“They're used to such conditions.”
“ Bad weather-related problems south in the Gulf. Everything's been diverted there for rescue operations. Looks like a hurricane on the way.”
She stepped away from Quarels and huddled with Sorrento. “Something doesn't feel right. Swantor's too smart for this,” she said. “He's got to be planning some sort of getaway that involves another vehicle. He's got to know how hot that boat is right now.”
“ Yeah, I've thought about that possibility myself,” re-plied Mike Sorrento. “But I don't think he'll abandon ship until he's finished his sick little game.”
“ Unless,” she replied.
He saw that her eyes had grown large. “Unless what?”
“ Unless he intends to go down with the ship.”
“ A double-murder and suicide. Not until after his last installment…” Sorrento softly said.
“ Can't we get any more speed out of this thing?” she asked the captain. “A woman's life is at stake.”
“ We're surveying the shore and every rock and island in the river, Dr. Coran. We don't want to miss anything,” replied the captain. “Nor do we want to run aground.”
“ What about that helicopter?”
“ They're trying to find us one, but I can make no promises.”
“ What kind of an outfit is this?” Jessica shouted. “Should I request one from the Army, the Navy?”
“ Take it easy, Jess,” cautioned Sorrento. “Let's go below, have a cup of coffee to settle our nerves,” he suggested, guiding her outside and on deck.
Jessica relented, knowing she needed settling. “Damn it, he's going to feed her to that mad dog if we don't locate him and stop him.” Why… What's Swantor getting out of all this?” he asked as they went down a flight of stairs.
“ I'd be guessing but… it seems like he's gone into competition with Kenyon, to outdo Kenyon's horror with his own.”
“ And to die at the top of his form?”
“ All this spawned from the mind of Daryl Thomas Cahil and his Internet lunacy.”
Jervis Swantor had pushed his craft to its limit and had burrowed in at the swamps that would eventually spill out near Grand Isle. To evade capture, he had used one of the old canals cut during the Civil War by black regiments for U. S. Grant. Few people knew of the canal and even fewer knew how to maneuver in the swamps. He had fed the woman and spent the rest of the evening racing from authorities and hiding. There were a thousand directions and waterways and islands in the swamp, but one place in particular where he could find refuge-his former home at Grand Isle, the boathouse there-and then he could introduce Kenyon to his ex-wife, Lara.
But for now it was time to feed Kenyon.
Darkness had descended over the swamp, along with another beautiful blue fog saying a long hello to Swantor where he stood on deck. He opened a small hatchway and looked down at Kenyon, who lay on his bed, his fists pounding at his sides. The camera never left Kenyon, and he had to know that by now.
Swantor opened a second small hatch and stared down at the woman named Selese. She had tried to work on his sympathies, giving him her name, where she lived, names of relatives, even her dog's name, Ronnie, but he had only listened dispassionately, never stepping before the cameras. His face and presence would only be felt after the great event was filmed. This was mere rehearsal, he kept telling Selese. Lara would be the real show.
Swantor went below and shut down the filming in Kenyon's room. He then entered with a key to Kenyon's shackle, tossing it to Kenyon. All the while, he held the gun on the other man, telling him, “Pick up your bone cutter and tool kit and go into the other room for your mind meal, Grant.”
“ You don't have to keep me chained up,” Kenyon pleaded. “We ought to be able to trust one another.”
“ You'd kill me at the first opportunity. I have no illusions about that, Grant.”
“ But I wouldn't.”
“ Shut up and do as I say!” Swantor indicated the gun in his hand. “You must be starved. Aren't you hungry?”
“ I am… that I am.”
“ Go then, feed.”
Swantor locked Kenyon and Selese Montoya in the cabin together. As he made his way toward the living area, Swantor heard the woman's uncontrolled screams. Selese continued to scream hysterically as Swantor watched the viewing screen and set up the computer to send to Cahil's website. A part of him grew fascinated, and he slowed to watch it all unfold as he filmed it. He keyed in the necessary strokes and beamed it directly to the world. He added a special message to the screen for the FBI woman who had contacted him:
You and the rest of the world are going to enjoy this.
He imagined all the people who would see the film, duplicate it and forward it on to others. It represented a kind of immortality for Swantor.
Swantor had given Kenyon no Demoral to work with, but Phillip didn't care. In order to make her hold still, he knocked her unconscious. Then the Digger had gone immediately to work, shaving the woman's head, marking her fore scalp with bold red lines and lifting his scalpel over her closed eyes. With his left hand, Kenyon worked deftly, cutting down to bone. With the first bloody incision, Selese awoke and immediately screamed, and realized what Kenyon was telling her: “I only want your brain.” Knowing now what he was doing to her, she pleaded for help from anyone on the other side of the camera lens.
From his seat at the controls, watching, Swantor smiled and said, “I beseech thee! I beseech thee!”
He then watched Selese swoon before fainting altogether from blood loss.
Swantor could not have been happier with the results. His camera had caught every blood spatter, every deft movement of the doctor's hands. And Swantor, now the Webmaster, zoomed in to display a close-up of the disfigured forehead. Now the camera recorded as Kenyon's bone saw came to life. Its mechanical whirr created a terrifying sound in this context, and an even more horrifying noise as it made its screaming, grinding path through the skull-shattered shards of glass ground in a mixer.
“ I give you the Skull-digger,” said Swantor, recording his master of ceremonies voice. “Finally, the star of his own show…”
“ I hope you're enjoying this, Swantor!” Kenyon shouted as he placed the bone cutter to Selese's forehead again, making the final, methodical cut in his medically delicate manner. The computer had been told to blip any mention of Jervis's name. His own fifteen minutes of fame would come at his own choosing, in time.
The computer camera next captured Kenyon plucking the cut window of flesh and bone from the forehead and discarding it. The camera then showed him lifting his surgical tongs, opening them, plunging them into the window he'd created, and plucking forth the brain. He held it up to the camera eye. Like sweetmeats prised from a crustacean.
“ Is this what you want, you bastard? Is it?” He bit into the brain matter, tearing away a portion, devouring it half chewed. He repeated this again and again, his hands slick with blood and brain fluid.
Swantor reveled in what he filmed, clicking off the audio and saying through the intercom, “Perfect… perfectly executed, Dr. Kenyon. This will make us both great men!”
Kenyon as Phillip devoured the last of Selese's brain. As he did so, Swantor said over the intercom, “I'll have another for you soon.”
The camera left the bloody mouth of the killer and focused on the body of Selese Montoya, slowly making its way from her toes, along her legs, to torso, neck, lower face and then to the black rectangle created in the empty skull.
“ This is going out live, Kenyon, to the world. Take a bow.”
Grant cried out, his mouth still bloody, raging at the camera. “Let me out of here now, Swantor! Let me out!”
“ Audio's off, Dr. Kenyon. No one can hear you.”
The captain of the cutter, on which Jessica and Sorrento traveled, stood looking out over the broad expanse of the river. A cruise ship made up to look like an old-time paddle-wheeling riverboat passed them by, tourists waving from every deck and chair, a gleaming diamond-colored chandelier winking at them from the windowed restaurant aboard. The gaiety of the riverboat stood in stark contrast to the work at hand aboard the Coast Guard cutter. “Imagine the guy's insurance premium if that damn floating restaurant should go down out here in this fog,”
