Extreme Instinct

TWELVE

Unable to sleep, her mind returning again to Karl Repasi's outrageous suggestions, Jessica wondered how many other less informed, less educated people in and out of her profession had begun to see things through the same distorted mirror as Repasi. Certainly, Karl had always been eccentric, an odd practitioner even for an M.E., but she could not fathom how he had arrived at such warped assumptions and conclusions. Then again, of late, anyone connected with the FBI, or the U.S. government in any way, shape, or form, had become targets for all the paranoia free-floating about American society, from UFO freaks, delusional fringe groups, and the man on the street, thanks in large measure to Hollywood's portrayal of government cover-ups, particularly in hiding UFOs and alien bodies, genetic experiments, and covert operatives working under the cloak of the U.S. flag; all this had become a battle cry for the fringe element and the fanatic alike. And why not exploit this uniquely American mass paranoia with such blockbuster, billion-dollar productions as now decorated the marquees of every movie theater in the land?

Jessica sadly realized that for many she'd become a scapegoat. Americans and people in general needed scapegoats and villains, people to point at and call less than holy, less than human, less than themselves, to point a finger at people capable of ignoring the rules all good Americans lived by.

Hollywood had lost many of its favorite villains, the threat of Russians overrunning America long gone, the German Nazis a thing of the past, now considered historical fiction by many young people, as if the Holocaust were a staged event for propaganda. Where better to place today's villain than squarely beneath the cloak of government, despite the fact that the U.S. government was made up of people just like all other citizens of the country, people who wanted white-picket fences around suburban homes in which to raise happy, healthy children? But nowadays Americans were drowning in their own paranoia, unable to see that the true villains, criminal-minded adults, were created out of Nazilike, Gestapolike upbringings, born to parents who abused children in cruel and torturous ways.

American mass paranoia had begun long before Waco, Ruby Ridge, and Oklahoma City. And to a certain extent, healthy paranoia, cynicism, and distrust of British authority had created the republic that was America. Cynicism formed the roots of democracy. Without it, there would be no America, a nation conceived in liberty, justice for all, and skepticism of authority.

Still, Jessica felt shocked to her core when an audience in a movie house applauded at the sight of the White House being blown away by alien invaders. She felt a wave of revulsion that films were now glamorizing such violent acts directed at the core of the nation and its symbols.

Jessica wondered at what juncture healthy criticism of the government became a bitter expression of futility, threatening to destroy all social fabric and the body politic. Popular fiction and movies of late had recently taken people into a chaotic landscape, displaying the American inability to sort out good from evil. Yet films and popular books only mirrored what was out there, what free-floated about in the ether of a place. The root causes of the paranoia didn't burst forth from film or the writings of horror and science fiction novelists, but from the collective soul.

Jessica knew that ill feelings toward government and government agencies were in the popular mind long before they were in the Hollywood pipeline, long before Hollywood embraced such scripts, before such incidents as Ruby Ridge-and that they'd grown to epidemic proportions, poisoning minds, especially those of the nation's youth, since Watergate.

Now Waco and Ruby Ridge had convinced thousands of thousands in the land that they lived under the rule of a government capable of blowing up a busy office building in the middle of a thriving middle-American city, a building housing men, women and children, for the sole purpose of getting an upper hand on the National Rifle Association. That the Oklahoma bombing was a ''black ops'' move in order that the president and "God Government" might point a finger at some unfortunate and beleaguered militia groups, members of which were being crucified in federal "monkey" courts where the evidence meant nothing; where defendants were railroaded to the gas chamber, as if everyone in America now lived under a pre-World War II Japanese military regime. And why would the U.S. government have planned and carried out the bombing of Oklahoma City's federal building? According to many a teen-on-the-street interview, the simple answer was as a show of force and power over those who dared question the president, his agenda or cabinet members, Congress or the House of Representatives, the CIA, FBI, FDA, ATF, FAA, NASA, the Centers for Disease Control, the U.S. Postal Service, the governors of every state, the mayors, the courts, the cops, and meter maids.

If you wore a badge of government at any level, you were suspect nowadays. And while writers and producers of paranoia-laden story lines only perpetuated the idea that everyone in government was for sale or had malicious intentions, Repasi remained right about one thing: Half-truths were good enough for the average reader who invested in a tabloid at the grocery counter.

Unable to sleep, Jessica tried to put Repasi and his specific paranoia out of her mind, and to help do so, she found herself drawn to Bishop's Western Union and the information packet that had arrived from Santiva in Quantico. She ripped open the message from Bishop, knowing what it must be, and she read:

Phantom has left another body at El Tovar Hotel, Grand Canyon Village, Yavapai East. Killer made phone contact with your stand-in. Call was placed 6:09 a.m. this morning and was caught on tape. Urgent you contact me ASAP.

Chief Warren Bishop

The message was damnably brief, saying nothing of where the phone call from the killer had originated. One good thing, Jessica gratefully thought, at least the bastard still thinks I'm at the Hilton in Vegas.

She put Warren's message aside and next took up Santiva's larger packet, spilling out its contents across the little table below the light. Santiva and the Behavioral Science Unit were as thorough as they could be with what little they had to go on, resulting in a less than detailed report on the suspect's profile. The unit had determined that the killer operated under a psychotic delusion involving a lust need for fire, that he was on some bizarre high and on an unknown quest, having a religious source, like some mythical archetype journeying deep into the belly of the beast to slay his personal demons. The report said that he was a thin, unremarkable, and unimpressive character with little to recommend him save the fact he appeared nonthreatening.

"Tell me something I don't already know," Jessica moaned in response to her reading of the profile thus far.

He likely lives alone, the report went on to say, or with one or more of his parents, if not a wife who generally leaves him alone for hours at a time and seldom if ever questions his comings and goings. He is likely a native of the Vegas area, or has lived there long enough to know it intimately. He likely works at menial jobs he considers far below his abilities and talents. He has an IQ higher than the norm, but he has major psychological complexes and psychotic episodes. He is highly organized and controlled in his dealings with victims, whom he selects randomly or due to some similarity in their dress or manner.

"All standard and par for the course," she muttered, "but it doesn't fit this guy. He hasn't remained in Vegas. He's come here, to Arizona, and his victims have nothing in common."

She realized that the Quantico unit had to feel they were working blind with the woefully insufficient information sent them. They simply didn't know enough about the Page, Arizona, killing, and they knew nothing whatsoever of the Grand Canyon murder. All they had at the time was information relative to Chris Lorentian's murder.

As a result, for the moment, the BSU profile was as much guesswork as was psychic Dr. Kim Desinor's added remarks on the killer. In longhand, she appended a note to tell Jessica her vision or version of the killer.

Your killer is male, most certainly, and has fixated on you, Jessica, for some reason having to do with a twisted religious search on the order of a crusade. The voice or voices in his head are directing him, but he is also a willing accomplice, because he expects a great reward for what he has done, and on a primal level he is rewarded via the suffering he inflicts on his victims. On a primal plane, he enjoys both the fire and the burning flesh. He puts his hands into the fire to feel the burning flesh. His hands will be darkened and hairless when you find him. The killer is unremarkable in and of himself, but the voices directing him have made him dangerous. He feels he has the power of gods behind him. Outwardly, he appears harmless and infinitely forgettable, while inwardly, he means to make history on the magnitude of an

Oswald or a Manson.

All my best, Kim Desinor

Jessica knew she could not ignore Kim Desinor's psychic sense. No one at the BSU group-indeed, no one at Quantico-knew that the killer was using his finger as a pen and his victims' burned bodily fluids as his ink. Desinor's psychic sense had saved Jessica's life in the past. "Fire-blackened, hairless hands," she said to herself. "Too bad we didn't have that bit of information when questioning the bus passengers this morning." But there were other buses, literally hundreds coming and going along the national parks route. Could one of them be carrying a killer? she wondered.

As for the killer's teasing messages, to date, no one had a clue about what the killer's messages, left at the scene of each crime, might possibly mean. Cryptologists in the documents department continued in their attempts to decipher the code but offered no hope at this time as to what it referred to, or where it might have come from other than the rantings of a maniac mind.

"No hope at this time," Jessica repeated to herself.

She next turned off the light and stretched out on the bed. She feared the phone at her bedside, feared it might ring at any moment, feared the sound of another fire victim raging in her ear. But the last call made by the killer was to her at the Vegas Hilton. The killer had no way of knowing she was here at Lake Powell. Just the same, she reached over and unplugged the damn thing.

J. T. had been right. Why not? The peace of mind was worth it.

She dreamily gave over her thoughts now to James Parry and Greece and their time there together. Soon she dozed and soon she fell into a deep and soul-soothing slumber.

J. T. had made arrangements for the following morning, and now he and Jessica were flying back toward the South Rim of the Grand Canyon in a Cessna twin-engine along a route that took them zigzagging back from Page, following the course of the Colorado River until once again they were over the great chasm.

The beauty of the magnificent canyon and its majestic size filled Jessica with emotions she'd thought long since lost. Something magical about the Grand Canyon created in the eye and the mind a religious feeling, a sense of wonder and awe at the spectacle created by nature and by God.

"They say it'd be a great place to commit suicide," muttered the old pilot of the plane, his whiskers white and brittle. ''Say your family can get over your loss before you hit bottom, is what they say." He laughed at the old local joke.

During the flight, she and J. T. were treated to close inspection of the canyon walls when the seasoned pilot, learning who they were and what their mission was, took his light plane below the rim and deep into the canyon at Jessica's request. They now skimmed along the surface in the aged pilot's effort to please and impress Jessica with his agility and ability with the plane. Both pilot and crew knew that this sort of ride, along the river bottom, deep in the canyon, had long since been outlawed, and was against FAA regulations, but while J. T swallowed his teeth, Jessica loved every moment of the canyon up close and personal. She could almost feel the spray of the water, they were so close to the surface.

"Just imagine this place if you was one of Powell's crew, the first men to navigate the river from top to bottom," said Pete Morgan, the pilot. "Now she's full of weekend rafters, playing at what Powell and his men did, hardly risking anything."

When they began the descent over the narrow landing strip at Yavapai East, they could see the small village atop the rim. Morgan pointed out each and labeled each for them: the ranger station with exhibits, Grand Canyon Village, the El Tovar, a handful of restaurants, bus and car parking lots, a train station complete with operating train on a small-gauge track running the length of the rim, carrying tourists whose legs had given out to and from the hotels. The airstrip was some distance from this setting, and so they continued their descent.

On arrival, Jessica thanked the pilot for the wild and woolly ride, realizing that he'd been doing it most likely since he was a young man. They set down at the South Rim in a field just off Grand Canyon Village at Yavapai East, where the toot and whistle of the quaint little trolley-style railroad cars created a loop connecting the various lodges and hotels there.

A car picked them up, the local sheriff's office seeing that they would be transported to the El Tovar, a rustic, beautifully situated hotel a towel's throw to the rim of the canyon. It was at the El Tovar that they both expected and feared discovery of the third victim, chronologically the second, #2 is #8, or so J. T. had surmised the night before, as per his doodling and as per classification by the mad killer, if this killing fit the MO.

Sheriff Zack Colby, chewing tobacco as he spoke, welcomed them to the area and drove them to the end of ''The Rim," as he called it, and they pulled to within inches of a grand porch leading them into the huge El Tovar Hotel.

They were guided to the room where the most recent victim had died, Jessica looking for signs of the killer, anything that fit his pattern. But the El Tovar, an enormous place with elegant dining room and gift shops, had acted quickly and had already arranged with a contractor to refurbish the room to its original beauty-to wipe clean any hint of disagreeableness. Parts of the walls were already gone. The burning bed had been replaced by another intact bed. It was as if nothing untoward had happened there.

"Why didn't the water sprinklers go off?" she asked, seeing the sprinkler was intact. "Or has it been repaired, too?"

"It was found to be faulty. Something doing with the wiring," said Sheriff Colby, raising his shoulders.

"If you all here were so sure that the death was accidental, why did you call the FBI, Sheriff?"

"I never called no FBI. FBI called us about six-forty yesterday morn."

"I see." She recalled Bishop's note, the time of the Phantom's last call, and realized the killer had directed Bishop's move.

J. T., searching about the room, announced, "Jess, there's no telephone in this room."

Jessica looked about. She had to agree. "Was there a phone in the room with the body?" asked Jessica. "Has that been removed, too?"

The sheriff grabbed at his beard and shook his head. "No, never was any phone in the room. She didn't have a telephone in her room. Cost less for her that way."

J. T. took her aside and whispered, "Must've been frustrating for him, Jess, not to be able to share with you at the time he wanted to. Couldn't put Flanders on the phone to beg for her life from you. Then he had to wait all day and all night to tell you about Flanders."

"Yeah, very inconsiderate of the victim and me, wouldn't you say?" she replied to J. T., then turned and spoke to Colby, asking, "Where was the killer's phone call to Vegas made from, then?''

"I don't know nothing about that, but there's a public phone down in the lobby, which is being dusted for prints but that's kinda crazy since it's public, but the other rooms have phones in them. The killer, if there was a killer here, coulda called from another room, his room, if he had a room here, if there was a killer, that is."

Jessica bit her tongue before saying, ''Believe me, she was murdered, Sheriff. Look, tell me why didn't Flanders have a phone in here."

"It's just that folks who work here don't get 'em, you see."

"What time of day or night was the body discovered?" asked J. T.

''Just after the lunch crowd was thinning out. She complained of not feeling well, cramps, I'm told, so she was going to lie down till the evening dinner rush and come back on duty."

"Anyone see her with a man?" J. T. continued to interrogate the sheriff.

"No, just the usual customer-waitress cuttin' up, you know."

"Meaning?"

"Well, Muriel was a flirt, they tell me. Some say she was after a man, any man."

J. T. nodded at this and asked, "Were there any signs of booze in the room?"

"Couple of empty beer cans, yeah."

"And I'm sure the cans are history now, too." Jessica stepped between J. T. and Colby, asking, ''Any pictures taken of the scene before it was broken down, Sheriff?"

"Thought you'd want to see how it looked, so I brought 'em," he replied with a mild show of pride, spreading them along the small bureau, which did not have a mirror. Jessica guessed that the mirror, too, was being replaced.

Jessica and J. T. studied the crime scene photos, taking their time while the sheriff made comments. ''We took it as accidental, you see. Had no reason to suspect murder. Firemen thought it accidental, or possibly a suicide, but nobody thought it homicide, no. Not at the time."

The photos were not up to standard, most of them too dark, making Jessica squint over each.

J. T. questioned, ''Hard to tell much from these photos. Was she found nude?''

"Yes, sir." Colby's grimace was a sign of his embarrassment and hurt by the entire sordid affair. "She was. Things like this, murder and burning up a woman's body… things like this just don't happen around here."

"And her clothes, were they burned along with her?" pressed J. T.

"That's right." Colby's face lit with surprise at J. T.'s magical knowledge.

''Tucked on either side of her?'' J. T. continued to amaze.

"Yes, sir, they were."

"Any odor of gasoline?" asked Jessica.

"None so's it was noticeable, no, but I'm no fire expert neither…"

Jessica came upon a photo of the mirror in the bathroom. "The words written on the mirror were in the bathroom?"

"Across the medicine cabinet, yes."

"Hard to decipher from the photograph," she said, but the pinched lettering read: "#2 is #8-Malicious Frauds."

"It's him, all right," she announced. "Look at this, J. T."

"That'd be my guess," he replied on seeing the photo.

"We'll want to interview the house staff and authorities, including fire personnel who saw the scene before the body was removed, before the clean-up when the writing on the mirror still smelled of animal fat," she informed Colby.

Colby's flexible features contorted into confusion now. He repeated her words, '' 'Animal fat'?'' Then he quickly added, "Yes, ma'am, ahhh, Doctor."

"And where can we find the bed and the body now?"

"Body's still at the hospital morgue, some thirty miles away, in a freezer, but the bed, well, it's six feet under."

"Six feet under?"

"Somewhere out at the landfill. No way to retrieve it."

Jessica gritted her teeth, saying, "Where there's a back-hoe, there's a way."

J. T. joked, "You want to exhume a mattress and box spring?"

"Maybe that'd be a little over the top, huh?" she asked.

J. T. laughed. "Yeah, Jess, just a bit."

They were about to leave when Jessica noticed that the carpet was dirty with grime brought in on shoes. "The carpet hasn't been replaced," she said. "Let's take a section from near the bed, have it analyzed for accelerants." Jessica went to the spot she felt most likely helpful, and taking out a marker from her valise, she created a square some two by two feet where a fire burn had taken out a chunk of carpet now hidden by the new bed. Apparently the owners hadn't been able to get in new carpeting as quickly as everything else.

"Get someone with a carpet cutter to take this square out," Jessica was saying when she noticed a scorched, barely recognizable piece of paper just below the bed. "What's this?" she asked no one in particular.

The two men came closer to watch her dig out her tweezers. Using the tweezers, she lifted the crumpled fleck of blackened paper residue and gently slipped it into a plastic bag, also taken from her valise. The paper measured only a few centimeters.

"What is it?" asked Colby.

"Something overlooked by both authorities and the maids. It may've come from the killer, and it appears to be what's left of a negative."

"A negative?" asked J. T., leaning in for a closer look.

"Could be from our photo guy. He's a mite careless," suggested Colby.

"Seems everyone hereabouts is a mite careless," Jessica sarcastically added. "What kind of camera was your guy using?''

"Minolta, thirty-five millimeters."

"Then this isn't from his camera, I can assure you. It's from an Instamatic."

"You mean he-the killer-takes pictures of them as they burn?" asked J. T.

Again Colby winced. "That's disgusting."

J. T. put a hand on Jessica's shoulder and he leaned in near her, saying, "We need to do a quick check, make sure no one, including insurance agents, has been in the room for photos using a cheap Polaroid with self-developing film."

"No-don't you see, J. T.? This film was in the fire. Proving it was here when she died," Jessica assured her friend.

"We don't have sophisticated enough equipment here to determine what that fleck of paper means," Colby assured them.

"We'll send it back to Quantico for analysis," J. T. informed Colby, and on closer inspection, both she and J. T. felt certain that it represented a remnant of a burning negative from a Polaroid camera, likely belonging to the killer.

Jessica stared at the clue as if it could speak to her.

Outside, in the hallway, Jessica took J. T. aside and said, "It's no accident, his leaving this trail of bread crumbs, here the film, there the footprint."

"Yeah, it's as if he wants to be found and stopped, isn't it?"

"Not an unusual subconscious wish among serial killers, but this time it does appear he consciously wants to see me eye to eye."

"Jess," warned J. T. in a guttural moan, "don't you dare."

"I have no intention of having tea with this bastard."

"Is that a promise?"

"Promise."

"I'll hold you to it."

"Make sure you do."

Interviews with the firefighters, followed by questioning everyone who worked with Muriel Flanders, put together the portrait of a lonely, matronly woman, a woman not without a temper and flaring malice at times, a heavy chain-smoker, but hardly a fraud. Jessica began to realize that the killer knew next to nothing about his victims save their vulnerability.

She and J. T. discussed this aspect of the murderer while en route to the hospital where the remains of Muriel Flanders lay waiting for them. Outside the car windows, the spectacular views of the South Rim of the Grand Canyon winked and smiled at them as the sheriff's car sped along the winding road that hugged the cliffs. All along their route, tourists in cars, vans, and buses crowded in at the overlooks to experience the vistas here.

''I know now that he selects them on the way they carry themselves: troubled, shy, unfocused, confused, weak-looking, vulnerable people. And he labels them whatever his fevered mind imagines them to be by some bizarre scale known only in his fevered brain."

"And he's a poor-assed judge of character," added J. T.

"He just wants them to fit some preset notion-his agenda, if you will, this numbers game of his, this whole number one is number nine thing, calling Chris Lorentian a traitor, this one a fraud, old Martin a violent person when in fact none of them fit his bullshit."

"Agreed," replied J. T. "Hell, one was a runaway barely out of her teens and the other a worn-out waitress who was in a dead-end situation."

"The third a lonely old man."

"Just a lonely soul."

''But this psycho brands the man a violent person. You see just how screwed up this creep is?"

"Projecting."

"What?"

"What shrinks call projecting. The killer may be projecting his own deficient character traits onto his victims, you see?"

"You're getting good at this, J. T.," she replied. "Maybe you have something there."

They rode in silence for a moment, each with his or her own thoughts until Jessica said, ''Back at the El Tovar, he didn't know there'd be no telephone in the room, but by the time he realized this, he was already too far along to start over. And if he did her during a lunchtime break, he didn't have a lot of time."

J. T. swallowed hard, his eyes rolling back in his head. "It's fairly obvious that he's got a time line and a quota to fill."

''Maybe… maybe he does. Kim Desinor called it a twisted religious quest of some sort."

"Maybe the body will tell us more," J. T. hopefully replied.

They were soon at the morgue, and the body was prepared for them. The autopsy was like dйjа vu. Jessica kept wanting to say, "Didn't I just do this yesterday?"

After an exhausting four hours over the charred remains of Muriel Flanders, Jessica and J. T. learned that J. T. was right, that the second victim wasn't Mel Martin but this poor waitress at the El Tovar Hotel in whose room was scrawled-as they pieced it together-this message:

#2 is #8-Malicious Frauds

After the autopsy, J. T., his eyes like slits, asked, "What's our next move, Jess?"

"We fly back to Lake Powell."

"Glen Canyon? Why?"

She went to a map on the wall depicting the western states, including the Grand Canyon and the areas they'd been since leaving Vegas. Using her finger, she mapped out the killer's route thus far. "He took off from Vegas for here, the Grand Canyon, killed number two here, and went from here to Glen Canyon, where he did number three. There are no connections whatsoever among the victims, right?"

"Correct, none that we've found, no-"

"Then the only common thread we have is his route, the direction he is going in. He didn't double back on us to do Muriel-"

"Flanders, right," J. T. said as he followed along.

"He didn't double back; he did her just as the numbers imply, as number two. Now we need to determine where he will strike next… before he does number four."

"How're we going to do that?"

"I'm not sure, but I know we have to get back to Glen Canyon as our starting point."

J. T. considered her logic, staring up at the wall map. "Okay, then, I'm with you." The killer's route so far had taken them farther and farther from Las Vegas. J. T. put his hands together in the prayer position and said, "Let's do it. We've got to stay on his trail."

They taxied out to the airfield, allowing Sheriff Colby to get back to his normal routine, and at the airfield, they argued. Jessica wanted to fly back with the old Pete Morgan, who'd so thrilled them earlier, while J. T. had pointed out a pilot who looked young enough to be his son. Jessica won the argument and they flew back to Lake Powell and Glen Canyon in rip-roaring fashion, the old man giving them a little extra time in the air by flying out to Monument Valley, telling them how he'd once flown over a John Wayne set, ruining a John Ford shot in a film called She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. "I was just a pup kid at the time," he finished with a faraway glint in his eyes.

"God, you've got to be ancient," moaned J. T. from the backseat before he buried himself in the information they had amassed on the killer thus far. He'd rather do this than look out at the beautiful scenery at the speed they were going low over the incredible valley. Instead, he penciled in the missing words on the notepad he'd shown Jessica the day before. With this added to his notes on the killer's messages, his collection now read:

#1 is #9-Traitors

#2 is #8-Malicious Frauds

#3 is #7-Violents

Where is it leading… Where will it end? John Thorpe wondered now as he stared at the killer's sick compilation of words and numbers. And what does it have to do with Jessica Coran? Why is this madman fixated on her?