Mortal Fear (29 page)

Drewe wrinkles her mouth in distaste. Does anyone think just one man might be responsible for the crimes?

Yes, but that presupposes an individual of staggering abilities. Hed not only have to have medical skill and access to things like blood and semen, but also detailed knowledge of law enforcement methods, forensics, locks, security systems, not to mention psychology and computers. Its hard to picture one manparticularly a serial killerhaving that kind of ability.

Why? Wasnt Ted Bundy a really smart guy?

Not really. I did a Nexis search on serial killers, and I learned a lot. Bundy looks clever compared to the mean of his groupserial killersbut put him on a scale with the general population and he was nothing special. Were talking about a guy who dug up women hed killed weeks before to have sex with their corpses. He got a lot of press because he looked halfway preppie and could convince women to trust him. The truth is, most serial killers are genetic debris.

Not Brahma, I say. Youve read some of his stuff, havent you? Hes erudite as hell. And he can exploit insecurity like no one Ive ever seen.

Drewe looks at Miles. You agree with that?

Yes. But I dont think hes a doctor. His computer skill levels too high for that. Some doctors know computers, but not at the level Im seeing.

So what do you think? I ask. You think hes a hacker?

No. I think he might be a Real Programmer.

This silences me.

Whats that? asks Drewe.

What Miles used to be. At MIT. People the media call hackers get to know operating systems like UNIX and DOS and VMS very well, their design quirks and flaws. But Real Programmers can
build
operating systems.
Theyre supercoders. They call it programming on bare metal. Theyre the demigods of hackerdom.

The problem with that theory, Miles interrupts, is that a Real Programmer killing people doesnt make sense. Were talking about a dogmatically nonviolent personality type. His entire life is lived between silicon, metal, and bits. Someone whos read
The Lord of the Rings
sixteen times and whod be glad to spend an evening trying to conjugate Elvish verbs with you.

Youre generalizing, I tell him. If this is a sexual thing, it doesnt matter what his career is. You should know that better than anybody. Brahma doesnt have control over whats driving him. He could be a priest, for Gods sake.

I think he does have control, Drewe says quietly. Most of the time anyway.

I suddenly recall Lenz telling me the same thing.

Why? asks Miles.

Because the murders have an ultimate object, she says. The pineal gland. And because the killer has expended great effort to conceal that fact.

Keep going.

The fact that the women were raped throws me. But drop that from the equation for a minute. The pineal gland is the primary object because the killer takes it away with him. I mean, if his goal were merely to rape dead women, he could kill just about anybody and do that.

So...?

So the killer is a doctor.

Miles looks disappointed. Proof?

Occams razor, Drewe counters. Its the simplest answer, therefore the most likely. Youre resisting it because youre biased against doctors.

I am not.

Drewe laughs. The killer broke into your computer system and you dont know how. Therefore, you assume he must be a member of the secret fraternity of the worlds smartest peoplethose who do what you do. But youre shortchanging doctors.

Miless face is red. I think youre wrong.

Why else should the killer hide the fact that hes
taking pineal glands? Unless it could somehow lead to him? And who does the pineal lead to? You said there were no cults known for taking the pineal. And in the one victim where there was no major head wound, the gland was removed using a standard neurosurgical approach that, despite the fantasies of the FBI, would not be the likely one chosen by a butcher or dentist.

Drewe begins walking around the kitchen, seemingly propelled by the tide of her reasoning. Look at the areas of expertise you mentioned. Postulate a brilliant surgeon and medicine is taken care of. Law enforcement is a technical undertaking usually handled by men from... what? The fiftieth to eightieth percentile of intelligence?

Miles and I watch her with fascination. The logical ruthlessness of a smart woman can be chilling.

Who better than a doctor could plant false biological evidence at crime scenes? He could get blood, urine, semen, stool samples, hair. Locks and security systems are childs play compared to microsurgery. Human psychology? Again, an experienced physician. That leaves

Computers, Miles finishes.

Drewe stops beside the stove. Yes. Now please listen, Miles. If I were to drop all my personal prejudices, Id have to admit that a person like you, a computer genius, could have been a brilliant surgeon had he chosen that path. And because I believe that, I must believe the reverse could be true.

He looks unconvinced. I understand your reasoning, but you just dont see that in real life.

Ill tell you why you dont see computer experts becoming surgeons. Because it requires a minimum of nine, sometimes eleven years of postgraduate training. The learning curve on computers is much shorter. You can jump in and begin working almost immediately, because if you screw up, youve only killed a machine or a program, not a person.

Miles stares stubbornly at the table.

But once youre really seduced by computers, she continues, its too late for medicine. Youre into hardware and software, not wetware.

Her accurate use of this computer term for the human brain, and by extension human beings, surprises us both.

But surgeon as computer expert? she asks, moving across the floor again. The stereotype of no spare time in medical school is false. People do get married, have hobbies. If we posit a medical student who had little or no social life but an obsession with computers, I can easily see him attaining the skill level youre talking about. Especially if he has the aptitude. And a practicing surgeon would have whatever spare time he wanted, plus the money to pursue his obsessions.

Miles looks up in defeat.

The question, Drewe concludes, is what is he taking the pineal gland
for
? What does he do with it? What does the FBI think?

Miles drums his long fingers on the table and scans a new sheet of paper. Possibilities range from eating it to burning it to selling it to Asians who render certain hormones from it.

Drewe stops again. Melatonin.

Thats right, says Miles.

Do you know what melatonin does?

It regulates the sleep cycle. Theres apparently a craze right now where people use it as a natural sleeping pill. Some think its a magic anti-aging pill. I know a few computer people who take it, along with a hundred other vitamins and herbs.

Drewe finally comes to the table and takes a seat. After Harper got back from New Orleans, she says, he told me about the pineals being taken. The next day, I punched a few queries into the Medline computer at University Hospital. It told me more than I knew before, but not a lot. Just enough to lead me in the right direction. Theres a neurobiologist on staff at University; he hasnt been there long, but hes good. You should have seen him come to life when I asked about the pineal gland. He was still jabbering when I left forty-five minutes later.

Melatonin is hot right now because research teams in different parts of the world have recently come up with some startling new findings on it. But before I tell you
what theyre doing, Im going to tell you why these women are being killed.

Miles stares at Drewe with the wonder of a kid watching a magic show.

Let me ask one question first, she says. What were the ages of each of the victims?

Miless eidetic memory spits out the digits like bingo numbers. 26, 23, 24, 25, 26, 25, 47.

Is that in order? By date of death?

Yes.

How old is the kidnapped woman? Rosalind whatever?

Fifty.

Drewe smiles. There it is. Someone is trying to transplant pineal glands between human beings.

What?
Miles cries.

Why? I ask.

To add fifteen to twenty vital years to the human life span. Perhaps ultimately to his own life.

Miles and I are silent.

According to the neurobiologist, Drewe says, foreign researchers working on the pineal began by focusing on melatonin as a dietary supplement, just the way people are taking it now. They found that mice ingesting a regular regimen of the hormone were not only healthier but also lived longer than the control mice. This prompted them to try a more radical approach. They had micro-surgeons transplant pineal glands between micethe pineals of young mice into old mice and vice versa. The results were astounding.
Far
more dramatic than oral dosages. The coats of the old mice regained their luster, the animals regained their sexual appetite and ability, T-cell counts went up, certain tumors disappeared, and a dozen other results, all positive.

And the young mice? Miles asks.

They immediately began to age rapidly. But the most fascinating thing is that the old mice with transplanted pineals maintained their reinvigorated state almost up to the point of death. To put it simply, they never got old. They just died.

The kitchen is so quiet that the
cheeep
of crickets outside sounds like a roar.

If that were true, I say finally, American pharmaceutical companies would be researching melatonin twenty-four hours a day.

How do you know theyre not? They may be duplicating these experiments right now. It just might be that a gland thought vestigial until 1963 is the engine that controls the human aging process. The number of people taking melatonin nationwide is staggering. Its also frightening, because no one knows what its effects are over time. The pineal gland basically rules the endocrine system, Harper. It controls sexual development by regulating other hormones. It affects body temperature, kidney function, immunity. It controls hibernation in mammals, migration in birds, it changes skin color in chameleons. All this was new to me. When the neurobiologist started asking why I was so interested, I made excuses and got out of there. But by then it was clear to me.

Miles is tapping his fingertips together. Youre saying the age disparity between the first six victims and Karin Wheat is explained by the fact that the killer was taking

Harvesting, Drewe corrects him.

Harvesting
the pineal glands of young women for transplant? Youre saying he put these first few glands in the freezer until he got ready to start kidnapping older women to test his theory on?

She shakes her head. I think the first murders were part of a training program. Transplantation of a human pineal has never been tried. The pineal gland has the highest blood flow by weight of any organ other than the kidneys. A transplant would be fantastically difficult, probably impossible. Lots of microvascular stuff, severing and reattaching minute blood vessels. Were talking groundbreaking neurosurgery. I think whoevers doing this knew he would need practice in the vasculature surrounding a pineal glandprobably a pineal as close to the living state as he could get it.

So according to your theory, says Miles, just prior to the murder of Karin Wheat, this mad doctor decided he was ready to make a transplant attempt?

Karin Wheat is the flaw in my reasoning, Drewe says
quickly. To make a transplant attempt, the surgeon would obviously need his recipient alive in an operating room, not dead in New Orleans. But I still think the last young woman killed prior to Wheat was meant to be a transplant donor. What was the elapsed time between her death and Karin Wheats murder?

Six weeks, I reply.

She sighs in frustration. Thats too long. No way a gland would remain viable that long.

Oh no, I nearly moan.

What? Miles asks.

Brahmas primary topic of conversation with Karin Wheat was immortality. That was the subject of her last novel. They both seemed obsessed with it.

Score one for my theory, says Drewe.

But he didnt kidnap Karin Wheat, Miles reminds her. He murdered her.

But he
did
kidnap Rosalind May, she counters. And May was almost the same age as Wheat, right? Fifty is definitely the downhill side of the hormonal roller coaster. Perfect candidate for what Im talking about.

Maybe the killer
wanted
to kidnap Wheat, I suggest. But something went wrong.

Maybe, Miles allows. She was the only victim who died with a drug in her system. Ketamine. Its an animal tranquilizer.

Your tech called me two nights ago. Baxter said May had been missing for two days. That means she was kidnapped

The night after Wheat was murdered.

I nod. They wanted to kidnap Wheat, somehow bungled it, and decided to go for May as a substitute.

A preplanned backup, Miles suggests.

But what went wrong with the Wheat scenario? Why kill her?

Drewe slaps the tabletop, stunning us both. Theres another victim, she says.