Grave Instinct Read online

  However, Phillip wasn't accepting any of it, and so Grant could not help himself, or rather, he could not stop himself, or rather, he could not stop Phillip. And so, Phillip had again killed for the brain matter he craved, this time a young woman named Sharon. This time, he decided to throw authorities off, not marking the victim with the Rheil symbol as he had before, wanting to confuse them into thinking it a new killer, a copycat.

  After the kill in Mobile, Alabama, Grant knew that Phillip had lessened his chances of ever returning to a normal life. The authorities were probably closing in, as indicated by Cahil's absence. While he'd seen nothing about an arrest, he knew Cahil never left his computer for long, and it had been a week without an update from him.

  Before the killing in Mobile, Grant had tried desperately to explain to Phillip that they should not strike again until they had gone as far west as they could go, across the continent to California. But no, Phillip couldn't wait that long. They'd driven from Valdosta, Georgia, but had only gotten as far west as Mobile, Alabama, off I-10 when Phillip had demanded to be fed again.

  From there they'd made their way to a Biloxi, Mississippi, area hotel in a crossroads patch of buildings in a place called Hardscrabble. While there, Grant arranged to have the van painted green, as he tried to plan for a future that didn't include getting caught or killed. As Grant worked out a plan—since Grant could not prevent Phillip from killing—Phillip slept.

  From California, he planned to go north after perhaps three or four feedings. As he moved north, Phillip could continue feeding. Once he got to Washington, he'd turn east and go back across the continent on a northerly track, again taking some time off from feeding to throw authorities off. He would continue to move and Phillip could feed as they went.

  Still sitting at the table in the restaurant, his brains and eggs long finished, he opened a single sheet of paper with the names and addresses of people who had confided in him their real-time addresses, people he had chatted with on Cahil's website. Four of the names had been marked off, and now he marked off a fifth. He had rendezvoused with only two of them, three others had refused to meet, but he had learned of their addresses because they trusted him. He told them he would help them get a fresh start. Each one was in a troubled relationship or was having difficulties at home with parents. He sent them bus tickets and timetables where to meet him. He told them his name was Phillip. There was always the chance that one of them would use the tickets he'd forwarded. He'd also struck up an online friendship with males, and one lived just north of New Orleans. Grant had chatted online with this fellow for more than a year, knowing him only as Mr. SquealsLoud on the computer, but he had given Grant his real name and address. Now Grant and Phillip knew him as Dr. Jervis Swantor and they knew he lived at a marina outside New Orleans. Swantor had said he'd be in Florida sometime this month as well, but Grant and Phillip had found themselves too busy and they'd missed the agreed upon date, and when Grant had checked at the marina in Jacksonville, it had been crawling with cops.

  As Grant continued to kill time in Hardscrabble, Mississippi, waiting for the paint to dry next door, he gave thought to Swantor.

  Dr. Swantor had claimed to be in complete agreement with Grant against Cahil's notions on how to properly go about finding the cosmic eternal mind. After a while, Grant felt comfortable with Swantor, that they were of a like-mindedness he felt with no one else. Missing him in Florida had been disappointing, but Swantor had also said he'd be returning to New Orleans immediately after. Perhaps Grant and Phillip should look the man up.

  Still, Grant wasn't certain he could trust Swantor or anyone else, for that matter, with the dark secrets he and Phillip shared. Grant put Swantor out of his mind for now. He instead focused on the garage owner. He had promised to pay the elderly man twice what the man asked for in an effort to keep him quiet about the van and Grant ever having been there.

  He next returned to thoughts about his plans for California. It was a grand scheme his mind had devised and fixed upon, but already it was undermined by Phillip. Still, there was no dissuading Phillip, not anymore, not once he set his mind—their mind—to feeding.

  All night long, Grant had lain in a state of dormancy, like a moth, sleeping as if cocooned up. Still, while his body had shut down, his mind raced headlong, planning his next move, wondering if Biloxi had a Greyhound station or a train station, certain it must have one or the other or both most likely with all its gambling casinos, advertised on every other billboard sign along I-10 in this and adjoining states.

  Grant had found Sharon, Phillip's latest victim, at a bus station. Runaways. They made easy targets, but the kills would have been impossible without his van. If he hadn't had his van in Mobile, he wondered how he could possibly have handled the girl. He had expected everything to go smoothly, since he had assurances from a Bolinda that she was on her way. She lived close to Mobile, only a short bus ride away, she had confided. They had first met in Cahil's chat room and subsequently she had given up her E-mail address to him. She had been intrigued by him, she'd said on more than one occasion.

  It turned into a long wait.

  She wasn't on the bus she'd said she would be on. He waited for the next one. He had spent a suspicious hour in and around the Greyhound station, when finally a young woman got off a bus coming in from Nashville.

  No one at the station hailed her or went near her, as others found their loved ones. This one stood apart, alone and vulnerable, like the last gazelle at a watering hole.

  She looked the pan he had planned for her: young, naive, frightened and hungry. No one paid any heed when he went up to her and said, “Bolinda? Is that you?”

  The young woman glared at him, not surprisingly. “No, my name's not Bolinda. You're looking for someone else.”

  “It's me, Seeker.” He didn't flinch. Instead, he offered her a meal and a place to stay for the night, along with any drugs she might like.

  She stared back at him, her eyes wide. “I'm not Bolinda, and no, I don't think so.”

  “Well, whoever you are, you can't stay on the streets. A pretty girl like you? You'd be dead by morning.”

  “Get away from me, you creep,” she said, the words echoing about the room.

  He looked up and raised his shoulders to anyone who might be staring, mimicking a lover's quarrel.

  “I only want to help you.”

  “What're you? The local pimp?”

  Grant thought of how he pimped for Phillip. “I'd only do that for you if you chose to, if you wanted to make money. I wouldn't force you into it.”

  “You've got some nerve. You've got to be kidding,” she replied.

  “Just stay the night. There's other girls you can get to know. They'll tell you I never hurt so much as a fly, and that I only want what's best for them.”

  “I'm sure you have them all well trained.”

  “Well fed and well trained, and they get whatever they want.”

  She stared at him, studying his features. “Just stay the one night, and by morning, you can make your decision.”

  “You say you've got some drugs?”

  “I do.”

  “What kind?”

  “Any kind, anything you want, sweetheart, for the taking ... for now. Here, let me carry your bag. I'm parked just around the corner outside.”

  She sheepishly followed. He confidently walked ahead of her, taking charge, asking, “If you're not Bolinda, what is your name, sweetheart?”

  “Sharon.”

  “Nice name. Nice.”

  “Who's Bolinda?”

  “Someone who stood me up.”

  In a moment, they stood at the rear of his van, and he placed her bag on the curb. He opened the rear door on the black interior while she stood beside him, gauging the wisdom of her decision. He could feel her thinking, it was like a pulsing beam coming off her cranium. She was young and filled with a powerful energy, he decided. It was an energy Phillip craved.

  As he opened the door with one ha
nd, he grabbed and shoved her head into the metal with the other, knocking her into submission and jamming the needle into her arm. She slumped into his arms.

  “Everything OK here?” asked a Latino street beggar with his hand out.

  Grant hefted the girl inside, lifted her bag and told the street man that he could have it and its contents. This gesture both stunned and pleased the beggar, who marched off quickly with the girl's things.

  Grant then secured Sharon's extremities and head. He wisely locked the rear doors and climbed into the driver's seat, going for the secluded place beneath the bridge that he had earlier scouted for the work. Phillip later told Grant that he believed Sharon was sent to them, and that she had more soul in her head than Bolinda would ever achieve.

  Reliving it here over coffee and the remnants of his late breakfast, Grant tried to recall the moment of touching that cosmic universal soul that Phillip had so guaranteed him. Phillip described it in beatific terms and was filled with excruciating happiness over it, but Grant had to be told about it, as by then he was no longer in the van. The operation was Dr. Grant Kenyon's doing, but the feeding and subsequent feelings of power and ecstasy belonged to Phillip.

  BEFORE leaving Mobile, Jessica had been assured by Agent Douglas that an alert on their killer there would go out. Unfortunately, the description of the van he used was a match for millions like it. Still, Douglas assured her that he would ask cities and towns dotting the map along I-10 west of Mobile, Alabama, to be on heightened alert for anything looking suspicious.

  She and J.T. had talked about their next strategy during the plane trip back to Quantico.

  “Listen, J.T., before Daryl Thomas Cahil was labeled the Skull-digger, the FBI had amassed 6,511 tips from the public as to the identity and whereabouts of the Skull-digger.” Jessica spoke over the hum of the plane.

  J.T. nodded. “Several of those tips pointed to Daryl. We had an army of agents across the nation looking into each tip, but since word Cahil got out . . . sorry, but all such tips were put in a holding pattern.”

  “According to Jere Anderson we now have a positive DNA match between Daryl's delicacy found in Morristown and Anna Gleanson from Richmond.” Jessica had checked in with the Quantico lab just before boarding.

  “Which implicates Daryl even more than ever. This fact alone will be enough to cement the case against Cahil in most minds.”

  “Most minds haven't seen what we've seen in Mobile, Alabama. We never had the Skull-digger in custody, John. He's still at large, a lunatic who likely took cues from Cahil.”

  “So what's next?”

  “We concentrate on the civilian tips,” she told J. T.

  “That's a lot of tips,” replied J. T. “We'll need a miracle to jump-start this case.”

  Every instinct and desire was to close a case, and once closed, minds shut down as well. No one back at Quantico would welcome the news that the FBI still had no clue as to the identity of the Digger.

  “I think Cahil's records—his database—are still very use-fill. We have to proceed under the assumption that whoever sent him that small portion of Anna Gleason is our killer. Daryl believes it to be the man who logs on as Seeker.”

  “I ran it through VICAP as a possible alias, Jess. Got nowhere.”

  “Then we run all the code names we've culled as possible leads through VICAP. See if it spits any back at us.”

  “We can do that, sure . . . good idea.”

  “I was thinking that we can do the same against all the crime tips that have gone uninvestigated because the FBI grapevine had the case, quote: 'winding to a close.' “

  “Great idea . . . we'll run cross-checks on both lists.”

  In fact, the tips that still remained in an uninvestigated status numbered well over five thousand, with more coming in every day. Most of these unchecked tips would prove a waste of time, but somewhere in the slush pile of tips, someone somewhere may have information vital to locating the real Skull-digger.

  “Earlier we asked VICAP for similar crimes. This time we go back to the unsolicited tips, pursuing each only in the event of matching key words and phrases that we'll program the computer to locate, such as 'doctor,' 'brain removal,' 'cannibalism' and 'Rheil.' “

  Jessica telephoned Eriq and, after greetings, she said, “We need to divert all the tips on the Digger case from every field office electronically to our Quantico computer.”

  “To consolidate them all in one place. Should've been done a long time ago, I agree.”

  Jessica suggested to Eriq, “We can then cross-reference them with other lists, like VICAP.”

  “It will take you months to run down every one of them,” he countered.

  “I have an idea that might save us months.”

  “Really?”

  “Once we finally get AOC to release information on the users on Cahil's website, we cross-reference them with names provided by VICAP and the tipsters.”

  “That's not bad . . . not bad at all, if we can get the AOC to release the goddamn subscriber names, make a three-way match, the list can't be so long.”

  Jessica was speaking over him. “Then we look very closely at any three-way matchups, and—”

  “We take only those crisscrossing people, and we investigate each thoroughly.” Eriq had a knack for making any good idea sound like his own. “Set it up. Let's do it.”

  Now the jet carrying them back to Quantico was circling for a landing, and Jessica could see the airport tower and the buildings of Quantico in the near distance. She saw the pleasant small town of Quantico, the comings and goings of cars in and out of store lots, people busy with their lives, the marching training cadets in the FBI compound, the place looking like a cross between a military barracks and a college campus.

  The sight always reminded her of the first time she'd come to Quantico as a cadet, recruited from her medical examiner job in Washington, D.C.

  THE little stopover at the Mississippi grill had reminded Grant Kenyon of his childhood, devoid of color or charm, when his name had been Corey Lyttle. He had legally changed his name when he'd gone off to college, never seeing or speaking to his parents again. Growing up as the son of a farmer in rural upstate New York, his life had been filled with the raising and slaughtering of animals—chickens, sheep, goats, hogs and cattle, and the seasonal deer kill. The slaughters were always detailed and time-consuming, involving getting at the intestines and organs—the vitals and vittles as his father had called them. The process involved salvaging every item of the carcass, from hoof to head, including the brain.

  He had grown up watching and learning and taking part in those slaughters, so as to become a man, as his father had put it. He recalled his callous and heavy-handed father's wielding of an ax to open the skulls of slaughtered cows, and his equally callous words: “Waste nothing, from an animal, boy.”

  His father had had no finesse when it came to going into the cranium for the brains of the animals. He simply shoved his gloveless hands inside the cavity created by two strokes of the ax, and then he wrenched the brain free. Inside the old house, his mother chopped the animal brains into mincemeat to be used like hamburger.

  When they slaughtered an animal for their own use, they fed on its every pan, including the brains. His mother had recipes for cornbread and brains, brain potatoes, brain soup, brains and eggs, brain brownies even. It had started young Corey Lyttle on a lifelong taste for brains. How many times did his father repeat the words, “Listen close, boy. Them animal brains'll make you smart, and we both know you need all the smarts you can rustle up. Besides, they fill you up when nothing else will.”

  Now Grant had gotten back on the road, heading west, going toward New Orleans on 1-10. He recalled how, as a child, he had become sick to death of brains, and once he left home he had vowed to never touch them again. He held on to that promise for many years, until he learned of the crimes committed by Daryl Thomas Cahil, and his motive for committing those grave robbings. That was the first time he'd e
ver heard of a physical connection between brain and soul, and it brought about the growth, development and metamorphosis of Phillip the Seeker.

  He'd left home with two overwhelming urges: to become his father's opposite, and to feed his thirst for knowledge, which would keep him from ever having to return to Stark, New York. He finished high school at the top of his class and earned a scholarship to college at NYU in New York City. Far from endearing himself to his mother and father, his education only worked to further their estrangement.

  Traffic now buzzed by and around Grant, while the sameness of the divided highway all around him induced boredom. A look into the rearview mirror reminded him how similar in features he was, at middle age, to his father. The same large brow, the same wrinkles in exactly the same places, along his jaw, about the neck, the same ears, eyes, nose even. It felt like staring at a ghost.

  “Some things you can't escape from, Corey,” said Phillip, the voice in his head.

  “What the hell do you want?” he replied.

  “What do I always want?”

  He drove on.

  He next thought of his wife and child, left in New Jersey to fend for themselves. Their family had been doing well up to a point, while Grant had kept his demons at bay. He'd purchased a nice house in Holyoke, a subdivision just outside Newark, and he and Emily were happy for a time, and when Hildy was born, it appeared all would be heaven and peace. He hadn't practiced any sort of brain-feeding for several years, keeping that powerful, gnawing craving at bay. On learning of Cahil in the papers, he began to follow the case, and he fulfilled his cravings vicariously for a long time by going online with Cahil's website, a secret fascination. He had even, for a time, practiced Cahil's prescription for his so-called legal brain-feeding. But ultimately, his urges took over, and he began to practice Cahil's first notion of eating the brains of dead people, in ready supply at the hospital morgue where he worked.