Extreme Instinct

EIGHTEEN

An all-points bulletin stretching nationwide was put out on Dorphmann, but Jessica knew that any resulting action would likely only net authorities a few arrests here and there of look-alikes, deadbeat fathers, estranged boyfriends, and the like. Dorphmann had hinted that he had physically altered his appearance already, or rather that Satan had done so for him. He had burned off his fingerprints, thinking this crucial to his living the life of a nonfugitive once he'd finished the Devil's work he'd been put to; he had shaved his head, had likely put on some weight given the free food provided by the tour package. He might have altered his appearance in other ways, such as changing the color of his eyes, from contact green to frame glasses and blue eyes. There was little telling, but he obviously knew something about makeup and diversion and escape tactics, as he'd proven in Vegas and now in Salt Lake City.

Jessica had returned to her hotel room after leaving the newspaper office, and now she felt badly that she couldn't be beside Warren Bishop when he opened his eyes, but there appeared no help for it. She had a rendezvous with a madman, a rendezvous that was long in coming, one she could put off no longer. She meant to put an end to Feydor Dorphmann's maniacal kill spree so that no one else would ever suffer at his hand again.

She telephoned the hospital and got hold of John Thorpe, whose sleepy voice slurred a good morning to her. It was 9:40 a.m.

"Anything new on Bishop?" she asked.

"He's dead, or haven't you heard?" J. T. quipped.

She pleaded with J. T., "Please stay by his side, John."

"I will, for you, Jess. Meanwhile, I'll go over Repasi's findings on the Grey woman, see if he missed anything or failed to tell us anything of a vital nature we don't already know, right?"

"Clever boy."

J. T. broke the news to her that he'd gotten hold of Chief Santiva, who was en route to Jackson Hole, to report Bishop's true condition and why they had felt it necessary to plant the phony story.

"How'd he take it?" she asked.

''He thought it a long shot, but agreed we had little else to gamble on with this nutcase, so he's okay with it, Jess. He still doesn't understand what Bishop and the 'other two agents' thought they were doing. He still doesn't know about the long arm of Frank Lorentian in this matter."

"He'll know soon enough, when he touches down at Jackson Hole. Gallagher will give him an earful, no doubt."

Jessica thanked J. T., finishing with, "For all you've done, John, over the years, thanks."

"Hey, don't go getting maudlin on me, Jess. As for sitting this out with Bishop, it's no big deal. You're needed up in Wyoming, so get saddled up and get going. And don't worry about Warren. On the QT, they're calling him a fighter."

"Has his prognosis improved?" she hopefully asked.

"His condition is stable but still critical."

"Damn…"

"He's a tough guy. He'll weather it, and he's out of surgery and in IC, where he's under constant watch, Jess. What kind of trouble do you suppose he was in with Frank Lorentian?"

"Most likely gambling debts. When I look honestly back on our early days together at the academy, I remember now how avid a gambler Warren always was. I'd rosily chosen to forget that aspect of his character."

J. T. replied, "Damn, I know it. I had a girlfriend once who'd bet on which of two apple blossoms would fall from a tree first."

"Yeah, Warren had that shortcoming, but I had no idea it had become a driving force in his life. Maybe it contributed to his divorce. I can't say."

Jessica felt badly that friends, coworkers, his agency, his former wife, and his kids would hear through the news media that Warren Bishop had died of a gunshot wound in the course of his duty as an FBI agent. She tried to minimize the horror of it all by pretending Bishop was, in a sense, doing decoy work in his most unusual undercover operation, most possibly his last as an FBI operative, and one he was not even aware of. She rationalized spreading the lie also in that it might save lives if Feydor Dorphmann bought into it.

"Where will you be, Jess, if he comes around?"

"I… I'll be at the hotel, getting some sleep," she lied.

"When will you be taking off for Jackson?"

"Sometime this afternoon."

"Maybe I can join you then. Call me before you make any arrangements, okay?"

"Will do," she lied again, knowing now precisely where Feydor Dorphmann was directing her to go. J. T. didn't know it, but she might well have said her final goodbye to him.

Rather than racing immediately off to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Jessica chose another course of action, or inaction, as the case turned out. She'd chosen to sit it out in Salt Lake City for a time, hoping now that Feydor, having had time to think things through and to "talk" with his demon god, would contact her at her hotel room.

She knew that in Jackson Hole she'd have the backing of an entire army of FBI agents and local authorities, all wanting to put an end to the career of the Phantom; she knew that Eriq Santiva was flying there now. She understood that a coordinated effort to create a foolproof net to catch the killer would be instantly under way once Eriq took command there. The FBI crowd would bring to bear every known weapon in the arsenal of crime detection to apprehend the fiend responsible now for the deaths of three FBI men, the manhunt fueled with a vengeance not previously felt.

Meanwhile, an FBI hotline in D.C. was inundated with tips flooding in from every corner of the country, from people in all walks of life, from wastepaper managers to basketball players to TV evangelists who claimed divine knowledge of the messages left by the killer, to academicians whose specialty-the history of the occult and religions of the world-made them TV talk-show guests on Oprah and Rosie. Everyone had some take on the killer, each as distorted and twisted as the next.

However, not even the TV affiliates and networks, nor the newspapers buying into the exclusive coming out of the offices of the Salt Lake Herald, knew as much as the killer and Jessica Coran knew. But at least these more responsible sources named names and displayed photos of the killer, alongside his handwriting and his Dante's Inferno fetish, the nine rungs of Hades, the list of sins and victim names. They had the "story" as Jessica had fed it to them; they had the prediction that Feydor Dorphmann would kill a ninth, unknown victim to fulfill his demented contract with the Devil or devils that haunted him…

She waited, armed with this knowledge; she waited this time for the killer to telephone her where she remained in Salt Lake City. "I'm through chasing the bastard," she firmly told herself.

In fact, New York publishers were in a frenzy since the release of Jessica's story about her discovery that the killer was into Dante's Inferno, in a frenzy to capitalize on the moment by rereleasing Inferno in all of its previous lives and permutations. Since it fell into a public domain document, any publisher could bring it out under any lurid cover it liked, softbound, hardbound, mass-market, or trade-size editions.

Meanwhile, Jessica waited for his call. Waited by the phone, her notepad in hand, staring down at the list of victims, studying it, wondering if he had spoken with his twisted god to gain permission to add the FBI intruders' names to his list of victims or not.

As she waited in the silence of her hotel room for his call, she stared at the final list again, and she almost saw the final version of the list materialize before her eyes. At the bottom of the list of offenses and names, she saw her name.

"Seems suitable enough," she jested with herself. "I am suited for the Vestibule, for sure." Her rereading of Inferno reminded her that according to Dante's description, the Vestibule was the place for the indecisive, those who had never committed to anything, including life, so that, though they had not earned a place in Hell, neither had they earned a place in Heaven, so that they were left in a state of limbo, a state of no real death.

The Vestibule sloped down to the River Acheron, the first of three circular rivers, each of which emptied into the next, finally to flow into the frozen lake at the center of Earth, the nethermost well or pit of frigid water of Cocytus.

"Call me, you bastard," she dared the phone, but it remained silent.

She could wait no longer. She packed, called for a helicopter out of Salt Lake City's airport, and arranged for a cab to get her out to the airport. She looked again at the killer's itinerary, its final destination being Denver, Colorado, by way of South Dakota and Montana, but if he took the bait-if he read the papers and saw the reasoning, that Bishop's death, alongside those of the other two FBI agents, counted in his mad game, then he'd have only one more kill to make: her.

She put her finger on the map of Yellowstone National Park, the stop after Jackson Hole, Wyoming. If he killed in Jackson Hole, she decided, there would be plenty of people, Repasi included, to clean up after. If she could get ahead of the bastard, be there at Yellowstone's Old Faithful Lodge, then she might take him by surprise and end this mental case's attempt to repopulate the Inferno with innocent people who got in his way. It would end one way or another with her in Yellowstone, where the bastard had wanted her all along.

Yellowstone was the fitting place, the logical end, she realized.

It was as if the killer knew that she'd been to Yellowstone before, that he had somehow sneaked into her home in Quantico, Virginia, and rooted around in her many photo albums to know her past. It was as if Feydor Dorphmann, or his personal devil, somehow knew that she had revealed the very first murderer in her long career as a medical examiner in Yellowstone National Park.

Jessica recalled the last time she'd seen Ranger Samuel Marc Fronval and Yellowstone. She'd been on vacation with a girlfriend during her years just after college while she'd been employed as assistant to the M.E. in Baltimore. She was still taking finals at Georgetown University, completing her education in the field of forensics. She was twenty-four at the time. The memory calmed her into a near sleep in which she recalled every event as vividly as if it were the day before.

She recalled seeing the unremarkable poster of a missing young woman in the park, and how calm the park rangers were the day her body was discovered. Not to disturb park visitors, the rangers put up no hue and cry about the discovery; rather, they appeared more stone-faced than ever. But Jessica had felt the menace, a bubbling excitement below the surface at Old Faithful Lodge, just beneath the veneer of gift shops, restaurant, lounge, and the tourist crowd, an excitement that went unnoticed by most. But Jessica had sensed it, had seen it in the eyes of the various rangers and staff who daily worked at the lodge. News had spread among them of a body found out at one of the hot springs.

Jessica had instantly offered her services when she learned it was a medical emergency, and since medical assistance was some thirty miles off by air, she was enlisted.

The helicopter she then rode in thundered through the canyon pass, brushing over treetops, scattering nesting bald eagles above the Shoshoni River on a breathtakingly clear, snow-dusted morning. The pace of the helicopter and the gorgeous scenery all around young Jessica Coran made her gasp as much with awe as with the rollicking ride.

The pilot had said over his earphones, "We'll be there in ten minutes. Hell of a sight."

She knew he was talking about the body and not the Yellowstone gorge below, which she marveled over alone, the pilot long jaded on the spectacular views. "You've made the run earlier then? You've seen the body?" she'd asked through the headphone set.

"I was on call when we got word from the Park Service. The woman's been missing for three days, two nights out here. Everybody feared the worse, you know, that she slipped somewhere along the trail into a hot pool. You know those suckers just sear you to death, and the body's never found sometimes. Well, this one somehow scratched her way out and died half a mile away in thick woods."

He banked with the curve of the canyon wall, and then they lifted in a startling flash, rising as if yanked from above by a godly hand. The pilot had introduced himself as Wayne Patterson, a bright-eyed, clean-shaven young fellow whose eyes lingered over Jessica. It frightened her a bit that he seemed so young and in control of her life at the moment.

The dense brown hues of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone here in Wyoming bordering Montana gave way to lush forests. Pine trees below created a pillowy carpet of green life swaying beneath their wake. It didn't appear there was anywhere to land.

''Just where do you intend to put this thing down?'' she asked.

"There's a ranger station with a clearing just ahead. We'll have to hike back down this way to the body, Dr. Coran. Mind my asking why"-he hesitated asking whatever was on his mind-"why, ma'am, they sent you all the way out from Baltimore?"

"Presidential order," she joked. "Remember, his concern for the national parks ranks right up there with poverty and homelessness and every other big platform issue this year. Besides, I was in the area-Old Faithful Lodge."

''Oh, I get it.'' Her little joke had hurt his country pride.

The helicopter touched down at the remote ranger station, and Jessica, her medical bag in hand, rushed from beneath the whirring blades, sand, leaves, and twigs tornadoing about her. They got into a four-wheeled land crawler and raced to the scene. In fifteen minutes they came upon a handful of men, all standing about a prone figure in the dust, covered over with a woolen blanket.

Jessica introduced herself to the men, most of whom looked dubiously back at her, wondering about her age and sex and experience, no doubt.

One of the men, wearing the uniform of a ranger and looking like an aged John Wayne, introduced himself, saying, "I'm Sam, Samuel Fronval. In charge of this district." He then casually pointed to the heap below the blanket and sadly announced the obvious. "She's beyond help… long dead."

Jessica stepped closer. "I'm Dr. Coran," she replied. "Happened to be at the lodge. I'll have to examine her, pronounce cause of death."

"Cause is pretty clear," replied another ranger, an overweight fellow who had the arms and general appearance of a white, hairless bear-and who, in fact, the other rangers called Bear.

"She never stood a chance," mumbled a third man.

"We figure it's that missing woman, Sarah Langley. She was hiking alone. Paid no attention to the warnings against hiking alone up in here," urged Bear.

"Just the same, I'll have a look." Jessica went to the body and pulled back the blanket. She gasped at the horrid sight of flesh that had been literally boiled from the bones. The woman had no features, the skin having sloughed away. She was so badly burned, in fact, there seemed no way she could have come so far in her state. This strange fact stood out along with something equally strange about the nude body that immediately hit her. The victim's ankles and feet, while scalded, were not in nearly as bad shape as the rest of her body. This struck her instantly as odd.

"Anyone remove her shoes? Were her clothes burned off her?"

"Maybe, can't tell. No evidence she had any clothes on, but superheated water like what she got into burns clothing into nothing," replied Fronval. "I've seen it happen."

"She didn't have no shoes on," said another ranger. "I mean when we found her."

Jessica looked again at the body, trying to make out any sign of clothing clinging to it, but there was nothing but the clothlike blotches and peels of skin remaining, whole portions moving in the invisible wind current coming off the ground.

"Well?" asked Fronval. "What's your diagnosis, Doctor?"

"Yeah, how'd she manage to get so far from the pool that killed her?" asked the pilot, equally confused.

She had to have had help, Jessica thought but kept her counsel.

"Animals musta' got at her," said Bear with a shrug. "Maybe a coyote or some grizzly come along and drug her here. There're signs she was drugged here."

Jessica and Fronval looked at the evidence the heavyset young man pointed to. Yes, the body had been dragged, but she doubted it was drugged, and Fronval was shaking his head, too. He near whispered to her, "If there were any bear tracks, they've been obliterated by last night's snow and destroyed by my overanxious men, but I don't think a bear got at her."

"Why not?"

"No bear marks on her."

"Gashes, you mean."

"Bear'll tear its meat into strips. Even a coyote'd leave marks where he clamped down on her, if he could even manage to drag her dead weight this far up from the springs. So, we got ourselves a bit of a Devil's Triangle mystery here, huh? What do you think, Doctor?" urged Fronval.

Jessica looked up from the corpse, the worst thing she'd seen in her young career as an M.E. student, the skin seared to molten, peeling sheets; sheaths of her skin had curled up, other portions of skin were missing, lost along the trail, revealing scorched, dehydrated veins, normally blue, turned to a white, milky hue, the blood boiled away.

With third- and fourth-degree scald burns over ninety percent of her body, she could not have survived long enough to have taken ten steps, much less arrive at this destination on her own power. There were second- and third-degree burns over the remaining ten percent of her. All her facial features and hair had been dramatically boiled away. All the soft tissues, such as the eyes, scalded into oblivion. Dental records were a necessity for a one hundred percent ID on the woman, for even if she had once had a birthmark, it, too, was gone. "If she were burned to this degree in the doorway of the best burn center in the country-" she began.

"That'd be Salt Lake City," supplied Fronval.

"-she still would have died…"

"But?" asked Fronval, sensing there was more.

"But the condition in which we find her, and so far from the hot springs-where is it?"

"Closest one is a quarter mile that way." Fronval pointed with an unlit pipe, and he next supplied the name of the hot springs that had apparently killed Sarah Langley, who, from what Jessica could tell, was a young woman in her mid- to late twenties who obviously enjoyed nature and taking her nature alone in the woods. Fronval said, "She was hiking along Firehole River. She'd been seen by a couple of fishermen up that way, least that's what Brian, here, learned before we began the manhunt for her."

Jessica looked up to see which one was Brian, guessing it to be Bear. He only shook his head, suppressed eye contact, and said in response, "I figured she fell in, 'cause look, her ankles and feet didn't get it near so bad. She must've fallen in and clawed her way back outta the pool, and her feet were the only things working right. They got her away from the pool, and a large, predatory animal must've done the rest."

"We can get the body over to Mammoth Hospital. They got a long history of hot springs deaths there. They'll know what to do, all the paperwork, getting the body to her family, all that," suggested Fronval.

Jessica nodded to Fronval. "Are they equipped with a sheriff and a jail there, Mr. Fronval?"

Fronval's eyes widened. "You suspect there's more here than meets the eye, Doctor?"

"I do."

"Murder? Foul play?"

"I do."

"Can you prove it?" he asked.

"Take me to the hot springs where she allegedly fell in."

Bear defended, saying, "They don't always fall in. Sometimes some people jump in, confusing one pool with another, thinking it a safe sauna, you know."

"Bear's right 'bout that," said a third ranger.

Fronval agreed, saying, "Some pools are safe to swim and bask in while the one right beside it is hot enough to kill anything that dares touch it."

"So, she coulda decided to take a swim or bathe," Bear said with a shrug.

"That same place has claimed lives before. It's a tricky area on the trail," agreed Fronval, "and there're three pools there. You slip and fall in, you could be killed. We figure, well, Bear here figured, she fell into Ojo."

"Ojo?" she asked.

"Ojo Caliente."

"Spanish for hot springs," added the young pilot.

"Lower Geyser Basin," added the third ranger, whose nameplate said Fred Wingate.

"That's where that Lewis kid, six years old, fell in when he was fishing with his father back in '58. But he lived for two days afterward," supplied Bear.

Fronval supplied the rest, saying, "Yeah, the boy had third-degree burns over his entire body except for the head and neck. Died in Salt Lake. Wasn't anything could be done. Lost too much body fluids to the heat. Ojo's one of the hottest of the springs; fluctuates between a hundred ninety-eight and two-oh-two."

"But she went in headfirst-her ankles and feet weren't in the water as long as the rest of her," Jessica said. "And there's a large contusion on the left side of her head where she sustained a blow."

"Coulda happened in the fall," suggested Bear.

The other men stood nodding, imagining the possible scenarios suggested first by Fronval, next by Dr. Coran, and then by Bear.

"I'll need to examine the spot where she fell in and supposedly dragged herself out of this Ojo springs. See if her clothing is there…"

"That could take days. You know how big Ojo is?" asked Bear.

"But if she fell from the trail as you theorize," replied Jessica, "then the search is considerably narrowed down, isn't it, Mr. Fronval?"

"Sure is," said Fronval. "I'll take you back that way on my four-wheeler. We'll have a look around while Bear and the others get the body over to Mammoth."

Jessica knew that the chopper was equipped to take on such cargo.

"I want to go with you, Sam," said Bear. "I'm the one found her. Feel I ought to carry through."

"No need, Bear. You go on to Mammoth with the body. Get things hopping there. Notify the family she's been located, and Fred. .. Fred, you get back to the station. We've left it unmanned long enough."

"Yes, sir," Fred immediately responded.

"You're going to need help out there at Ojo, Sam," complained Bear as Jessica stared at his gloved hands, wondering if they might not be scorched from the hot springs as well, and if they were… But all the men, and Jessica, were wearing gloves against the cold, frigid air.

"No, Dr. Coran and me, we'll take care over to Ojo," Fronval commanded in fatherly fashion. "You've done quite 'nough, son. I'll catch up to you in Mammoth."

Bear held them in his gaze until they disappeared in Fronval's four-wheeler.

At Ojo Caliente, a quarter mile away, Jessica and Sam Fronval searched for almost an hour before finding what to both of them appeared the place where Sarah Langley entered and most likely exited the deceptively calm hot springs where a spectral cloud of sulfur gases caressed and embraced the humans onshore. The surface water was glasslike for the most part, and while it sent up a blanket of superheated air over its wide surface, it hardly appeared to be a killer.

Fronval, using his wilderness skills, located an area where broken branches and matted grasses told him she'd tumbled from. They found not a stitch of clothing onshore, no shoes, nothing of the sort. Furthermore, there was no indication of hiking equipment strewn about, no backpack, no tent, not a trace she was hiking in this area. Only the near invisible signs Fronval pointed to evidenced her ever having passed this way.

"What do you make of it?" Fronval asked Jessica. "Did she fall in headfirst with every stitch of her gear weighing her down?"

"Could all that gear dematerialize in that cauldron of boiling water?"

"Possibly," Sam Fronval answered, drawing on his now lit pipe.

"Highly unlikely, Mr. Fronval, that nothing survived her fall."

Fronval shook his head, continuing his devil's advocate tone. "Other people may've come along, picked up anything seen as useful."

Jessica shook her head in return. Anyone watching them would think them in heated debate. "Even if she did fall from the trail along here, there would likely have been some scattering of her things here and there. And this time of year, how many other people would be along here? And everyone knowing the girl's been missing, it would've been reported."

"Besides," he said in an agreeing manner now, rubbing his chin, "the trail's much more slippery at other junctures. If she fell into the pool, why at this spot?"

"You'd know more about that than I," Jessica acknowledged. "But if she did fall in here, the natural place to've come out is right at this spot, here," she finished, pointing. "Unfortunately."

"If she did claw her way out and walk away from the fall as suggested by Brian Cressey."

"Yeah, the fellow you call Bear?"

"Nickname… suits him. He's strong as a bear and about as single-mindedly dumb. But if he had anything to do with the girl's death, why didn't he dispose of the body right here, same as the equipment? Leave not a trace. Wouldn't a murderer, given this great, natural opportunity to dispose completely and utterly of the body.. . wouldn't he?"

"I couldn't tell you for certain what goes on in the mind of a murderer, but we know that in an unplanned murder-that is, one in which someone loses control-the killer seldom thinks clearly or in any orderly fashion."

"I see."

"And I've read that sometimes killers hold onto the body for long periods, you know, for… well, indelicate purposes."

"My God," Fronval said, each word a groan.

"As for the missing equipment, I'd look into Cressey's locker, and I'd look at his hands."

Fronval's face was still twitching, still stuck on the part about keeping the body for indelicate reasons. "You really think he. .. he held onto the body to stick it to the dead girl even looking like she does now?"

"Depends on how cruel and psychotic a person he is. Just how well do you know Cressey? How long's he been a ranger?"

"Not long. Transferred in from a park, Stone Mountain, Georgia, if memory serves. Don't know much about the kid, but you're right. We gotta take a look in his boots, and we need a look below his gloves…"

"I didn't like what his body language was saying back there. I was a little afraid to call him on it, ask him to reveal his hands. He was holding a high-powered rifle."

''I had my suspicion when he suggested maybe a grizzly got at the girl and turned up its nose to the burned flesh, but there weren't any signs of a bear kill whatsoever. It wasn't the scene of a classic carcass feeding."

"Of course…" She considered his meaning. "You're quite right, Mr. Fronval."

"No coyotes, ravens, or magpies waiting their turn at the corpse. A bear makes a racket when he feeds, and he makes a stench and a mess of the carcass. There weren't no claw marks or teeth gashes I could see on her."

"Perhaps the body hasn't been out in the elements as long as we suspect, sir."

"You think she was dead when she exited Ojo Caliente, don't you, Dr. Coran?"

"It will take a full-blown autopsy to be sure, but that bruise I mentioned, the one to the temple, was considerable, since it was deep enough to show below the skin that'd sloughed away from the cranium."

''She was dead when she exited the water. She was dead weight. All he had to do was hold her by the ankles. He likely fought with her, lost his temper, pushed her in, held her by the ankles until she was dead, pulled her out, and realized what he'd done."

Jessica, staring into Fronval's sad eyes, bit her lip.

"But you already knew all that, didn't you, Doctor?"

She was glad he had said the words. Less argument that way.

"The search for Sarah was already on, but he didn't know what to do. It wasn't something he planned, so he had no plan for disposing of the body. Then when the search became such a big deal for everyone, he saw an opportunity to emerge as the hero who had located the body-which wasn't so tough, since he'd held on to it.

"Bastard probably kept it in a snowbank behind the ranger station where he was putting in time alone up here. Creepy bastard."

"I suspect a thorough search of his sleeping quarters will reveal that she spent some time there after she was dead."

"That would cinch it, wouldn't it? Can you be sure there'll be trace evidence there?"

"The way she was dropping skin, yes."

"God." Fronval moaned again. "Think of it-being held under that heat by your ankles. There was no way she could escape his grasp or the searing heat."

"If she had pulled herself from the water, her feet and ankles would've been seared at least as badly as her hands, but they weren't. As for this location, we're not going to find any evidence without doing some archaeological digging about. It's an ideal spot for a murder, actually. No clues left to find. You can't without doubt know where she entered or exited the water."

"I know it was here," Fronval said with conviction.

"But it wouldn't hold up in a court of law, sir. Any other poolside in the wilderness, and we'd see indentations in the sand, evidence or a lack of evidence of her hands and nails having clawed her way out. But not here in all this mineral spillover."

The land around Ojo Caliente was constantly being reshaped and rebuilt, in places spongy, in other places cracked and hard and brittle, the stuff of geyserite: a hydrous form of silica, a variety of opal deposited in gray and white concretelike masses, porous, filamentous, and scaly. Therein shown no footprints or telltale signs the woman walked or crawled from this place, but then, too, there were no signs of any attacker's prints, either.

"We can't prove he killed her from what we can see here," she told him.

"Sonofabitch, but we've got to prove he did it; I know it in my bones."

"That bit of knowledge, I'm afraid, is also useless in a court of law, Mr. Fronval. We need to bring in photographic equipment and photograph everything, even this spot, showing the lack of any sign of struggle here. We need pictures of the body, and we need a warrant to search Cressey's quarters."

"That camp belongs to the service. We don't need no damned warrant to get in there and search."

"But we do, sir. Else the court will throw out all the evidence we find in the camp. It will be viewed as his private space, his sleeping quarters, where he has a reasonable expectancy of privacy, despite the ownership question."

"That's crazy."

"That's the law, sir."

"Protects the guilty and his civil liberties, huh?"

"Along with the innocent, yes."

"Damn, I sent Bear off to Mammoth. You can bet he's going to make tracks for the nearest safe haven."

"Maybe not. He still wants to be a hero. Besides, we can radio ahead to authorities there to pick him up. Our first worry is to get a judge to give us a search warrant."

Fronval had hold of a rifle he'd pulled from his all-terrain vehicle. They were far enough into the wilderness that should a bear or other wild animal attack, he could use the weapon in the event of threat to human life. Now they stood and began to make their way back to the all-terrain when a gunshot rang out, striking a boulder beside Fronval's head, sending a rock shard into his forehead and knocking him down. Jessica looked up to see Brian Cressey smiling down at them. He raised his rifle scope again.

Jessica dove for Fronval's rifle, hearing the report of a second shot fired by Bear and hearing Fronval groan with the impact. Jessica brought the rifle up, shoved the bullet into the breech, aimed, and fired, striking Bear in the solar plexus, sending him scudding down the rocky slope toward them, his rifle flying off in another direction.

Fronval was hit in the shoulder and his head was bleeding, but he was okay. Bear was dead. Jessica went to his inert body, his staring eyes, and she yanked away his right-hand glove to reveal serious first- and second-degree burns in a splash and splatter pattern. She next unclothed his other hand, revealing even worse burns on his left hand. It was Jessica's first encounter with a murderer.

Jessica's fear of Feydor Dorphmann quadrupled now as she sat beside the still and silent phone in Salt Lake City.

It chilled her to know that somehow Dorphmann knew that she would follow him to Yellowstone. It felt uncanny, as though he knew of her earlier, fateful trip to the park. He knew that she had seen the bubbling cauldrons that licked Earth's crust there, like the liquid tongue of Satan, and no doubt Feydor had also been there at one time or another to look into the orifices of Hell. It was this geography that linked killer and hunter.

Yellowstone was filled with geographic anomalies, both fascinating and bizarre, some ten thousand hot springs, geysers, mud pots, and steam vents scattered over its mountainous terrain, all atop a plateau. In dramatic, exquisitely beautiful natural formations, most of the strange thermal waters were hotter than 150 degrees Fahrenheit, 66 degrees Celsius, and many reached temperatures of 185 to 205 degrees Fahrenheit, or 89 to 96 degrees Celsius. This, and the fact that water boiled at 198 degrees Fahrenheit at this altitude, made the alluring, fascinating features also quite deadly, so much so that nearby Billings, Montana's, newspaper the Billings Gazette routinely reported more hot springs deaths in Yellowstone than they did deaths due to grizzly bear attacks.

The worst tragedy in the area occurred on July 29, 1979, almost twenty years ago now, in midafteraoon when nine-year-old Markie Hoechst of Bainbridge, Georgia, walked along the visitors' boardwalk alongside Crested Pool with her vacationing family. This awesome hot spring had several names over the years, some quite colorful, such as Fire Basin, Circe's Boudoir, and The Devil's Well the same as Feydor Dorphmann had alluded to. Little Markie, enveloped in the billowing clouds of steam that the hot springs continually emit, lost sight of her parents. The hot vapor blew into Markie's eyes and no one knows quite what happened to her next, for she somehow got off the boardwalk and into the searing waters, which allowed her only a handful of screams before she was silenced, boiled to death in the hot spring. Despite the fact that a guardrail stood between little Markie and a searing, scalding death, she somehow managed to fall in. Some accounts claimed she tripped at the edge of the boardwalk; others said she'd climbed onto the guardrail and fell from there. At any rate, she plunged into the cauldron, where the temperature rose to more than 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Reports said the girl tried vainly to swim a handful of strokes before completely scalding to death and sinking. According to Newsday and Newsweek accounts, the final glimpse the girl's mother and father had of little Markie was seeing her rigid, mannequinlike body and stark-white face-the mark of her pain and fear-sinking away from them and into the depths of the boiling water.

Markie's father had to be held by others, restrained from jumping in after his daughter. Her mother fainted. Later, her father stated that no one present actually saw her fall or misstep; that she had been walking along behind them, skipping along on the boardwalk, when suddenly they heard a splash. They instantly turned, only to see other tourists helplessly staring and shouting down at someone who'd fallen into the hot spring, and next horror struck: It was little Markie.

Her body sank from sight. Eight pounds of bone, flesh, and clothing were recovered by park rangers the following day.

Jessica wondered again at Dorphmann's suggestion that she meet him at the Devil's Well. She calculated that he'd have been eleven years of age in 1979, and she wondered if he, too, as a child, had visited the Devil's Well, and if he had become captivated by it. She wondered if others, fascinated by the eyelid of Satan in this place, might not have wanted to see what would happen if they lifted a little girl over a rail and dropped her into such a pool of superheated water.

She wondered if a Feydor Dorphmann had been on hand that day in Yellowstone to push a foolish little girl from a guardrail that she'd climbed up onto to impress, surprise, or gain attention from her parents.

In any event, Yellowstone's geysers and hot springs remained from generation to generation beautiful and strange, and peripheral areas both awesome and ugly, such as the boiling pots and pits of white mud froth from which rose a sulfuric steam that covered onlookers. At dusk, all around Old Faithful Lodge, rising banshees of smoke rose and cantered off in the wind on all sides, creating the effect of an army of phantom souls released into the night. This from hundreds of hot springs and bubbling pools, some as searing as 280 degrees Fahrenheit, enough to strip an animal of its fur as well as its skin, should it fall in. The carcasses of buffalo, elk, deer, and other animals were routinely found in this obstacle course of superheated waters bubbling up from Earth's core. And many a person had foolishly lost his life to Yellowstone's unpredictable ways, so much so that a local historian who'd chronicled the foolhardy deaths in Yellowstone published a book under the title Death in Yellowstone. Sales of the book in the gift shops continued to be brisk each season.

Yellowstone, of course. It appeared the perfect place for Feydor Dorphmann to end his quest.

Jessica dared tell no one of her plan. The others would find out soon enough, as soon as they tired of Jackson Hole as a staging area to catch Dorphmann.

Still no word from Dorphmann came. The bastard, she thought, is going ahead as planned. This meant a likely death in Jackson Hole, another at Yellowstone, possibly two there.

She called the desk for a cab, picked up her waiting bag and professional bag, and was halfway out the door when the phone rang. She put down her things and moved toward the phone, taking it up on the third ring.

"Yes?" she asked.

"It's time for number six."

"Wait. Didn't you see the papers? You've already killed by fire two additional victims, Feydor. You don't need to do this."

"I can't take any chances," he replied. "Those others were flukes, mistakes, not planned by him and me. This way, I know for sure. Number six is number four: Avaricious amp; Prodigal. Understood, Doctor? Now, that, that is for sure," he finished, obviously removed a gag from his sixth victim, and with a whoosh of power, ignited the gasoline already poured over her or him. Jessica could not tell from the wailing, agonized screams whether it was a man or a woman.

"There's a fire, but I fooled you again. It's not in Jackson Hole, Doctor. Your pals won't be in the right place. Only you know where I am tonight, you alone."

She realized he could be anywhere between Salt Lake City and the great Yellowstone National Park, in any of hundreds of motels and hotels along Interstate 287, the main highway of 191, or back roads spreading fingerlike from these two roads, but she said, "All right, Feydor. I'll come alone to where you want me, to Yellowstone, but you've got to promise, no one else is killed. Understood? No one else between now and then."

He hung up, the fire engulfing everything around him, no doubt, but he'd heard her promise and her request. He had heard what he wanted to hear from her. She prayed he'd go for the bargain.

Jessica left the safety of her room for the waiting cab. She'd earlier arranged for a private helicopter to take her up to Yellowstone. It was nearing 6:00 p.m. Gallagher, Santiva, and the others in Jackson Hole would remain on a long vigil until they got word of the latest fire death, Satan, God, and Feydor alone knew where.

"Salt Lake Regional Airport," she told the cabbie, who muttered something about the nice evening as his tires screeched from the curb.

Eriq Santiva and Neil Gallagher and the others now had every hotel in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, a small but bustling commercialized village, under watch. Eriq had taken time to oversee Gallagher's setup, and after approving of what the Salt Lake City bureau head had done, he began to question Jessica Coran's delay in getting to Jackson Hole.

He got on the phone to the hospital in Salt Lake City, and after several frustrating channels, John Thorpe was reached. Thorpe had earlier reached Eriq on the airplane phone, telling him of the planted newspaper coverage and the fact that all three men who'd been injured in Salt Lake City were in fact still very much alive.

Now Eriq asked, "Where's Dr. Coran at this moment?"

"She's not there in Wyoming? With you, sir?"

"No, she is not. When did she leave?"

"Well, she was planning on leaving mid- to late afternoon, but she was also supposed to contact me before she left. I'd planned, hoped to travel with her to Jackson Hole."

"I'm telling you, she is not here. She's made no contact with us here."

"I'll try to get her at the hotel. She may've overslept. She'd been going all night, sir."

"Do that, and get back to me! Meanwhile, how's Bishop doing? The other two agents?''

J. T. instantly hedged. He didn't like lying to his boss, but Jessica had asked him not to reveal the Lorentian connection to Bishop this way, over the phone. ''All of the men are out of serious danger now, and Bishop is showing good signs of recovery, but all are being kept heavily sedated, sir-for the pain, you see."

"Understood."

J. T. hung up and tried to hail Jessica at the Little America Hotel and Towers, but he was told by the desk that she wasn't answering her phone. A stab of fear split his heart. What was she up to? he wondered, feared. Then he made out someone talking in the background there at the desk, telling the fellow on the phone that Dr. Coran had checked out and had taken a cab to the airport.

"When? When?" J. T. pressed the man when he came back on with this information. "When did she leave?"

"Around six, sir, six this evening."

"Oh, all right… thanks." J. T. hung up and immediately got back to Chief Director Santiva.

"She's on her way, then. Good."

"I believe so, sir, yes. I'll call the airport to confirm."

"Do that."

Again they hung up, but now J. T. wondered what was going on with Jessica. Why hadn't she called him to tell him her plans, to include him on the trip northward? Something was wrong. He felt it in the bone marrow. A quick call to Salt Lake International revealed nothing save the fact she hadn't flown out of there either on a private or a commercial plane. He asked at the hospital about any small airports in the area, and he was given several names, but the one that everyone agreed on as the best was Salt Lake Regional. A call there proved frustrating. A helicopter had taken off at six thirty-five, but as was usual with helicopter charters, no flight plan had been left with the tower. It was assumed to be a sight-seeing run, but the helicopter in question hadn't returned.

"She's not going to Jackson Hole," he said to himself where he sat at the useless telephone at a nurse's station outside Bishop's room. "Damn," he swore. "She's gone after him alone." But where? Where had she gone? Where would the showdown occur?

He rushed from the hospital to Jessica's room at the hotel.

Once at her hotel, J. T., flashing his credentials and claiming it an emergency, stepped into the room so recently vacated by Jessica Coran. She'd left the room in immaculate condition, as typical of her, but J. T. prayed for any clue as to her whereabouts. On a notepad beside the phone he found a notation she'd made, and it had a chilling effect on J. T. as he stared down at the message, which read:

#6 is #4-Avaricious amp; Prodigal

"Damn it," he muttered, knowing what the message must mean. "He's killed again. Somewhere between here and Jackson Hole."

"Sir?" asked the bellman who'd unlocked the door for him.

"Nothing, never mind." J. T. then saw the discarded map in the wastepaper basket. He lifted out the map and unfolded it, spreading it across the bureau, instantly recognizing it for the answer he'd come in search of. "Yellowstone. She's gone to Yellowstone."

Another glance at the map and he saw the fine-pen circle mark around Old Faithful and the Upper Geyser Basin, with the names of the various hot springs. One in particular caught his attention and his imagination, recalling to mind what Jess had said about the one phone call from the killer in which he mentioned Hellsmouth and the Devil's Well.

J. T. raced out with the map in hand. He had to get to the airport, and fast.