Jessica recalled how Lorena Combs, as a high-school student, had gotten the story.
Strand went on. “He replaced the boogeyman; hell, he was the boogeyman. Christ, before Cahil's activities, the dead could assume themselves safe in their graves, but not anymore. Imagine the parents of these departed children learning what had happened to their babies? Like I said, Judge Skinner, with the best of intentions, didn't allow cameras or reporters in the courtroom. Nobody but people directly involved in the prosecution and defense of the case, which included Drs. Gabriel Arnold and a young Jack Deitze on one side, me and my partner, along with Newark detectives on the other.”
“ So the trial transcripts and what Deitze has on him are the only record of his madness?”
“ Until now. He's still thinking the same thoughts only now with live game.”
“ To get at this lump of brain tissue?” J.T. asked, clicking on an icon that opened on a sketch with a caption indicating it was a drawing of the Island of Rheil. “Here it is. Look familiar?”
asked J.T.
It was the first time that J.T. had seen Cahil's drawing to compare it with what they had found inside the victims' skulls. “It does look like the cross,” Jessica muttered into J.T.'s ear, “in a rough kind of way.”
J.T. shook off a shiver and asked, “How mad can men get, Jess?”
“ It would appear as mad as they wanna be.”
J.T. clicked on an icon below the article. The computer screen now filled with a scanned photograph of something oddly shaped like a small filleted fish lying beside a six-inch ruler, measuring approximately two inches. It had the gray appearance of real brain tissue, bulbous at one end, cross shaped at the other. Below it read a caption: Human Rheil, sent to me by the Seeker. May 3, 2003-
“ What the hell is that?” asked Owens, pointing to the screen.
Strand said, “A photograph of this Rheil thing from an actual brain.”
“ From one of the Skull-digger's victims,” suggested J.T.
Jessica gasped and stared at the small strip of brain tissue. “This alone ought to put the man away for life.”
Morristown, New Jersey Early morning
“ DARYL'S website is getting hits from all over the U.S. and the planet, Jess,” J.T. told her.
“ Can you trace them?”
“ Which one? They're coming in at warp speed. We need more help and a focused target.”
A light drizzle had begun around the dark little house vacated by Daryl Thomas Cahil. Jessica had seen that the man's computer was equipped with a digital camera. She asked J.T. to bring up the photographic image of the material Cahil had labeled as a real piece of human brain tissue. “I want another look at it.”
Now she and Strand stood over J.T.'s shoulder, staring fixedly at the fleshy-looking lump in the digitized computer image. The tissue resembled skin peeled and cut away from a raw chicken leg, except that it was gray, tinged with a blueness, J.T. explained, “The blue color is either from being cold, or it's an enhancement made by Cahil-to dramatize it more.”
The tissue sample indeed had roughly the same shape as the cross found left inside the victims' skulls, a perpendicular feeder line, a horizontal connecting line and a bulbous top that was roughly circular in shape. More chilling than anything else was that Cahil represented it as the real thing, taken he told his subscribers, from a living human brain.
“ The Internet,” muttered J.T., “you just don't know what kind of crazoid thing is coming outta cyberspace next.”
“ Cut from someone's medulla oblongata.”
A tired J.T. said, “It's been real, all right…”
“ What're you saying, that we all have this tingler inside us?” asked Owens, who'd hung back, clinging to an ammonia stick.
“ Yes, we do,” replied J.T.
Jessica closely examined the image. Thinking aloud, she said, “If the sonofabitch photographed it here and put it onto his system, is it possible that it's still around here someplace?”
“ If he hasn't consumed it,” countered Strand.
“ If he left it here, he'd have put it on ice,” suggested Jessica, recalling the hum of the refrigerator.
“ In with the Miller Lite,” joked J.T.
She rushed for the kitchen area and tore open the refrigerator in search of the small body part depicted in Daryl's photo. Nothing on the shelves other than a few bottles- olives, pickles, pickled beets and rotted vegetables and cheese. No other dairy products or cold drinks or juices, only a jug of water. She snatched open the freezer and began ferreting for something in the many foil-wrapped, un-marked items there.
“ Find anything, Dr. Coran?” asked Agent Owens from behind her.
“ Help me out here. Anything that looks suspiciously like… like…”
“ Like a brain or a piece of a brain?”
The freezer compartment was stuffed with small items wrapped in newspaper, and Jessica feared the worse. “Anything that isn't chicken, pork, beef or fish, I'll want to examine, no matter how small, you understand?”
“ Mystery meat, I get it.” He went to work with his gloved hands and talked as he did so. “Look, I'm sorry about the false pretenses of my superior, Dr. Coran.”
“ I accept your apology, Owens.” She unwrapped a soup package. He found a bag of peas. They emptied their finds into the crowded sink.
“ I'd just like you to know, I truly am sorry.”
“ Forget about it, Owens, until such a time as I need a favor.” Jessica now unwrapped the intact brain of what appeared a small animal, likely a cat's brain. She placed it gently aside, as Owens gasped on unwrapping a slightly larger brain-most likely that of a dog. “My dear God,” he repeatedly said. “My dear God.”
“ It's not human,” she informed him.
Strand had entered the kitchen and, seeing this, he said, “I see you've located the neighborhood strays. Do you think they have this island of tissue thing in them, too?”
“ They might, but let's stay focused on anything smacking of human brains.”
Jessica told Owens, “Look through all these wrapped goodies, and cull any that look or even smell suspicious.” Out of the corner of one eye, Jessica saw Strand going down into the basement. Jessica called out to Strand, “Let me know if there're any freezers down there, Max.”
“ Gotcha,” he called up.
Strand's light shone on an ill-matched washer and dryer set that dominated the small basement-no freezers or locked storage areas, only an array of boxes, garden and house tools, a small workbench, grease-covered tools and parts, and grimy stone walls, but then he saw the stone wheel and small kiln where Daryl fired his clay brains. It was an elaborate set up of raw materials he'd put together, and on shelves behind it, an array of what appeared to be homemade clay pots, each distinct in one way or another, but these were no pots, but his wares. Some were painted bright colors, while some were left gray, to appear natural. Some were large, others small. Some intentionally stylized or misshapen, others realistic. All could be pried open from the top, and a small area inside left room for the pasta.
Strand moved closer to the finished products for a better look at what appeared a strange hobby even for Cahil. As he neared the clay creations, perhaps fifty in all, he shouted up, “Some hobby Cahil indulged in!”
He pulled out his camera and began taking photos. “Nobody's ever going to believe this.”
Just then Strand heard Agent Owens shouting from overhead. He grabbed three of the brains to hand over to Dr. Coran, one painted, the other two neutral gray, and he rushed back up the stairs and into the kitchen area where he placed the clay brains on a countertop. One of the gray ones, having yet to be fired, suddenly crumbled under Strand's fingers. “Shit,” he cursed.
John Thorpe, having raced from the bedroom, stood alongside Jessica now. The two M.E.'s were busy examining the thing Owens had discovered in the tinfoil that lay thawing out on the counter. “What is it?” Max asked Jessica.