Extreme Instinct jc-6 Page 22

  "And you?"

  "Right now I've got my hands full with a killer. I can't worry about what's in Karl's head."

  "Just the same, I'm going to join you as soon as I can."

  "As I said, you're quite welcome here."

  "I've listened to every one of the tapes Harry Furth created from your phone tap, Jess, and this guy scares the hell out of me. Just listening to him… and me in a safe, well-lit office… Well, it honestly has taken its toll on me. Harry and I have listened to the tapes at every speed, and Harry has separated out the back-scatter noises in the earlier tape."

  "And?"

  ''Harry tells me that much of the back-scatter noise before the roar of the fire engulfs every other noise is of two distinct sounds."

  "Yes, go on, Warren."

  "One is of a… a moaning, groaning as if of a sexual nature and a click-zip, click-zip sound, a noise we've duplicated as-"

  "A camera, the self-developing kind, right?"

  "Yeah, but how did you know?"

  "Found a scrap of processing paper at the El Tovar scene."

  "Jess, this madman could be there in Page, in the lodge with you right this moment. You may want to sleep with that Browning of yours tonight, but I'm flying up first thing in the morning."

  "One consolation," she said.

  "What's that?"

  "We're closer on his trail than I'd thought. And if he figures I'm on his trail, if he knows I'm here, perhaps he'll make the mistake of coming back this way to make contact with me again."

  "You need to get that phone bugged."

  "I will, as soon as possible."

  When she hung up, Jessica felt her heart sink. Just moments before, she'd felt safe here at the Wahweap Lodge, subconsciously telling herself, At least the creep won't be telephoning you anymore. He can't know where you are.

  Jessica had been feeling both relief and guilt- over the fact that she would not be getting another phone call from the Phantom. If and when he did call again, someone else, the actress hired by Bishop and Furth in Vegas, would be having to deal with it, answering the phone calls of a maniacal killer. But now she didn't even have this cushion.

  These thoughts flowed through her weary mind riverlike when suddenly the phone under her fingertips shrieked to life. She didn't want to answer; didn't want to chance its being the monster.

  She no longer felt safe at her bedside here at Lake Powell's Wahweap Lodge.

  Finally, on the third ring, she said aloud to herself, "It's got to be Eriq Santiva or someone else connected with the case."

  She lifted the receiver and tentatively spoke into it, saying, "Hello, this is Dr. Coran."

  "Jess?" The voice instantly put her at ease. It belonged to psychic and coagent, Dr. Kim Desinor, calling from Quantico, Virginia.

  "Kim? It's so wonderful to hear from you!" Kim hadn't any idea how wonderful, she thought.

  "I'm just reassuring myself you're all right out there. I'm astonished about what's going on out there, and frankly, I don't like it, not one damned bit."

  "Eriq forwarded your reading of the situation. It's much appreciated."

  "I have my good days; others, the well seems dry, the source gone, you know."

  "In any case, it's great to hear from you. How's Ginger?" Jessica always asked after Kim's calico cat.

  "Never mind Ginger. I want to caution you about what you're dealing with. Santiva's just as concerned over this madman's obsession with you. We're both very worried. How do I know Santiva's worried? Easy! He came straight to me for my input on this creep, and I've become increasingly worried, too, so look-"

  "I'm all right, Kim, really."

  "Listen to me. There's no worse a fanatic lunatic than a religious nut, and it feels to me as if this guy has some religious quest he's on, and you, dear, are at the heart of it all. Obviously enough."

  "The hardest part is knowing that others are dying because of me," Jessica replied.

  "Stop it right there, kiddo. You mustn't and cannot ever blame yourself for this screwball's actions."

  Kim always knew precisely how to cut through the bullshit, Jessica thought now. "I will try not to-"

  "Don't try anything, just do it!"

  "All right, I'll do as the Nike ads say."

  "I just had to make sure you're all right there, Jess."

  "Seems you're not the only one."

  "Really? Don't tell me, a new man?"

  "No, nothing like that."

  "Well, dear, Ginger is fine, and it is quite late this side of the Rockies, so good night."

  "Night, Kim, and thanks for the support."

  "Always. Ciao."

  Jessica decided sleep wasn't going to come until she telephoned J. T. with the latest news on the whereabouts of the killer at the time he had called in his second kill. If the killer was as close by as she feared, J. T. had as much right to know as she.

  She lifted the receiver and began dialing for J. T.'s room when she realized someone else was on the line. She heard breathing. It sounded like flames being fanned.

  "You can't hide from me, Dr. Coran," he said. "Nor from the truth, from this!" Jessica froze on hearing his now familiar voice, replaced now with a whining gibberish, as of someone attempting to speak through a gag- yet another fright-filled, slurred voice, the voice of a fourth victim on the other end, she surmised.

  She desperately held on to her calm and resolve to learn more about the Phantom, this creature behind the awful string of fire murders. She recalled the calmness of the actress who'd played her, and grasping at straws, she pretended to be that actress.

  "Are you in the lodge?"

  No answer, just the gasping noise of the poor sacrifice at the other end.

  Jessica shouted, "At least tell me where the hell you are! You coward!"

  Taking the phone off the victim, the raspy-voiced killer replied, "I am climbing from the depths of Hell, which takes courage. I am no coward."

  "We can help you out of the pit," she assured him.

  "You can help me? Really?" he asked, his voice rising maniacally.

  "Yes, we can get you the best doctors in the country to-"

  His laugh drowned her out. "You are going down into the pit as I rise from it, Doctor. Don't you see that? Don't you feel it? You can help no one. Not even yourself."

  "Where are you?"

  "You must know by now. You must see."

  "No, I don't see a thing. Make it clear for me."

  "You're a smart woman. You can figure it out. Isn't that how you normally play out your petty games, Doctor?

  I just want you to know that we are both cut of the same cloth, Dr. Coran…"

  "Really? How so?" Damn this bastard, damn his soul and his body, she thought.

  "We are both concerned with the same… fears, phobias, you and me."

  "What the hell fears are you talking about? And what's your name?" she challenged, hoping to keep him on the line for as long as possible, to somehow reason with him, to somehow save the poor victim he held hostage somewhere in the lodge, or somewhere beyond.

  "Call me… call me Nessus."

  "Ness? Ness-suss? How do you spell that?"

  "Spell it how you wish."

  "Is that your name?"

  "It is the name my god calls me. I am his messenger and your guide."

  "I see, Nessus. So you're not responsible for your actions, your having killed three people? You're just an instrument of some power you cannot control. Is that it, Mr. ahhhhhh…?" It isn't working, she realized. He's not giving out any names or reasons that make sense.

  "Perhaps if you'd crack a book once in a blue moon, you'd know what the fuck's happening here!" The sound of the torch and the screams of his latest victim suddenly filled Jessica's ears, along with the back-scatter noise of a clicking camera, followed by the deafening stillness after he, the man of the moment, the godhead in control, slammed down the receiver.

  "Where are you, you cowardly freak bastard?!" Jessica shouted into the dead r
eceiver. "Cowardly bastard!" Tears of frustration filled her eyes.

  Jessica was left alone with the sound of the victim's screams filling her ears and her silent room. The phone was untapped. No one knew that the monster had again somehow reached out and touched her. She felt angry, confused, outraged all at once. She wanted to lash out at the creature causing her such pain. But how? How did she fight what she could not see?

  Jessica immediately called J. T. to inform him of the latest communique from the killer and her certainty that another victim had already been sacrificed in the Phantom's unholy game. When Thorpe arrived, half dressed, at her door, his hair wildly disheveled, he was still zipping his fly while asking if she were all right. She pulled him through the doorway, clinging to him, telling him verbatim what the killer had said, ending with the fact he no longer called himself Charon but Nessus.

  "The names must mean something important, at least to him," suggested J. T., who now watched Jessica pace tigress fashion about the small room.

  ''More likely to his developing, his metamorphosis, perhaps. Maybe he thinks he's going to turn into some sort of superhuman being or winged creature or god by killing nine victims and sacrificing them to his fucking demons."

  "Easy, Jess."

  She continued, not hearing him. "I don't know, but whatever we can learn from these bits and pieces he's offering, we've got to take full advantage of-now, J. T., before there's a number five, you understand?"

  J. T., seeing she teetered on the edge, pleaded, "Calm down, Jess."

  "Calm down? I don't fucking want to calm down."

  "You're on your way to a burnout, Jess, if you keep this up," he warned.

  "Burnout-just the right image, as always, with you, John."

  He knew that she seldom called him John, and when she did, it meant she was either displaying real affection for him or that she'd become annoyed. "You're going to stay in my room tonight." He instantly waved his hands to any disagreement she might have, adding, "You'll take my bed, and I'll sleep here, in your room. And I'll take any calls that come in for you. Okay? Understood?"

  "No way. If that creep comes looking for me here in this room, finds you, and kills you, I'd never forgive you, John."

  "All right, then, we'll compromise."

  "Compromise? How?"

  "We'll both stay in my room with you on the sofa, then. Happy?"

  The following morning they learned of a fire that had gutted several rooms at Ruby's Inn the night before. Ruby's, they learned, referred to a well-known stopping-off point for people going into Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah, west of Glen Canyon.

  "We've got to get out there," Jessica told J. T.

  "But Bishop's arriving here this morning. Don't you want to wait for him?''

  "I left word in Vegas about what happened last night," she explained. "Talked with Harry Furth. Bishop'll figure it out; he'll catch up with us at Bryce Canyon."

  They arranged for a shuttle run to the airport. Along the way, J. T. asked, ' 'Suppose we can get a helicopter pilot who doesn't think he's Buck Rogers?"

  Once at the Page airport, they located a helicopter and flew toward Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon. Jessica had once traveled to the area, and she told J. T. that his eyes were in for a number of breathtaking sights; and the country, as they flew over in the whirlybird, did not disappoint either of them.

  In Bryce, Utah, at the Ruby Inn, they touched down at a commercial helicopter pad just across the street from the inn, a mammoth, made-over ranch, it appeared. There a crowd of onlookers had gathered in the way of police and fire officials just winding down their investigations. Jessica and J. T. feared they would find exactly what they knew they would, a fourth body-another woman, by Jessica's reckoning and what little her ear had picked up of the victim this time around.

  The murdered woman's name was Eloise Whitaker, an elderly window, and she was, like Martin before her, enjoying a vacation as a member of a bus tour group, using Colorado Bus Travel, and traveling solo. J. T. and Jessica had already discussed the fact that two of the victims now had been passengers on vacation buses that toured the national parks, a third victim had worked in one of the parks, and that this seemed the only tenuous thread connecting the various victims.

  Jessica knew that large tour groups went back and forth through the national parks every day, following exacting schedules. A death like Martin's and now this one slowed that progress considerably, and so when they ran into the bus tour guide named Ronny Ropers and his group again at Ruby Inn, Jessica was not completely surprised.

  But Ropers's face lit up in a wide, theatrical surprise. "You again? And another fire?" he asked Jessica. "Do you bring them about?"

  Jessica gritted her teeth and asked, ' 'Is the deceased one of your charges, Mr. Ropers?"

  "No, thank God. This one belonged to Christy Apple-gate, with Sunshine Tours. That's her over there, the one who can't control her crying."

  One of several huge buses painted with a rainbow of colors and letters proclaiming it a VisionQuest bus suddenly lurched at Jessica as she walked across the parking lot toward the blackened rooms where the fire had gotten out of control this time. Jessica was suddenly pulled from the path of the bus by an alert J. T.

  "Damn bus driver," cursed J. T. for her.

  Other buses began to follow suit, leaving the lodge to maintain schedules, but Ropers had held his group up in an effort to help out in any way he could with Christy's sudden problem, him having had ' 'experience'' now with just this sort of emergency. He intended walking Christy, a well-acquainted friend, through the reams of paperwork and reports that would have to be filed. Now she had a dead-murdered-passenger to report, and Ronny deftly held her hand through it all.

  "What the hell's this world coming to?" Ropers asked Jessica, who began questioning the tearful Christy, who could tell them nothing useful.

  J. T. and Jessica flashed their badges and were ushered through the yellow police tape. Ruby Inn looked like an enormous ranch turned bus stop, fields and corrals and lakes stretching out away from it at the rear. Jessica caught glimpses of horses running freely about the corrals. A part of her wanted to run screaming and free with the horses, to get as far from this case and the Phantom as humanly possible.

  Out front of Ruby's, the place sported a huge welcoming sign for all the bus tour traffic, a large restaurant, rooms for rent, laundry facilities, telephones, and a gift shop.

  ''Another body, another message, another autopsy to tell us what we already know," complained Karl Repasi, who met them at the door.

  Surprised, Jessica asked, "Karl! How did you get here so quickly?''

  "I have friends in high places, remember?" he replied glumly, adding, "God, this is getting too hard, Jess, too damned hard. One smoldering body after another. Listen, please, please let me apologize for my outburst of the other day. I didn't mean half of what I said. I'm on my feet for too long and my brain stops functioning."

  Jessica walked past him without another word.

  "How did you get here, Repasi?" asked J. T., who had thought only he and Jessica, with the exception of the Vegas FBI, knew of the Ruby Inn murder scene. "Who tipped you off to this one?"

  "I've been listening in on police calls since I was a child."

  "Karl, you're beginning to get on my nerves as well as Jessica's," he replied.

  Karl merely frowned, turned, and joined Jessica to stand amid the charred remains of the room, the dead woman's still-smoking body on the bed, the killer's now familiar scrawl on the mirror. ''You need all the help you can get on this one, Jessica. Don't fight me. Let me help you. Just tell me how I can assist in bringing this madman to heel."

  "How, Karl? How're you going to help me?"

  "Obviously, this Charon fellow wants to tie you up with autopsy upon autopsy while he is free to go on to his next killing," Karl replied, his hands flying about. "I can give you freedom to move faster if you turn over all the autopsy work-hours of time, which the killer is using again
st you-to me."

  "Why, Karl?" asked J. T. "So you can get your name in the papers?"

  "I won't lie to you. I'm writing a book right now on my most intriguing cases for Pentium Publishing. I have a contract. A chapter detailing how I worked closely with the great Dr. Jessica Coran won't hurt the book."

  "Now it begins to make sense," suggested J. T. with a cynical grin. "I thought so!"

  "In fact," continued Repasi, "I was hoping you'd consent to doing an introduction for the book, Jessica. If not, perhaps you, Dr. Thorpe."

  Ignoring his request, feeling him ingenuous, she replied, "I'll consider your suggestion, Karl, but at the moment, I'm busy, Doctor." She stepped up to the message on the sooty and this time cracked mirror, the surface of which looked like a roadmap with its spiderweb of crisscrossing cracks. This message, also written on greasy, fatty liquids, actually bulged outward, with sections of glass ready to peel apart and fall away. The message on the cracked mirror read:

  #4 is #6-Heretics

  "Pick up sticks," she muttered to herself.

  "The fourth victim is a heretic?" asked Repasi, shaking his head. "Is this why she is burned far greater than those before? No, not exactly," he continued. "The room was entirely engulfed, according to the fire investigator. It went to backlash."

  "Backflash, you mean?" corrected Jessica.

  "Yes, backflash, flashover, creating of the room an oven of gases, which exploded inward. From there the fire spread."

  "Something of a miracle the mirror only cracked and didn't explode," she said, staring into the webbed lines that streaked across the lettering to make a mosaic of her reflection. "I'm surprised the whole place didn't go up in smoke."

  "Fire has a mind of its own, they say. No two fires being exactly alike, like people, they say," J. T. philosophized.

  Repasi added, "The units saved came as a result of speedy work on the fire department's part, after everyone was alerted by the explosion, and the fact one of the local trucks was at Ruby's for an all-night country jamboree and barbecue at the time."

  "Anyone in adjoining rooms hurt?" she asked.

  He shook his head. "Just scared witless."