Free Mortal Fear by Greg Iles

problem, analyze itfor patterns, usuallyand given enough time, solve it. Miles doesnt analyze anything. He looks at something, and he just knows . He grasps physics and numbers the way I do people and musicwholly by intuition. Its as though his asocial childhood allowed him to tune into some subrational channel of information that is beyond the rest of us.
    When I took the sysop job, I was looking forward to getting to know him again. Id only seen him a handful of times in the past fifteen years. But for whatever reason, it hasnt worked out that way. We occasionally exchange e-mailsometimes using the satellite video link that his techs installed here when I took the job-slash-hobbybut on balance, I know him no better now than I did when we were kids. Maybe my hopes were misplaced. Maybe you can never know anyone more deeply than you know them in childhood.

    By the time Drewe arrives, Ive put together a bastardized stir-fry of broccoli and pork and lemon. We eat iton the front porch, which is thick with heat despite the falling darkness, but mercifully free of mosquitoes. As soon as we sit, Drewe asks for a play-by-play of the meeting in New Orleans. I give it to her, glad not to have to keep anything back. She takes in every word with the machinelike precision that carried her through medical school with honors, and when I am done she says nothing. I have held one detail until the end, hoping for a silence like this one.
    Whats the pineal gland? I ask.
    She finds my eyes in the gloom. The pineal body?
    I guess, yeah.
    Its a small glandular structure at the core of the brain. In the third ventricle, I think. Its about the size of a pea.
    What does it do?
    Until about thirty years ago, nobody thought it did anything. It was considered a vestigial organ, like the appendix. Scientists knew the pineal made melatonin, but no one knew what melatonin did. What does the pineal have to do with anything?
    The FBI says the killer cut off Karin Wheats head to get to her pineal gland.
    What?
    Sick, huh? The other victims might be missing theirs too, or else their whole heads.
    Drewe grimaces.
    Can you think of any reason why someone would want pineal glands? Do they have any medical use?
    I dont think so. There were some pineal experiments going on at Tulane when I was there, related to breast cancer, I think. But I dont remember what the findings were. She pauses. You can buy melatonin in health food stores, though. God, this reminds me of those PBS shows where they talk about Oriental medicine. You know, how Japanese men pay poachers hundreds of thousands of dollars for rhinoceros horns and tiger testicles and things. All to cure impotence or restore their lost youth or something.
    My opinion of my wifes mental acuity has been reaffirmed yet again. She has already broached a theory thatseems more logical than that of the police in California, who believe the EROS murders may be the work of a cult.
    So what is melatonin? I ask. What does it do?
    Its a hormone that regulates your sleep cycle. Your circadian rhythms. You know, what causes jet lag. Some people take it to prevent or relieve jet lag symptoms.
    Can you remember anything else about it?
    Drewe touches her forefinger to the tip of her nose and fixes her gaze somewhere out in the darkness. I know this posture well: concentration mode. I think it controls the release of serotonin, maybe some other hormones. I seem to recall something from one of the journals. Neurobiological stuff. Something to do with the pineal and the aging process. Weird how that fits with the Oriental thing, isnt it? But that doesnt mean anything. Murderers dont read JAMA or Journal of Neuroscience .
    Why not?
    Well... I guess its possible. Drewe grimaces and says, Men are scum. A routine comic line of hers that doesnt sound so funny tonight.
    So whats the plan? I ask lightly, falling into our usual banter.
    More dictation. She stretches both arms above her head. My personal cross to bear. She begins gathering