been a long, anxiety-ridden delay. In its arguments, AOC cited that many of the logons came from hotels and libraries, as well as private homes, and that what the FBI wanted was tantamount to invasion of privacy and against the public's right to assume they had privacy as upheld by the AOC's contract with the public.
The bad news from AOC was called in from a female representative of the company, a spokesperson. Jessica had immediately asked the AOC representative if she would at least pinpoint which users had logged on from libraries and hotels in Richmond, Winston-Salem, Jacksonville, Savannah and Mobile on specific days and nights. The representative stood firm, spouting policy, adding, “Only in the event of a terrorist attack can we lay aside the principle of privacy to our customers.”
“ There is a serial killer on the loose, looking for his sixth victim!”
The phone clicked dead.
Jessica had even contacted Dr. Jack Deitze, Cahil's keeper while imprisoned, and pleaded for information on anyone contacting Cahil via U.S. mail or phone before he began his website. Neither Dr. Deitze nor anyone else at the facility could help her, as records kept on U.S. mail addresses coming into the prison were not kept beyond ten years. They'd been destroyed two years before. Phone logs likewise.
FBI code-breakers continued to work on Cahil's hard drive. Meanwhile, several hundred other names had also made a two-way match-up between VICAP and civilian tips, and this formed the long list Jessica now held in her hands. She pulled a chair alongside Dana Morrill, a bright young computer aide, and she said, “Using these two-way matches as your starting point, cross the list with the words 'island,' 'isle,' 'soul,' 'brain,' 'mind,' 'doctor' and R-h-e- i-1,' “ she said, spelling out the last word. As an after-thought, she added the word “butcher.” She recalled that in Cahil's pitiful little biography he had once been a butcher.
J.T. had been on a well-earned break, but now he reentered the unit and saw that Jessica appeared as much in hot pursuit of the leads as before. He came near and whispered, “Jess, we just got a report out of a place called Hardscrabble, Mississippi, of an elderly couple murdered at a body shop- a freshly painted van was involved. You said we should be on the lookout for an escalation in violent and erratic behavior.”
“ Where's this place located?”
“ Some seventy or so miles from New Orleans. A crossroads between Biloxi and New Orleans, right off 1-10. Police are suspicious it could be our guy, since there's evidence of a freshly redone van. Like I said, it occurred at a shop run by this elderly couple-both shot to death. A dark green van was seen leaving the place.”
Jessica studied the report J.T. held out. “Location is right. Could be him driving a freshly painted van since this involves a body shop. Do we have anyone to ID the killer?”
“ Negative. Witness only saw the van peeling off, headed toward New Orleans. Word is, the guy just executed these two-bullet to the back of each head.”
“ May be our guy, maybe not. He's got to be feeling us on his heels. Look at this.” She extended the computer's hits from the keywords she'd asked for earlier. “Sixty matches.”
“ Wow, that many doctors on a violent-crime list and on civilian tips at the same time? That's kind of scary.”
“ Wonder how many visited Cahil's chat room? Damned AOC gets their way, we may never know.”
“ Eriq's back at the courthouse now, trying to get us what we want,” J.T. assured her. Jessica turned to the computer aide. “Bring up any photos we have of our gallery of rogue doctors and butchers- see if we find any Sweeny Todds. I want to see if any of them vaguely resemble the work of the two sketch artists in Fayetteville and Mobile.”
“ All sixty of them?” Dana Morrill looked at her watch. It read 5:47 P.M.
They worked throughout the evening hours on Jessica's notion, but in every case the level of violence was ruled as entirely out of keeping with the violence done victims of the Skull-digger. Still, since there were two-way match-ups between “doctors” and “butchers,” each conceivably possessing the tools and skills to remove a human brain, Jessica dispatched the information to respective field offices to investigate these doctors.
One agent complained, “We're already canvassing a list you gave us that's three times as long.”
“ Drop the long list. Use the short list for now. They've been identified as doctors and butchers taken from the long list. One of them might be the Skull-digger.” One of them might be the Seeker, she thought.
“ So, the man being detained is not the Digger?” asked an agent in New Orleans.
“ Jesus. That's for the press. Official thinking, right now, is what you're pursuing, Agent.”
“ Damn, and we thought it was over,” replied the field agent. “You know, a little more cooperation and information sharing, and a little please and thank-you, Dr. Coran, might help.”
“ Yeah, please and thanks.” Jessica's level of frustration felt at an all-time high. She feared that anytime now the Digger would strike again, and still no one knew his identity or whereabouts.
She called Eriq on his cell phone. No answer. She tried again. When he finally came on, he said he'd had to leave the courtroom to take the call.
“ How's it going with FBI vs. AOC?” she asked.
“ We're going to win this thing, but they're putting up a stubborn fight.”
“ We suspect the real Digger is in and around New Or-leans with a newly painted van. Dark green in color. I believe we should put New Orleans on a heightened-alert status.”
“ How sure are you, Jess?”
“ Fairly sure.”
“ Then consider it done.”
“ And how soon are we going to win the order against AOC?”
“ Like I said, still in the pipeline, but I think it's finally going our way.”
She replied, “Something has to.”
TWELVE
I will make you shorter by the head.
Downtown New Orleans 9:20 P.M.
Officers Tony Labruto and Collin Doyle sat idling in their cruiser at Plymouth and Juniper, drinking coffee and eating burgers for their late dinner, when the FBI dispatch came over the radio. They had heard the news once before, at the debriefing before going out onto the streets of New Orleans. Labruto had even joked about it earlier. “Be on the look out for a newly painted dark green van. And, get this, license plate unknown-with a suspicious- looking character in the driver's seat. Suspected of killing two people in Hardscrabble, Mississippi. Oh, and suspect may possibly be the Skull-digger, but the people killed in Hardscrabble didn't lose their brains and were shot with a. 38 millimeter.”
“ What more do you need to go on, Tony?”
“ Oh, nothing I s'pose.”
The cab filled with the crackle of the police radio, a pleasant feminine dispatcher's voice calling out a ten-10, disturbance at a downtown address, skirting Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. Something to do with a fight between two men over a woman. “Hi-ho, Dispatch, this is Unit 112. We're on it,” said Labruto into the mic.
“ So much for dinner.” Doyle moaned. “Hit it.”
The lights began to spin and the siren wailed as the cruiser sped for the nearby destination. Labruto thought of his six years in New Orleans. He felt it was the finest force he had ever worked with, barring the military unit he had belonged to during Desert Storm. He liked New Orleans, the home of Cajun passions, great food, Mardi Gras, jazz and the Saints. The city had a throbbing fascination with life and lust, which suited the single cop just fine.
Doyle, on the other hand, was a family man with several children, and he missed his native home, Chicago. He was continually going on about being stuck in New Orleans. He had come here for higher rank and pay. Tony
