“ Island of tissue?”
“ Deep at the center, something of an island. Called it the Real Island at his elocution. No one knew what he was talking about, least of all me.” “You were at the trial?”
“ I found him fascinating; I asked to be put on his case, and Dr. Arnold arranged everything and set me up for the case study. I was not long out of psychiatric study at Stanford.”
“ Tell me more.”
Deitze had an overlarge face, uncannily wrinkled with worry lines for one so young. Perhaps this single case was meant as his crowning achievement, and it had taken its toll on him. “It was assumed this object Cahil sought was some imaginary prize, part of his warped fantasy. But later on, during incarceration, I began to listen more closely to Cahil. I dug through old texts and esoteric books on the brain, and I made a stunning discovery. This 'Real Island' he spoke of, it was spelled R-h-e-i-1 after its discoverer, a Dr. Rheil in the late eighteenth century. Cahil wasn't talking about some fiction his mind had concocted but a real-that is tangible-piece of brain matter, Dr. Coran.”
“ I've never heard of this Rheil Island, Dr. Deitze. Is there a formal, medical term for this brain part?”
“ Just Rheil. Rheil dissected hundreds of brains during his lifetime, but only stumbled on his so-called island late in his life. Said it was located in the deepest recesses of the medulla oblongata.
“ The midbrain. Cahil claimed in perfect lunatic fashion how the soul resided there, which had been Rheil's eighteenth-century speculation. Cahil said that in consuming this portion of the children's brains, that he meant to consume the souls of these children in order to be more powerful and in touch with something he called the cosmic mind.”
“ Christ save us all.”
“ I'm only telling you what he told the court, and details he filled in later as I worked with him. At any costs, Cahil had stumbled onto the esoteric teachings of the likely demented Dr. Benjamin Artemus Rheil, and he twisted what Dr. Rheil had to say about the Island of Rheil. My own study into Rheil and his work shows there's next to nothing remaining of the man or his theories, and others have simply chalked up his island as a leftover from our primitive brains. But in Cahil's mind, this small portion paradoxically holds all our spiritual being within, and when you die, you go to this island to await your next journey or voyage or incarnation.”
“ You mean purgatory is all in the mind?”
“ Strange thing is that Cahil would draw pictures of it over and over again.”
“ Purgatory?”
“ No, no, the island itself, and it is roughly similar in appearance to a cross that signifies upright man, the horizon, and the godhead.”
“ Do you have any of his drawings?” asked Jessica.
“ I do… and it coincides with the etchings you located on the dead women killed by the Skull-digger. Your chief sent me the image and asked if it meant anything to me.”
“ Strange coincidence, I admit, but you said you could prove that Cahil is not the killer. It looks the opposite to me, Doctor.”
“ Cahil is being set up. Someone is using him. He's accepted my therapy as his cure, to replace the object of his desire-which violates human morality and all the laws of decency known to mankind-with something acceptable. He now consumes a symbolic diet like many of us consume the host and the body of Christ with the wine and the wafer.”
“ And you think he's remained on his diet since leaving here, Doctor? We all know how many patients go off their meds after leaving here, and we are speaking of a symbolic gesture here, something far more difficult to absorb than a psychoactive pill.”
“ I know he's remained true to his new path.”
“ You want to bet the lives of more young women on that assumption?”
“ It's not… I mean, yes.”
“ Tell me, Dr. Deitze, what did this guy do with the children's leftover heads and the portions of brain he didn't want?”
“ Cahil had been a butcher on the outside. After warming to me, he told me that he ground up and fed the rest of the remaining gray matter, along with the heads, to his dogs.”
“ I see… mixed it all together with the usual bonemeal from his little chop shop of horrors. I'm sure the animals went mad for it.”
Deitze stood up and wandered to his window, looking down on the courtyard below where the less dangerous patients were allowed an hour a day.
Jessica was getting messages from the man's body language. “Has Cahil been in touch with you, Dr. Deitze?”
He hesitated a hair. “No… and I've lost track of him. He's disappeared from the home and job we placed him in.”
“ Morristown? Where did he work?”
“ Baby land Furnishings.”
“ My God… you placed him in a job involving children?”
“ He is cured, I tell you, and he is not your killer.”
“ Dr. Deitze… Jack… it's one thing to do a case study and put forth a theory of rehab never before tried, but it's foolish to maintain that we should not take a close look at this guy, unless you have some irrefutable evidence that he is innocent.”
Jessica thought of their initial profile of the killer, and she asked, “And if he's disappeared from where he was placed, that only points up the fact he's roving. Possibly roaming the coast from Jersey to Florida.”
“ I know Cahil is cured of feeding on-”
“ On the real thing? Look, we're not excluding other leads, but the mark left on the victims is identical to this man's drawings of his Rheil tissue. You won't mind if I take one or two of his drawings with me, will you?”
“ No… go right ahead. But I wish to caution you about Maxwell Strand. He only wants one thing: to see Cahil killed.”
“ These drawings are more than coincidence, Doctor. They're quite compelling. As for Strand, I'm sure I understand his biases.”
“ Read the rehabilitation paper in its entirety, Dr. Coran,” he called after her as she left.
Strand had waited on a hallway bench. He stood and came alongside her. She wanted to get out of this building full of horrors and bad memories.
“ Did he feed you that line about how he's cured Cahil of his cravings for cannibalizing brains?”
“ He told me about it, yes, along with the story of how Cahil only wanted a small portion of the brains of his victims.”
“ Yeah… the Rheil tissue.”
“ You know about that?”
“ I was there at his elocution, and I've read Dr. Blowhard's case study. I told you, I'm an expert on Daryl Thomas Cahil.”
“ Then tell me,” she asked, slowing her pace so that he might keep up. “Where do these sickos come up with their fantastic rationalizations?”
“ Adolf Hitler rationalized genocide right along with Osama bin Laden.”
“ So they place him in Morristown and provide him with a job at a kid's store? I can't shake this inconceivable idiocy.”
He countered sharply. “But it made a warped kind of sense-bureaucratic nonsense.”
“ How crazy is the system?”
“ Has this harmless job by day, and cracking open and feeding on young women's brains by night,” said Strand.
Jessica felt an urgency to find and put Cahil behind bars for the sake of his next victim. Something about Cahil's working around children convinced her that maybe she ought to be pursuing this man exclusively and full throttle.
They passed the security check, waved to the guards and were out the door. Jessica breathed in great breaths of air. Strand, at her side, said, “Santiva told me about what you found in the victim's heads, that picture of the Rheil cross. It corresponds with the pictures that Cahil drew while in prison, and the one he has up on his website.”
“ Website? Whataya mean, website?”
“ Don't you know? It's all in Deitze's case study, part of his rehab program for poor little misunderstood Cahil. While he was incarcerated, Cahil was set up with a computer and was given access to the Internet as part of his therapy.”