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“ At least we know it wasn't some mysterious disease or food poisoning that killed her.”

“ The senator will have to pursue it with local police now.”

“ Of course, you're right.”

“ Appears a fairly straightforward murder of one's spouse, as the senator suspected.”

“ I suspected as much, too. If you'd ever met this creep…”

“ Just, please, next time someone puts the screws to you, Eriq, at least talk to me first and level with me. Maybe put someone else on it. I have a backlog of work that would sink an elephant.” “You always told me that any murder is worth your time.”

She took in a deep breath, realizing he was right but not wishing to give in. “That was a long time ago, before the rash of maniacs out there crossing jurisdictions and filleting people, and those crimes need our attention and expertise. Hell… some new psycho every other week, Eriq. Out there raping, torturing and now cutting open people's heads for their gray matter…”

“ I'm afraid there's been a third, Jess.”

“ When? Where?”

“ In Jacksonville, Florida.”

“ Right on the Georgia-Florida line, just as we predicted.”

“ Just got the call. It's the real reason I'm here.”

“ Christ, when did you get the news?”

“ Just got the call while you were in autopsy. I called down; they said you were nearly finished, so I let you finish. I know how you hate to be interrupted during an autopsy.”

“ Yeah, especially one involving pol-a-tics!”

Ignoring her dig, Eriq said, “As you know, we put a call out on the law-enforcement hotline for anything to do with victims missing any or all of their brains in a surgical manner?”

“ Yes, go on.”

“ And we suspected he'd show up in South Georgia or North Florida.”

“ I guess you want me down there?”

“ You're our logical choice, along with J.T.” Jessica had visited the Richmond authorities to get a firsthand account of what they thought of the Brain Thief, as their local papers painted the killer. J.T. had done likewise in Winston-Salem. J.T. had also interviewed a young woman nearly abducted in Fayetteville, learning only that the would-be offender there drove a dark blue van. Little had come of their efforts to find patterns or evidence that might help form conclusions about the killer.

“ Bring back as much photographic evidence as you did on the previous cases. Jess, higher-ups think that you should be devoting all your time to this case.”

“ Figures.” Fatigue whispered in her ear, saying, Run away!

“ And, by the way, your telephone is going to ring right about now.” Eriq looked at his watch and pointed to the phone.

The telephone indeed interrupted them, and Jessica answered. “Dr. Coran. Can I help you?”

“ I certainly hope so,” replied a female voice at the other end. “I'm Sheriff Combs of Jacksonville. I guess your Chief Santiva's informed you of our situation here. I had just seen your request in passing yesterday, and now this… sad business here, and sad to say you people were right. The Skull-digger has come to the Sunshine State.”

“ Skull-digger? Is that what he's being called now?”

“ That's what Winston-Salem's calling him.”

“ Guess I'm out of the loop. Has the body there in Florida been disturbed?”

“ Secured at this point, and if you can come right away, we'll hold off disturbing it any further than it's already been disturbed by my officers. They turned the body for some unaccountable reason; I guess to see if there was any other violence done to the back of the skull.”

“ Was there?”

“ No, the only other notable item was the restraint marks.”

“ Hands, feet, throat and temples?”

“ Hands and feet certainly. Throat and temples… I'm not so sure. How does he restrain the victim by her temples?” “We suspect a viselike head restraint.”

“ My God.”

“ I'm taking a chopper out immediately. Hold on every-thing.”

“ Might have trouble keeping Bulldog Koening off.”

“ Who would be?”

“ Dr. Ira Koening. Our city M.E. Good, stubborn and tenacious man, but he's been backed up due to health problems. Still, he wanted the case when he heard of its uniqueness.”

“ I've met Ira at a number of conventions. I agree, he's a good man. Tell him I look forward to working with him.”

“ Will do. I told him we intended to get FBI assistance, and that you'd be using lab space at the FDLE.”

“ Florida Department of Law Enforcement has labs in Jacksonville now?”

“ We're progressing.”

“ Tell me what you have so for.”

“ A big nothing. Nothing but questions, I'm afraid. The victim's not giving up any clues. Not yet. But she was wearing an expensive summer dress, appears young-perhaps eighteen, nineteen. Not dressed provocatively, not likely a prostitute, no reason we can see that she should have attracted such violence. Then again, who would?”

“ Was she sexually assaulted?”

“ Hard to tell. She came up out of the water in a fisher-man's net in a dress, but that's as far as we've gotten. Wanted your input before anyone else got to the scene.”

“ I'll be there by daybreak.”

“ Once the press gets this, and they will, there's going to be an outcry here for vigilante justice if we don't find some answers,” Combs told Jessica.

“ Anything else you can tell me relative to the body?”

Combs described the details of the discovery of the body and redundantly spoke about the missing organ. She sounded frazzled. She sounded young for such a position. This was likely the single worst case she had ever caught. She repeated herself on everything, ending with, “Press is going to have a field day with this shit.”

“ Yours is the third such victim that we know of, all young women. And I don't think this creep's going to go away anytime soon.”

“ Is he killing women who look alike? Can we warn women with the same general appearance?”

“ Fact is, there's some superficial likeness between the first two victims, physically, I mean. But as to anything else- likes, dislikes, community involvement, economics-no. But they were both white and young and brunette. One was attending a flight-attendant school, the other was a nursing student. Anna Gleason was twenty-one; Miriam McCloud was twenty-two.”

“ That appears to square with the new victim,” said Combs.

“ Still, they differ in the details enough to make us suspect that they could be randomly selected-chance and opportunity murders-but we're not certain at this point, so we're ruling nothing out.”

“ If they are randomly selected, that will make it all the harder to find this creep.”

Jessica sighed deeply and said, “We've run the details of the other two crimes through the historical files of the VICAP system, to see if anything remotely like this has ever come up before. Cases involving people's brains being smashed in, cut into with knives, pitchforks and axes, but nothing like the kind of thing we're seeing here.”

Jessica recalled the first instance of a body that was missing its brain that VICAP had isolated. It had been in Normal, Illinois, in the 1920s. The body had been dumped in a river there. The killer had been a quiet farmer up until the day he murdered his wife and removed her brain and ate it for supper one night. At his execution, he gave a strange statement: “ 'I done it to please the voice inside my head that pleaded it be done until I could not stand it no more.' “ It had been his ailing wife's voice, he claimed. He died in the electric chair.

Jessica told Combs, “These recent killings are serial in nature; either he feels he must kill the same thing over and over, or he feels he cannot get it right, so he keeps coming back for another try, or he simply likes it so much he can't give it up.”

“ Like an addiction.”

“ Sometimes it's more than that. Sometimes it's the only way they can get their twisted, sexual gratification.”

“ Through such horrid violence to another person?”

“ Yes… afraid so.”