“ Don't you want to wait? Get a CSI team in here, photos, the whole nine yards?” asked Sorrento. “Cover our asses, so to speak?” “Some things can't wait. We couldn't save this woman in life, least we can do is help her in death.”
“ How much of the woman do you hope to recover?” asked Konrath.
“ Gators swallow whole chunks, like sharks. Most of her will be intact.”
O'Hurley came through the brush on a makeshift splint. He gaped at the scene, and Konrath brought him up to date. Together, the three men pried Kenyon from the monster's jaws. Jessica and the others grimaced at the sight of the crushed skull and oozing gray matter. They then rolled the gator onto its back. In a moment, the alligator's bulk quit shimmying under the blue light of dawn, and it lay now on its back, its green-to-white stomach shimmering like glowing mildew.
Jessica revved up the bone cutter again and began the incision, unconcerned about precision as the cutter sailed through the tough underbelly of the twelve-foot-long monster.
Sorrento in a failed attempt to ease the tension said, “Some cesarean section you've got going here, Doc.”
After the difficult work of the center cut, a visible, odious gas flume expelled from the stomach, sending Jessica back-peddling, the odor too much to bear. When it was safe to return, she cut two flap wings at top and bottom of the original cut.
With no other instruments to work with, she worked in butcher fashion to open the stomach lining. More gas fumes erupted, and Jessica said, “Think there's something here.” She grabbed hold of a gooey yellow swath of clothing and pulled at it. A large portion of the raincoat. She was finding nothing in the way of flesh and bone.
Working on, without gloves, she used her blood-smeared hands to pull back the tough, unyielding skin once more. Sorrento lent a hand, holding back one of the massive flaps, the odor of the insides threatening to make him ill when Jessica declared, “There's no Mrs. Swantor here. She's got to be out there somewhere.”
“ In the woods?”
“ In the river?”
“ Someplace other than the gator.”
“ She may've drowned.”
“ Maybe the gator has a hole someplace below the water where he stashes food.”
“ She could be in shock, wandering about in a daze.”
The theories came fast and furious.
They began calling her name, their voices wafting through the thickets and out over the river. No answer.
“ We'll get some help from the cutter, do a thorough search of the entire area,” suggested Konrath.
Jessica searched for her cellular phone but realized it must be in the Mississippi muck that Konrath and Sorrento had pulled her from. “All right,” she said, relenting. Looking down at herself, she saw that she was covered in animal blood and tissue, caked in with mud. Ignoring this, she began to spout orders. “Yeah, we need reinforcements. You're right.”
“ We have some black-water divers aboard the cutter. We'll get them out here, too. We'll find Mrs. Swantor,” Konrath assured her.
Jessica breathed deeply and rubbed the back of her aching neck. “We've got to grid the house, the backyard and the yacht as well as three additional crime scenes. There's a total of six bodies, seven if Mrs. Swantor is found dead. And we need to confiscate the tapes that Swantor made aboard his-”
“ Jess, I think you need some rest and-” began Sorrento.
“ Rest?”
“- to step back. Let others handle things from here on,” he suggested.
“ You're cold and shivering, Dr. Coran,” added Konrath. “We could all use some hot food, nourishment, coffee. It's been a rough night.”
Sorrento took her by the shoulders and firmly said, “I'll stay behind, keep any animals from getting at the bodies until you send in a team, Doctor.”
“ Good news is we've put an end to the Skull-digger. I'll let them know back at headquarters, get the word out.”
“ Come on, O'Hurley,” said Konrath. “You need that ankle taken care of.”
Jessica again thanked Sorrento for all he'd done, and then she thanked the Coast Guard men. Looking up at the top of the rise, she saw sunlight up there above this backwater hole.
“ Yeah, you're right, Mike. I'll be able to coordinate everything from the ship a lot more efficiently than from here.”
“ Exactly.”
Along with Konrath and O'Hurley, Jessica made her way up the incline, climbing for the light.
SORRENTO watched all the others leave. When he felt certain he was alone, he stepped around to Grant Kenyon's shattered head. He easily plucked away large pieces of shattered bone from the skullcap created by the powerful jaws of the dead gator lying nearby. He squatted over the man's exposed gray matter, removing more and more of the fractured pieces from around it. He then, curious, proceeded to dig with his hands, and he liked the texture and feel of the cortical matter on his fingertips. Finally, Sorrento dared taste Kenyon's smashed brain.
The head was fractured wide, part of the skull easily picked apart like an eggshell. He found pieces, shards, whole chunks easy to prize out, just like feeding on a large walnut. Other parts had to be ripped with some difficulty from the crushed skull. Sorrento was convinced that this man's brain held power after he had cannibalized so many, and that if he now consumed Kenyon's brain, he might quite possibly have a glimpse at this “cosmic mind” he had read so much about on his computer since he had first logged on to the website run by Cahil, after a high-school kid up in Chimera, Louisiana, had first contacted him about it. Something about Cahil's suggestions were hypnotic, as radical as they sounded. But he had never entertained the idea that Cahil was the real Skull-digger. But rather that Cahil had influenced the Skull-digger.
Peering in through the cracks of Kenyon's demolished skull, he saw there was more inside he could not get at because his hand was too large to reach inside. He saw the bone saw lying where Jessica had left it, but dared not use it. That would tip his hand. Instead, he grabbed up a rock and smashed it against the cranium, opening the already existing fissures wider still. Using his Swiss Army knife, he managed to dig out more of the brain. He fed on it, not caring for the taste, but devouring it nonetheless for its magical power.
The situation, the location, it was all so perfect for his needs. No one need ever know. Everyone would simply believe the alligator got at Kenyon's brain before it died. Jessica had been too busy worrying over the woman's remains to pay close attention to the condition of Kenyon's brain.
No one would be the wiser… no one but Michael Sorrento.
Just then he heard a twig snap, and turning, the raw gray matter of what was left of Kenyon's brain in his hand, he saw a naked, shivering woman staring at him, but her eyes didn't register a thing. It was Mrs. Swantor, and she was in complete shock.
He stood and smiled, stepped toward her and said, “Mrs. Swantor.. I'm FBI Agent Mike Sorrento. I've been looking for you everywhere.”
She could not speak-showing only fear and looking like a deer caught in headlights. Frozen. Still, she might bolt. She stared past him at the bodies of the gator and Kenyon. Sorrento wondered how long she'd been standing here, staring; how much she had seen.
A Coast Guard helicopter began whirring overhead, a deafening sound. Sorrento guided the woman beneath a thicket of trees. “Stay right here, Mrs. Swantor, until I come back.” He went for the bone cutter. The sound it would make was no longer a concern.
EPILOGUE
And keeps the palace of the soul
