Mortal Fear (28 page)

Dont even tell me where you got that shit.

Ive got to. His eyes glaze with sudden desperation. I need your help.

To do what?

To save myself.

Miles has already drunk two cups of coffee, Drewe and I one each. It took me that long to recount my experiences with the FBI, even with heavy editing. I dwelt mostly on the tragic raid in Dallas and played down Lenzs plan of luring the killer to the Virginia safe house. Miles seems more concerned with the psychiatrists suspicion that he might be the killer. I admit that Lenz still suspects him, but before I can qualify my words, Drewe starts asking questions about the murder victims.

In answer, Miles opens his briefcase on our kitchen table. Inside are neatly banded stacks of laser-printed paper covered with the hieroglyphics of command-line communications between computers. In short, Drewe and I are looking at a cornucopia of the fruits of virtuoso computer hacking.

I have a lot of information here, he says, squeezing back into the narrow space between the table and the wall. I started as soon as the deaths were confirmed. Its not nearly everything, but what I have is color coded. Green for city police reports. Orange for crime lab findings. Blue for witness interviews. Red for general FBI stuff

Youve been into the FBIs computer? I interrupt.

Computers, plural. Their acronym for the case is ERMURSfor EROS murders.

No wonder they want to arrest you. Have you broken into their personal e-mail system?

Ive seen it. Got some printouts here. Ive also been in the National Crime Information Center computer, and some new thing called NEMESIS. Stands for
Nonlinear Evaluation/Manipulation of Evidence System
. Thats the
only system they have thats really elegant, and its not officially on-line. The rest are crufty as hell.

But why take these risks? Drewe asks. Cant you just keep your head down until this is all over?

No. Because Baxter and Lenz arent going to catch Brahma any time soon. And in the absence of real leads, the great god Momentum will cause them to cast around for the most likely suspect. In their book thats me.

But

The only way for me to get these guys off my back is to catch Brahma myself.

Something ripples through my chest, like a pebble dropping into a still pool miles from anywhere.

Besides, he goes on, Brahma is fucking with my network.
My
system. I set it up, created it ex nihilo, and hes treating it like his personal sandbox. Not acceptable.

Have you figured out yet how he got in? I ask. How he got the master client list?

Miles stares furiously at the table. No.

I find this almost impossible to believe, but I dont want to press him in front of Drewe. What about alibis? You must have alibis for at least some of the nights the killings took place. Hell, I cant remember a night when you werent sysoping the network.

He gives me a sidelong glance. I dont have to be at the office to sysop. You know that. All I need is a laptop and a phone connection. Beyond that, I dont care to discuss it.

Drewe and I share a look. She takes a sip of coffee and says, Couldnt you just turn yourself in and put up with whatever hassle they give you until the murderer kills again? That would prove youre innocent.

Its not that simple. If Im arrested, Brahma could decide not to kill again for a while. Or if he kept killing, the FBI could say a copycat had joined the game. They could claim I was part of a group, and try to prosecute me on that basis.

But surely they cant have enough evidence to prosecute you?

Miles shrugs. There are some lab findings that are consistent with my blood. Theres other stuff as well.

Not DNA?

They cant have that, he says sharply. Not legitimately. But Brahma has successfully planted misleading physical evidence at every murder. I have to assume he knows who I am from EROS. Whos to say he hasnt planted something of mine that could give them a DNA sample?

Thats impossible, Drewe says.

Nothings impossible. And dont think the FBI is above juggling samples to create DNA evidence against me, given enough pressure to close this case.

He slides some dark sheets from beneath his pile of paper and spreads them faceup across the table like playing cards. These are the victims.

None of us speak. The sheets are laser-printed gray-scale photographs. All six show side-by-side photographs of young women: two blondes, three brunettes, one Indian. In the left-hand photos, the eyes are open and glowing with life, the lips smiling, the hair well fixed; in the right-hand ones the facesthose that are thereare gray and shapeless, the eyes open but blank with glassy stares. One of the right-hand photos shows a decapitated torso, another a head that looks as though it was put through an airplane propeller. One shows a face like something from a vampire film, with wooden stakes protruding from bloody eye sockets. Before we take in too much, Miles sweeps the pages out of sight and says, I got these out of NEMESIS. Ive got crime scene photos too, but you dont want to see them.

Hes right. Drewe is still staring at the blank spot where the images lay. After a few moments, she blinks, then rises and pours Miles a third cup of coffee.

In a remote voice, she asks, What do the police think drives this man to murder these women?

Miles drinks deeply from his steaming cup, finishing with an audible swallow. The case has been running for five days. Ever since Harper called the New Orleans police and linked Karin Wheats murder to six unsolved cases in other parts of the country.

What parts?

Portland, Oregon. New York, Houston, Los Angeles,
Nashville, and San Francisco. Of course the first killing was David Strobekker, the man who was murdered for his identity. That was Minnesota.

The first one we know about, I correct him.

He nods. Rosalind May, the kidnapped attorney, was taken from Mill Creek, Michigan. Shes still missing, and theres been no ransom note.

I think shes dead, I tell him.

Ditto.

I dont, Drewe says, firmly enough to draw looks from both of us. At least she might not be.

Why do you say that? asks Miles.

A theory Id prefer to keep to myself right now. How was each of the women killed? I mean, I saw the photos, but what did the autopsies say?

Miles watches her from the corner of his eye. Brilliant as he is, he remembers being aced by my wife many times in school. The firstnear Portlandwas initially ruled an accidental death. She was a rock climber. Took a fall climbing solo, fractured her skull.

Was she missing her pineal gland?

Miless eyes narrow. She was exposed for a couple of days before they found her. Coyotes got to her. She was missing a lot more than her pineal gland.

And the other murders?

Shotgun blast to the face in New York. Strangulation and beheading in Houston. Claw hammer in Los Angeles. Pistol shot in Nashville. Strangulation in San Francisco, with the eyes removed and stakes driven through the sockets.

The pistol shot was also to the head?

Right.

And every woman was missing her pineal gland or her entire head?

It isnt certain. With the shotgun victim it was impossible to tell. Some victims were missing only part of the gland. But the FBI consensus says yes.

And they assume Karin Wheat was also.

No.

No?

Karins head was found this morning.

What?
I cry. Where?

Some Cajun fishermen found it wedged in a cypress stump in the Bonnet Carre Spillway. The police figure the killer tossed it out his window while driving across the causeway toward La Place. That means he drove past the airport going out of town. And her pineal gland
was
missing.

How was it removed? Drewe asks, her eyes bright.

Does that matter? I ask as the reality of Karins death hits me all over again.

Of course. Did someone just reach in with a dull spoon and dig it out, or did he know what he was doing?

I dont know what tool was used, Miles says. I didnt see an actual autopsy report, just an FBI memo. It said the gland was removed through a hole under Wheats upper lip. Like Brahma punched through the sinuses and up into the brain.

Jesus, I mutter.

How big was the hole? Drewe asks.

Miles checks his papers. Seven millimeters wide. Damn. Thats pretty small, isnt it?

Drewe is smiling with satisfaction. Thats it, she says.

Thats what? asks Miles.

All those traumatic head wounds were meant to mask the killers real intent. But Karin Wheats head was never meant to be found. Her wound gives us the truth.

What do you mean? What truth?

Tell me the angle of the pistol shot that killed the woman in Nashville.

Miles consults his papers. It was fired into the back of her neck at an upward angle, near the first cervical vertebra.

Drewe nods and smiles again. Have you ever seen anyone who was attacked with a claw hammer, Miles?

He grimaces. Have you?

Yes. During my residency. It puts big holes through the skull, and the brain squeezes out through the holes like toothpaste from a tube.

Miles and I look at each other in bewildered horror.

That seven-millimeter hole beneath Karin Wheats
upper lip, Drewe says. The one that went all the way up into her brain? A neurosurgeon would call that the sublabial transsphenoidal route.

What? Miles asks.

Its a standard method of removing pituitary tumors. The pituitary gland isnt that close to the pineal in neurological terms, but in a dead person you could probably punch right through the pituitary and get where you wanted to go.

Youre saying a doctor could be doing this? I ask.

Im saying a doctor
is
doing it. The stakes through the eyes? A surgeon could go through the optic foramenwhere the optic nerve passes through the skull into the brainveer to the midline, and go straight for the pineal. With the claw hammer and the rock fall, he could practically reach in and pull the gland out. The gunshot wound in Nashville? He goes up through the foramen magnum, the big opening in the bottom of your skull, and into the brain. The traumatic wounds cover up his tracks.

The track in Wheat was pretty small, Miles says. How do you pull out the gland through such a small hole? Would that be the reason he only got part of it sometimes?

The pineal is about the size of a pea, Drewe explains. The problem wouldnt be getting it out but seeing it at all.

What about a flexible probe with a fiber-optic camera and a cutting tool? asks Miles.

Youre talking about an endoscope. I dont think they have those for neurosurgery. But I guess you could use any endoscope if the patient was dead. I assume the FBI is looking at doctors as suspects?

Miles nods. But doctors are only part of a much wider suspect group. Every police department has a different theory. The California police are working a cult angle. Theyve seen cult murders in the past where certain body parts were taken. No pineal glands, but adrenals, ovaries, testicles, all kinds of things.

Dr. Lenz pretty much dismisses cult murders, I tell them. Almost all of them are committed for some conventional motive.

Baxter has officially classified these murders as normal sexual homicides, Miles says, if there is such a thing. All the murdered women were raped after they were dead.

A short intake of breath from Drewe.

Theres a ton of forensic evidence, he goes on, consulting his printouts. Bite marks in some cases, not others. The marks dont match. In one case they may have been made by a woman. With a couple of victims there was severe skin mutilation. The weird thing is that semen samples were found and analyzed in every case, and with seven victims theyve found semen from at least four different men. Sometimes near the victim, other times inside the vagina. Theyre waiting on DNA tests now. To compare to mine, no doubt.

The hair on my forearms is standing. You mean four men raped each victim?

No, no. Four men spread over all seven cases. Though in two victims there were two different semen samples found. Miles shakes his head at Drewe. I know what youre thinkingone sample from a boyfriend or husband, the other from the killer, right? Wrong. Both samples in each woman were the result of postmortem sex.

Good God, I whisper.

Miles takes a sip of coffee. The problem with physical evidence is that the Behavioral Science people basically use a connect-the-dots approach to murder. They have checklists for cops to fill out. Condition of the body. Restraints, no restraints. Type of weapon. Cause of death. Post-offense behavior. Antemortem rape or postmortem rape? Penetration or just masturbation? All these things produce vastly differing profiles. Miles sounds almost saddened by the imperfection of the system. A guy who knows the system can put a few extra dots at each crime scene and distort the picture. If he puts in enough dotsor takes them awaytheres no picture at all.

Like the radically different head wounds, Drewe says. She pulls at the corner of her mouth with her forefinger. What about the physician angle?

Miles shuffles his papers. The current Unit profile
includes butchers, dentists, doctors, male nurses, taxidermists, veterinarians, even people whove worked in slaughterhouses. They figure somebodys expanding his horizons in new and exciting wayswith help, of course.