“ Height?”
“ Five-ten.”
She told him of the shoe print find at the latest murder scene. “It's from a guy who's at least 175 to 180, possibly one hundred and ninety pounds, Detective Strand.”
“ Prints at a crime scene can be unreliable.”
“ The officer in charge was very thorough and professional. And Cahil can't have changed his foot size or his height, so… Then there's the thing about how leopards don't change their spots.”
“ You mean a ghoul can't graduate to live prey?”
“ He dealt in dead bodies, not live ones, right? Like his height and weight, his MO and his fantasy aren't likely to change.”
“ Unless it has developed into something else. Hell, he had nearly thirteen years to tweek it.”
“ Our current ghoul makes dead bodies; he doesn't dig them up. Other than the brain theft, there's not a lot of similarities here between what Cahil was convicted for, and what the Skull-digger has done.”
“ But that's just it. Cahil lost more than twelve years. He's now making up for lost time. He could well be the Skull-digger, still in search of this 'island' thing, this 'real thing.' “
She had no idea what he meant, but she asked, “Then why isn't he in custody, Detective?”
“ He will be as soon as we can locate him. Place is under surveillance at the moment and an order for his arrest has been issued. I took the liberty and asked your field operatives in Jersey to haul him in on suspicion, just to see if he was there, but he's not, which tells me he's elsewhere.”
“ Where is 'elsewhere'?” “Possibly in Atlantic City, as your mysterious phone calls suggest.”
“ Santiva told you about the calls?”
He nodded.
She knew the way to Deitze's office; it had been Gabe Arnold's before Matisak had hooked him up to a dialysis machine in the infirmary and drained him of every ounce of blood. Jessica hadn't returned here in almost nine years, and she'd forgotten about the constant wail of madmen behind these walls. Fortunately, she needn't go through lockup for her purposes today. Her groundbreaking study on socio-paths, done here back in the early '90s, had become required reading at the FBI Academy.
Strand struggled to keep pace, a bad leg plaguing him. She slowed in response.
“ Can you verify that he's actually been out of town, and if so do his vacations coincide with the killings?”
“ Neighbors verify that he's been out of town, but no one can say where or for how long. He's a recluse, and he timed his disappearance to coincide with my operation and hospital stay.”
“ Was he living with anyone in Morristown?”
“ I've seen a woman come and go, but it's him… one of his personality manifestations.”
“ He's schizophrenic?”
“ Multiple personalities. So, in a sense, yes. A woman resides there with him. I suspect the first call you got, the female caller, was this manifestation. So, you can stop worrying about her safety.”
“ He has no wife? No girlfriend who lives elsewhere, maybe out of town, maybe down the street or in Atlantic City?”
“ None. He has no interest in anything smacking of normal, Dr. Coran.”
Jessica imagined the pressure Eriq must have been under from both above and from this man to place someone- anyone-in custody for the Skull-digger's heinous crimes. “I want to believe this is the guy as much as you do, Detective-that we're closing in on the bastard, but I have to be careful.”
“ Are you preaching the book to me?” he asked and then laughed.
“ I'm sorry. I've been down a lot of dead ends recently.”
“ I'm sure you have.”
One of the guards at the greeting desk must have called up to Deitze's office because he stood outside the door, waving her forward while telling Detective Strand that he would speak only to Dr. Coran.
The two men glared so hard at one another that Jessica feared each would be turned to stone. Obviously, they had some bad history between them. “I'll speak to Dr. Coran alone or not at all, Strand,” declared Deitze.
Strand whispered in her ear, “Watch him. He's a liar.”
Jessica had met Deitze at various law-enforcement functions, but they had never spent any time together, and what little she knew of him, she didn't care for. He was an overbearing, self-aggrandizing sort who, she believed, would sell his mother for a chance to be published in a major medical journal.
The first thing he extended to her was his published paper on Cahil's treatment, and secondly, his sweaty hand. “The paper is on Cahil, although I used a fictitious name. If you will, Dr. Coran, read it thoroughly, you will find Cahil harmless and incapable of the skullduggery and butchery of this so-called Brain Thief who takes human life. If Cahil is involved at all, it is only peripherally and not of his own choosing.”
“ What do you mean by that?” she asked.
“ Let's retire to my office. I have coffee. This will take time.” As she entered his office, she apologized for Santiva's absence. He replied, “Hardly a problem… much better for medical people to understand one another before we go off to others with our theories, wouldn't you say?”
She wondered if what he said was meant as a slap of sorts. She wondered how much Santiva had told him about her suspicions of Cahil. “I suppose so, yes.”
“ Can I pour you coffee?”
“ Black, please.”
He poured for them both. “Take the time to read the report.”
She did so, asking questions as she went. “Cahil admitted to why he robbed the graves of five children? Says here it had nothing to do with the tabloid speculations about necrophilia.”
“ Cahil was not sexually motivated whatsoever to attack his dead victims, no. He wasn't in it to create sex objects of his victims, no. All balderdash.”
“ I was within these walls on several occasions while he was incarcerated, doing my own study, as you recall, Dr. Deitze, just before you took over as Chief of Psychiatry here. Neither Dr. Arnold nor you thought him of interest to my study, yet he harbored these antisocial behaviors? Why was he kept from me?”
“ Hardly kept from you. He was kept in isolation.”
“ And you two worked with him.”
“ Yes, before Arnold's unfortunate end… yes.”
“ I see.”
“ Cahil was never a candidate for your study because he had not actually murdered anyone.”
“ Necrophilia was the sensationalized story, yes. Page one of the tabloids. So, what's the real story?”
“ He cut off the heads in order to take them to a safe place where he could do what he wanted with them. To take his time.” “The safe place being his basement at home?”
“ With a stopover at his place of work, a butcher's shop, where-”
“ Where he could damn well take his time with the victim's head, I'm sure.”
“ Yes… but it was in order to take his time with his true intended prize, the brains of the dead children, Dr. Coran.”
“ Ghoulish, all right… and what did he do with the gray stuff? Breakfast, lunch and dinner?”
“ Not exactly, no.”
“ Blended it in the mixer and drank it with his Ovaltine?”
“ If you'll just listen, Doctor.”
“ Bathed in it?”
“ No.”
“ What then?”
“ To gain his freedom, he had to describe his crimes in detail. He had to give a complete elocution.”
“ Dr. Deitze, what the hell did Cahil use the brain matter for?”
Deitze cleared his throat, sipped at his now-tepid coffee and replied, “The man sincerely believed it would place him in touch with something he called the eternal cosmic mind.”
“ Then he did consume it?”
“ Not all of it, or so he professed in open court. Said it was just a small island of tissue he really cut the head open for.”
“ Small island of tissue?”
“ Discarded the rest of the brain. But to get at this small dab of brain matter, he had to cut deep into the center to pluck it out.”