Extreme Instinct

THREE

Still in her robe, Jessica threw open the door. She could smell the faint odor of smoke as it wafted through the hallway. Somewhere, overhead sprinklers had gone into service, while her room and the hallway remained dry. Instantly, she recalled the bizarre phone call and the room number the desk had given her when she'd asked to be patched through to the mystery caller.

She instantly returned to her phone and again dialed the desk, shouting, "There's a fire up here somewhere, and I believe its origin is room seventeen thirteen. Get the fire department up here, now!"

As she held the receiver in one hand, she worked a pair of panties beneath the robe and up her legs. She then thought of J. T., who was on the floor above. She dialed his room, telling him to get out, that there was a fire on the seventeenth floor. He thought she was pulling his leg until she screamed, "Goddamn it, J. T., move!" With that, she slammed down the receiver.

She looked about for something to throw on, grabbed a pair of Guess? jeans, a pullover T-shirt with a Magic basketball logo on it, her card key to the room, and she then rushed barefoot toward the elevator, where she found the stairwell. Along with others in various stages of dress and undress, she moved along in an attempt to get below the fire, telling others she suspected it to be three or four floors below them. One or two of her traveling companions were curious how she knew this fact.

"The odor is quite pungent," she explained, "and that means it's rising toward us, or at least that'd be my guess," she told others within earshot.

Once on the fifteenth floor, they first heard and then saw firemen storming up the stairwell. Other firefighters were unloading from the elevators and spilling into the hallways above, or so it sounded, some shouting like commandos at the civilians, moving them out and down. Jessica lingered on the stairwell above the fifteenth floor, waiting while others, in various stages of panic, passed her by, some assuring her that the only safe place was the lobby below. Firemen called out to her, telling her she could take the elevator on fifteen for the lobby below.

A crowd too large for the limited number of elevators had emerged by now, and J. T. found Jessica on the stairs, where she'd remained a flight below seventeen. "Hell of a welcome to the Hilton, huh?" J. T. said.

"Yeah, I'd just gotten my shower, and now I'm going to smell like fire," she replied. "Look, I've got to go up there, have a look at the room where the blaze started."

"Funny no alarms or waterspouts went off," he replied. "You suppose all the fire detectors and sprays in all the rooms may be, you know, inoperable or something?"

This high up in a building, she little wondered at J. T.'s distress. A skyscraper could quickly turn into a death trap for those reposing inside.

"Do you have your ID on you? I just grabbed my key and left everything in the room," she confessed.

"Yeah, I have mine with me, but Jess, why do you want to go chasing a fire?"

"I have a grave feeling someone has died in this fire."

J. T. stared a moment. "You getting spooky on me, like that psychic detective Dr. Desinor or something, Jess?"

"No… I heard her death…"

"Heard?"

"Over the phone. She called just before the fire reached her-said something about gasoline, about someone's wanting to kill her. Said her name was Chris Lorentian." Despite the fact that Jessica spoke her remembered thoughts to J. T., she believed her own thoughts sounded too insane to utter.

He shook his head. "Are you sure you didn't just dream this up?" he replied. "Jess, it's just a fire right now. We don't know that anyone's died in it."

"But I'm telling you someone has, and that I spoke to her."

J. T. looked away, his expression saying, Come on, Jess, the reception's already under way downstairs, and those gambling tables are waiting for us, too. But thankfully, he did not say it. Instead he asked, "But why'd she call you? How'd she know about you?"

"How the hell…" she burst out but slowed down, taking a deep breath. "I don't know the whyfors or the how-tos here, J. T. I'm in the dark. I mean, victims usually talk to me, but normally they're dead when they do their talking," she added. "This… this is just weird. This victim, I think, I fear, spoke aloud and directly at me. I don't know how or why… or what to make of it, John."

"Easy, Jess," he offered.

"Let's just get up there and have a look."

John Thorpe could only stare, his mind racing to put the incomplete details together as they climbed toward the seventeenth floor, where they were met with resistance from firefighters who blocked their way until J. T. flashed his FBI identification and announced who they were.

"FBI?" asked the fireman loud enough for the fire marshal inside to hear him. "How did you guys get this one so soon?"

The fire marshal came to the door and introduced himself as Fire Detective Charles Fairfax, a tall, firm-looking man in an untoggled fire coat and flopping, loosely pulled-on fire boots. "I was downstairs in the casino myself when my beeper went off," he explained. "Dr. Repasi had me paged."

Jessica hardly looked the part of an FBI medical examiner at the moment, but Fairfax, a tall, gaunt man with deep-cut wrinkles and leathery, perhaps fire-retardant skin, she mused, took her appearance in stride. She was barefoot, her hair wet, her T-shirt inappropriate. Fortunately, J. T. had his ID and was dressed in a suit for the reception downstairs. The building was full of forensics people, and apparently the fire marshal was also in attendance for the conference.

"Have you come to any conclusions, Detective Fairfax?'' Jessica asked.

''Flat out murder by fire. No surprises, really, except for the mirror."

"Mirror?"

"You'll see it inside. Anyway, there's an accelerant pattern that shows up under blue light clearly enough that tells us she was doused with what we believe to be ordinary gasoline, which was ignited by an unknown source. No book of matches for this guy. Some of our guys think the fire was ignited by a torch wand, which would give the killer some distance from the blaze."

"How do you know it was a torch wand?"

"A second accelerant pattern, a bit distinct from the first. Appears he may have fired up a butane torch and sprayed the gasoline with the butane flame. But this is all guesswork until we can get the lab analysis work done, of course."

"Understood."

"I mean we've got a lot of experience standing in the room. Myself alone, I've seen more than two thousand suspicious fires."

J. T. whistled in response.

"You know fire's the third-"

"Greatest cause of death in the country, yes," finished Jessica.

"Some six thousand Americans a year die by fire, and fifty percent of 'em come up suspicious, requiring the fire marshals. So we see a lot, and nowadays, what with modern science to back us up, we can put quite a case together before it's over."

"Let's have a look-see," suggested Jessica.

"Dr. Repasi's already inside with our fire investigation team," Fairfax explained.

"We just want a look," replied Jessica.

"You got reason to believe it's an FBI matter, then be my guests."

Sure enough, Karl Repasi was inside, leaning in over the bed where an unidentifiable body lay scorched beyond recognition, curled into the familiar, fetal-like position of those suddenly caught in an inferno, as if warding off Hades with merely hands and feet and flesh were defensively possible. The wrists appeared broken, but Jessica had seen victims of fire death many times before, and she recognized the wilted limbs as bones cracked due to the intensity of the heat the body had suffered. Later, during autopsy, X-ray examination would reveal many more broken bones in the body, in legs, arms, and possibly elsewhere.

The entire mattress had gone up, along with a stash of clothing tucked on either side of the victim's body. This added some less than volatile materials in the mix, since most all clothing was fire retardant nowadays. The killer, no doubt, wanted to leave more smoke than flame and to keep the fire localized over the bed. He obviously knew something of the nature of fire and how to control it. Two of the fire marshals were discussing this feature as they entered the room.

"Bastard was in control from the moment he planned the fire to the moment he stepped away from it," one of Fairfax's men concluded.

A scorched black roof mocked from overhead; the nearby wall remained untouched save for peeling, blistering paint, and soot.

Fairfax said to Jessica, "The scene looks like a spontaneous combustion in some regards. I think this guy wants us to think so, too, but we're not stupid."

Jessica saw that the intense source of the fire was localized over the bed, and it did give the appearance that at one moment the victim lay sleeping peacefully in her bed and in the next instant was consumed by fire. Still, much of the room was painted in black soot and creosote, from floor to ceiling; it had been fire alarms in the rooms above and below the fire that had alerted neighbors to the danger. The alarm and sprinkler system in 1713 had been disconnected, presumably by the killer. Atop the ugliness of the fire soot and grease came the sopping, soapy, drenched-in-water layer, creating a moist patina overall, thanks to a snakelike hose meandering through the room.

Jessica gave a quick glance to the awful body lying balled up on the bed. Her mind, almost independent of her, ticked off the results of what to her meant obvious murder: massive tissue damage, burning and charring, the limbs swollen and split open from the superheated air, like so many grilled hot dogs. Fried nerves, cooked brains, instant cataracts, ruptured and bleeding eardrums, but the blood was seared to a black oil. The heat on the bed not only sizzled and blackened the woman's skin, distorting all features, but had broken bones beneath the skin.

"A lightning strike of a hundred million volts of direct current, reaching fifty thousand degrees Fahrenheit, would've been preferable to this death," Karl Repasi was telling the firemen. Jessica surmised that Karl was right the instant she glimpsed the tortured features of the victim.

"Is that right?" asked one of the fire marshals.

Repasi replied, "When struck by lightning and the current passes through the brain, a person immediately loses consciousness with the crack of the bolt: All breathing halts, you see, and one giant spasm ceases the rhythm of the heart, leaving it in one tight contraction from which it generally cannot recover."

"So there's less suffering than the usual fire death, I see," said the fire investigator, whose hand unconsciously gripped his gun for something solid to hold on to. The combination of the stench and the sight of the grilled and blackened young woman on the bed was enough to overpower anyone, even seasoned veterans such as Fairfax and his men.

Repasi seemed now to be holding court. He continued on the relative merits of being hit by lightning rather than dying in the fashion that their present victim had, saying, "After a short duration, the heart muscle relaxes and may or may not resume a normal, spontaneous beat. Recovery is only possible if the damage to the brain is minimal, but in the case of considerable burn damage to brain tissues, death is absolutely certain. But for every fatal victim of a lightning strike, there are three hit by nonlethal, stray current charges splintering off from the main bolt itself. Such questionably 'lucky' folk are merely stunned and have stiff, sore muscles and small burns where the current exited their bodies. But here, now, the body on the bed represents a gruesome difference from the painless, quick death of a lightning strike."

For Jessica, the burned-out eyes and the grotesque mask left little doubt that Chris Lorentian, if this were she, had suffered an excruciatingly painful death at the hands of her attacker, proving that fire was not as forgiving as lightning.

The body and facial mask, painted with the sickening and odorous creosote of superheated body fluids and fat, resembled the look of an ancient, cave-dwelling man dug out of a glacier, a fellow whom Jessica had met once at the Smithsonian Institution one Sunday afternoon when she and other FBI employees were given a private tour. The mummified remains were as scorched and blackened as this body before them, but his tissuelike body and ragged cloth remnants had had a hundred thousand generations or more to become blackened and crumbly, not from fire but from ice. Yet the results appeared the same.

Jessica turned away to find J. T. staring with equal fascination at the bureau mirror, which reflected the seared body back at her. Superimposed over the image of the body was a smeared message written in black soot and grease-perhaps the grease of the burning victim-across the gleaming surface of the mirror. The killer's message read:

#1 is #9-Traitors

"He's obviously trying to open a dialogue with us," J. T. was saying in her ear, but she didn't want to hear this, didn't want a dialogue with the Devil. She didn't want to deal with another Matisak, not now, not ever, but it appeared another was being foisted upon her nonetheless. Still, she didn't want to believe that this madman had singled her out for a dialogue.

Just the same, even as she heard the voices, the boots and rustle of fire hoses and paraphernalia, even as she heard the words of the men in the room, Jessica was off in another place, staring at the strange message on the looking glass, the shape of the killer's handwriting, making mental note of its eccentricities as she'd learned to do from Eriq Santiva, wondering at the message's hidden meaning. The bizarre equation, one equals nine, made no more sense than the single word "traitors," yet the cryptic message beat an anthem in her head. Who was the traitor here? The killer or his victim? Someone who had betrayed the killer, someone he meant to kill over and over? Were there other traitors waiting to be burned alive? Perhaps the traitor wasn't the victim at all; perhaps someone close to the victim whom the killer wanted to see suffer? Was Jessica herself seen as some sort of traitor in this perverted, twisted mind? And what did he mean to imply with the numbers? What kind of reasoning was this? That the number 1 represents the number 9?

"What is that?" asked J. T., equally confused.

Jessica stepped closer to the mirror. "Fairfax, have you found any prints in the room?"

"No, nothing. This guy was extremely careful. Likely wore gloves."

Jessica knew that fire investigation had come into its own with modern, computer-enhanced gas chromatography and lasers. ''Do you have a blue light with you?'' she asked.

"Right here."

"Shine it on the message in the mirror."

Fairfax, impressed, came close to the glass with his handheld laser. One of his junior partners turned off the portable lights they'd brought into the room. Everyone's eyes were riveted to the strange grease marks across the mirror, now highlighted beneath the blue light.

"Do you see what I see?" she asked.

Fairfax gasped. There were multiple print marks in the grease.

"What kind of grease marker is this guy using?" asked J. T.

"We'll need lab analysis, but it appears to be hot grease from the flaming victim. It dries hard and waxy on the mirror's surface, and he took his gloves off to write in it," Jessica explained. "Unless someone in here touched the grease?"

She and Fairfax scanned the room for anyone who might confess to having touched the lettering and numbers on the mirror. There were no volunteers. "Just the same," said Fairfax, "everyone here not on my team, leave a set of prints with Dennis, here."

Dennis had been doing the fingerprint search. He gave out with a ''Yo'' for all to identify him.

"We should also scrape the message for a sample of the grease he used to smear out this message with, to confirm my suspicion," Jessica told Fairfax. "Also, see to it clear laser photos and the usual photos are made from every angle on this mirror, before anything is removed."

"Not to worry, Dr. Coran," Fairfax assured her.

The blue light disappeared when someone turned on the portable lights the fire investigation team had brought into the room. The electricity in the room had long since departed.

Karl Repasi now stepped over to where she stood before the mirror. "Impressive, Doctor, but you can be assured that I have everything here well in hand. So, you and Dr. Thorpe ought really to go back to the convention, enjoy yourselves. This is hardly an FBI matter."

Jessica did not release Repasi from her glare. "Karl, I want a copy of every photo shot here," she replied. "And if you autopsy her, I want a copy of the protocol."

"We'll have to get a laser camera from the lab," complained Fairfax, who sent one of his men out with the chore.

In the meantime, Repasi gave Jessica a hard stare, as if to say, Who's in charge here? but he kept silent counsel while the flash, flash, flash of the 35mm Kodak camera and the repeated whining of its automatic forward gave positive response to Jessica's request. The noise of the camera also came as a welcome relief to Jessica's thoughts. Other noises and voices now filtered in from the hallway, where people were gathering and being held back by uniformed policemen.

"Here's the answer to your earlier question, Dr. Repasi," declared Charles Fairfax, who also vied for control of the crime scene. Fairfax's hair was light and wispy, making him look like a candidate for baldness within a few years. His stony eyes and grim demeanor were in keeping with both the scene and his job. He presented the picture of confidence and knowledge. "Whoever doused her with the gasoline and set her aflame, first went to work on the overhead sprinklers and the alarm." He pointed to the melted alarm box, its wires exposed and singed like dead and hardened worms.

For Jessica the crime scene took on a surreal nature, as if time stood still.

Repasi was still defending his position with Jessica, saying, "I was only a few doors down. I stumbled into this, just as you have, but now that I'm here, I'm obligated to see it through."

Jessica nodded in response, knowing Repasi to be an ambitious man by nature, and that M.E. s as a rule were ambitious and tenacious. Good attributes for the profession. He surely saw the media attention such a case meant. Jessica, like Repasi, had known in her bones, the moment she'd stepped into the room, that it had to be murder and no mere fire suicide.

Jessica, ignoring the others, now stared at the body and the bed upon which the woman had died, the bed that had been turned into an inferno, the remnants now black and dripping a mucky residue all about the carpet around the fire hole in the bed, the body on the bed sagging through to the blackened carpet beneath. The body looked like a martyr upon a cross, its hands and feet stuck together as if soldered that way, the remnants of whatever binding that held the victim in place now turned to black snakes coiled about her wrists and ankles.

Jessica's eyes, as if fitful and resisting her stare, blinked again and again over the sight like two small cameras recording the indigestible truth, while the photographer with the fire department continued to snap photos from where he stood on the opposite side of the bed.

Everyone was going about his or her duties, doing what must be done while Jessica felt impaled in thin air, unable to make a decision, unable to think clearly, feeling a helpless fool, just in the way here, as Repasi believed, while her mind replayed the telephone call again and again in its every detail. She must recall every word, every nuance, for every utterance, every sound, could be important. The one sound-that rush of fire-she would never forget; it had been like death's angel whispering in her ear.

She felt J. T. tugging at her to come away from the body and the room; she felt all eyes upon her. But the photographer, Repasi, the firemen, none of them had spoken with the dead woman only moments before. They could afford to be nonchalant about the murder; they didn't have an emotional stake in the circumstances surrounding the killing. Nor could they possibly know what was going through her mind, how she felt, the overwhelming remorse and helplessness she now endured.

"Jesus, the odor… damn, look at it…" said J. T. with a moan at Jessica's side, the sight of the charred corpse getting to him now, too.

Jessica's mind retreated, wanting to shout at Karl or any other easy target: This isn't really happening, is it? Some sort of gag, an elaborate hoax put together for the convention, a fun "whodunit" for the weekend get-together of forensics champions, to keep everyone occupied? M.E. s liked healthy competition with one another, and Repasi was beating hell out of her. Her instincts had been right on. The fire, Fairfax, and the firemen added a nice touch, along with the body via a Hollywood prop specialist. It all made for a fun-filled mystery weekend game engineered by Karl and his pals, and J. T., the double-crossing, scrawny traitor, was in on the joke as well… If only it were true.

Jessica felt J. T. pushing a handkerchief into her hands. He'd already placed one over his own nose to ward off the sickly sweet and sour odor of charred flesh, which she knew only too well to be real-no moviemaking magic could capture such a stench. Handling burn victims was never easy.

J. T. was saying, "Gives me the heebie-jeebies just lookin' at her."

"Yeah, right," agreed Repasi. "Makes my skin crawl, too. Thorpe, this is a real body, a real crime scene. If you ever got out of that laboratory of yours in Quantico, you'd know this is the rush we live for, right, Jess?" he suddenly asked her, making her feel even more responsible for this young woman's death than she already did, if that were possible.

When Jessica failed to agree with him or meet his eyes, Repasi shook his head and stared back at the dead woman, muttering, "Hell of a way to go out, but maybe she was dead when he did her. Only an autopsy'll tell us so."

"Any ID on the victim?" Jessica asked, drawing Fairfax's attention.

"Nothing found so far. No purse or wallet, no, but a front desk check says the room's registered in the name of a Chris Dunlap. We might assume this is Chris."

"If the room is registered to the victim here, it should be a Chris Lorentian," she muttered in response. "Maybe Dunlap's a maiden name."

J. T. put an arm about her.

The fire investigator's eyes widened as he asked, "You knew her?''

Repasi jumped into her face. "How do you know the victim, Jessica? Cops are going to want to talk to you. Is she with the convention, in the club?''

"Only briefly met by… by phone, and no, she's not with the convention, so far as I know. I only spoke briefly to her. Damn.. damn," Jessica further muttered as if to herself, the men in the room all staring now at her.

"Whoever killed her, he or she held the room for some time before doing the deed then," J. T. pointed out unnecessarily, likely needing to hear himself speak in the face of such horror. Jessica realized that he seldom got out of the lab and that he was hardly used to such awful crime scenes as this. She instinctively grasped the protecting hand he'd placed on her shoulder, giving it a squeeze.

"You okay?" she near-whispered to him.

"Don't worry about me, Jess."

"You look a little pale."

He stepped away from her, closer to the body, giving it his full attention, holding himself in, and lying without saying a word.

Jessica began barking orders, saying, ''Contact the desk again. Find out for certain who the room was registered to. See if it's ahhh… ahhh… see who signed for the room."

"Yeah, like the bastard's going to leave his name at the desk," mocked Karl Repasi. "Maybe toss his business card into the jackpot drawing beside the clerk?''

"Karl," she said, looking at the man's light Polish features, "did you place a call from this room earlier?"

"What? What in hell are you implying, Dr. Coran?"

"No way," said the fire investigator. "Phone line was seared through and the electrical in here is out. I had to go next door to call the desk."

"Damn it. Well, don't anyone touch the phone again. It may have the killer's prints on it." She then again turned to Repasi and asked, "Then you didn't at any time use the phone?"

His frown was answer enough, but he muttered in agreement, "Yes, beneath all that grime on the phone, there's likely to be some prints we might salvage. No, I haven't touched the phone, dear, believe me."

The use of the word "dear" for her was condescension enough, but then Karl asked, "You look as pale as your pal Thorpe, Dr. Coran. Can I get you a glass of water?'' The stench of charred flesh had its dizzying effect on her, but more so was the realization that she had spoken on the phone with the victim, at the killer's arrangement, less than an hour before. "Oh, God…" She felt a bit light-headed, the room and the still-smoldering flesh conspiring to create of her a nauseous and useless bundle of nerves.

"Why don't you Quantico folks let me take care of this bit of nasty business," continued Repasi, a stout, squat, yet powerfully built man whose ego was also stout. ''Go on along now, the two of you. The Vegas coroner's been called. There's nothing more you can do here."

It was obvious Repasi wanted the case, or at least to be a large part of it; he no doubt had decided on entering and seeing the sooty writing smeared across the mirror that this would be a high-profile case, one that might bring him some notoriety. Part of Jessica told her to do as Repasi wished-step away and leave it for others to clean up. She didn't need this. Another part of her recalled the screams of the young woman lying now like so much petrified wood on the burned bed.

J. T. half-whispered to Jessica, ''Then it was her on the phone."

Jessica was slow to agree. There seemed something indecent in the circumstances, something vile in having just spoken to the dead woman, and despite the fact that Jessica hadn't played a voluntary part in Chris Lorentian's brutal murder, she somehow felt responsible. But these feelings must be kept capped; it wasn't something she wanted to open and examine here and now.

But Karl Repasi remained keenly curious. ''Are you telling us that the victim telephoned you just before the murder?" he pressed.

"That'd be impossible," countered Fairfax. "Her hands and feet were tied. The ropes are burned into her flesh."

"Then the killer dialed for her," replied Repasi, "telephoning you, Dr. Coran. Why? What does that mean?"

"Yeah, whataya make of that?" chorused Fire Detective Fairfax.

"The killer… the man who did this… telephoned Jessica," J. T. admitted. "Moments before the murder, to tell her what he planned. Isn't that right, Jessica?"

''Not quite. He never spoke a word. He just wanted me to hear her shrieking death as she burned to death, the unholy bastard."

Repasi's mouth fell open, but he managed to say, "He called you? From here? From the crime scene? And you asked if I used the phone?'' His twitching mustache combined with his doughy, round-faced features to fill the bowl of consternation looking back at her.

Jessica's simple reply held an elegance of its own. "There's a record of the call with the desk, yes."

"Then he called you before the fire?" pressed Repasi, fascinated now. "He actually spoke to you? Told you what he planned?"

"I spoke with her, not him, never him." She pointed to the dead woman as she corrected Repasi. "She asked for me, for my help."

''By… by name?'' asked Fire Detective Fairfax, amazed.

"And the killer? What did he say?" Repasi again pressed.

"Nothing, not a word."

"He said nothing to you?"

"Nothing and everything," she countered.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Bastard just wanted me to hear her die, and I did. I heard it all…"

The men in the room, including her friend and partner John Thorpe, stared in blank astonishment at her words.

"He wanted to make sure I knew what he did to her; wanted me to hear her suffer, wanted me to hear her pleas to him, and her pain when he turned her into a ball of flame. And he got exactly what he wanted…"

"What exactly did she"-Fairfax pointed to the body with the pen he'd been waving around-"say to you?"

"She-what I take as our victim here-she asked if it was me, asked by name… told me her name, Chris Lorentian, she said."

Fairfax's face scrunched up as if trying to decipher the information.

Jessica continued, "She was crying, blubbering, terrified."

''Told you her name?''

"Chris, she said… Chris Lorentian."

"Sounds familiar," Fairfax replied, setting his hat back on his head, contemplating this.

Jessica lifted a fist and added, "She said something about gasoline, that he doused her with gasoline. I heard the whoosh of flame, heard her scream… heard him-''

"Her attacker?" asked Repasi.

"Heard him laughing, cackling, at the sight of her tied to this bed and burning atop it."

"My God…" J. T. tried to find a pocket of breathable air.

Jessica, too, felt faint. She tried to think of pleasant places, blue skies, green meadows, Hawaii, James Parry, anything but this reality before her.

"She wasn't tied to the bed," Repasi corrected Jessica.

"What?"

"She was bound, hand and foot, face up and watching when he put the torch to her. Fairfax believes he had to've used an easily controlled and focused flame, as with a wand and torch, say a butane torch, right, Fairfax? Fairfax says he concentrated the burn at the eyes, but that he did a pretty good job of frying her altogether, since he doused her body and clothes with gasoline."

Jessica went for the door, where she held tight to the moldings, her emotions intermingling with the recent memory of hearing Chris Lorentian's agonized screams, the thought now overpowering her emotions. She glanced out into the hallway over her shoulder where people were being gently assured that they might return to their rooms, that there had been a false alarm, no fire. In the crowd of faces, she saw that morbid curiosity that comes with the smell or the sight of death. In the hallway, she thought that perhaps she might find some semblance of clean air, perhaps escape this nightmare. Instead, she found the drooling crowd and wondered if the killer himself might not be here, watching… overseeing his handiwork..

J. T. agreeably joined her, himself anxious to leave the death room odors and sights.

"Good idea," she heard J. T. say.

Repasi joined them in the doorway and muttered, "Yes, good thinking. I'll take care of things from here, Doctors."

"Be my guest," J. T. told him, wrapping an arm about her, and while he attempted to lead her from the death room, Jessica stood her ground, a sooty carpet. With his failed attempt to get Jessica away from room 1713, J. T. tried dark levity. "This is going to put a hell of a crimp into the convention, huh?"

"It is so odd, Jessica," began Repasi again. "You say you don't know her, yet she calls you for help." A big man who might've played linebacker in college, Karl instantly dropped his stare, realizing how crude he was being, or perhaps he had gotten a glimpse of himself, his reflection, in her hazel eyes; she was unsure which. Karl's eyes now fixed on her bare feet, and indicating the soot all around, he suggested, "You might want to bag your feet, if you're staying." His own shoes were covered with polyethylene bags, and the carpet was scorched in irregular patches, mostly about the bed, where the fire had scattered like so many sprites and unthinking fairies at play.

Jessica wasn't answering Karl, nor did she notice the stares garnered by her from Fairfax and the photographer who'd obviously overheard enough to make him stop shooting pictures. Jessica stepped away from Repasi and located a box of polyethylene bags near the door and placed them onto her feet, securing them with rubber bands.

"I want a closer look," she announced and stepped back into the charred ruins of the room.