Mortal Fear

unimaginable.”

“But personally he’d never make a dime,” I point out.

“He’d be famous, though,” says Miles. “And with the current legal climate, he might just get off and do a multi-million-dollar book deal.”

“Money and fame,” murmurs Drewe. “The twin gods of our society. Pretty strong motivation for the right person.”

“I just don’t buy it,” I insist.

“Well, obviously there’s the metaphysical side,” says Miles. “I mean, whoever pulled this off would be accomplishing what no one in history ever has. If you forget morality, his quest is heroic. Even noble.”

“Noble!”

“Hell, yes! Melvillian in scope. Captain Ahab with a scalpel. Mary Shelley unbound. One of his aliases is Prometheus, remember? I’ll tell you something else. The three of us are under thirty- five. But one day we’re going to look down at parchment skin, shriveled breasts, limp dicks, and swollen joints that creak like ratchets when we try to move. And on that day I think we’ll understand the fountain-of-youth motive much better than we do now.”

Drewe wrinkles her nose. “I think you’re crude but also right. That tells us that the killer must be at least… what?”

“Forty-five,” says Miles.

“That’s the upper range limit for a serial killer,” I tell them. “And you’re using it as a lower limit. At least that’s what I got from my research.”

“If we go with Drewe’s theory,” says Miles, “I don’t think Brahma is a serial killer, except by after-the-fact definition. He’s a doctor, period. A scientist. Lumping him in with Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy is like grouping Denton Cooley with Doc Adams from Gunsmoke.”

“Forty-five sounds good,” Drewe agrees. “Surgery is an acquired skill. Even gifted cutters need to be tempered.”

In that instant my mind skips off track, giving me a new perspective. “We’re missing the forest!” I declare, startling both of them. “If Drewe could find out all this about the pineal gland, surely the FBI has as well?”

She looks put out at my devaluation of her detective work. “What do your papers say?” she asks Miles.

“As of last night, they weren’t giving more weight to doctors than to any other group. That may have changed after Wheat’s head was autopsied.”

“I doubt it,” I tell them. “Do you know why?”

My oracles are silent.

“We’ve created a single suspect brilliant enough to actually pull off this transplant thing. But that’s flawed logic. It isn’t necessary that he be capable of it, or that it even be possible. You see? All that’s necessary is that he know about the pineal research and that he believe he’s capable of doing a transplant. That’s what lets in the psychotic taxidermists and dentists and all the rest.”

“But his computer skill proves he’s brilliant,” argues Miles.

“Brilliant with computers,” says Drewe. “Not necessarily medicine.”

“Let’s say a surgeon is the brains behind this,” I cut in. “He trolls EROS himself, but he needs a hacker to get at our master client list, plus medical information from health insurance computers, God knows what else. Then he hires muscle to do the actual killings-”

“That explains the rapes!” cries Drewe. “It’s not the surgeon, it’s his hired thugs. Some sleazeballs are raping the women, and the surgeon doesn’t care so long as he gets his pineal glands. He’s probably glad his thugs are confusing the crime scenes!”

Miles is nodding. “Division of labor. A surgeon could easily afford a cracker and some hired muscle.”

“Gross income for a neurosurgeon is nearly half a million,” Drewe says. “And that’s an average.”

“I’m definitely in the wrong business,” Miles mutters.

“But that theory works only if Brahma’s a flake,” I point out. “If we postulate a man with a real chance of success, he needs a team of medical specialists to help with the operation.”

“And they’d realize what he was up to,” says Drewe. “Eventually. I don’t think money would be enough motivation for medical people to take part in murder.”

Miles laughs bitterly. “Money is always enough motivation for some people. You two have so much of it now you’ve forgotten what it’s like to really need it.”

“Whether it’s a nut or a serious surgeon,” I say irritably, “it’s clear why you and I are suspects. You could easily be the paid hacker. You’d be guilty of murder even though you were never at a single crime scene.”

He nods soberly.

I shove back my chair, climb onto its wooden back, and perch there with my feet on the seat. “I’d say we’ve come up with some significant reasoning here. The question is, do we tell the FBI?”

“Fuck no,” Miles says savagely. “They’ve got me cast for the remake of Midnight Express.”

I look to Drewe, but she is gazing at the kitchen curtains drawn shut against prying eyes. “They know most of this already,” she says softly. “They must. If they don’t, I don’t have much faith in them.”

“What do you think?” I ask Miles. “Do they?”

He averts his eyes. “The groundwork is there.”

“They don’t suspect there’s an unknown victim,” I press him.

He shakes his head.

“We’ve got to tell them about the fifty blind-draft women,” Drewe says flatly. “That’s nonnegotiable. One of them is dead or missing right now.”

“Drewe,” Miles says carefully, “women set up blind-draft accounts precisely because their use of EROS might cause problems or even physical danger in their homes. I can’t sic the FBI on them without any warning.”

She is clearly upset by this. “Privacy means more to you than a human life? You think those women value it over their lives?”

“It’s more complicated than that. You just came up with this unknown-victim idea. And if we accept our own logic, she’s already dead. Right? I mean, we’re pegging her as a donor.”

“Not necessarily dead. She could be lying on an operating table right now.”

Miles is thinking. “What if I call Jan Krislov and tell her to order my techs to start contacting those fifty women? To verify that they’re alive and okay?”

“ Everywoman with a blind-draft account,” Drewe insists.

“That’s over five hundred women,” I tell her.

“Closer to six,” Miles says. “It might cause a panic, but we could do it.” He pauses again, weighing the risks. “Okay. I’ll tell Jan to put four techs on it. They’ll start with the fifty women who aren’t active but are still paying their fees. Good enough?”

Drewe bites her bottom lip.

I feel a strange fluttering below my diaphragm. “Miles, maybe it’s time to come clean with Baxter and Lenz. You talked me out of pursuing this thing once, and the result was very bad.”

He lets out a frustrated sigh. “Harper, the three of us are buying into a scenario we came up with off-the-cuff, and a pretty damned wild one at that. The FBI has twice the raw data we do, but they’re not buying the doctor theory yet. Because they can’t afford to. It’s their responsibility to catch this guy. We’re just three people talking. You see?”

At my core I know this is a lie. We are not “just three people talking.” We are bright people with specialized knowledge and personal stakes in the case. Even Drewe seems to have attacked the problem with proprietary intensity.

The blaring ring of the kitchen telephone freezes us all in place. Drewe looks to me for a sign.

“I’m here,” I tell her. “Miles definitely isn’t.”

She takes a deep breath, then picks up the receiver and says, “Dr. Cole.”

She listens intently for about ten seconds, then cuts her eyes at us and smiles tightly. “Hang on,” she says, and puts her palm over the mouthpiece. “It’s Mom. It’s about Erin. This is going to be a long one. You want me to go to the bedroom phone?”