Extreme Instinct

SIXTEEN

Jessica literally threw the bills at the cabbie, grabbed her valise, and raced into the Hilton, where she found FBI men had scattered in all directions, one agent taking her aside for her own safety, thinking her a civilian. "I'm FBI!" she shouted, unable to produce her badge and ID while he had her hands in his grasp. She pushed and pulled away from the man when suddenly she saw that several men were being rushed out on stretchers, two of them blackened from having fought their way from a fire, it appeared, their faces having taken the brunt of the flames.

Jessica didn't recognize the first man wheeled by but the second, even with the scarred tissue, looked familiar. She tried to place him when the elevator doors opened again and a third man was wheeled out. The form on the gurney lay still, inert, looking dead, but he had a truly familiar face. To her horror, it was Warren Bishop. He was bloody and unconscious but not fire-blackened or scarred like the other two men.

"Warren!" she called out, racing to him.

A strong-armed medic held her back.

"I'm a doctor," she informed the medic. "Let me go!"

When the agent in charge gave the medic a nod, he released Jessica, who rushed to Warren's side. "Where are you taking him?"

"Salt Lake Memorial, ma'am, but first we've got to get him on life support."

"He's been badly wounded," said a tall, well-dressed man in a suit beside her now. She turned to face Neil Gallagher. "We got here as soon as we got your call, but too late, I'm afraid. I don't know what the hell Bishop was up to, but he wound up in a running gun-battle with your fugitive, Dr. Coran. The other two injured men haven't been thoroughly checked out as yet, but we know they're not federals, and they have no badges or law enforcement identification on them. They weren't carry anything to identify them. In fact, their pockets were stuffed with weapons, from brass knuckles to Lugers, and with thousands in cash, but their identities remain a secret."

"What're you saying?"

"They appear to be citizens of one sort or another."

She gauged his meaning. "They were hired guns?"

"They were both carrying what amounts to an arsenal."

Jessica suddenly recalled where she had seen one of the men, and the name Rollo rolled over in tumbler fashion in her brain. Frank Lorentian's man. What was Warren doing in the company of Frank Lorentian's men? It had to be a mistake, a coincidence, that Lorentian's hired assassins had located the Phantom just at the moment Warren had. Yet Warren had, for no accountable reason, jeopardized everything by withholding information from Gallagher and failing to locate her when he arrived in the city, as if… as if he meant to see the killer executed by Lorentian's henchmen.

These thoughts Jessica kept to herself, but she knew that Neil Gallagher's suspicions had already been aroused. "When… if Bishop recovers, he's going to have some explaining to do," Gallagher said in her ear.

"He was following leads, like any good detective. He didn't know he was so close to the viper when it turned on him," she said. "Simple as that."

Gallagher let it go for the moment.

The Salt Lake City Hilton, a beautiful, prestigious hotel in the heart of Salt Lake City, Utah, served as a surreal backdrop to the sudden turn of events. "Is he… is Bishop expected to live?"

"It's a toss-up," replied Gallagher as the medics rushed Warren away.

"What about the other two men, the burn victims?"

"Bad… very bad. No guarantees at this point."

"And the perpetrator? Bishop's a crack shot. Did he get him?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Damn it! You mean he's gotten away?"

"My people are scouring every inch of the hotel and surrounding area. He's believed to be afoot. We'll get the SOB."

"I've got to get to the hospital. Be there for Warren."

"He'll be in the operating room for hours. He was conscious when I found him. There's some paralysis to his left side. For you, Doctor, there's reason to stay on here, something you'll want to look at."

Jessica looked into Gallagher's sad eyes for the first time. She knew he must mean the fire room, the body, the killer's latest grim communication. "All right, show me the way."

The crime scene was a familiar one, displaying the same MO, the same cunning, and the same malicious disregard for the suffering of the victim, and in getting away this time, the killer had caused injury to three men, one of whom Jessica cared a great deal about. And settling over the entire scene lay the pervasive mystery of why Warren had attempted to take on the killer without proper backup or planning, and who the two men were who'd accompanied him if not FBI men.

Frustrated, feeling as if her hands were tied while she was being made to watch this horror played out again and again before her, Jessica stepped into the now all too familiar, grim consequences of the killer's modus operandi, the remnants of fire and murder. In the still-smoldering, gutted death room, she found the brutalized remains of the monster's latest victim, number five.

Neil Gallagher wondered how she could be so calm as she looked down at the charred body on the bed. She could see the confusion in his eyes when she turned to examine the mirror without having been told there was anything remarkable there to see. It was painfully obvious that Gallagher's office had been given little information on the case, and she was partially to blame for this. Again, she wondered why Bishop had kept Gallagher out of it.

She pushed all these thoughts back while she studied the Phantom's latest message, scrawled in grease across the glass surface of the mirror. This one read:

#5 is #5-Wrathful amp; Sullen

After having a cursory look at the body, and after taking a few samples, going through the motions, Jessica pronounced the victim dead due to her burns brought about through murder. She secretly cursed Eriq Santiva and the entire FBI apparatus for not having raised anything anywhere with the fingerprint evidence. Just the same, to seal the killer's courtroom fate when he was finally caught, she asked Gallagher to get his best fingerprint technician in to search for prints on the telephone and in the written grease message. When Gallagher asked for an explanation, she explained what they knew of the messages, handing him a copy of what J. T. had given her.

Gallagher said, "Damn. I guess I've been out to lunch on this one from the get-go. Sorry, Dr. Coran."

"Not your fault, Gallagher."

''I mean, I knew this guy was on a kill spree, but none of this," he said, indicating the list of messages left at the crime scenes. "I didn't know any of this. I knew about the calls, the connection between you and the killer. Read about it in the papers, but nobody's got this."

Gallagher appeared shaken to his core. To further disturb him, she told him how the killer wrote his messages in the byproduct of the burning body: grease. Gallagher's stony face began twitching when he looked anew at the message, now knowing that it had been written in the burning fat of the victim. But in the best machismo fashion, he held himself together while she added the latest words from the killer to the list she'd kept a running tally of. It now read:

#1 is #9-Traitors

#2 is #8-Malicious Frauds

#3 is #7-Violents

#4 is #6-Heretics

#5 is #5-Wrathful amp; Sullen

No longer did Jessica have to wonder what the numbers and words used by the monster meant, what drove his obsession and murderous rage; she knew now that he meant to fill the nine rungs of Hell in Dante's conception of Hades.

"I've got to get out of here. Got to be with Warren," she told Gallagher.

"Your services, your expertise, Doctor," countered Gallagher, "are needed here."

"Contact Dr. John Thorpe at Ruby Inn, Bryce, Utah. Get him up here for the autopsy. Failing that-''

"Failing that, call Dr. Karl Repasi," said Repasi, who now stood in the doorway.

"Goddamnit, Karl," she cursed. "You're starting to worry me. Are you and the Phantom the same man?''

Repasi laughed at the suggestion and said, "Of course not, although I can see why you might believe so, Jessica. No, Warren called me. Told me to be here as soon as I could get away from Bryce. Said you were on to something, and it appears he was right. Where is Warren?"

"Hospital, in a coma."

"My God! How?"

Gallagher replied, ''As Dr. Coran put it earlier, Bishop took a great risk and it bit him."

Jessica took Repasi aside. "I think you know more about why Warren Bishop was here with two strange men than you're saying, Karl. You and Warren had an argument, a fight earlier today. What were you arguing about?"

"He was upset with me over what I'd said to you the other day, nothing more."

"Nothing more? Nothing having to do with problems in Vegas? Nothing having to do with Frank Lorentian?"

Repasi's facial response gave him away. She had hit a nerve. She pressed her advantage. "Lorentian got to you, didn't he, Karl? And he got to Warren as well, didn't he?"

"He's a powerful man," admitted Repasi.

"Powerful enough to buy himself a medical examiner and an FBI field chief?"

Repasi dropped his gaze.

"Enough said," she bitterly replied, storming off.

Neil Gallagher caught up with her and offered her a ride to the hospital. He started in by asking questions about Warren Bishop, how well she knew him, for how long, what sort of man he was. She pleaded for him to give her a break. "Can we please talk about this later?" she asked, silencing him. During the long, lonely ride over to where Warren Bishop lay in a coma, Jessica pieced all the parts together. And she felt like a fool. J. T. had warned her to be wary of Frank Lorentian, not to turn a blind eye to his threats or the reach of his power, and what had she done? She'd put the billionaire thug out of her mind and he had in fact blindsided her; he had gotten to someone she loved, and he had ruined Warren Bishop's career in the bureau as a result, managed to get two of his own men maimed for life, no doubt, and they had managed to let the beast they were all after escape once more.

She wondered how charges could be brought and made to stick against Lorentian. She wondered if Warren and the other two men would cooperate once he and they recovered. But realistically speaking, she knew that Frank Lorentian was about as untouchable an outlaw as they came, for he was an outlaw with enough money to buy anyone or anything required to float just above the law, up there with the likes of many another wealthy American baron.

The wait at the hospital was long and drawn out. Finally, Neil Gallagher approached her to say, "I'm sorry about your friend, Bishop. I hope he fully recovers."

"Why? So you can hang him out to dry?"

"No one in the operating rooms up there is going to come out of this unscathed, Dr. Coran. We will get at the truth here. Friend or not, Bishop interfered in this investigation, short-circuited a very real possibility of capturing this madman you've all chased here to Salt Lake. I have my duty, too, Doctor."

"Do your duty, then, Gallagher."

"When this is all over, I'll want a statement from you, Doctor."

"I apparently didn't know Warren as well as I thought."

"Obviously." Gallagher began pacing before her. He'd been watching her write on a notepad.

"Shouldn't you be orchestrating the manhunt for the Phantom?" she asked.

"I have my best, most trusted people on it. Believe me. We'll have him. We'll have him soon. It would help greatly if one of those three upstairs could give us something on the man we're after. And what about you, Dr. Coran? Have you been thoroughly forthcoming about what you know of this maniac who likes to fry women into oblivion?''

"Men and women, it makes no difference with this guy so long as he has the log to burn," she replied snappishly. "I've told you all I know."

"What's that you've got there?" he asked, pointing to her notepad.

''He intends to kill a total of at least nine victims, according to our math."

"Nine? Why nine? Why not seven, like that film, or twenty or fifty or a hundred?''

"All I know is that he intends to fill up this… this ascending and descending"-hole, she wanted to say, but instead finished with-"scale."

"Scale? The scale you showed me earlier?"

"Which, if he's allowed to carry on, will soon look like this," she replied, handing him the hospital logo notepad she'd been working over.

Gallagher raised it to his eyes and read the newly developed listing for murder. It read:

#1 is #9-Traitors

#2 is #8-Malicious Frauds

#3 is #7-Violents

#4 is #6-Heretics

#5 is #5-Wrathful amp; Sullen

#6 is #4-?

#7 is #3-?

#8 is #2-?

#9 is #1-the last victim?

"We suspect this maniac has some fixation with themes found in Dante's Inferno," she confessed, for giving information to Gallagher, for some reason, always felt like a confession, she thought.

"Dante's Inferno?" he reacted, looked up from the new list, and now he stared through Jessica, asking, "What kind of madman is this guy?''

"Some might say he is on a quest of some sort, the meaning of which only he fully comprehends. None of this means anything to the rest of us; it's all concocted in his fevered brain, and I'm sure Dante Alighieri didn't in 1321 ever expect his lurid descriptions of Hell to ever fuel a twentieth-century madman's killing lust."

He complimented, ' 'Ingenious of you to figure out this much."

''Luck and happenstance have had much to do with getting this far, but the fact remains, he's at large. There're too many holes, unanswered questions."

"Logically, your numbers appear accurate; this is most probably accurate." Gallagher pressed a finger into the list. "The man intends to kill nine victims."

"Unless he rolls it over, goes back through the rungs to number one again after hitting nine," she suggested.

"All madness, complete madness."

"We have reason to believe he's hearing voices, that he's driven, obsessed, possibly possessed, or at least he believes himself possessed."

"Of a demon?"

"Or demons. I've sent this list along to Quantico, from where it has now gone out to the nation's leading academicians and the mental health professionals in the hope someone somewhere might recognize the thinking. Put it together with the fevered mind that has obsessed over it."

"Yeah, I see, like they did in the Unabomber case."

"Yeah, something like that."

"I read something about it."

"Read something about it? The Unabomber case, you mean?"

"No, no… your case, Dr. Coran."

"Where?"

"Your earlier list, the first one you showed me. It was published in The New York Times, the L.A. Times, and every other major newspaper in the country as well as being aired on national television."

"No one told me!"

"Sorry, I thought you knew."

"I've been… out of touch…"

"Thinking seems sound enough. Someone, somewhere must know this head case and his background, where he lives, right?"

"Yeah… we can only hope. We've also got a line of inquiry following an itinerary, a bus schedule we believe he is on. That's how I got here as quickly as I did."

''Yeah, you mentioned as much when you first informed us."

Jessica wondered how Repasi was connected to Lorentian, and she decided that Karl was hired to keep a running tab on the progress in the case, and that Warren, who had somehow become hopelessly indebted to Frank Lorentian, had succumbed to using his office for Lorentian's personal vendetta in this matter. Repasi was in the hospital, too, but he was busy downstairs with the autopsy on the latest victim, whom Jessica felt guilty over since she had not even gotten the woman's name.

"I'm going down to the morgue to see Dr. Repasi," she told Gallagher.

"I'll accompany you, Doctor."

"As you wish."

They found Repasi just finishing up. When he saw them, he said, "No surprises. Same MO down to the gasoline hot spots about face and upper torso."

Jessica needed to get away from the body and the smell of smoldering flesh adhering to the room. She felt as if she could no longer breathe. Gallagher, a sensitive man, saw her need and ushered her out almost as soon as he'd accompanied her into the morgue.

Gallagher escorted her to a hallway, and at the end of the corridor they found a balcony that overlooked the now darkened city. The warm, fresh air felt good on Jessica's skin, and it invaded her nostrils, attempting battle with the odors from the death room that had taken hold.

Gallagher now asked, "This bus itinerary-it tells you where his next destination will be? Can we get there before him?"

"I'd hoped that for Salt Lake, but we were too late for Salt Lake."

"Thanks to Bishop, yes."

"I wish you wouldn't condemn Warren before he's even had a chance to… to defend himself."

"All right, sorry again. I'll give him the benefit of a doubt. Meantime, where is the killer's next stop, if you don't mind sharing?"

"Wyoming. Jackson Hole, Wyoming, I believe," she replied. ''Can you get me there quickly?''

"As soon as you're ready to go."

"I have to know first how Warren is doing."

"The other side of the hospital, there's a helipad. We can take off from here together for Wyoming. It's not far by air."

She sighed, taking in a deep breath of the clear air, and despite the humid night, a chill, made primarily of fear, wafted through her nerves as she contemplated her next encounter with this madman who'd created some sort of fantasy involving Dante's Inferno, Satan, nine to possibly eighteen murders, and Jessica Coran. She leaned in against the balcony, steadying herself, feeling Neil Gallagher's reassuring hand on her shoulder, hearing his whispered words.

"This must be a nightmare for you. I've only seen the one example of this madman's work. You've now seen five. Now that we know what bus he's traveling on," suggested Gallagher, "we're staking it out to see if he's stupid enough to attempt another boarding tomorrow morning. Frankly, I don't hold out any hope of his doing so, but as they say, crime makes you stupid, so… And frankly, Doctor, I'm a bit confused why you and the others chasing him didn't stop and board the bus before it got this far."

"Don't you think that Warren must've given it thought? Radio the state patrol and surround the bus? Maybe get everyone inside killed? But you've got to realize, we only learned for certain that he was on that specific bus after his arrival here in Salt Lake. There was no opportunity to take him out somewhere along the road before he became a Salt Lake problem, Gallagher."

"I see."

"Besides, there're some thirty or so other passengers on that bus."

"Of course. And if we didn't know before how dangerous it is to approach this lunatic, we certainly know now, don't we?"

"Yes, of course. Any attempt at an assault on the bus would have cost more lives."

"All the same, this morning, when the bus pulls from the curb, it will do so only after a thorough check by my people. By the way, the victim of the fire was a tourist to our city, a passenger on another tour bus. Her name was Evelyn Grey."

"We know he's crazy, but he's also cunning. It's highly unlikely he'll rejoin the tour group or follow the now known path of tour thirteen fourteen on bus sixty-seven of the VisionQuest lines. Still, he has a plan that involves killing four more people at the very least. Whether he shows up in Jackson Hole or not is anyone's guess. And as for staking out the bus, he now knows we're on to him, close on his trail. He's hardly likely to show up tomorrow morning to board that bus.''

"All the same, Quantico has asked for my full support, and as far as I'm concerned, Doctor, you people need all the help you can get. From here on out, I call the shots. Two of my men are guarding Bishop and those two questionable fellows whose faces were rearranged by your killer, possibly dying, certainly maimed for life, due to the ineptness of the investigation thus far. Now, tomorrow morning, my men will be there when tour number thirteen fourteen readies to leave the Hilton. We've interviewed the driver and the tour guide, and they know of our interest in

Mr. Dunlap, should they ever lay eyes on him again."

"He's not a fool."

"We'll take him down, one way or another. The bus driver is being replaced by an agent, and we already have the other end covered, too."

''What do you mean?''

"At Jackson Hole. There we'll greet the bus as the owner-operators of this place he would have been staying at tonight, a place called the Wagon Wheel Motel."

"If you knew where his next destination was, why'd you bother asking me?"

"Call it a test."

"I see."

"After Bishop's performance… rather hard to know whom to trust."

"Sure… I can understand that." Jessica inwardly fumed, but she kept careful control of herself. "Refreshing to find a man with a plan," she told him, thinking his plan foolhardy and full of holes.

Still, she kept silent. "Do it." She knew that Gallagher's plans would net him nothing, that the killer wanted to be caught up with by one person alone: her. That his bread crumbs and leavings thus far had all pointed to one thing: that she be his ninth, his last victim. He was no fool. He would not return to the company of tourists on a bus with a known itinerary, not now, now that they'd come so close to catching him. If nothing else, Warren had thrown a scare into the fiend.

"Then you will join us in Wyoming, Dr. Coran?"

"Go ahead without me. I'm here until Warren regains consciousness."

Still awaiting news at Salt Lake Memorial Hospital, Jessica finally learned that Warren Bishop remained in an hours-long intensive surgery and that he wasn't expected to regain consciousness anytime soon after the operation, nor would he soon have use of his left side even if he should survive the surgery. The killer's bullet had been a spreader, a single bullet exploding from a cut jacket, creating a series of winding, twisting, tearing pellets coursing through Warren's body. He'd been wearing a Spectra vest, a technically superior vest to the Kevlar line most FBI men were still wearing, but the bullet entered at close proximity, the powder burns on his clothes telling the story, and the bullet entered just above the sternum, where the vest hadn't been completely secured by Bishop. From there, the bullet took its winding courses-up, down, around, back and forth, cutting small but deadly paths through vital organs, arteries, and veins.

While she waited, Jessica was deserted by Neil Gallagher, who'd conferred with Dr. Karl Repasi and had invited Repasi to join him in the helicopter to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. With this team away and awaiting the next strike of the cobra at the next stop on the killer's itinerary-an itinerary that may well have changed by now-Jessica at least felt some breathing space.

She remained uncertain of the killer's path now, whether he would indeed show himself in Jackson Hole, but just the same, she and Gallagher had little else to go on. An hour after Gallagher and Repasi had left her, Jessica was joined by J. T., who swept her up in his arms. They held one another for a long time, J. T. asking all in one breathless fell swoop, "How's-Bishop-doing, how're-you-Jess, ' n-what-happened?''

"Bishop's torn up on the inside like a garden soaker. If he survives, his prognosis for a full recovery isn't good." Tears filled Jessica's eyes. "Worst of it is, John, he used us, used both of us."

"Used?"

Jessica confided what little she understood and suspected of Bishop's botched attempt at ridding the world of the Phantom via Frank Lorentian's hired thugs.

"He must've been in to Lorentian big time from the get-go," said J. T. "And to think, we never suspected him of a thing."

"We may never know exactly what kind of debt he owed to Frank Lorentian, if he doesn't survive."

"What about the other two, Lorentian's goons?"

"Second-degree burns to the face; neither man may ever see again. One of them was that guy we met at Lorentian's, his bodyguard Rollo."

"I knew we'd be dogged by Frank Lorentian. I just knew it. But I thought it was Repasi."

"Karl Repasi, too, was keeping tabs on us-for Warren, near as I can tell. Warren was paying Karl to keep him informed of our movements."

"That explains a lot." J. T. again comforted her and said, "I'm sorry about all this, Jess. Really I am. I know you and Bishop go back a long way."

"I thought I knew him."

"Don't be too hard on yourself, Jess. I didn't suspect the man of a thing, either, certainly nothing like this."

"Meanwhile, a killer goes free. We could've had him, John! Damn Warren for that, damn him."

Again J. T. held her, trying to absorb her pain. In a moment she pulled away, dabbing tears from her eyes with a handkerchief that appeared to have seen a great deal of use this night. It was nearing 3:00 a.m.

She stepped away from him, bent, and lifted a notepad she'd been working on before he'd arrived. "Oh, by the way, J. T., look at this and give me your appraisal. I've had a lot of time on my hands here, and I've been reading Dante's Inferno, and the killer's list, all the missing pieces, you know?''

He reached out for the proffered notebook, nodding. "Yeah, what about the missing pieces?"

"I think I know what they are, what they'll be when they come."

J. T. gaped at her, the notepad half in his hands, half in hers. She wanted to push it fully into his hands like a hot potato.

The notepad was filled with the information she wished to share with Thorpe, information no one else had. "Working this out is the only thing that's kept me sane in this place, waiting word on Warren," she told him. "Go ahead, check my work. What do you think? You think the killer's final list will look like this?" She tore off a sheet from the notepad she held in her hand.

J. T. stared at the long list Jessica had completed. He sat down, holding the list before him, simply whistling aloud. The notepad read:

#1 is #9-Traitors

#2 is #8-Malicious Frauds

#3 is #7-Violents

#4 is #6-Heretics

#5 is #5-Wrathful amp; Sullen

#6 is #4-Avaricious amp; Prodigal

#7 is #3-Gluttonous

#8 is #2-Lustful

#9 is #1-(the last victim?) sent into

Limbo… through the Vestibule and over the River Acheron "Avaricious and Prodigal, Gluttonous and Lustful, you know the labels now from your research." J. T. scrunched up his eyes and asked, "The Vestibule? Vestibule? To where? And the River Acheron?"

"Entryway to Hell," she explained. "Hellsmouth, like Mammoth, maybe. Something he said over the phone to me once. I need to get to an atlas."

"Do you mean to tell me that this… all this has been some elaborate scheme simply to find a way to tell Jessica Coran to. .. to go to Hell?"

"Very funny, my friend, but I think he has more in mind than that; I believe he wants to personally send me to Hell. Here." She tore off a second sheet from her notepad. "Take a look at this, too."

J. T. now stared at a set of concentric circles, each circle representing a level in Hades, or in the mind of the killer… or both. The notepaper read:

The Rungs of Hell