But only now did she realize that she still clutched the receiver so tightly in her hand as to make her knuckles white. Gasping, she placed the receiver in its cradle.
She wondered if she'd be as angry with Las Vegas if Jim were here beside her.
Still, the call, the genuine nature of the horrid cries of the voice calling itself Chris… it all seemed so real and unrehearsed. Then again, if an actress had been hired, then why not? she told herself. But suppose it had been real? her mind nagged.
She dialed the desk operator, identified herself as an M.E. with the convention and as a guest of the house, giving her room number, 2017, and adding, "Did the phone call I just received-did it originate from outside or inside the hotel?"
"It was from a house phone, Dr. Coran."
She smiled. "Repasi," she muttered.
"Pardon?" asked the desk clerk.
"Never mind."
The clerk then interrupted her, saying, "I'm sorry, that call originated from another room, Dr. Coran."
"What room?"
''Seventeen thirteen, Dr. Coran. Below you. Would you like me to call them back?''
"Yes, please." She decided to cut short Repasi's little fun.
But the number continued to ring, unattended. An automatic tumbler clicked in and a too-pleasant, syrupy female voice asked, "If you would care to leave a message for the current occupant, please do so at the sound of the tone."
The tone came and she felt foolish. What sort of message should she leave? She wasn't even sure it was Karl Repasi. There were plenty of others who might have cooked up this little scenario. "This is Jessica Coran," she finally said, "and I just want you to know that your joke's as little as your penile extremities, gentlemen!"
The moment she hung up, she regretted stooping to their level, becoming the thing she hated. Still, it felt good to jab back, and she was, after all, only human.
What did they expect her response to be? To telephone the Las Vegas Police Department? There a desk sergeant would take her complaint, and one of the boys would contact the sergeant for a copy of the complaint, which would be read at one of the sessions to a screaming, howling bunch of sawbones. Jessica would bear the brunt of the joke, along with the FBI, and her description of the "crime" her ears had witnessed would be recounted. This followed by colleagues, wiping tears from their eyes, staggering to her table to thank her for all the laughs while politely, civilly enjoying their stress-reducing weekend.
They'd get the biggest laugh when Karl Repasi role-played the sergeant at the desk, saying, "Okay, so what do you want us to do about it?"
"Trace the call. Determine its origin. Something of that nature might be in order," another would respond, playing Jessica's part.
"We'll look into it, Dr. Coran. Enjoy your stay in Vegas.. Don't drop too much at the tables," Karl would finish with a flurry.
"Well, to hell with that," she told herself, pleased now that she had put the kibosh on the hoax. She now urgently sought out the refuge of a hot shower, anticipating the relaxing spray.
When she stepped from the shower not ten minutes later, she heard an assortment of noises outside her door and up and down the hallway. The circus was in town. It sounded like conventioneer central. One of the other conventions in conference here was a rowdy bunch of Michelin Tire Corporation reps from all over the country. Whoever these characters were rampaging about in the hallway, they sounded like they meant to get their party's worth.
Still, in the thick terry-cloth robe she'd bought while in Hawaii some years before, Jessica was startled when someone banged bearlike on her door, screaming something unintelligible from the other side. She wondered if it were Karl and his crew, disappointed at her earlier lack of response, but a look through the peephole revealed a stranger mouthing the words, "Fire! Fire in the building! Get out!"
THREE
Some say the world will end in fire.
— Robert Frost
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 generat
ions 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?"
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