Cheshire cat's grin during the entire interview.
“ What's this we found in your house in Newark, Daryl?” she demanded, holding out a small bag filled with seeds.
“ Birdseed,” Cahil announced. “I feed the birds out back of the house.”
“ Other than the house in Morristown, Daryl, is there someplace else you spend time?” asked Jessica.
“ One place else, yes.”
“ And where is it located?”
Cahil pointed to his head.
Jessica gritted her teeth, feeling horribly uncomfortable in such proximity to the man. She felt his horrible hot breath on her.
“ Any other physical place outside your head, that we might search?” she pressed.
He looked absolutely befuddled by this, losing the grin, concentrating on her words to the point she thought his head would explode.
“ Do you reside anywhere else, say in a van, for instance?” asked Jessica.
“ Nah, no other space or place. This is it…”
Jessica studied the man's off-center features and his black-bean pupils to determine if he were lying or not. But there was no life in his eyes, so no reading them. She watched his hands for signs of clenching or cutting himself with his nails. She watched his breathing and his movements for any sign of telltale lying. But there was nothing to read in this man, nothing in his body language, eyes, tone or stance. The system had taught him well. He was as zombielike in this dream as he had been in the actual interrogation.
“ I was very popular when I was in prison,” Daryl said. “Three women wanted to marry me.”
“ Really?”
“ Started out as pen pals. They all proposed marriage. They wanted me to impregnate them, to have my child.”
I can see why, Jessica thought. “Daryl, have you been in contact with any of these women since leaving prison?”
“ Of course, the ones who're alive.” His grin proved satanically grim.
“ One of them died in Richmond, one in Winston-Salem, the third in Jacksonville, Florida.”
Jessica started in her sleep, her body involuntarily tensing and releasing, waking her in the process. She knew on awakening that her every instinct insisted that Cahil's confessions-both in real time and in dream time-were lies. Cahil was indeed not the Skull-digger. Some part of him wanted to be the Skull-digger, but that hardly qualified him as the killer.
