Extreme Instinct jc-6

by Robert W. Walker

  She dropped her sleepy-eyed gaze, finished with having put J. T. on the spot, through with scrutinizing his reaction down to the least tick. "Thanks, J. T. You're a friend, a true friend. I have very few of you left, you know."

  "Nonsense." J. T. pointed to the mail in her hands. "You're not going over that stuff tonight, are you? You're far too exhausted."

  "No, nothing more tonight," she promised. "And yes, I am tired."

  ''How are you really doing, Jess? I mean, well, I know this maniac's got to you."

  "I'm holding up," she assured him, thinking, but barely…

  J. T. gritted his teeth and said, "And Karl Repasi's only making it more difficult for you."

  "Leave Repasi to me, okay. I don't want to hear that you two've gotten into a fistfight behind the barn over my honor, J. T. Is that clear?"

  "All clear, Doctor… All clear."

  "I know it sounds crazy, J. T., but you know what I fear the most tonight?''

  "Your telephone, I would imagine."

  She nodded. "Exactly. Crazy, isn't it? I mean, he can't possibly know I'm staying here tonight, yet."

  "If it bothers you, unplug the damned thing."

  "Unplug the phone? If I do that, I cut myself off from Quantico, from Bishop, everyone. No, I can't do that."

  "Why the hell not?"

  "It's not done in our profession."

  "It's time you started thinking of yourself, Jess, and to hell with our profession."

  She smiled back at J. T., saying, "Maybe you're right. Maybe I'll do just that, and thanks, John."

  "What for?"

  "For being a friend."

  TWELVE

  Woman is like your shadow: Follow her, she flies; fly from her, she follows.

  — SЙBASTIEN R. N. CHAMFORT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Chief Warren Bishop

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Oswald or a Manson.

  All my best, Kim Desinor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Meaning?"

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