Extreme Instinct

SEVEN

Jessica was awakened in the middle of the night by an insistent phone at her bedside, where a digital clock read 3:10 A.M. She hadn't answered a telephone ring since hearing from-she wondered if she dared think it him now- the Phantom Killer. Not knowing how many rings had already come, she still hesitated answering the annoying machine, like some clawing Rumpelstiltskin at her bedside. Her hand, as if independent of her mind, halted in the air over the receiver. A fearful dread continued to blot out her resolve.

Possibly… probably Jim… calling from Hawaii. It's late there, too-1:10 a.m.-and he's thinking of her, and he wants to hear her voice. Or perhaps it's Eriq Santiva, or someone else at Quantico with an urgent message, something about the case that simply couldn't wait till daybreak. Perhaps it was Kim Desinor with some psychic words of advice…

She lifted the receiver. Placed it tentatively against her ear. Muttered a soft, "Hello?"

"Dockkkk." The word was chillingly choked off. "Kkk-Coran?"

The voice sounded like Chris Lorentian's; it sounded like a voice from the grave. Jessica immediately wondered if she weren't simply in the midst of a nightmare, one of those horrible replays of a true event the brain safely tucked away but the soul took out to examine more closely, always about this predawn hour. Yes, her weary mind playing tricks on her, but her blood temperature plunged at the chilling tones coming over the spectral wires, while her hands-trembling with the dreamed-up receiver-turned strangely clammy, her mouth as dry as potato dust.

Finally, she heard herself ask, ' 'Who is this?''

A high-pitched voice replied, "Mel… Marrrr-tin."

"I don't know you. Who are you?" The voice sounded far away yet strident, pulled tighter than a guitar string, shaky and twangy. A quaking, older-than-Chris Lorentian female voice, she felt certain now. If it was the nightmare of the other night happening all over again, there seemed to be certain minute changes. Still drowsy, part of Jessica remained just as certain that she'd wake from this all-too-familiar nightmare any moment now to find a silent room, the receiver on its cradle, her nerves intact, her bodily control and functions returned to her. Another part of her mind screamed that this was no ephemeral event.

"He made me… made me call." The disembodied voice filled Jessica's ears; the shaky, cracking voice resounded with terror. Obviously in pain, obviously in tears, the caller conjured up the image of the helpless form Jessica had seen in room 1713 of the hotel, the scorched remains of Chris Lorentian.

"Who is he? Who is the bastard? Give me something, anything, any clue," Jessica pleaded.

"Any Chhh… Christ…"

Any Christ? she asked herself. Was the caller swearing? "A name!"

"Beelzebub!"

"Satan?"

"Doe… douwhn…"

"Dough?"

"Doooon't let him hurt me! Says… says he's doing it for… for you."

"Doing what for me? Who is he? A name! And what does he want from me? Ask him! Ask him! Keep him talking," Jessica pleaded.

Another voice, all male and vicious and throaty, growled into the receiver, "I… I kill for… thee, Kkkkoran…"

"Who are you? What are you?"

"I am Charon!"

"Listen to me, Sharon."

"Char… Char-ron," he corrected. "And there's no time for Hellsmouth like the present. It's over for number three."

She only understood his threat. "No… no," Jessica muttered and then screamed, '' No! '' even as she heard the slosh, slosh, slosh of a wet substance, and she heard the baritone voice of a male shadow, the Phantom, saying something in the background that sounded like a muffled, "Burn… die, bastard thing, burn in the mouth of Satan for all eternity, burn in the well!"

"Mel!" Jessica shouted just as the whoosh of superheated air traveled through the lines, stinging her ear. She could smell the fire and feel its singing, singeing song amid Mel Martin's single, long, contorted wail of pain until there was nothing left but the beating of the fire's wings moments before the phone line went dead.

This is it… I wake up screaming now, right? Jessica thought, all in the same instant that the phone line went dead. I wake up now. But she realized it was no dream, that she was awake, and that the weight and firmness of the receiver in her hand were corporeal, not spectral.

She choked and coughed as if the fire had somehow singed her own lungs, and gasping for water, she slammed down the receiver and grabbed the glass of water she routinely kept at her bedside, knocking it over, spilling the contents over the carpet.

"Damn, damn, damn this mudderfreakingsonofabitchin' bastard of Satan!"

Tears had come of their own volition. Jessica had seldom felt so maligned, so abused, and so helpless. She wanted desperately to reach out and touch this someone, this SOB. Then she recalled the security measures Warren's local bureau had placed on her phone. She prayed they had the fire freak on tape, and that they could place him precisely where he had called from this time without delay. She prayed the fiend had remained close by and that FBI operatives were busting in on the monster at this very moment.

She'd gotten the killer to speak to her; small comfort, but it was something. Warren's vigilant men must have gotten the killer's voice on tape, which meant a voice-print-surefire evidence against him once they apprehended the creep. Too late for poor, defenseless Mel. She was obviously gone now, the way of Chris Lorentian.

"God," she wondered aloud, "could he be in the hotel again?" Could he have remained that cool, to stay that close to her and the scene of his crime, she wondered, knowing that criminals, more often than not, enjoyed revisiting the scene of the crime in an effort to relive the moment of their having been in complete control of the murder victim's life, to feel again that sense of power over another life.

She instantly and instinctively reached for her Browning automatic, a gun that had saved her life on more than one occasion. A million questions positioned themselves all in a row for her consideration, but all of the little soldiers were tripping over one another as in a Laurel and Hardy movie, causing a havoc of confusion and wonder. But uppermost and clear in her mind was one question: What was his reasoning? Did he believe that he would eventually do her in the fashion of his other victims? Did this bastard believe himself born of fire, that he would die by fire, and did he want her in that fire with him? Why had he singled her out for his sick game of flesh-burning murder? Why was he so bent on torturing her through vividly displaying the torment he inflicted on his victims? And again she wondered, how close was he to her at this moment?

She wanted to yank the receiver up again, call the desk to determine the origin of the call, but she couldn't. She was expecting another phone call any moment from Harry Furth, the genius who put the tap on her phone, but she hadn't seen him actually get the job done, and she hadn't gotten back to Warren's Las Vegas FBI branch to find out for certain. She cursed the possibility that once again she might be the only one privy to the killer's chilling audio setup. She hadn't been 100 percent happy with the idea of people listening in on her phone calls, but for the sake of narrowing down the facts about their Phantom Killer, she had little choice in the matter.

The phone rang.

Could it be the monster returned? She hesitated until it rang three times.

Finally, she lifted the receiver, saying nothing.

"We got the asshole. We got 'im."

"And this is?"

"Agent Harry Furth." Harry Furth's thick voice sounded a direct opposite of the killer's hollow tone.

"Where? Where is he?"

"Page."

"Page what?"

"Arizona."

"Arizona? Page?"

"Lake Powell."

"Lake Powell?"

"Page, Arizona."

"But… isn't that… hundreds of miles away?"

"I don't need a geography lesson, Doctor." Harry sounded tired, brittle. No doubt like herself, feeling helpless as he listened in on this brutality he could not stop. "But it's not really so far. It's near Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park, actually closer to Monument Valley. By air, you can be there in under a couple of hours."

"We got anybody there, on it, now?" she wanted to know.

"We've got local law enforcement on it. They're crashin' the place as we speak. Keep your fingers crossed."

"Where… I mean, exactly how far is this place from here?"

"A day's drive. Not far. Happened at the Wahweap Lodge and Marina, on Lake Powell. Great place to vacation."

"Not so for Mel Martin, obviously…"

She was relieved in one sense that this cruel, sadistic monster was not in the building, that he was not as close to her as he'd been only the night before, but she was disappointed he'd not remained in the city, that he was expanding the geography of his kill spree, in a sense creating a larger radius for them to cover. Was it part of his plan? Usually, the Behavioral Science Unit of the FBI must work diligently to narrow the geography of the crimes to a specific location, to hone in on the killer, often doing so well as to locate the street on which the killer lived. Usually, the killer lived and worked and killed within a relatively confined area, close to home and to places he felt familiar and comfortable with. The crime geography remained fairly constant with most serial killers-save the Henry Lee cross-country types-even if the killer happened to be mobile, but this pyromaniac killer had jumped to another square quite quickly and unexpectedly, enlarging the geography overnight.' It made her wonder where next he might strike. No one could possibly know using the normal techniques. Not with this guy any more than they'd been able to use normal procedure in the apprehension of the Night Crawler in the Caribbean the year before.

She considered her options. Stay put; return to Quantico; go to the second fire death scene. "I'm getting dressed, Harry. I want to get out there to Lake Powell."

"Whoa, wait up there, Doctor. You need to stay next to this phone, where he can reach you. We need as much tape on this creep as possible, need to study the tape in depth, and we need to get a fix on him next time. Somehow you have to keep him on the line longer."

"That's ridiculous. He's not on the line with me, his victims are! How do I keep the victim alive and on the phone longer, long distance, when this mother's in control of her and me and the time clock?"

"I don't know, but the phone line's our only link to this crazoid."

"Harry, if you want someone to man this phone, then get someone, but I won't be a prisoner to this madman, and I don't intend staying in the Flamingo another night. Do you understand?"

"But Dr. Coran-"

"No, no argument."

"All right… all right. We'll get an actress to play you, a decoy."

"Now, that makes a great deal more sense, Harry. My time's worth more than that of an actress."

"Guess you ain't heard the latest contract Julia Roberts signed with Disney."

She only snorted her reply. "Hmmmph."

"Meantime, we'll get a voiceprint made. This time the guy screwed up big time. We got 'im on tape, and we got 'im spoutin' off in the background, but the scatter needs cleaning up. I can do that, but it'll take twenty, maybe thirty hours, depending."

"Do it, and let me hear of the results. As for now, can you get me to Lake Powell, to this Wahweap Lodge?"

"I'll get a chopper prepared out at the airport; go to Hangar Twenty-four. They'll be expecting you."

"John Thorpe may be accompanying me."

"Gotcha, and I'll let the guys in Arizona know what's going on soon as I hear back from them."

"Do you think they might've gotten in there on time?"

"Doubt it. There was only a small window, a few minutes watching her burn, and he may've gotten out before the fumes got to him, which doesn't leave our guys much time to converge."

"Then you heard the entire conversation?"

"Every word, Doctor. Made no sense. Guy's completely nuts. I don't know how you held it together as well as you did, but you did, and you got a hell of a heart-gumption, my pappy used to call it."

She didn't feel like she had any gumption, or that she'd held anything together. Still, she replied, "Thanks, Harry. Tell 'em at Powell to not disturb the body or the crime scene. Understood?"

"Will do."

"Will I see you at the airport?"

"No, I want to get right on this tape. See what comes of it. Maybe later, I'll see you in Page, you know, when I've got something."

"Damned glad you got in here and set up the tap when you did, else we'd have nothing."

"Couldn't do otherwise. My boss was roasting my chops to get this set up. He seems to think you're pretty special… priority one, Dr. Coran."

She smiled at this. "Tell Bishop thanks for me. And Harry, I've jotted down a couple of things the killer said that may be especially relevant to our narrowing this mystery man down. I want you to tell Bishop these could be important clues to reveal something about the killer, the words he used to refer to himself, Char-ron, he'd said, or Charon, and the unusual word Hellsmouth. Could be a place."

Furth replied, “I thought he said Char-man, that he was like this char-grill guy, char-man. Didn't catch the reference to Hellsmouth. Any event, you can tell Bishop yourself."

"How's that?"

Warren's got a thing for you. Why don't you give him a call? He's gonna want to know about this new wrinkle. May even want to accompany you to Page, knowing Warren as I do."

The innuendo was thick enough to slice with a blunt scalpel, she thought, but it was no secret how Warren Bishop felt about Jessica Coran. She'd seen Bishop at one of today's sessions, and they'd had more coffee together. He'd been understanding-sweet, even-when she spoke of the awful first phone call from the Phantom's supposed first victim, telling him in graphic detail how horrible it all was. He'd been sympathetic, suggesting that she have something a bit stronger than coffee later with him in the lounge, suggesting they have dinner together.

They'd known each other for years, since her first year in the FBI Academy. They'd been close friends and had studied together, competing with one another to be the best. He was so good in hand-to-hand that they made him an instructor on the spot, and so he'd actually become one of her trainers.

Over the years they'd stayed in contact, remaining best of friends, but when the death of Chris Lorentian had happened and Jessica had been placed in danger, Bishop had been out of town on another case, which had taken him to New Mexico.

Now he and his team had gone into swift action, surfing and sifting through FBI computer files for any and all similar fire deaths that might be related. These fire deaths ranged from those ruled accidental to those intentionally set fires that engulfed whole homes, restaurants, or warehouses, leaving someone dead in the process. They'd narrowed the list down to seventy-two that smacked of similarities, primarily the use of butane as an accelerant alongside the smoked remains of some poor slob, male or female. Bishop and his team were reworking and rethinking every angle on each such case, but Jessica's gut reaction was one of skepticism. She believed this guy had started with Chris Lorentian-that "#1 is #9" pointed to this supposition. The phone call to her, the message written in the victim's own bodily grease, all had something to do with the number 1 and the number 9.

Perhaps the killer had a preset game plan that called for nine lives. And it had something to do with the notion of traitorous behavior.

She believed the victims knew their killer, or at least had had some previous contact with him. And this assumption was a world of difference from its opposite view, that victim and killer were strangers, that these were stranger killings.

Bishop was a broad-shouldered, handsome man with a wonderful smile and a great sense of humor. His sense of duty and honor were equally honed. A Desert Storm vet, he would make any woman a great prize, but like Jessica, his work had for all these years kept him from a personal life. It was natural and easy for the two of them to share time together, reminisce about the academy, about their earlier lives and the people they had once been. In fact, Jessica rather liked being reminded of a time when she was a naпf, an innocent. Bishop made her feel good, made her laugh, as he was still capable of doing, but she was also sure that he also made her look hard at what she'd become without the slightest intention of doing so.

They'd parted at her door, all thought of their jobs and professional selves abandoned. They'd kissed, for old times' sake on her part, but somehow it had become a passionate embrace, one she felt safe within, confident with. Still, she had halted him at the door, telling Warren that her heart belonged now to James Parry, and that regardless of her strong feelings and attachment to him, she simply couldn't betray James. "Not like this," she'd said, and Bishop, in his usual poise and with a grin of acceptance, thanked her for what he termed ''The best evening of my life in a long, long time."

"Liar," she'd countered.

"I mean every word of it, Jess, and if Parry doesn't take care of you, I'll go looking for the bastard."

"My hero, my shining knight."

"Uughhhh! Now you're making me sick." He remained laughing all the way down the corridor and when he waved good-naturedly from the elevator. "Don't worry about a thing, Jess," he assured her then. "I've got Harry Furth, my best man, on the wiretap. If this murdering piece of filth does call you again, we're going to nail the putrid excuse for a human being. Trust me."

"Yeah, Bishop," she'd replied. "I do-trust you, that is."

"Trust me to take this elevator down and leave you in peace, you mean?''

"That, too, Warren, and thanks for understanding."

"Long as you're happy, Jess."

She had smiled then as the elevator doors closed on his strong, tall form. It would have been so easy to have invited him in. ..

She now pushed the thought away, telephoned for a cab, and began packing an overnight bag for Page, Arizona.

Jessica's next call went to J. T., alerting him to the alarming news: Once again the Phantom had struck like a naming shadow, and the SOB had forced his victim to contact Jessica via telephone so that Jessica might listen in on the murder. J. T. instantly reacted, coming to her room to stand in wait with her, to be with her, to console her. They ordered a pot of black coffee from the all-night room service, and between gulps she told him as much as she could recall of the ugly, bizarre, phoned-in murder of the Martin woman; then they packed, not knowing if they'd be returning to Las Vegas. John Thorpe insisted on accompanying her to Lake Powell at Glen Canyon.

"Ever hear of a name like Charon?" she asked J. T.

"We'll have it run through the FBI computers. See what kicks out, follow leads to his crooked past. We'll get this twisted bastard, Jess."

Warren Bishop met Jessica and J. T. at the airport, where a helicopter had been chartered for their early-morning flight. Bishop had come rushing to her side as soon as he'd learned of the phone call that had so rocked Jessica's night. In the dismal gloom of an airport at 5:20 a.m. of what already felt like a scorching day in this desert paradise, they stood waiting on the flight pad.

Warren, looking sleepy and fatigued, like a bear just out of hibernation, walked Jessica aside and apologetically said, "I wish I could fly up there with you, Jess, but I can't drop everything here. Too many pressing and politically charged problems, and being the guy in charge…"

"No need for apologies, Warren. You and your men have done quite enough."

"Furth'll get on the voice tape, see if we can learn anything from it, and there'll be Arizona-Utah branch agents there to meet you in Page.

"Jess, promise me you'll take every precaution against this guy. Obviously, for some screwball reason, he has it in for you."

"No need to worry about me, Warren, and I fully understand. I have a pretty fair idea of the scope of your responsibilities here. Don't forget, I'm in love with a field chief."

"Just the same, I may follow you on a later flight."

"We could be back in a day or two, depending."

"Then again, you might not. We've hardly had time to recapture… old times." For a split second, the look in his eye gave Jessica a start. She feared he might suddenly surprise her by taking her into his arms and passionately kissing her. To stave off the moment, she turned to search for where J. T. had gotten off to, and seeing that he was busy with the young chopper pilot, she said, "I'd best board before J. T. bores the pilot to death."

"Wait, Jess," he said, giving her a bear hug and a kiss on the forehead. ''A little brotherly kiss, huh?'' he asked. "Just want you to know that you can count on me, Jess."

"Thanks, Warren… but I know that-always have."

"Have a safe flight."

"I'm sure we will."

"Some of most fantastic scenery on the continent between here and Page. You'll enjoy it. And don't forget to look up at the stars once in a while, for the soul."

"Hey, I look up plenty. Last time I came on vacation out West, I was practically a youngster. Visited Yellowstone up in Wyoming. Did some hiking, fishing, and photo hunting."

"Yeah, I can see you in Yellowstone," he replied, smiling wide. ''You always did love the outdoors, nature. Time you got back to it, maybe."

"Perhaps you're right." She smiled and turned, saw that J. T. had already seen to their bags and was waving for her to board. At the helicopter, the rotors already spinning and sending up a whirlwind of dust, the young pilot- young enough to be one of Jessica's nephews-stood alongside his chopper, a sight-seeing chopper pressed into sudden service by the FBI.

"How safe is this thing?" she wondered aloud.

"We take special care of our birds at Vermilion Cliffs Tours," the bush-cut-headed pilot replied with a smile. The young man told Jessica to sit up front in the copilot's seat, having learned she had experience as a pilot herself. J. T. had nestled into the back of the helicopter.

Still, Jessica impulsively rushed back to Warren for a final word, her eyes moist with a mix of emotions. She'd been on a roller coaster of confused emotions since the first telephone call forced on her by this madman with a torch. "Warren, you be good to yourself, and you take care of yourself, too," she finally said to him, unsure if any words she might utter could possibly ease his apparent loneliness and pain. "I'm sorry this once I can't be there for you, Warren."

He smiled, laughed even, and his usual gruff voice became melancholy, sweetly tolling in a rhythmic, metered away. "Don't worry about this tough old 'gator. Hell, my hide's as thick as pine bark. It's just… well, you touch something in me mat never fails to peel a layer or two off."

"Bishop, you're as tough as my Aunt Sarah," she joked, making him roar with laughter, and she mirthfully joined him when she caught sight of J. T., who'd been watching from the chopper, a frown signaling a groan escaping him. To spite J. T., Jessica hugged Bishop a second time, and from over Bishop's dropped shoulder, Jessica could see a deeper frown turning Thorpe's face into a large prunelike growth, ugly even from this distance. She now quickly boarded the whirlybird, and Bishop waved them off.

Jessica was soon settled into the cockpit passenger side of the helicopter. She'd learned to fly small planes and she loved flying, but she had never flown a chopper. It looked like great fun, and she talked to the pilot the entire time, even while he went through his preflight check, telling him of her love for flying.

The young pilot beamed. He shared her love of the air.

The inky sky was giving way to light the way a water-color painting gave way from one color to another, bleeding into one another, and on their way to the Grand Canyon, the sun was meeting them. Within the hour, Jessica and J. T. were treated to an aerial view of the colossal Hoover Dam, one of America's seven modern civil engineering wonders, on beautiful Lake Mead, the dam's reservoir, which equated to the largest man-made lake in America.

Even from this height, Jessica saw that the dam dwarfed everything around it, even the mountainsides into which it nestled. Cars and trucks drove across its razorback highway, which capped the Great Pyramid scale of the dam.

The pilot obviously spent more time flying tourists than marshals of the law, and he automatically explained what they were looking at. "Construction of the dam began in 1931, and the last concrete was poured two years ahead of schedule, in '35. Power plant wings were completed in '36, and the first generator began operating in October the same year. The seventeenth and final generator went into commercial operation in 1961."

Jessica and J. T. took it all in; the place inspired awe.

Young Joseph Duncan, the pilot, continued to fill them in on the facts, as he'd long since memorized them. "Hoover Dam represents a godsend for Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, and California for electricity, domestic water needs, irrigation, generation of low-cost hydroelectric power. It was named one of America's seven modern civil engineering wonders in 1994 by the American Society of Civil Engineers."

All Jessica knew was that it shone in the morning sun like some majestic giant's stone palace. She watched a lone bald eagle soar above the dam. The combined sight was breathtaking.

The pilot spoiled the moment, informing them of the army of men and machines, and the years of toil, required to build the dam, finishing with a story about ' 'those poor unfortunates who gave their lives in the mammoth undertaking, some having literally done so, as they are still entombed in the dam, having fallen in with the tons of concrete as it was poured… on various occasions."

J. T., through his headset, replied, ''I heard that was all a lot of nonsense, that no one died in that fashion, and no bodies are inside that colossal accumulation of rock and mortar."

The pilot shrugged before replying, "Ahhh, who's to say? But it's what we tell the tourists."

From there they flew over the fantastic beauty of the East Rim of the Grand Canyon, a wonderland of carved rock formations, light and shadow, depth and distance through which trickled the dwarfed Colorado River. Jessica couldn't take her eyes from the sheer size of this magnificent geologic formation, doing so only when J. T. pointed out two enormous birds of prey flying low over the canyon below them.

"Buzzards?" she asked.

"California condors," replied Duncan. "They released about nine or ten in the canyon last year; trying to make a comeback from extinction. Nobody's seen a sight like this in seventy years here at the canyon. Let's go in for a closer look, shall we?"

Ignoring a new law that outlawed air traffic below the rim of the canyon, Joseph Duncan recklessly dove toward the condors, trying to mimic their natural flight, trying to keep up with them and at the same time keep from getting too near canyon outcroppings, walls, and floor. Once the condors disappeared from sight, he began to meander with the Colorado River instead.

Jessica found the flight the most exhilarating experience of her life, while J. T. began to clutch at the sides of the seat he was in and to moan fearfully. The flight reminded her of a similar one, years and years before, through the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone in Wyoming, where she'd performed her first duty as a medical examiner in the field. It had been during the trip to the national park to get away from the stresses of her new job as assistant M.E. at Baltimore Memorial Hospital in Maryland. She was still very much the student of medicine in those days. Park authorities alerted to a death at one of the thousands of hot springs in Yellowstone, and learning of her presence, asked her to come out and have a look at the body, which was in a remote area of the park. They'd had to helicopter to the location. It had proved also to be Jessica's first encounter with a murderer.

But there was no time to tarry on memories or the beauty and grandeur of the Grand Canyon here in Arizona, and so they were soon raised again above the canyon rim, and in minutes the chopper whirred away from the beautiful sight of the great and enormous mother of all canyons.

Warren had been right about the scenery. It was a religious experience. Utterly and magnificently wild, as Yellowstone had been. Since her visit to Yellowstone, Jessica had been a member of the National Parks and Conservation Association, the organization that published National Parks magazine and fought to keep wilderness areas wild. It was the lone voice fighting not only to keep the national parks for the people but also to keep them wild, because there was ever a hue and cry to develop park areas or to sell off mining or lumber rights to the highest bidder. Others wanted every possible hazard of the parks eliminated by boardwalks, guardrails, fences, signs, and signposts every few feet, despite the fact that every known and unknown hazard could never be completely eliminated by structures or regulations any more than traffic hazards could be eliminated from the L.A. superhighways.

Now they were flying away from the Grand Canyon and straight over the famous Painted Desert of Arizona, where Navajo Indian hogans and circular patches of land marked the circle of the Navajo family unit, easily visible from the sky, where each isolated house stood. To Jessica's surprise, they weren't finished with the Grand Canyon just yet, for on the other side of the Painted Desert awaited the great and magnificent North Rim of the Grand Canyon.

"This here's the northernmost section of the canyon," Duncan explained, and from the air, this strange and beautiful place looked the part of a scarred alien landscape, another planet, its rainbow of hues like so many elusive patinas, each layer of the "mountains growing into the earth," as Native Americans said of the canyon walls, painted by light and shadow, ever changing with each passing moment, each passing cloud.

The sunrise here became a trumpet sound, a tolling bell, telling everyone on the ground to rush to the rim for sights that would never come again, for tomorrow's sights here would be different. In a sense, the Grand Canyon equaled visible time. Looking across at the bands of sediment, one stood staring into the earth's history of aeons ago. It was no different from what astronomers said about looking back through time via their most powerful telescopes, but here the human eye had no need of any mechanical device to see into the shadowy beginnings of Earth's turbulent creation.

Helicoptering was nothing like jetting about, Jessica felt. In a chopper, you floated, feeling like you were sitting on a moving platform or flying carpet, and in fact you were at the center of a big glass bubble from which you could view everything. The cockpit of an airplane had an entirely different feel. You could hardly see in all directions in a small plane; hell, you couldn't see over the dash in front of you in many models, and in a plane you glided down to earth, but not so in a bobbing helicopter. In a chopper you floated down to earth.

While Jessica worked the radio to call ahead to local law enforcement people, the chopper now quickly descended. Decreasing altitude, the pilot deftly maneuvered the joystick, and they gently helicoptered down at Page, Arizona, the brilliant orange and yellow earth and the azure waters around Glen Canyon Dam winking up at them in the morning sun. The waters all around the hills and mountains here created a cerulean blue against the desert reds, a spectacular sight. In fact, spectacular sights abounded here. In the distance, as they'd approached, Duncan had pointed to the towering pinnacles of Monument Valley, a backdrop to seemingly every John Wayne Western.

They had found Page's small business airport, where commercial helicopters and small jets flew sightseers over Lake Powell and Monument Valley for just under one hundred forty bucks. Here Jessica and J. T. were met by a local sheriff's car, transporting them within ten minutes to Wahweap Lodge and Marina, nestled amid Lake Powell's spiky inlets, the whole a man-made crater lake that had come into being with the building of Glen Canyon Dam.

The lodge was extraordinary, and it was instantly obvious why so many boaters and vacationers gathered here; and out over the lake all manner of pleasure craft could be counted, from pontoons to speedboats and cruisers. The huge, multifaceted lake with its hidden fissures and miles-long fingers, having once been a land of rocky slopes, mountains, and crevasses, was now a favorite playground for water enthusiasts, as the great dam built on the Colorado River had created a vast lake here that had raised the water level, flooding the valleys here, burying below the waterline many sacred Native American pictographs and wall paintings in the trade-off, much to the chagrin, annoyance, and anger of Native American activists, old-timers, and the ghosts of ancestors past.

Jessica herself questioned the trade-off, wondering why the pictographs couldn't have at least been chiseled out and removed for display in a museum on the West somewhere. But her main concern this morning at the lodge on the man-made lake was to catch a killer. Coming in view of the building where Mel Martin was murdered, she reached for her black valise and gripped it hard, girding herself for what she surely would find inside the lodge.