“ We ought to, yes.”
“ But this… this… It makes me think of the scam artists who, days after the World Trade Center attacks, began bottling and boxing up dirt and debris from the rubble of thousands of lives to sell at whatever price they could get.”
“ A slap in the face to all decency and humanity otherwise displayed at Ground Zero.”
They had embarked on a long journey, the first step in reinvigorating the investigation. They were only hours into it, knowing it would take days and a great deal of luck. And while Cahil remained in custody, and would likely stay put for some time, the real murderer remained at large. And since no other victims had been found since Mobile, a low-level buzz among the people working overtime on the case had begun. Everyone wondered if Mobile had not been a copycat killing after all.
Eriq Santiva suddenly entered the room, followed by the head of the FBI, Director Thomas Hinze. Santiva remained silent while Hinze blasted away. “I just got a copy of your DNA analysis on the brain tissue found at Cahil's residence, and it matches the Gleason woman killed in Richmond. Given the date, I'd like to know why it took so long to get to me? That's strong evidence linking Cahil to her murder, wouldn't you say, Dr. Coran?”
“ Yes, it is but-”
“ And I have a copy of your protocol sent to Santiva here on the last victim located in Mobile, Alabama. She didn't have the mark of this Island of Rheil thing on the backside of her skull or anywhere else. Chief Santiva here tells me that you had informed him that the killing in Alabama was the exact same MO-identical. Says he has only now learned it wasn't. What kind of games are you two playing, Dr. Coran, Dr. Thorpe?”
“ Director… Chief, it's my report, not J.T.'s,” she said, standing now to keep from cowering beneath them.
“ Aren't we all on the same team here, people?” asked Hinze.
J.T. said, “I'm as much to blame as Jessica, sir. I kept silent about it, too.”
“ Only at my request,” she countered J.T. and turned to Eriq. “Look, I know in my gut that one of Cahil's Web buddies set him up.” Her tone matched her look of defiance. “You know my instincts about this kind of thing are good. That I'm good at what I do. Just let me do my job.”
Santiva said, “Jess, I think you two made a grave error in Mobile.”
“ How so?”
With an upraised hand, Hinze stopped Santiva from answering. “This just isn't panning out, Dr. Coran. Thorpe here has monitored the Web page to no avail. We've got hundreds of agents working overtime on a hunch. We need to cut our losses, indict this Cahil person, and get on.”
“ We're in too deep for that,” she countered.
“ We've wasted too much time on this case, and I think it's time you came to the same conclusion, Dr. Coran.”
“ We're not halfway through the tips yet, Director.”
“ If the Skull-digger were still out there, he'd have struck again. We'd know about it conclusively. This murder in Mobile was a copycat.”
“ I don't think so. Our profile all along said that the Digger could not control his urge after a few days, remember?” “Unless he's become more disciplined,” suggested Hinze. “And incarceration has that effect!”
Jessica added, “What if the latest body just hasn't surfaced yet?”
“ Do you two have any idea how much hot air's breathing down my neck right now?” asked Hinze. “Besides, suppose for a moment you're wrong, Dr. Coran, and you and I know you've been wrong before-”
She thought of mistakes made in Chicago that had gotten her friend and mentor, Otto Boutine, killed. She thought of mistakes she'd made in tracking Mad Matthew Matisak, and the trail of bodies he had left in his wake, and how she had almost gotten herself killed on more than one occasion.
Hinze, a tall, imposing figure, continued talking over her thoughts. “Suppose the woman in Mobile… that her killer goes free, this Citizen X-because we decide it's the work of the Skull-digger. And instead, it's just some guy using the same MO to cover his tracks!”
It had been known to happen more often than officials cared to inform the public. How many murders were tacked on to a serial killer list might even surprise a criminal judge.
“ We're set on this course, Director. We are investigating another theory, that the Digger is one of Cahil's website junkies. We know his online name-the Seeker.”
The director paced the room. “All right. Chief Santiva tells me you have a thing for this guy that Cahil pointed out early on. But he also tells me Cahil's page has not heard anything from the Seeker. Isn't that right? And there's a theory that the Seeker and Cahil may be one and the same. Santiva is beginning to think so, aren't you, Eriq? Tell her.”
Eriq cleared his throat and replied, “That thought has been discussed, yes, but I have to stand with Dr. Coran's assessment. We need to keep the investigation open until we can follow the leads we've uncovered to a conclusion we can all live with, sir.”
“ We're still hopeful that we'll hear from this Seeker character when he checks in again with Cahil's page,” added J.T.
“ The guy who calls himself the Seeker argues that Cahil has no special knowledge of where the soul resides in the brain, argues against the Island of Rheil being of any consequence. And Cahil claims this person sent the brain tissue from Anna Gleason to him.”
“ Through field ops, we raided a Richmond PO box this Seeker guy used for surface correspondence, but the guy used phony identification.”
J.T. then hefted a computer printout in his hands. “I did locate an interesting old letter from the Seeker to Cahil. It's about the Seeker's childhood, all about slaughtering animals on a farm, but it includes slaughtering them for their brains. He doesn't give any details as to time or place or his identity except for a first name-”
“ Which is?”
“ Corey,” J.T. replied. “You might find it interesting if gruesome reading.”
Jessica added, “I think maybe we ought to go after a discovery warrant on this guy alone, take our chances with the roll of the dice.”
“ Too late for that,” said Santiva. “I wrote the order for full disclosure of every user.” Eriq and the director now stood over Jessica's shoulder and scanned the data J.T. had handed her.
“ Still we can put him at the top of the list.” Jessica pushed back in her chair and tried to calm her nerves. It had appeared for so long now that no one stood with her save J.T., but she realized now that Eriq firmly backed her as well, despite his earlier doubts.
Eric and the director left, and J.T. soon followed their lead. Left alone, Jessica stared down at the collected E-mail letters from the Seeker. She had mumbled a goodbye to J.T. but her eyes and mind were focused on the letter describing the Seeker's upbringing. “I know you're out there, whatever you care to call yourself-Seeker, Corey, Satan.”
Jessica Coran stood over a team of men and women sifting through the computers in the computer analysis section of the FBI at Quantico. She nervously paced, holding on to reams of information coming out of their new investigation. She remained anxious to get word from a judge that AOC had been made to comply with the FBI request to open up the subscriber lists visiting Cahil's website. But so far, nothing forthcoming. Everyone on the team felt stymied.
Daryl Cahil's name had come up so far as the only three-way match among the civilian tips, the VICAP program and, of course, on his own website. He remained the only known user still, and would so long as AOC continued its fight with the FBI. The court battle had brought out curious reporters, and AOC, happy with the publicity it was now garnering, wanted nothing more than to fight for the rights of their customers-to drag the publicity out. This also dragged into the light the whole story of Cahil's arrest, his website and the AOC controversy and what it had to do with the Skull-digger case. This only caused a flood of hits on Cahil's website, causing more problems for the team's monitoring efforts-adding to the nightmare.
Meanwhile, all the other users logging on remained unknowns. Cross-referencing with Cahil's website log-on code names proved useless. But they had learned that the Seeker and a handful of others had faithfully logged on for years, and that in fact, the Seeker was among the first to contact Cahil while he remained in jail. Santiva relentlessly pursued the federal court judge to get AOC to open its files on the E-mail addressees. The result had
