Extreme Instinct

EIGHT

As they approached the marina with its hundreds of scattered boats of various sizes-looking like so many birds perched atop the shimmering water-Jessica could see that Wahweap Lodge was of modern construction. Still, the colors and grounds were in keeping with the surroundings, making for a creamy blend of sand, brown, and earthy hues. It was a sprawling lodge, and it appeared filled to capacity, its vacationing horde of boaters and weekenders making the best of the heat by staying near the water.

The drive to the lodge from the airport was quick and simple, and when they entered the main doorway into the lavishly furnished western decor of the lobby, Jessica's eyes went instantly to the extremely beautiful and lifelike portraits of Native Americans-men, women, and children-adorning the walls. The local artist or artists who'd captured these figures had brought them into sharp focus and rendered them extremely attractive. The walls were also hung with Western lore items, from bullwhips to tastefully done Native American artifacts and art.

She and J. T. had little time to glance about, however, for the night manager, held past his normal duty hours now, shakily introduced himself as Mr. Nathan Wood. The man looked as if he'd been pummeled and dragged over rocks from behind a pickup truck, and he, alongside the local sheriff's deputy who had acted as their chauffeur, directed them to the fire room, where two uniformed Arizona State patrolmen (Jessica liked to call them "pa-troopers," as she did as a child) stood milling about.

Jessica noticed a small cardboard box near one of the officers' feet. She let it go, peeking inside to where the body still lay waiting for her and J. T.'s arrival, untouched and unmoved. It was 5:55 a.m., and the Arizona sun rained in through half-open drapes, blinding Jessica to the amount of fire damage before her. It seemed the bathing sunlight was fast attempting to wash the fire-blackened room clean, softening its appearance, and in an elusive, illusionary way, it succeeded.

"Protective wear," Jessica said to J. T. as she snapped open her valise and snatched out a white linen lab coat, rubber gloves, and a face mask. She dabbed a bit of Vicks VapoRub below her nose to cut the smell of death.

Stepping into the fire death room, a bump here against the bureau, a grind there against the bedpost, and Jessica knew her clothes would be painted in fire grease had she not taken precautions.

Two local FBI men and fire officials looked hard at Jessica and Thorpe; these men were expecting them and had remained, milling about, sipping coffee, curious about the new wave of FBI folk who'd been brought in, wondering why the doctors had come all the way from Vegas to be here. One of the two Arizona-Utah field agents looked to have taken charge, and he quickly stepped forward and offered J. T. his hand, explaining, "I'm Tom McEvetty. It was me and my partner, Kam-"

The partner hustled nearer and with a hand as large as a griddle, awkwardly leaned over and almost fell atop the charred body on the bed as he poked his hand out, saying, "I'm Kaminsky, Ed Kaminsky, special agent, Mac's partner. Friends call me Kam." Kam's gloved hand, dripping with goo, was still held out to Jessica after he'd taken J. T.'s handshake.

Jessica finally took Kam's gloved hand in hers, and they shook with Mac looking on. "Nice to meet you both," she assured the Arizona bureau men who'd hauled ass to get here from Flagstaff.

Frowning at his partner, McEvetty continued, "Anyway, we responded to the call from Vegas to get up here from Flagstaff's soon as we could, but it's a long way from Flagstaff. We flew in, same as you. Your man in Vegas contacted local authorities, and those two fellas outside in uniform were the ones who rammed the door, but too late, I'm afraid."

The one called Kam took it from there, saying, "The patrolmen discovered the fire and the body, but no sign of your shadow man, this Phantom guy, save a sooty footprint, which you might be interested in."

McEvetty, a large, bull of a man, shuffled his weight past Jessica and J. T. in the crunched space, and now he pointed to a large smudge on the light blue carpeting just outside the threshold, where a small cardboard box had been placed over the print, saying, "So's nobody can accidentally smudge the print before it gets placed in a cast."

Jessica went to the box, lifted it, and stared at the print below. It was a clear, even shoeprint, as opposed to an actual footprint impression, showing a worn, uneven pattern on the sole. A shoe expert might be able to tell them a great deal about the man who left the print, but more likely the expert could tell them a great deal more about the shoe than about the man inside it. "You're sure it wasn't made by one of the firemen, one of cops, or one of you guys?" she asked.

The two FBI men from Flagstaff exchanged an exasperated look, taking offense. "It was the first thing Morgan and Dawes noticed when they got to the door," said the one called Kam.

McEvetty quickly added, "They preserved it immediately after securing the place."

"Good… good work," she said to the two uniformed cops who'd been standing idly by.

"We got other business," one of them said. "We'll keep our eyes open for any suspicious-looking characters in the area, on the roads, but we're outta here now, if you folks are finished with us."

She nodded, a half smile sending them on their way. "Sure, sure."

One of the two state patrolmen called back, ''Just hope something comes of the shoeprint."

They all knew that without a match, it was like finding a fingerprint with no one to attach it to, completely useless. "Yeah," J. T. agreed.

"We might make something of it," Jessica added, "if… when we catch this freaking monster." She thought it an ironic twist on the missing glass slipper in Cinderella. She then turned back to the charred and blackened cave the killer had made of the once lovely room, her eyes traveling about the killer's incinerator. There were familiar indications-tracks-that the same killer had been at work here, the clues all pointing to the same man, all around the room in a constellation of previous activity that left its indelible mark. Jessica began enumerating these for the others to take note.

"Naked wires where the smoke alarm and sprinkler system were disconnected, the stage well set so that the killer would have ample time to walk away from his carnage before others were alerted to the fire, and a message smudged in black soot scrawled across the mirror, different this time, yet quite familiar."

J. T. and Jessica stood side by side at the mirror, reading the words scrawled across it. The familiarity of the message left on the mirror had the power to chill the spine:

#3 is #7-Violents

"What the hell's zat 'spose to mean?" barked McEvetty in Jessica's ear. "Violins? You think he means violins, maybe… hearts and flowers, maybe?"

Means the bastard can't spell ''violence,'' Jessica thought but said nothing. She desperately tried to block McEvetty and the others out while J. T. watched her amazing concentration on the mirror, where her reflection- healthy skin, firm, rich in moisture, few lines, even-toned, supple and smooth brow, all framed by radiant auburn hair-congealed in a bizarre double exposure amid the smoke streaks and the body's unhealthy appearance on the bed-loose, arid, riddled maplike with lines, so uneven in color and hue as to rival the hard, brittle, rough colors of the dark earth, all hair burned away. All this superimposed by the smoke-painted, greasy letters left on the mirror. Her eyes screamed silent, closed over the images for a moment, and opened firm and determined once more.

"I don't know what the Sam Hill the message means, gentlemen, and we might never know, and perhaps it doesn't matter."

"Doesn't matter?" asked McEvetty, a note of exasperation in his voice.

"Perhaps no one but the killer will ever know what his numbers and shorthand mean."

J. T. told the two Flagstaff agents what had been left at the kill scene in Las Vegas.

"As for meaning in a madman's head," Jessica said now, "perhaps the hellion will take it to his grave with him."

Still, she found herself examining each character, each loop and dip in the madman's hand, sizing him up as she did so, using what little she had learned about handwriting analysis against the unseen enemy. But the process told her little that she didn't already know, given his telephone fetish, and his fire fetish, and his liking for turning human flesh into fire-blackened, dehydrated cardboard. So what if his damnable lettering screamed that he rationalized beyond all reason as normal human beings understood reasoning? That he held a bizarre and fantastic worldview that excused him from his actions, from meting out suffering, pain, and death on others so he might feel the power of holding their lives in his hands, so he might feel good and godlike? She already knew this much. Handwriting analysis might have helped them to understand the movements and actions of the Night Crawler in Florida waters. But this guy? She doubted that what few scraps he was leaving would be of any service, even if they found the best handwriting expert on Earth to decode it; only in deciphering the madman's code, its meaning, the numerical game, the puzzle of words he left behind might the firebrand's death notices serve her and other authorities. But suppose it had no meaning, that it was simply what it appeared to be, gibberish, nonsense?

"Filthy business," muttered Kam, who was on her right, also intently studying both the words and numbers, and her reaction to them.

From the killer's own handwritten message, Jessica's eyes moved coolly, somehow independently of her brain, to drift to the reflected image of the awful handiwork of the brutal monster and her own superimposed image standing over the body. Somehow, given the flood of sun rays, the morning mist, and the charred and still-smoldering room, no one else but Jessica Coran and the body were reflected in the mirror from the angle at which she now stood.

Like the message on the mirror, the body on the bed also looked familiar.

"I just don't get it," complained J. T. of the message in the mirror, the sound of her friend's voice shattering Jessica's reverie, almost as if shattering the mirror.

She turned on him. "Get what?"

"These damnable numbers make no sense. One is nine, three is seven? I mean, what's that?"

"Hell, if the world made sense, men would ride side-saddle," Jessica automatically responded, recalling a favored feminist line, making McEvetty scratch his head while Kaminsky lightly chuckled. J. T. only frowned, causing her to continue, "Wake up, J. T. None of it makes any damned sense whatsoever." She ran a hand through her thick hair. "If it made sense, this madman wouldn't be telephoning me where to pick up the bodies; if it made sense, he wouldn't be out there." She waved a birdlike hand before them. "He'd have been long ago committed, safely put away; if it made sense, he'd have committed himself or killed himself or accidentally caught fire himself."

"Then we'll start with asylums and institutions. See if anyone in the head game can make out any of this cryptology of his," returned J. T. "After all, at the first killing in Vegas, he left the number sequence one equals nine. Now he skips to three? Three equals seven? Numerically, it doesn't compute, but somebody, somewhere's got to recognize this… aberrant"-he searched for a word- "chronology."

"Yeah, where's number two?" asked McEvetty.

Jessica's eyes bored into J. T. ''What meaning can a maniac take from numbers, J. T.? Quit looking for meaning and method in this madness. Even if there were any, which I seriously doubt, you and I can only guess at such meaning and likely never fathom it, and at the moment, any speculation could lead us in an entirely wrong direction."

"There's got to be a message in there somewhere," Kam insisted.

McEvetty, nodding, agreed and persisted with his inquiry intact. "The first killing is given number one, the second number three? What happened to number two? Who knows? Maybe this guy is some sort of Zodiac killer, you know, killing by the stars, astrological crap, numerology, shit like that…"

Perhaps it was the fact that they were all men, all bent on understanding one of their own, all bent on making sense of murder so foul as this, or perhaps it was simply the fact that there were three of them and one of her, but she refused to let these men have their way so easily.

"McEvetty," she replied, "at the moment, we've got our hands full with reality; let's don't get into numerology and shit like that, okay?"

"But Jess," continued J. T., "he might be telling us what his next message will be."

"How's that?" asked Kam.

J. T. turned to the other man and explained, saying, "It may be in the sequence. One equals nine, three equals seven would be followed by five equals five, you see? He skips one number on the first part of each equation and two digits on the second part."

J. T. began jotting down his notion on a notepad for the other two men to see more clearly what he meant.

Jessica feared they were all looking in the wrong place. Still, from what little of handwriting analysis she'd gleaned from Eriq Santiva, her boss at Quantico and an expert in documents and graphology, Jessica knew she had to start some record keeping of her own, that mentally she had already gathered much information about the killer by the killer's own confused script. She knew:

1. He was in many ways creative, perhaps evilly imaginative, possibly well read, literate despite the error on the spelling of ''violence.''

2. He walked that fine line between genius and madness.

3. He showed signs of an internal war, a great struggle turned outward and dangerous now.

4. He liked numbers and word games, games involving a puzzle; possibly he had a mathematics or scientific background.

5. He liked yanking their chains, and had likely spent much time in isolation, perhaps prison, perhaps someplace closer to what J. T. believed, what McEvetty would call a loony bin.

6. He held them and all other authority figures in great, abiding contempt.

7. He killed as opportunity presented itself after selecting a victim.

Still, she kept all this speculation to herself. She'd write it up in a report, fax it off to the team of profilers working the case from remote Quantico, Virginia. She might also send it to OPS-1 in D.C., where it would be brainstormed; along the way a cross-reference would be made between what she believed she knew of the killer and VICAP's computer banks.

She believed her suppositions about the murderer to be true, for his lettering showed great, sweeping flourishes, uncontrolled loops and swirls, reminiscent of the Night Crawler's handwriting the year before. But with the Night Crawler, they had had so much more to analyze. He'd written whole letters and poems for publication to the newspaper. The Phantom, by comparison, must be far more introverted, shy of the light; his cryptic messages were meant for quick consumption by law enforcement only, with little or no concern for attention from the media. In fact, his words were darts meant for a singular target, for Dr. Jessica Coran, it appeared.

She stared longer at the handwriting, giving it her full attention. His hand revealed much anger and art, quite a mixed bag, actually.

J. T. could see that she was studying the lettering again, and he asked, "What's the handwriting telling you, Jess?"

She wisely withheld taking the deep breath her body wanted to take. She then answered J. T., saying, "His center line is nonexistent, which rules out any stability, and his letters roam freely about below the center line, indicating a powerful but twisted sexual drive, which likely means he got off on watching his victims burn, likely ejaculating in his pants if not over the victim. We're not likely to find much evidence of this given the fire, but we'll search nonetheless. It may be that he left a drop here or there of his secretions, which may or may not reveal something through DNA tests."

"Whataya saying, Dr. Coran? That he jacked off over the victims while they burned alive?" asked McEvetty.

"That'd be my guess. Pure speculation at this point, but yeah, such violence is often the only avenue for such a man to vent his psychosexual lust."

Kam whistled and said, "Even while… I mean while the victim was burning alive?"

"That's why it's called a psychosexual lust murder." McEvetty shook his head, adding, "Even though the heat in here must've been searing his own skin?"

"Some like it hot." She tried a joke on the men, but this only got her a series of frowns. ''Might even find some evidence of ejaculation and the killer's DNA on the body, if it hasn't entirely burned away," she added louder for the others, "the bedclothes, the carpet if we're lucky, if he didn't keep it in his pants."

J. T. stared hard at her, biting his lip. "He's got to be the sickest bastard I've ever dealt with."

"To him it's apparently become normal, casual behavior. Sick is in the eye of the beholder." She continued, pointing to the handwriting. "Other lines race above the center line, indicating a faith in his own superiority."

"Yeah? Anything else?"

McEvetty and Kam had shut up on hearing about the psychosexual, lust-killing aspect of the murders as Jessica portrayed it, likely wondering how she could dismiss numerology but accept graphology and her own leap to this conclusion about the killer's masturbating over the victim's burning flesh.

It must seem a wild leap to them, but Jessica had seen and interviewed so many killers behind bars over the years whose sexual aberrations ranged from getting off via strangulation and stabbing women repeatedly to ripping out their entrails. Fire and sex seemed as easy to equate as murderous hands, knives, guns, or torture instruments and sexual gratification. More brutal and sadistic murder was committed in the name of sexual gratification than any other motivating conception. For some men and women, aberrant sexual behavior was a way of life, a bodily need, a religion, and she saw no reason to doubt that the Phantom was practicing his religion at full tilt on this, his kill spree. Most assuredly, his religion had evolved from an early age, his childhood spent in dark corners, shying from the light of others, from what society deemed normal and acceptable behavior, like a griffin or a Grendel creature, ugly and unwelcomed and unloved, kept at bay by his own proclivities and awful habits, and it likely involved small, helplessly pinned life forms, fire, and his penis.

Jessica continued to answer J. T. regarding what she saw in the lettering. "So far, I've found all the signs Santiva told me to watch for in the Phantom's hand. See the pressure he places on the ends of lines? The killer uses the clubbing common to aggressive, angry, out-of-control people in which letters are given large, bulbous endings, but remember what materials he's working with."

"The greasy fat of his victims," supplied J. T. for the other two men, who both swallowed hard at this revelation.

Jessica continued, saying, "He's testing us, J. T.; testing me, in particular. No sane person would leave so methodical and organized a crime scene, assuring no clues, only to knowingly douse his ungloved fingers in the victim's burning tissue to leave his prints on a mirrored surface."

"Leaving his voice on tape, placing his handwriting on the wall, and his prints," J. T. agreed, nodding. "Maybe he wants us to stop him."

"So far he hasn't used a single word with the lowercase letter d in it, so it is impossible to know if he uses the maniac d, which Santiva, during our hunt for the Night Crawler in Florida last year, taught me to watch for. Still, his long-stemmed letters are like black roses."

"Say again?"

"They're forced tersely ahead of one another, and like daggers, they stab toward the right, as if barbed, ripping to get at the object or end letter. There's plenty here to mark him as insane. .. and he's right-handed."

J. T. placed a firm hand on her shoulder and, reading her mind, added, "Insane, as if his actions haven't already told us as much. Always room for one more lunatic under the sun, hey, Jess?"

"Always the master of understatement and quiet imagery, J. T.," she replied, moving away, stepping closer to the body on the blackened bed.

Staring directly now at the murder victim, no longer using the mirror to soften the sight or ease her way toward it via the route of reflection, Jessica now looked straight into the desiccated features of Mel Martin outside the mirror.

Jessica now felt the blow, absorbing it with her entire body and mind as her eyes clearly conveyed the message of the real image of horrid death left her by the killer: the shriveled corpse, mummified remains, the limbs pulled inward, hardened by the temperature of the fire, which had created in the body its own instantaneous, solidified rigor mortis.

She read the familiar patterns present, seeing flashes of metal about the body. She saw that the killer had used items at hand to tie his victim, a blackened belt buckle dangling from the victim's hands, likely the victim's own; something like a western-style string tie about her feet, the string tie's metal nubs winking back at her, despite their having been blackened. Oddly, her feet were in good shape, not quite burned beyond recognition, like the rest of her. In fact, the feet were largely okay, and large and thick. Mannish, Jessica thought. The condition of the feet and ankles recalled the scourged body of a woman many years ago, in Yellowstone National Park, whom Jessica had been asked to render an opinion on. The woman was burned over 90 percent of her body, but the feet and ankles were not touched by the fiery liquid that had boiled her to death, a hot spring she'd purportedly fallen into that measured 202 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a sudden flash of realization, Jessica saw that there was something extremely different about this victim from the earlier hotel fire death victim. Mel Martin's fire-blackened, nude body clearly showed her to be a him, that "she" lacked breasts, and that he had male genitals hidden deep in the folds of his now fire-scourged body.

"Damn… he's a man?" she muttered.

"Excellent observation," replied an amused Kam.

"Last time I looked, yes, ma'am, ahhh, Doctor," added McEvetty, giving his partner a wink.

But Jessica was mentally adding an eighth item to her list of what she suspected was true about the Phantom, what she'd report to headquarters about the Hell-bound bastard:

8. He killed indiscriminate of sex.

Jessica felt a sudden need to sit down somewhere. Seeing her sudden loss of composure, J. T. whisked her outside and found a nearby room, where a Spanish maid was busily cleaning the bathroom. J. T. sat Jessica on the bed, slipped the maid a twenty, and flashed his credentials, telling the maid he was a doctor and that they would need the room for a half hour. "Come back then," he instructed.

The maid gave him a wink and a cynical smile, said something in Spanish, and disappeared.

"How can he be a man?" Jessica asked.

"Maybe Mel in there had an unusually high voice, and besides, fear can constrict the vocal cords, Jess. Let me get you some water."

"You don't have enough water, J. T."

… as surely as a passion grows by indulgence and diminishes when restrained; as surely as a disregarded conscience becomes inert, and one that is obeyed active; as surely as there is any meaning on such terms as habit, custom, practice; so surely must the human faculties be moulded unto complete fitness for the social state; so surely must evil and immorality disappear, so surely must man become p erfect.

– Herbert Spencer

When Jessica and J. T. returned to the odorous death room, they found a big-boned, stout, black-haired man in a flannel shirt and rubber gloves crawling about the floor, sniffing at things in bird-dog fashion. McEvetty shushed them on entering, saying, "Fire investigator. He was here earlier, but went out for a smoke."

The chief fire investigator, from whom a series of hems, haws, and hums now steadily flowed as he crawled about the floor and examined all sides of the room and the bed, suddenly leaped elflike to his feet, coming face-to-face with Jessica.

"Just checking my earlier findings," he told her.

McEvetty quickly introduced Jessica and J. T. as principal investigators on the case to Page's fire marshal. The fire investigator's name was Roy Brightpath, yet he looked like a man chiseled from the granite of this place, his skin the color of bronze. Jess realized immediately that he was part Native American.

"We at first thought it was just a guy fell asleep with a cigarette in his hand, but moment we come in, we could smell the accelerants. Dog couldn't place it anywhere but over the bed. Lennie, my lab guy, came over, took one whiff, and said it was a mix of gasoline and butane. 'Course, we'll verify that with analysis sometime late today, but Lennie's the best, and I'm pretty sure, pretty sure." He extended a gloved hand, and they shook. She saw by his bars that he was a captain, which meant some years of experience.

"I wasn't expecting the victim to be… male, that the victim's a man. I mean, I spoke to him on the phone moments before he died, and he… he sounded like a woman," replied Jessica, pirouetting about and staring, still shaken at this turn of events.

"Whoa up, there," said Brightpath. "Whataya mean, you spoke to him?"

"Just before he was murdered," she confessed. "J. T., will you explain?" she asked.

J. T. brought Brightpath and the others up to date on what had occurred between the killer and Jessica thus far. When he finished, Jessica asked, pointing to Martin's body, "Who was he? Does anyone know anything about the victim?"

"An older gentleman on vacation, late sixties, alone from what the detectives can gather," replied Brightpath, whose skin, tinged with a red hue, made him a walking, talking ironic twist on the word "fireman." Jessica guessed his roots must be somewhere in the vast family of the Navajo or Hopi. He was short and stout with a wide face that, under better circumstances, appeared to enjoy a white-toothed grin. She guessed as much from the smile lines and wrinkles.

"Smoked Camels without filters," continued Brightpath, ''carried a billfold full of pictures of his grandkids, beautiful children."

Kam took up Brightpath's slack, adding, "Recently widowed, kids got together money to send him on this trip to see the West, the great natural resources of the national parks, or so his co-travelers have told us. So, he's on this trip, which is the dream of a lifetime, and whammo! This happens."

McEvetty quickly stepped in, saying, "We heard about your case in Las Vegas, but this time the victim's male, an over-the-hill guy by all appearances. Nothing like your victim in Vegas, so-"

"But you didn't know about the writing on the mirror in Vegas, did you?" she asked. "Thought you'd have a little fun since we flew all the way to Page anyway. Is that about it, McEvetty?"

The Arizona-Utah agent took in a deep breath, released it slowly, and said, "Sorry. We thought it was, you know, unrelated."

"You thought?" she replied sarcastically.

Brightpath, ignoring them, said, "Dead guy's name was Melvin"-he checked his notes-"Melvin Bartlett Martin. That's according to both the seared wallet left on the table beside the bed and according to the agents here, who got their info from the night clerk."

McEvetty added, "Martin had the room all to himself, but he dined with another man, according to the waitress who served him last night."

"Left the lounge after purchasing that bottle of wine sitting over there unopened," Kaminsky added, pointing at the 1989 Chardonnay label.

"It didn't pop from the temperatures in here?" asked J. T.

Brightpath shook his head. "Epicenter of the fire was over the bed. Never got that hot the other side of the room. Not even to burn the wallet on the nightstand."

Jessica nodded, replying, "Just like our fire murder in Vegas."

McEvetty raised a meaty finger to his lip and said in such a tone that Jessica saw a lightbulb go on over his head, "Let's check the wine bottle for prints."

"And dust the whole room, and scan it with an infrared laser, if you can get hold of one, for signs of any human secretions," Jessica added, thinking it most likely a waste of time. Still, they must be thorough and hope that this madman would continue to make mistakes, as he had in leaving his prints in the messages and his voice on tape only a few hours earlier, and in leaving his shoeprint, laden with black soot, in the baby-blue-carpeted hallway here in Page, Arizona.

"I'm not so certain your theory about this monster's right, Jess," J. T. muttered in her ear. "I mean about him getting off sexually on burning corpses. Wouldn't that mean he'd need a woman, a female victim? And what about the time element?"

"No, he doesn't need a female victim, not necessarily," Jessica replied, "not if they're all so much kindling for his fantasy, no. As for time, he's spent quickly, perhaps even before he does them. He may get off on the anticipation alone."

"So, in essence, it appears this guy doesn't care what sex his victims are."

"You can't use your own sexual excitement barometer to gauge this guy against, John. He's obviously not interested in them in any sexual sense you and I can fathom," she replied, searching cursorily over the body for any signs of blunt-force injury, but she was unable to see much in the smoke-laden light. "I give him this much," she began. "He's intent on remaining a faceless bastard, careful and controlled, so…"

J. T. leaned in, for she was as much as talking to herself. "So?" he asked.

"So, I guess you're dead right, J. T." John Thorpe's big, round brown eyes grew larger. "How's that?"

''We've got to crack this code of his." She now looked at and pointed to the message left by the killer. "It's got to make sense to someone somewhere. This guy has had to've talked to someone about himself, his fantasy, his sexual needs, his plans, his obsession-madness… and maybe his interest in numbers and words such as 'traitors' and violents.' "

"We could send it around to our university consultants, our arcane friends in academia. Who knows? Maybe one of them will recognize something. Maybe a mathematician…"

"I was thinking the same, but we also want to touch on medical people, mental facilities in particular. Maybe we should go public with what we know, spread it across the tube and the headlines. Somebody's got to know something about this nutcase, and we need information now, before he phones-kills-again."

"Obviously our documents guys aren't having much luck with the first message," he replied.

"But now this"-she again pointed at the new message-"may spur them on. Let's do both-send it to Quantico, as we did the other, and forward it on to our contacts at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, all the major universities in the network, and our medical lists."

She turned now to McEvetty, a bearded, rugged-looking man who might well have been wearing buckskin and rawhide, he so looked the mountain man type, and she said to him, "Do you have a photographer on hand?"

"Jake's just waiting word. He's having a doughnut and coffee at the coffee and gift shop off the lobby. They opened early for us."

"Send for him. Get photos of everything, starting with the mirror, and have them send up some coffee. I need something pleasant to smell in here. What about that secretion search, Captain Brightpath? Do you have the wherewithal, or do we call for help?''

"On it," he responded, going for a phone.

"So, what're you waiting for, McEvetty?" she scolded.

"Yes, ma'am, ahhh… Doctor." McEvetty's moist eyes, very like those of a doe or an ox, seemingly saying that he much admired her show of strength in the face of such horror.

She turned once more to J. T. and asked, "Can you take care of getting the information around? The photos of the handwriting, the shoeprint cast, what we've got here, and route it all to-"

"Sure. I'll get on it; that is, unless…"

She studied the hesitation in his features, glad to have her confidant and familiar friend alongside her. "Unless what?"

He whispered, so the others would not hear, " 'Less you really want me to handle the body, Jess. Burn victims are tough, I know."

Drowning victims in the water for long duration aside, burn victims in which the entire body, head to toe, was covered in the creosote of superheated human tissues and fat represented the most difficult cases for the forensic medical person, no matter how toughened or jaded. The corpse repulsed the physician. And this did not make for the best of working relationships or conditions. Usually Jessica felt a sense of bonding with the victim, a close-knit relationship in which she shared secrets with the deceased, down to the pallor of the skin, the size and shape of every organ, inside and out. But how was this possible here? Here such a bonding was virtually impossible when looking into so completely annihilated a face and human form, when having to look into the mask of a creature molded of fire. All this was true, despite a generalized and sometimes overwhelming sense of empathy with the victim's pain, felt even more strongly if you had prior knowledge that the victim was alive when put to the torch.

Jessica could not deny the powerful impact on both the doctor and the forensic process such a thoroughly repugnant, desecrated body meant. It was just shy of dealing with an exhumed body, a years' old cadaver from a grave, and in some regard worse, for the odor of burned flesh was worse than the odor of decay.

Jessica dropped her gaze from J. T., sheepishly whispering in reply, "I'm fine here. Go on with Brightpath. Be sure we get all the equipment we need here."

Jessica relocated her black valise, and next she located a scalpel, the one given to her by her father. She'd pulled down her mask earlier, and she placed it back over her nose and mouth, her white lab coat now having a patina of soot.

Jessica stepped closer to the mummylike corpse, inching closer until she stood abutting the blackened bed and the blackened east wall. She now meant to go to work gathering immediate samples for later lab work. She was all right, she told herself, but her thoughts over the ungainly thing at her fingertips continued.

The men in the room watched in a kind of rapt awe.

Most victims of complete burn such as this meant ample cause to rush through an autopsy. And in the rush, vital clues could be lost, and often were. Most certainly the coroner's usual care, precision, and thoroughness were impeded, if not breached completely. A good forensics man or woman knew this going in, so Jessica fought the overwhelming desire to be done with the body as quickly as possible, but Jessica also well understood the all-too-human response to the catastrophic annihilation of the body, its tissues and organs, to fire. She also understood J. T.'s chivalrous gesture was not without reservation, that he would prefer to make other vital arrangements and leave the autopsy to her. Despite his outward gallantry, she guessed that Thorpe was inwardly pleased that she hadn't jumped at the chance to trade places.

"Are you sure, Jess?" He was pushing his luck now.

"Damn it, J. T., I'm sure… I'm okay here. Now get going. You've got phone calls to make, people to wake up, and get that damned photographer out of the coffee shop and up here."

"If you want me to take charge here, Jess… just say the word."

She grit her teeth. "Now you're getting on my nerves."

"Whataya mean, Jess? I'm just trying to show a little sensitivity. You women always want a show of concern, but you also want to be treated like equals. Suppose I asked McEvetty or Kaminsky here about how their morning's going." He shrugged and frowned, a bit tired of her show of bravado in the face of a death so without integrity as this. And for a moment the others saw and heard what amounted to a married couple arguing about nothing. They had worked many cases together, elbow to elbow, but usually J. T.'s help came in the safe confines of a well-lit lab back in Virginia. "What?" he repeated, his voice giving way to anger.

"Go, get photos of this bastard's message. Get copies to Santiva and to the academics and the nuthouses, okay? I'll see to the body."

J. T. nodded, folding her hands in his like they were an omelet. "Whatever you want, Jess."

She bit her lip and held back a curse, finally bursting with, "What I want has very little to do with anything these days, John. This motherless… monster is using me, and I don't like it, not one fucking bit do I like it. Get that photographer in here and take care of that decoding angle for me, okay?"

"You didn't cause this, Jess," he reassured her, studying her constricted features. "And nobody can believe you did."

Ignoring this, she turned to the bed and the body, which in the fire had become an unrecognizable lump of extraneous waste dumped here like one might find back of a plastics factory: Body in repose, hands and arms, feet and legs arched inward in what firemen called the "fetal fire position," the dead man frozen in a moment of excruciating pain, the gaping fissure of the mouth, the gaping holes where the eyes had been, all worked in tandem to create a mask of grimacing, tortured distress, the agony visible through the newly formed body armor of blackened tissue.

The mattress had created first a thick, black, choking smoke when the flame from the butane torch ignited it along with the body itself, the result discoloring the bedpost, walls, and ceiling, and then the mattress had exploded into flame due to the gases released. Again this meant the killer must also be using a mask or filter of some sort, if not a small oxygen tank. She made a mental note to follow up with an exhaustive list of professions that employed such materials and instruments.

Other units on either side of the fire room, and even those overhead, were also scorched, but only slightly, due to the fast action of the FBI having contacted local authorities, and the fire department's subsequent action to contain the fire. Still, Melvin Martin-his unopened, label-scorched bottle of wine standing upright and mocking him-now melded with the charred furniture, a part of the soaked and sopping material left in the aftermath of the fire, followed by the fire hoses. He and his mattress one object now, and not just an object of pity… He had literally been soldered to his mattress and box spring. Martin's remains could not fully be separated from the chemicals and sodden materials adhering to him. This could only be done in the morgue with great care and handling and swathing and bathing, to make him as presentable as possible for burial, for his family's sake.

She left the side of the body, grabbing hold of her valise for something solid to hold on to, and she again stepped from the room to retrieve some air from the hallway. It was the worst condition she'd ever seen a human body in, and working over such a fire-desiccated body was no simple task. It would take several takes.

Everyone watched her. She even saw some pity in McEvetty's stony eyes. "Like a Pepsi, maybe?" he asked. "Or maybe a boilermaker?" he joked.

This only sent her back into the room sooner. She now placed her valise on the soupy mattress of the bed and snatched open a second pocket to pull forth a pair of fresh rubber gloves, indicating that if anyone needed a fresh pair, she had plenty to spare. She then located a notepad from deep within her valise, and on the ruled and printed pages of her autopsy report pad she began the tedious work of checking boxes for cause of death, condition of the body and premises.

It's going to be a long and difficult autopsy, she thought, and somehow she couldn't help but feel partially responsible for Melvin Martin's death, despite consoling words to the contrary from J. T. or anyone else. That in some sick, twisted gyration of logic Chris Lorentian and Melvin Martin had to die because of her, because of who she was, because of some morbid and as yet undetermined connection between the Phantom and the M.E., because this killer, in fixating on her, had somehow made her his accomplice, his confederate. The cruel, sadistic bastard.

She at once wondered how many other law enforcement agents and agencies across the country would soon be viewing it the same way. She wondered if perhaps she'd become a liability for the FBI since becoming the serial killer hunter celebrity that Dr. Coran had evolved into. Maybe J. T. was wrong; maybe she did cause this storm, due the publicity she'd been receiving on the sensational cases she had been involved in over the years. And if that held true…

"Why's this sicko fire freak calling you on the telephone, Dr. Coran?" asked McEvetty, who returned to the room with his partner beside him. The question was posed in so casual a manner, as if he might be asking after her preference in dishware, as if he actually expected her to have a full-blown, informed answer.

J. T. suddenly returned with the photographer and proceeded to give him orders to "shoot everything."

Now McEvetty stared across from where he stood on the other side of the bed and body. Beside him, his partner, Kaminsky, held an eager look on his face as well, also anxious for an answer to McEvetty's question when suddenly he seemed to realize the foolishness of both his partner's question and his expectant stare.

Kaminsky stood Abe Lincoln tall, bony, angular, lean, a sure ad for the Marlboro man, but somehow he fit into his white shirt and suit with a quiet grace lacking in McEvetty altogether. Both men gave off the appearance and aura of native Arizonans, mostly via the ruddy complexions, averted eyes, and wrinkles cut like scars, but whereas McEvetty weighed in large and bullish, Kaminsky was-while just a hairbreadth taller-much thinner and more light-footed. In a coarse way, McEvetty appeared always to be sporting a perpetual, scowling frown, whereas Kam maintained a quiet if cynical elegance.

"No doubt you two've already exhausted any off-color remarks or dark humor you most assuredly needed to get out of your systems before my arrival? Where's the usual detectives' banter, boys?" She'd heard laughter coming from within the black hole of this place when she and J. T. had first been guided here by the night clerk and the state patrol officer.

"Kam's working hard on getting in touch with his feminine side these days," joked McEvetty. "Ain'tcha, pard?"

"Shut up, Mac." Kam turned his full attention on Jessica. "Don't mind McEvetty and his stupid questions, Dr. Coran," Kaminsky said in a conspiratorial whisper. "His feet were so big when he was born that-''

"Shut up, Kam."

"-that there just wasn't no other place to put them but in his mouth, and he's gotten so used to the condition. Well, it just comes natural to him."

Jessica smiled in return and began going over the body with a handheld magnifying glass, complaining of the poor light. Still, she easily saw what she needed to see. Like Chris Lorentian's nearly cremated, baked body, there were wounds to the head, but no bullet holes, no quick and painless death, unfortunately. Poor old Melvin had died a torturous, horrendous death as a living marshmallow, and for no other reason than to satisfy some sick bastard's idea of kicks.

It was then that Dr. Karl Repasi stepped into the room. Jessica didn't at first see him, although she heard J. T. asking someone, "How did you get here? When did you arrive?" And Jessica hoped it was Warren, but when she looked from the cadaver, she saw that it was Repasi.

"I'm here to assist in any way possible," he informed Jessica. "I got word from Bishop about the killing here and got a plane out of Vegas."

"This takes you some distance out of your way, Dr. Repasi," she replied, keeping her eyes on her work, wondering what his game was.

"Arizona's my territory. Now this bastard's come to my home state," Repasi answered and stepped closer for a professional look over her shoulder as Jessica examined the crinkled, crumpled, fire-blackened outer layers of the body, a kind of brittle-to-the-touch, breakaway armor.

Jessica and J. T. exchanged a glance, accepting Repasi's reasoning for the moment. He was the M.E. for Phoenix, Arizona. Still, Phoenix was a long way from Page.

Repasi found a question lurking in his head that he had to ask: "What do you think, Jessica? Same MO? Fingerprints in the written message? Identical scene, except this one's a man?"

"Cause of death is often hidden by fire, as you know, and as you've said many times, Doctor, we have to be sure, but on the surface, yes."

"The way I heard it from Vegas is that you heard this one's dying words on the phone? That he-"

"That he was smoked while I listened in."

"Then you know he was, like Chris Lorentian, conscious when he got it; burned alive."

"What is it you want here, Karl?" she asked point-blank.

"Just to offer my services. That's all. Everyone knows you've got your hands full with this. That you need help, more help than Thorpe can give you. So, tell me, what can I do to help?"

She glanced up at J. T., seeing that he was not pleased, and she said, "All right, Karl."

"Whatever you need, Jess," he replied.

"Witness the fact I find no puncture wounds, no blunt-object wounds, no knife or bullet wounds."

"What about track marks?" asked McEvetty. "You know, drugs?"

Kaminsky tried to soften the question by adding, "Isn't it true the one killed like this in Vegas was using?"

"That was never established, was it, Dr. Repasi?" she asked.

"As a matter of fact, there were some high concentrations of an over-the-counter sedative found in the blood, Dr. Coran. But no needle tracks or hard drugs, no."

"Well, if I'm to locate that kind of information, gentlemen, I'll need a lab, I'll need seven hundred thousand times the light and a powerful magnifying glass, an electronic comparison microscope, blood and serum samples, a gas chromatography setup. Do you see a possibility for any of that happening here in this room?'' Instantly, Jessica felt apologetic for her outburst, for sounding off, and coming off, as so officious and bitchy, but the past two days and nights weighed heavily, a damnable burden and strain on her nerves, and these men seemed only to be adding to her stress.

McEvetty's unrestrained, snaking smile created a new mask of his face, and he sputtered in an infectious schoolboy fashion now, saying, ''But Dr. Coran, on our way up here, we heard you were some kinda-what, Mac?-miracle worker. That you could see like a cat in the dark. That the dead whisper in your ear? Isn't that right, Ed?"

Jessica laughed with them to lighten the moment, but just the same, she had had enough of the Hardy boys.

"Call in the paramedics, Jess," said Repasi. "Let's ship Mr. Martin here to the morgue, so I can do a thorough job of it. You'll have a copy of the report by nightfall."

With this request coming from Repasi, Jessica looked up at J. T., who took her aside and said, "I don't know what Repasi's game is, but he's way out of his jurisdiction. He's the M.E. for Pheonix, not the state of Arizona.

"Yes, and he's built up quite a reputation there. He's terribly anxious to help us out, isn't he?"

"Maybe he wants your job, Jess."

"He can have it."

She then tore off her gloves and tossed them atop the mummified remains before her, the photographer snapping a quick shot of her gloves atop the body. She grabbed her bag and left the two area FBI men to exchange looks, while J. T. followed her out and Karl Repasi scratched at his head and beard, as if utterly confused by her anger.

Jessica, a bit tired of being assessed, stopped in the hallway, where she found the air less foul, and after taking in a deep breath, barked orders down the corridor. "You can get the medics in now; have 'em take the body to the nearest medical facility with the best lab equipped for morgue work, will you, fellas? And what would that be, and will you get me there?"

"We only got one hospital in Page, ma'am," replied the uniformed officer nearest her.

She nodded, sighed, feeling foolish. "It'll have to do then."

Jessica was about to leave with J. T. at her side when a distraught man in cowboy boots, string tie, and ornamented belt, and sporting a Stetson hat, rushed into the fray, his face beet red with anxiety. "My God, is it Mr. Martin's room? I just learned of the fire. God, the bus'll be delayed."

"Did you know Martin?" asked Jessica.

"He was on my bus. One of my travelers."

"Your bus?"

"I'm Ronny Ropers. I'm a tour bus guide. Mr. Martin's one of my charges. Someone's going to have to notify the family, and since I'm captain of the ship, so to speak… Nothing like this has ever happened before, not on my watch. I mean, sure I've had some die on me; we book more over-the-hill passengers than any tour line going, but it's always been of natural causes. I heard talk of… of murder?''

"You have any idea who might have wanted Martin dead?"

"What're you talking about? We're all just touring the country, having a good time, all except Himmie."

"Himmie?"

"Mr. Herndorf, Klaus Herndorf, dour guy, keeps entirely to himself at the back of the bus, doesn't participate, always a glum response, talks very little English, voted most likely to Uzi the bus."

"Did you see Martin with Herndorf or anyone else last night?"

"I spoke to him myself last night before going into the village. He was fine."

"Was he alone?"

"Yes, just going down to dinner." Ropers was visibly shaken. "He was just a sweet old man. Who'd want to murder him? I was just kidding about Himmie, of course."

"We'll want to meet with and talk to everyone on your tour, Mr. Ropers."

Suddenly he looked even more stricken than before. "But that will delay us for hours."

"I'm sorry, but it will be necessary."

Jessica and J. T. followed Ropers outside to his bus, weaving in and out through a parking lot littered with tour buses. They had to be led to the bus that belonged to Martin's group. There she began the tedious questioning of other tourists who might shed some light on the Martin case. So far, all they had in the way of an identification of the mysterious man who had dined with Martin was the shaky description of a waitress who had very poor recall.

From the look of the crowd on the bus, Jessica held out little hope of learning much more than why older people on vacation were willing to make absolute fools of themselves in what they chose to wear, and certainly not any more than they already knew about the killing.

''Martin was a loner,'' said one of the elderly ladies near the front. "He kept going off by himself. Didn't mingle well."

"Poor social skills," added the lady traveling with her.

"We tried to involve him more," said another gray-blue-hair across from these two, her garish green sunglasses and bonnet bobbing with her speech.

Ropers reluctantly agreed. "I found it difficult to involve him. Usually, I can get anyone involved in the time-passing games we play on the bus, but Martin was a real dour fellow, not unlike Mr. Herndorf in that regard, but at least Martin would crack a smile now and again, show he was listening in."

"He was traveling alone, recently widowed, somewhat soured on life," supplied another elderly lady.

The image made Jessica think of how lions in Africa picked out their prey from among the aged, dying, and weak who could not keep up with the herd. Had Martin died because he was lonely? Did he have absolutely no connection to Chris Lorentian? If so, then the victims were randomly selected by the killer, and the killer did not know his victims, save for what he might surmise from their body language, perhaps.

Did Chris Lorentian look like an easy target, like Mel Martin had looked like an easy target?

Jessica met with and spoke to Herndorf, who was every bit as sourpussed as Ropers had described him. He expressed in broken English his regret about Martin, but assured Jessica he had not seen or spoken to the man the night before and knew nothing of his accident, as he put it. Herndorf seethed throughout the interview, angry at the Gestapo-like treatment and the FBI's putting them off schedule.

Feydor Dorphmann felt an overwhelming need to catch up on his sleep as he boarded the large, comfortable, air-conditioned bus that had snaked its way through canyon passes, pulling out of Page, Arizona, at dawn along with thirty-six other passengers. He had seen the activity of fire trucks, a paramedic wagon, and local police milling about the scene of his last destruction.

He had located his usual seat at the rear and settled in, placing his hefty black briefcase in the overhead and grabbing a pillow for his head. He had loosened up with the other passengers now, saying good morning to each as he passed them, remembering some of the names, asking forgiveness from those he could not recall. He nestled into the cushions of one chair and put his feet up on the one beside him.

The other passengers had long before become curious about him. They had all become "real chums" at the inaugural dinner the night he had burned Chris Lorentian to death. They had all exchanged information about themselves to one another, all at the coaxing of Doris, the tour director, a woman whose makeup-if not her face-might crack if she smiled once more. No one on the bus knew anything about Feydor, and he knew he must come up with some answers to some inevitable questions. He wondered if he ought not revert to his German, as bad as it was, and pretend to know very little English. It could save him a lot of trouble.

Contemplating this, he had happened to glance out the window. His heart almost stopped, and then it started up in quick-beat fashion when he saw Dr. Jessica Coran emerge from the building near where the fire had broken out in the early-morning hours, disturbing everyone in the east wing of the lodge.

As others now began boarding the bus, Feydor quickly realized that the fire and the fire death fueled the talk of the morning for the tourists, and word came back to Feydor that the poor fellow who expired in the fire was a traveler on another tour with another bus line heading toward Vegas and coming from destinations ahead on their schedule.

Jessica Coran and a man with her, flashing their FBI badges, suddenly boarded another bus, Martin's tour bus. Dr. Coran's small black valise dangled at her side, firm in her strong hand. Feydor watched with great interest, wondering if the FBI people might yet board his bus, fearful they could cut short his and Satan's scheme. But Doris wasn't about to be held up. She'd been involved in what appeared a continual rivalry with yet another bus following the same route as they.

"Crank her up and get us outta here, Dave!" she ordered the driver.

Doris appeared determined not only to stay on schedule but also to defeat her nemesis by gaining time and getting ahead of schedule. Doris had explained that the earlier they got out, the better and cleaner the facilities along the way were apt to be, and the better the service and the better the food.

When the bus had shuddered into life, Feydor felt safe again.

And now, even as the tour director listed their stops today, Feydor began to nod off, and soon the killer nodded off completely, a half smile on his lips. He'd done a good night's work, and a respite from his fevered mind and future plans felt reward enough for now.

I deserve a break today, his mind kept telling him. Along with some peaceful sleep in the air-conditioned comfort of the bus. This compensation felt right. But Doris, from the front of the bus, started up another of her blasted sing-alongs, show tunes.

Feydor placed on headsets built into the seat to listen to some Bach, Handel, and Wagner rather than participate in this morning's Andrew Lloyd Webber tunes with the tour guide, a frustrated showgirl, Feydor decided. Even from behind his closed eyelids, he could feel the woman's wrath. She'd be after him to participate more; there was little doubt of this fact. He occasionally opened his eyes and found her glare.

The tour guide had said they must all rotate seats on each successive day of the tour so that everybody got a chance to be up front, and it supposedly made for friendlier relations among the travelers. Feydor hadn't changed seats, preferring the serenity and relative safety of the backseat. Besides, the view from here held all other passengers under his scrutiny.

But it had been a rough night, so he leaned the back of his chair as far as it would go, feigning a headache. He allowed the classical music to flow over him. For the moment, he felt relatively safe in sleeping. He remained pleased that Jessica Coran, like a beckoned shadow, had followed him thus far. He was equally pleased to have left her yet another surprise that would complicate her pursuit. He thought of the well to which he intended taking Jessica Coran, the well of fire into which he intended throwing her. He recalled the area as it appeared to him as a child, recalled the first time he had ever taken a life; it had been another child's life and no one had ever known except for him and for Satan, who told him to do it.

He knew that Satan beckoned him back to the place where he'd killed that little girl, where he'd pushed her from the guardrail and into the Devil's lips. He had stood about with the rest of the crowd, watching the frantic parents as the little girl cooked to death in the superheated waters of Yellowstone National Park.

He'd been in search of redemption ever since, but God was in no mood to redeem him, and it appeared only one god could salvage his soul, the god of Hades.

He felt an overwhelming need to make contact again with the FBI woman, Jessica Coran, but when the bus finally stopped at a roadside cafe and gift shop, at eight thirty-five, his attempt to reach Dr. Coran at the Wahweap Lodge failed miserably. She was unreachable.

He hung up and dialed the number he had for her in Vegas at the Hilton. He'd get his message to her one way or another, he promised himself and his demon within. He'd talk to the FBI. Not necessarily Jessica Coran this time, but someone close enough to forward her the news. They were all waiting to hear from him again; someone would be there at the number in Vegas, waiting for his call, awaiting disclosures.

While others on the bus attended to nature and the gift shop and their stomachs, he placed the second call, making the call he'd been unable to make the day before for lack of time and for lack of a handy telephone.

As it worked out, it was provident he hadn't had a phone in the room at the El Tovar, where the group had stopped for a fast look at the Grand Canyon and lunch. While the others lunched, he had set fire to a malicious fraud in the name of Satan. He wanted to tell someone about it now in the worst way. Wanted to get word to Dr. Coran.