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."