“ Yeah, you're right, Mike. I'll be able to coordinate everything from the ship a lot more efficiently than from here.”
“ Exactly.”
Along with Konrath and O'Hurley, Jessica made her way up the incline, climbing for the light.
SORRENTO watched all the others leave. When he felt certain he was alone, he stepped around to Grant Kenyon's shattered head. He easily plucked away large pieces of shattered bone from the skullcap created by the powerful jaws of the dead gator lying nearby. He squatted over the man's exposed gray matter, removing more and more of the fractured pieces from around it. He then, curious, proceeded to dig with his hands, and he liked the texture and feel of the cortical matter on his fingertips. Finally, Sorrento dared taste Kenyon's smashed brain.
The head was fractured wide, part of the skull easily picked apart like an eggshell. He found pieces, shards, whole chunks easy to prize out, just like feeding on a large walnut. Other parts had to be ripped with some difficulty from the crushed skull. Sorrento was convinced that this man's brain held power after he had cannibalized so many, and that if he now consumed Kenyon's brain, he might quite possibly have a glimpse at this “cosmic mind” he had read so much about on his computer since he had first logged on to the website run by Cahil, after a high-school kid up in Chimera, Louisiana, had first contacted him about it. Something about Cahil's suggestions were hypnotic, as radical as they sounded. But he had never entertained the idea that Cahil was the real Skull-digger. But rather that Cahil had influenced the Skull-digger.
Peering in through the cracks of Kenyon's demolished skull, he saw there was more inside he could not get at because his hand was too large to reach inside. He saw the bone saw lying where Jessica had left it, but dared not use it. That would tip his hand. Instead, he grabbed up a rock and smashed it against the cranium, opening the already existing fissures wider still. Using his Swiss Army knife, he managed to dig out more of the brain. He fed on it, not caring for the taste, but devouring it nonetheless for its magical power.
The situation, the location, it was all so perfect for his needs. No one need ever know. Everyone would simply believe the alligator got at Kenyon's brain before it died. Jessica had been too busy worrying over the woman's remains to pay close attention to the condition of Kenyon's brain.
No one would be the wiser… no one but Michael Sorrento.
Just then he heard a twig snap, and turning, the raw gray matter of what was left of Kenyon's brain in his hand, he saw a naked, shivering woman staring at him, but her eyes didn't register a thing. It was Mrs. Swantor, and she was in complete shock.
He stood and smiled, stepped toward her and said, “Mrs. Swantor.. I'm FBI Agent Mike Sorrento. I've been looking for you everywhere.”
She could not speak-showing only fear and looking like a deer caught in headlights. Frozen. Still, she might bolt. She stared past him at the bodies of the gator and Kenyon. Sorrento wondered how long she'd been standing here, staring; how much she had seen.
A Coast Guard helicopter began whirring overhead, a deafening sound. Sorrento guided the woman beneath a thicket of trees. “Stay right here, Mrs. Swantor, until I come back.” He went for the bone cutter. The sound it would make was no longer a concern.
EPILOGUE
And keeps the palace of the soul
Several months later
Daryl Thomas Cahil was being held on charges that his website instigated a murder spree, and he was being held for observation at the same facility where he had spent thirteen years under the care of Dr. Jack Deitze. A case was being put together that Daryl was a danger to himself and others. Still, Jessica felt certain that charges brought against Daryl would never stick unless a direct link could be drawn between his text and graphics and the two killers, Kenyon and Swantor. The freedom of speech issue regarding dangerous and inflammatory materials spread across the Web would protect Cahil and others like him. Still, the legal team set against him asked for and got full cooperation from Jessica, J.T. and the FBI Cyber Squad. They cooperated in showing how the website had influenced first the kill spree and then the madness unique to Swantor. The trial was set for next month in a federal courthouse in Richmond, Virginia.
In the meantime, Daryl had become despondent since he was denied the fame of the Skull-digger-and access to a computer. Still, Jessica feared, the U.S. vs. Cahil would end with his release, unless federal prosecutors could prove conclusively he had intended to incite behavior such as Kenyon's kill spree and Swantor's act committed against Selese Montoya, James Harris, and his ex wife. They must prove beyond reasonable doubt that Daryl's warped ideas were tantamount to criminal intent, that he meant-like a cyber prophet, a modern-day Charlie Manson-to bring about the death of others. Kenyon's audiotapes represented exhibits one through four; Swantor's computer video of Selese Montoya's death number five. Kenyon had killed Sheriff Danby Potter and Jervis Swantor as well, and presumably Mrs. Swantor, whose body had never surfaced. The prosecutors would back their arguments with Swantor's horrible actions, citing that Daryl's website had had a domino effect.
Daryl might be his own worst enemy at his trial, however, since the stronger the prosecution's case for intent and influence grew, the happier he became with his growing, newfound notoriety. When he heard about Swantor's having filmed Kenyon's last murder, sending it into cyberspace, he became giddy with his power over the two men. Jessica hoped his smugness would hang him in the courtroom.
It had grown late in the day when John Thorpe entered Jessica's office at Quantico carrying a stack of binders. “Here're the autopsy reports from Grand Isle, all six of them.”
She indicated a cleared spot to her left. “Right there.”
He placed the thick bundle of reports in a pile on her desk. “You really need more reading?” he joked.
Jessica had not looked at the death scenes involving so many at the Swantor estate on Grand Isle. She had decided, once she had returned to the comfort and warmth of the Coast Guard cutter that horrible morning, that she didn't want any more to do with the Skull-digger case. She stayed on long enough to monitor the massive manhunt launched from the air, the ground and underwater for Mrs. Lara Swantor. The woman was never found, dead or alive. After that failed attempt, Jessica had chosen to step back, allowing others to clean up the mess left in Kenyon's and Swantor's wake. With so much devastation, so many lives lost in a single night on the island, six autopsies-seven if she were to count the postmortem on the alligator-it had taken all this time to entirely complete the forensic work, so that every murder scene from the yacht to the house, and Ken-yon's end, could be understood down to the smallest detail. Except for the official reports, only the nightmares created by the work of the Skull-digger lingered on.
“ Everything's in order, Jess,” J.T. assured her. “Damned fitting that alligator should chomp down Kenyon's brain, too.”
“ I thought it a fitting justice,” she agreed.
“ No chance for a Jack Deitze to turn him into a pet project. As for the protocols, trust me, Jess… you can rest assured the CSI and M.E. teams sent to Grand Isle did a first-rate analysis of all three crime scenes-the yacht, the house and the backyard-as well as the site where Kenyon was killed.”
“ I'm sure they did a thorough job of it, John. All the same, you know how I operate.”
He frowned and nodded, going for the coffeepot. “I know… I know
… bound to review it.”
“ I'll just give it a quick going over.”
J.T. poured himself the last of the coffee, sat down across from her and watched her go to work on the files, one for each victim and the two perpetrators. “Like I said,” Thorpe spoke between sips of the acrid coffee. “The team New Orleans put together paints a clear picture of how each died, and by whose hand each had met his or her end.” “You know, John, you don't have to go over them again with me.”