goddamn files to us.”
Jessica and J.T. settled into the small special transport Cessna six-seater. They taxied to the runway and, having immediate clearance, were soon racing toward the sky. Jessica loved the exhilaration of takeoff.
“ If this is our guy and not some copycat, Jess,” said J.T. with an upraised hand, “then he's moved considerably west.”
“ Yeah… you're right. He worked along the east coast, now maybe he's heading southwest, changing his hunting grounds.”
“ If it's him.”
“ After all the faulty, misfit evidence, J.T., you don't hon-estly believe that Cahil is guilty.”
“ I believe that Cahil is insanely nuts.”
“ Agreed, which makes him an easy target to set up. I just feel it.”
“ Instincts?”
“ Call it what you will.”
“ If the Manning girl was in touch with Cahil, it could mean that his other victims were as well. They could have accessed through computers other than those at home.” J.T. had left the capable team of computer experts to monitor Cahil's website and continue checking on those possibilities.
“ The libraries I traced the Seeker to won't allow us access either, not without a court order. Public policy.”
“ Yeah, I recall they pulled the same argument following the Nine-Eleven attacks.”
“ Might as well try to relax and get some rest,” he sug-gested, handing her a cup of tea brewed for them.
“ Thanks, and you're right.” She stared out at the darkness of the never-ending sky.
Grant Kenyon had wrestled with himself for a month before he had killed again. He knew that taking another life would risk their capture, his and Phillip's, a sure end to any future. But Phillip had become insatiable. It made no difference to him. Like a junky, all he wanted was the stuff to end his craving, and if it meant throwing away a well-orchestrated plan to implicate Daryl Cahil, then so be it, according to Phillip.
He knew all the good reasoning in the world would not stop Phillip. The geography of his brain had been divided from the day of his birth, he supposed now as he sat in a restaurant drinking coffee. It was a Cajun place in a rural town in Mississippi and they had brains and eggs on the menu as the specialty of the house. He had ordered them.
“ What kind of brains are in those eggs?” he asked the rough-looking, matronly waitress, who appeared to do all the work. No one else remained in the place. It was nearly 10 A.M. and the breakfast crowd had come and gone.
“ What kinda brains you looking for?” she replied.
“ It says the house specialty.”
“ Pork brains, mister.”
He nodded. “Pig brains.”
“ Hog brains. That OK?”
“ Hogs'd mean they were full grown, adult?”
“ Yes, that's right.”
“ OK, thank you, I'll have some. Wouldn't sit right, my eating little baby piglet brains.”
“ I reckon you're some kind of animal activist type, huh?”
“ Actually, yes.” He lied to appease the woman, who went off for his order. She seemed almost happy, he believed, because she thought she had so penetrated his mystique.
He laughed at the woman.
When they arrived in Mobile, Jessica and J.T. rushed from the airport to the crime scene, a patch of desolate sand and weed beneath a bridge straddling Mobile Bay, where the body had washed ashore. They were met by Police Chief Randall Boyd, a short, stout man whose uniform buttons looked to be near exploding against his barrel stomach.
Apologizing for Agent Lowery's absence, Special Agent Harry Douglas of the local FBI also greeted them, informing them that a member of Boyd's deputies had been able to ID the victim already.
“ Deputy Joy Kirchner,” said Chief Boyd, “did some good work. She hauled in a homeless guy she saw rifling through a trunk in an alleyway near the Greyhound station. She took it for stolen. It had a picture ID in one of the flaps, and it matches our victim here, along with a library card from Linville, Tennessee. Name's Sharon Ashley.” He pointed to the prone figure beneath the sheet below the bridge.
“ Her ticket has her arriving from Nashville at 8:45 P.M. last night,” said Agent Douglas. “She was spotted here by a fisherman at 6 A.M. this morning. My men have contacted her parents in Tennessee. She's… she was a runaway.”
Jessica gave a moment of thought to the reason or reasons the girl might have run away and straight into the waiting hands of the Skull-digger. She wondered if some of the girls had been lured to their deaths via the Internet, or if the killer routinely staked out bus stations for his prey.
“ She was from a rural town fifty or sixty miles from Nashville, where she caught the bus to Mobile,” Boyd informed them. “Word is, she had no relatives in Mobile, so no one knows who she met at the station-if anyone.”
“ Authorities up in Nashville,” began Agent Douglas, “say she spent all her free time at the library in her hometown of Linville, but the damned library will not give the authorities a look at the girl's E-mails. They'll only do it if ordered by a court.”
“ Then let's get one!” shouted Jessica, frustrated by the dead ends.
“ It's in the works,” replied Douglas.
J.T. and Jessica now stepped closer to the covered body and Agent Douglas said, “She's just a kid, younger than the other victims.”
Boyd said, “Parents are driving down.”
Agent Douglas then said, “Most awful sight I've seen in my thirty years with the bureau.” With that he removed the sheet covering the corpse. Staring down at yet another mask of mutilation, Jessica felt a wave of weary sadness envelop her. She turned away for a moment, gathering her courage, wondering anew how anyone could so brutalize another human being.
J.T., meanwhile, gritted his teeth and clenched his jaw and fists. Jessica, shaking off her emotions as best she could, went to work. J.T. followed her stoic lead.
She pulled out a tape recorder and spoke into it as she examined the body. After reciting the date, locale, name, race and approximate age of the victim, Jessica added, “Again a young woman, this time still in her teens, staring back, vacant-eyed, vacant of forehead, vacant one brain.” Overhead noise from a number of fighter jets reminded them of how close the Pensacola Naval Air Station stood.
“ Maybe some creep from the base,” said Boyd.
The bridge overhead lay down a dense shadow over the body, like a thick paint stroke. Jessica took out her penlight and shone it into the open cavity of the cranium, searching for the symbol at the back of the skull.
“ Is it there?” whispered J.T.
She breathed deeply, her forehead creased with confusion. “No… no it's not.”
“ Then it may not be him. It could be-”
Boyd supported J.T.'s stance. “Maybe it's some lunatic on shore leave from one of those gunboats out there.” He pointed out at the huge, horizontal buildings along the other shore-naval ships, battleships. J.T. whispered, “Maybe it's a copycat killing, Jess.”
She disagreed. “No, it's him, all right, the same hand at work. Microscopic analysis of the bone cutting will tell us for certain, but I just feel it's him.”
“ But the fact there's no mark inside the skull…”
“ Other than that, it's exactly him. He wants us to think it's a copycat killing, by leaving something crucial out. He couldn't help himself. Don't you see, John?”
“ It's just another way to throw us off, make us think he's not at work here, you think?” replied J.T. “But if he
