surprised even her. He killed to possess that single prize. The idea alone unnerved Jessica. Everyone held some object or place or attribute near and dear, but how many felt their very organ of will and mind and soul was up for grabs by some maniacal beast anxious to rip it from them? Carried within and protected by the skull lay this three- pound gift of God and nature, and now it was threatened by a monster who wanted to take it.
Precisely why he wanted it remained a mystery, but want it he did, and now two young victims had fallen into his hands.
Why did he want it? Was it a mad craving or a twisted fantasy that had revealed some magical potent power or elixir made from grinding the brain and beating it in a mixer to be consumed? Or did he like it solid and raw? All speculation. No one knew. No evidence collected thus far had pointed to what motivated him to kill others for the only sentient organ in the body.
Jessica had, in the course of doing autopsies since her first medical training in forensics, removed a lot of gray matter in her searches for cause of death. She had seen the brain destroyed by all manner of disease, toxins and slow poisons like alcohol. She had seen the results of massive trauma to the brain from highway accidents to dining-room murders. The dead brain itself always felt the same to her-inert matter with no life force left-a three- pound misshapen dodo bird shot down, lying wingless, earthbound, not so much as a feathery flutter of a nerve.
The fully developed brain always looked and weighed the same-three pounds, give or take. But looks deceive. Jessica knew from her readings and experience that no two brains were exactly the same, no more so than human fingerprints. In some distant future, she imagined a time when a John or Jane Doe might be “recognized” and given an identity through a brain-print or brain map. The brain in its infinite folds and fissures has a unique pattern all its own, not unlike any two mountain ranges or glaciers, no matter the outward appearance. Still, some brains were put to better or weightier use than others, so if not in scale, in power the brains differed. Was there something in this fact of individuality that had prompted him to murder?
She and J.T., along with her significant other, Richard Sharpe, had discussed these very issues the night before. But they had come to no meaningful conclusions. In fact, they had come away as confused as before. “If this brain chef is killing in order to feed on brain food,” said Richard, “if you will, then why cannibalize young teens who have amassed little or no knowledge of the world beyond rap music? If, of course, you are doing this deed for the reason put forth by aboriginal tribes and primitive peoples the world over. That is, to take on the qualities and intellect of the man or woman's brain you consume,” Richard said as he packed for a diplomatic mission to China to shore up the extradition proceedings to bring a suspected terrorist prisoner back to the States.
“ Good question,” replied J.T., sipping at his wine.
“ Suppose he's not doing it for reasons put forth by primitives,” said Jessica. “Suppose he's answering to a different, perhaps more personal calling.” “You mean perhaps his dead mother is telling him to do it?” Richard stared at her for a response.
“ Something like that, yes.”
J.T. nervously laughed. Richard continued to pack. His plane would soon be leaving from the Quantico airstrip. The evening quickly ground to a halt, and she shooed J.T. out and then drove Richard to the airstrip where they had only a short time to embrace and say goodbye.
“ I may not be here when you call. I may be in the field,” she'd told him. “If you can't reach me here, use the cell number.”
“ Jess, why must Santiva always send you out on the worst, most awful crimes the FBI has to offer?”
“ You mean like the time he sent me to London? Where I met you? Habit, I'd say.”
“ Yes, London, but also where you damned near got killed. Just be careful while I'm gone.” He kissed her and again they embraced. She had remained there, waving until the six-passenger jet transport took off.
Santiva's meeting now at a close, people filed out. Jessica lagged behind. She picked up all her notes and thought about how helpless they were in the face of the random violence brought about by spree and serial killers. When and where the Brain Thief might strike again must wait until it happened. Unless they could find a miracle in all the thousands upon thousands of tips already flooding in on who the Brain Thief was. “He's everyone's neighbor or lover,” as J.T. had put it.
In the now empty room, Jessica looked up at the wall where the slides had been. The blankness felt like a challenge they would not soon or easily overcome. It made up a clear metaphor for the case-not so much as a clue on the smooth surface of the manila wall.
“ Would you like to see the slides again?” asked a female voice from the back of the room.
“ Oh, Henrietta, it's you. I thought I was alone,” she replied. Henrietta was Eriq's technical assistant. “No, thanks to seeing the slides again. Maybe another time.”
“ Just putting all of this stuff in a safe place,” said the technician. “You people, you've got to catch this SOB fast, Dr. Coran, before he butchers someone else's little girl. That's what he is, a butcher, not a doctor, not like you. He kills people; you save people.”
Jessica thanked Henrietta for the vote of confidence and quickly left. And though part of her did want to see the slides again, another part did not.
Still hiding in his Jacksonville, Florida, motel room, Grant Kenyon assessed his situation: thirty-nine years of age, facing forty, and somehow his life had been turned over to this insidious other self that he found his body, mind and soul contracted to-his damnable brain. A thinking organism living within him and fighting him for dominance; a thing telling him even as a child to consume brain matter. He had fed on small animals in this way as a child, working his way up to larger animals, and he had fed on the brains of medical cadavers when in medical school. No one had ever discovered that he'd had anything to do with the two missing brains there. Another kid, accused of pulling off a fraternity stunt, was expelled but no one had pointed a finger at Kenyon. In later years, he had fed on several fresher dead brains in the hospital morgue where he worked after earning his degree. None of it involved murder, no more so than the Jersey Ghoul, Daryl Thomas Cahil, had murdered his victims in '89 and '90. Now all that had changed-gone was any semblance of concern for where he got the brains. His mind now insisted he take them while they were still warm. Now he committed murder in the name of this craving, and for such a leap, his brain had had to concoct a perfect rationalization about glimpsing into the cosmic mind, one he'd first learned of from Daryl Thomas Cahil. Kenyon had followed the man's case from his first grave snatching to his apprehension, incarceration and release from prison. Using a fail-safe system with a firewall, he had remained in touch with Cahil from the moment he discovered the man had a website called Isle of Brain, which Cahil had begun in prison. The website had toned down over the years, preaching the use of symbolic tools such as animal brains instead of human brains to reach the cosmic over mind, but anyone reading between the lines knew that this was Cahil's only way to remain free to communicate. Even so, he had animal-rights activists working diligently to shut him down.
Cahil had abdicated the thrown of the brain-master, and Grant Kenyon's other brain had latched on to it, promising itself that it would surpass anything Cahil had ever attempted.
Still, a relatively new development had come-an aberration as if out of nowhere. His other mind/brain wanted to bond with him over this obsessive craving for the living, warm brain. He had already killed and consumed such. At least his altered self had, but to do so, it had had to collaborate with the part of his mind that premeditated selecting and attacking a victim. The uncontrollable urge belonged to the other within, while organization and carrying out of the specifics belonged to him. Highly unlikely that anyone but himself would or could see the distinction, save perhaps a competent shrink like those who had found some redeeming quality in Daryl Thomas Cahil. Grant didn't know where the original obsession plaguing him had come from, what its roots might be-whether genetically based or something that had occurred at an extremely early moment in his life. Perhaps it'd begun in the womb inside his forming brain, perhaps just after. He didn't know how deeply the fixation extended, or how long it would go on; nor did he begin to understand the need to consume human brain matter. Yet the necessity-according to the one within, calling himself by Grant's father's name as some kind of cruel joke-grew more powerful and insis-tent with each feeding. And as the need grew, he felt more and more of his own identity waning, flickering like the last moments of a candle until soon it would be extinguished, consumed by Phillip altogether.
The words of an old professor somehow filtered through to Grant Kenyon. “Our present understanding of the brain leaves us in the dark, and we may as well say the encephalon is filled with cotton wadding as anything else.”
Since then, as a medical man, Dr. Grant Kenyon had learned that the brain had no parallel, and that it was a supernatural organ that bridged the gap between physical and psychical realms. “Look at what it's done to me,” he
