Extreme Instinct

ONE

"Says here Nevada's the seventh-largest state in the union," John Thorpe told Jessica Coran, reading from his guidebook in an attempt to bring her from her doldrums. "Yet it has one of the smallest populations."

The cab they were in almost hit another, their driver shouting an obscenity and blowing his horn, all for naught. Jessica imagined that half an hour from the clutter and clatter of downtown Vegas, all she might hear would be a desert wind howling across the uninhabited red earth, playing the sagebrush like so many lilting harps. She was wishing to be there, maybe in a Jeep, exploring the vast and strange and otherworldly wasteland of the arid West. Such a lark had to beat hell out of the casinos and the proposed series of dull talks on forensic medicine. If she wanted to return home with any lasting memories-she'd been told by those in the know that the real Nevada had nothing to do with the unreal surreal called Vegas-she'd take Warren Bishop up on his offer, and she'd escape Vegas for the surrounding mountains. However, ditching J. T. could prove hard, and she didn't want her friend's feelings hurt when she did it to him. So she'd told J. T. nothing and decided to bide her time; when the time was right… maybe…

Warren Bishop knew the terrain, and she had always felt secure and safe in their friendship, which had, off and on, flirted with something more serious than just friends. Warren had been one of her training officers at Quantico when she'd first become an agent. He was a man who subtly got his way by making a recruit believe she was doing precisely what she, not he, wanted. He had a gift as a teacher, and no one knew firearms like Warren Bishop. Four years ago, he'd been offered any branch field office in the country, and he had chosen Vegas for reasons still unclear to her. He wasn't a big gambler, but he had fallen in love with the area, and he kept a wide collection of Wild West and American Indian paraphernalia, including old guns. She'd been looking forward to seeing Warren and rekindling their friendship. But a quick call from the airport to the Vegas FBI branch office told her that Bishop had been unexpectedly called out of town, so she was now nursing a funk that poor J. T. hadn't a clue about.

"Population 1,201,800, it says here," J. T. continued, "but they say Vegas is growing by leaps and bounds, the fastest-growing city in America, a Mecca for jobs. Capital is-"

"Carson City, I know. Minimum age for casino gambling is twenty-one, driving sixteen."

The cab ride was hot and jostling and bone-jarring, the machine obviously in need of new shocks, and the Nevada heat created an ovenlike atmosphere, making Jessica Coran wish that she had the natural protection God gave an armadillo. With her natural defenses up, she actually felt armored and apart from all that was going on around her, felt like an armored knight in woolen underwear riding a cantankerous horse, in fact. It had been a long and difficult flight on the Delta jetliner, due in large part to the scarcity of legroom. They'd booked late, failing any chance at first class, both she and J. T. not sure until the last minute that they wanted to attend this year's function.

"Las Vegas, Nevada, of all the damned places on the continent. Why is the most prestigious forensic medical group in the country meeting here?" Jessica grumbled to hear herself, adding for the driver's benefit, "You ever hear of air-conditioning? Crank that thing up."

"I am so sorry, ma'am," the man replied in his most polite, most condescending tone, ''but it needs repair, and I'm putting three niсos through school, and my wife… she is on disability."

This made Jessica frown and close her eyes. Beside her, J. T., whose lopsided, boyish grin leaped ahead of his reply, said, "If you'll just temper that cool, critical eye with a bit of patience, Jess, we're almost there. After a change, you're going to love Vegas. Wait'll you get a look at the Luxor and the Excalibur and the MGM Grand hotels. You'll see Vegas is more than a collection of casinos along a strip, believe me."

Although J. T. was in his early forties, his dark hair, smooth skin, and energetic step, along with a quick, alert eye and a great sense of humor as well as a questioning, probing mind, were all qualities that made him seem younger; Jessica liked these qualities in her friend and colleague. Together, they had made a "mean team" for the FBI over the years. J. T. was her ever-faithful friend and collaborator against some of America's most horrific criminals. As a result, they had shared information, experience, and sometimes nightmares regarding such killers as Mad Matthew Matisak, Robert Kowona, the Hawaiian maniac, the Florida Night Crawler, the Claw of New York, and the New Orleans Queen of Hearts killer.

It had been at J. T.'s insistence that she had agreed to accompany him to the annual Forensic Science Association of America convention, ostensibly to seek out some much-needed R and R for both of them. J. T. had been ecstatic at the idea of seeing Las Vegas again, having visited a few years before with his then wife, whom he'd since divorced. "Some of my best memories are of this city," he'd confided earlier on the plane as they circled the city in search of clearance from the tower. ''My dad used to fly us out here at least once every few years."

She had replied that her best memories were of Greece and Rome. The recent separation from her lover, James Parry, still felt like a barrage to her soul; she'd been unable to get him from her mind. Her depression over her and Jim's situation hovered over every thought like an albatross, for when Jim had once again left her for his homeland of Hawaii and his duties there, she had vowed to find a way for them to be together, but the way had not materialized…

Here in the limo, J. T. reached over, took her hand in his, and squeezed it; he gave her hand a firm little shake and pointed out the back window at a cowboy on a horse riding down one of the main thoroughfares, adding to the congestion of bumper-to-bumper traffic. "There's one cowboy's got the right idea," he chimed, his voice firing off sparkles of enthusiasm for this Mecca on the desert floor.

Outside, in the blistering heat, construction sites all around them sent up strange, ghostlike clouds rising with the gusting, late-afternoon wind, each creating whirling dervishes of candy wrappers and discarded plastic bags and other debris. This would be trailed after by another, less encumbered, yellow dustbowl-like apparition made of sand and wind, yet the wind had no effect on the heat, except to slam it about.

"Come on, Jess. You'll have fun; maybe it'll get your mind off Parry and-"

"Leave Parry out of this," she sternly scolded, her eyes dimming.

"— and your other problems," he weakly finished. "Hell, cut loose a little, seize the moment, look around you! This place is a glitter dome at night! That's your problem. You haven't really experienced Vegas till you've experienced it by night, dinner clubs, shows, Broadway-style revues, dancing. You've got to give it a chance

… loosen up…"

"Maybe I'll do that," she challenged, staring out at the dust-laden streets of Las Vegas, across which desert sand continued to sweep from the multiple construction sites of this modern desert boomtown.

Odd, Jessica thought, how this place was growing both upward and outward: newer, taller, grander, gaudier casinos, show houses, hotels, and circuses being built in a city already overcrowded with so many casinos and lavish extravaganzas of one sort or another. There seemed no possible space nor need for another in this mechanized, industrialized contrivance of a holy temple to which the human race paid homage in the form of coin.

But Jessica's primary, thoughts wafted across her own shabby life. She was sick to death at having had to part from James Parry again. Their time together in the Mediterranean had been exquisite, but far too brief. They had talked for days about how they could work out the thorny problems of their long-distance love affair, but very little had been resolved. Rather, they were more deeply in love than ever and just as far apart as ever-he in Hawaii, she in D.C.

Two people couldn't get much farther apart than that, and Jessica, of late, had come reluctantly, onerously to the conclusion that she would never marry; and more sadly, more impaling to her heart, she had come around to accepting the fact that life, and whatever forces attended her fate, had never intended her to ever have children.

It was a conclusion that, though necessary to reach, to put behind her, remained no less painful for its finality. It was what her friend and favorite psychiatrist, Dr. Donna Lemonte, would term a not atypical female reaction to an expected and even instinctive event-having children. Almost every woman's inner soul and drive allowed for that tugging refrain of the womb, a refrain that had come down through the ages, paradoxically or not, genetic predisposition or not, that told a woman she was incomplete until she fulfilled the circle of life that she-created as she was, with the requisite equipment-was so much a part of. Jessica knew such thoughts were offensive to some women who proclaimed they need not have children to be whole, but for her and she imagined most, these thoughts were as natural as tears. You're born to give birth, from life comes birth; you can't dispute the fact that it's in you to do so, that you are equipped to conceive, incubate, nurture, and feed a growing life within you. You're "bred" to believe it's part of your identity to have children, you're raised on the belief. So, naturally, most if not all women either had to have children or confront the phantom child they failed to bring from within: face down the guilt and remorse and move on in an atmosphere of acceptance or be eaten alive by the penitence of regret.

Religious leaders and theologians claimed that while it was a powerful and painful process, guilt was a good, natural instinct, without which mankind would have nothing to clutch on to in times of darkness and loss. There was the belief that it was one's own fault somehow when a loved one committed suicide, or that the loss of a family member to a fire or cancer or to some other disease was due to a punishment meted out by a god one had somehow wronged over a lifetime. It all seemed somewhat foolish to Jessica, knowing as she did that disease and suicidal tendencies and fire had scientific causes, that they were actually more natural in nature and in the species than was guilt. But in a larger, social sense, maybe the theologians were right.

Sure, science and technology outstripped human evolution, human growth potential, the brain, socialization, education, racism, prejudice, leaving cavemen with cave-dwelling beliefs and notions while allowing them easy access to automatic weapons, drugs and poisons, the information to make a bomb from items below his kitchen cabinet; but hey, so long as there remained guilt and remorse, what did it matter? Perhaps the theologians did know more about the heart and the soul of mankind than science could ever know. Without feelings of sin and remorse and guilt, we'd all be killers, she thought. And maybe if some of the serial killers she'd trapped and put away and destroyed over the years had harbored any sense of guilt whatsoever, they'd have controlled their psychotic fantasies and ended their mind-made killings before acting on such murderous desires.

Perhaps if such sociopaths could be injected with a hormone called guilt, they couldn't play the psychological games they played with authorities to please their bloodthirsty demons and gods. The worst kind of killer, a sociopath, lived without remorse and without guilt or guile or empathy or conscience. What manner of being was this to be created in God's image? Would science come to the answer somewhere along the DNA double helix before theology found an answer? Would there come a day when science could be tapped into to supply the guiltless with a dose of guilt, remorse, grief, caring, love?

Here in the bumpy cab-which the driver dared call a Vegas limo service-Jessica wondered about the old phrase, "Religion is the opiate of the people." But certainly not all people; some appeared to require a more potent opiate. Men like Tauman, the Night Crawler of Florida. Men who relished torturing their victims required serious behavior modification if they were ever to feel the pain of their victims. Religion hardly amounted to a conscience… In fact, some of the thrill-seeking, feel-something-anything murderers she had known claimed to have killed in the name of religion, usually a religion with a following of one. And, of course, Jesus Christ remained the number one cause of death among the dying who'd left this world "in the name of Christianity…"

Jessica was brought back to her present discomfort by a news report over the limo's scratchy radio, something about the recessing U.S. Senate. No surprise, she thought.

The Senate was always out to lunch or recess. It took great reserves of talented men and women to catch elusive serial killers, to bring such monsters into the light of justice; but try to tell that to a Senate investigation committee looking into slashing the FBI's budget.

When their airport curbside limo came to a stop at the light, J. T. pointed out the famous Luxor Hotel and extravaganza. The lingering Nevada sun sent shards of light against its black glass surface, only to create an impenetrable image. Fascinating, more so than any of the steel and glass temples erected to the sky and the almighty dollar, its unusual size and pyramidal shape made it a marvel of human accomplishment and construction. It was the pyramid at Giza replanted here in the American desert. It was a stunning modern-day answer to the Egyptian pyramids, this answer to any of Hollywood's infamous, big-screen Babylons.

Like Vegas itself, it made for a stifling whore, this symbol of how far wealth and power were willing to go for the sake of more wealth and power. Audacious, grand beyond scale, and as gaudy and garish as all of convention-central Las Vegas's megacasinos combined. Like all of Vegas, the Luxor combined gargantuan themes and dreams of "epic" proportion with a crude commercialism possible only in America, a place where one casino's take in nickels alone on any given day might feed some Third World countries for a year.

But all J. T. saw was the grandeur of this architectural marvel, and all he could say was, "See what I mean? The city's desperate for a new image as a family-friendly place."

She cynically nodded and replied, "Yeah… sure… And what kind of conference can we have, J. T., surrounded as we are on all sides by… by so much… temptation?"

"You, tempted?"

"No, not me… everyone else."

"Oh, I see… everyone else. You're worried about everyone else… everyone but you." He laughed and ran a hand through his thick mat of dark hair.

She frowned at his response. "What's so funny?"

"Jess, do you really think you're immune to gambling?"

"I do and I am…"

"So, you're just worried about everyone else in the forensic science community being able to abstain?"

"Think about it, John," she quickly replied. She only called him John when she felt annoyed. "Adewah, Repasi, MacEachern… Sloan, Slaughter, Oleander, for that matter…"

He pictured each of these infamous medical examiners in turn.

She continued, "They take out bets on which one will find the most unusual and unique stomach contents on a victim in six different categories, E-mailing each other weekly to compare findings, so just imagine them surrounded by slot machines."

Again J. T. laughed. "So, big deal. We do the same to ease tensions in the lab… which wound on a stabbing victim will be the first fatal blow, whether a time of death will or will not turn an acquittal into a guilty verdict. Whether a young attending female student will find me attractive or not…"

"Big wooooo!" Now she laughed in response. "Still, if everyone's at the gambling tables and the bandit boxes, how're the brightest minds in the forensic world ever to come to any consensus about our bylaws, current issues with regard to the witness box, the latest in DNA findings, serious matters of ethics, legislative issues, and-"

"That's your problem, Doctor." She halted, her eyebrows lifting like birds on the wing.

"What's my problem, Dr. Thorpe?"

"Too damned serious for your own damned good at times, Jessica Coran. Life's short. When do you intend to find time to enjoy yourself, your life?''

"Hey, I had a great time in Athens and Rome with Jim, and now I'm back. I have plenty of fun… plenty…"

"And if Parry hadn't flown down to the Caymans to find you with those two tickets in his fist?"

Her eyes widened. "I'll be damned. You put him up to it, didn't you?"

"No, no… no," he denied, his eyes darting, searching for someplace to light, a pair of confused birds let out of a cage. He wondered how he'd gotten himself into this cage.

"And here I thought it was all Jim's idea. Didn't I tell you not to go playing Cupid? You're not that cute… although since putting on a few, you do have a cherubic quality about you."

J. T., pleased he was only mildly scolded, instantly defended his weight, saying, "For a man my age, thirty-nine next month"-he lied about his age-"it's not so bad, or so I'm told by my trainer. Axel always says-"

"Axel?" She stifled a laugh.

"Yeah. Axel always says, 'It's good to have a little to burn…' "

"I'll just bet good ol' Axel says that. And just what burner are you working on?" she continued to tease.

He was glad that she had been pleased down in the Caymans when she had reached out and found Jim Parry appearing from nowhere while she, like some real-life Perilous Pauline, had hung suspended over a bevy of hungry, blood-sniffing sharks. Parry had literally saved her from death in the waters off Grand Cayman, a surprise that had been totally unexpected. Then he whisked her off to Athens, where they remained for a week, followed by a second week, in Rome. And for a time, J. T. believed Jessica Coran would never return to D.C., and sometimes he still wondered why she had.

"As for me, when it comes to a gamble," she was saying now, uselessly pointing in the direction of the Flamingo Hilton, fearing the driver was taking a circuitous route, "I can take it or leave it."

"Who's a bigger gambler than you? You gambled and won against Matisak in New Orleans, and you did the same with Tauman in the Caymans. Take it or leave what?" Then he wondered if she had meant Parry and paradise, feeling a bit awkward at putting his foot in it

"Gambling, gambling, and this Mecca for gamblers and people who crave to throw their fortunes, big and small, down the most extravagant 'come on' toilet the world and history has ever seen-that's what I'm talking about."

"Ahhh, come on, Jess. There's got to be some redeeming factor about Vegas. Every city has some… upside."

"Well, there is plenty of-"

"Neon?"

"Parking," she finished.

Jessica was well aware that the low-lying metropolis, nestled as it was on the desert floor, represented the fastest-growing city in America and that its growth had changed its character over the years. However, she firmly believed that all character began with a bedrock that remained intransigent and unchangeable. A city openly spawned on corruption and greed could not deny its roots or heritage by raising temples to the sky, even if they held "family" attractions within. The central root upon which it all flourished remained human fallibility, greed, and feeding off that greed. Sure, the limbs of the tree had sprawled far and wide from its core-downtown Vegas being the hub from which architects and city planners worked-but there was scarcely a household on the desert floor left untouched by money had from gambling in one fashion or another.

Absolutely, Vegas brimmed full with good and decent people-families eking out a living, children struggling in schools at all levels, playhouses, cultural events, museums, and small pleasures that on the surface appeared to have nothing whatever to do with downtown Vegas or gambling, but then, no place in the city was immune. The entire tax base rested on gambling, and every 7-Eleven, every gas station, Laundromat, Chinese restaurant, and grocery store, as well as the airport, had slot machines for casual "play." She imagined it must be an extremely confusing place to grow from childhood to man- or womanhood.

The limo pulled into the Flamingo Hilton drive, flanked by O'Shea's on one side, the Barbary Coast Casino on the other. The Hilton hadn't escaped the towering tackiness of the place any more than the more modern "erections" here, she thought.

"I'll get the bags, you get the tip," suggested J. T.

The weather was searing, a torrid 101°F in the shade, and while a wildly gusting wind blew a thin, near-invisible desert veil over everything, it did nothing to cool but rather irritated the skin. They'd been sweating since leaving the comfort of the airport, the driver obviously no good with controls, or perhaps he was saving on gas, or simply had no understanding of air-conditioning. He wouldn't receive a full tip, not from her, despite his familiar woes.

After helping J. T. with the bags, the cabbie said to Jessica, "Wel-come to Los Veegas, pree-ty la-dy…" His accent, jet-black, sweat-saturated hair, broken-toothed grin, and swarthy skin gave him away as a Hispanic immigrant, possibly an illegal. A once-broken nose and a serious, healed-over scar also marked him as a former brawler; perhaps a man who had fought in the ring-either amateur or lightweight division-or in a back alley, if not simply for money. He seemed a bit punchy, his shirt half in, half out of his waistband. She handed him several folded dollar bills, despite the awful conditions of the so-called limo, when suddenly the cabbie began to thank her profusely, saying, "Ju know, dis's dee only tip I've got all de day long? God bless ju, and-''

"The only tip you've gotten all day long?" asked J. T., astounded. It was nearly six in the afternoon.

"It has been dis way lately. No one comes. Too many cabs"-he pointed to the long line of cabs lined in a row in front of and behind them like sentinels, all awaiting another fare.

"So, t'ank you, amigos, and have a nice day." It was a practiced line. "And my shill-dren and my wife, dey, too, bless you." He smiled and started for the other side of the cab, waving and leaving her feeling guilty. She and J. T. exchanged a look before she snatched open the passenger-side door and tossed in an extra ten to the man.

When she straightened up, J. T. instantly pulled her aside and asked, "What's the matter with you, Jess?"

"Whataya mean?"

"That was a scam. You just fell flat-assed for that limo driver's scam, Jess."

"You think so?"

"I know so. All that God bless 'ju,' business. He dropped his guard, said 'you' twice in that last remark to 'ju,' pree-ty la-dy."

"Damn." She stared at the limo, which had remained static, the driver waiting his turn for another fare. She considered going to his window, flashing her badge, and perhaps giving him a taste of what it was like to be hassled by a federal agent. "I'm going to do something about that," she muttered, the oppressive heat bearing down like some mighty entropy.

J. T. firmly shook his head, saying, "It's too late. He took you, fair and square." "What's that? Vegas rules?"

"Don't forget where you are. You're out your money, kiddo, and somewhat out of your element…"

"Shit," she angrily muttered, feeling like a large member of the cat family just cheated out of a meal.

"Forget it, Jess. It's only a tenner. Don't sweat the small stuff. If ju don't lose it here, ju lose it in the slots inside. So, big deal." She frowned, accepting her moment of naivetй, a moment when she let her guard down and was burned for the privilege.

J. T. called for a bellman for the bags. Jessica knew her friend and colleague was itching to get into the casino to lose his money in a game of chance, and this consoled her to some degree. At least she hadn't knowingly, consciously thrown her money down a toilet, as John intended. In fact, it appeared J. T. meant to binge on gambling, and this worried her.

But for the moment, glad to be getting out of the oppressive desert heat, anxious for a shower, maybe even a swim at the pool, she hurried ahead of J. T. and the bellhop to locate the registration desk. Signs greeted them in the lobby, signs reading welcome forensic science association of America-east pavilion. And despite Jessica's frown, J. T. insisted on getting a photo of himself where he now stood, alongside one of the huge, expensively framed and gaudily lettered signs. Then, to her consternation, he insisted that the bellboy take a snapshot of the two of them together beside the welcome sign.

"For my album," he said in her ear, hugging her as the photo was snapped.

So far Vegas sucked. Get me to my room! she mentally screamed.