J. T. nodded at this and asked, "Were there any signs of booze in the room?"
"Couple of empty beer cans, yeah."
"And I'm sure the cans are history now, too." Jessica stepped between J. T. and Colby, asking, ''Any pictures taken of the scene before it was broken down, Sheriff?"
"Thought you'd want to see how it looked, so I brought 'em," he replied with a mild show of pride, spreading them along the small bureau, which did not have a mirror. Jessica guessed that the mirror, too, was being replaced.
Jessica and J. T. studied the crime scene photos, taking their time while the sheriff made comments. ''We took it as accidental, you see. Had no reason to suspect murder. Firemen thought it accidental, or possibly a suicide, but nobody thought it homicide, no. Not at the time."
The photos were not up to standard, most of them too dark, making Jessica squint over each.
J. T. questioned, ''Hard to tell much from these photos. Was she found nude?''
"Yes, sir." Colby's grimace was a sign of his embarrassment and hurt by the entire sordid affair. "She was. Things like this, murder and burning up a woman's body… things like this just don't happen around here."
"And her clothes, were they burned along with her?" pressed J. T.
"That's right." Colby's face lit with surprise at J. T.'s magical knowledge.
''Tucked on either side of her?'' J. T. continued to amaze.
"Yes, sir, they were."
"Any odor of gasoline?" asked Jessica.
"None so's it was noticeable, no, but I'm no fire expert neither…"
Jessica came upon a photo of the mirror in the bathroom. "The words written on the mirror were in the bathroom?"
"Across the medicine cabinet, yes."
"Hard to decipher from the photograph," she said, but the pinched lettering read: "#2 is #8-Malicious Frauds."
"It's him, all right," she announced. "Look at this, J. T."
"That'd be my guess," he replied on seeing the photo.
"We'll want to interview the house staff and authorities, including fire personnel who saw the scene before the body was removed, before the clean-up when the writing on the mirror still smelled of animal fat," she informed Colby.
Colby's flexible features contorted into confusion now. He repeated her words, '' 'Animal fat'?'' Then he quickly added, "Yes, ma'am, ahhh, Doctor."
"And where can we find the bed and the body now?"
"Body's still at the hospital morgue, some thirty miles away, in a freezer, but the bed, well, it's six feet under."
"Six feet under?"
"Somewhere out at the landfill. No way to retrieve it."
Jessica gritted her teeth, saying, "Where there's a back-hoe, there's a way."
J. T. joked, "You want to exhume a mattress and box spring?"
"Maybe that'd be a little over the top, huh?" she asked.
J. T. laughed. "Yeah, Jess, just a bit."
They were about to leave when Jessica noticed that the carpet was dirty with grime brought in on shoes. "The carpet hasn't been replaced," she said. "Let's take a section from near the bed, have it analyzed for accelerants." Jessica went to the spot she felt most likely helpful, and taking out a marker from her valise, she created a square some two by two feet where a fire burn had taken out a chunk of carpet now hidden by the new bed. Apparently the owners hadn't been able to get in new carpeting as quickly as everything else.
"Get someone with a carpet cutter to take this square out," Jessica was saying when she noticed a scorched, barely recognizable piece of paper just below the bed. "What's this?" she asked no one in particular.
The two men came closer to watch her dig out her tweezers. Using the tweezers, she lifted the crumpled fleck of blackened paper residue and gently slipped it into a plastic bag, also taken from her valise. The paper measured only a few centimeters.
"What is it?" asked Colby.
"Something overlooked by both authorities and the maids. It may've come from the killer, and it appears to be what's left of a negative."
"A negative?" asked J. T., leaning in for a closer look.
"Could be from our photo guy. He's a mite careless," suggested Colby.
"Seems everyone hereabouts is a mite careless," Jessica sarcastically added. "What kind of camera was your guy using?''
"Minolta, thirty-five millimeters."
"Then this isn't from his camera, I can assure you. It's from an Instamatic."
"You mean he-the killer-takes pictures of them as they burn?" asked J. T.
Again Colby winced. "That's disgusting."
J. T. put a hand on Jessica's shoulder and he leaned in near her, saying, "We need to do a quick check, make sure no one, including insurance agents, has been in the room for photos using a cheap Polaroid with self-developing film."
"No-don't you see, J. T.? This film was in the fire. Proving it was here when she died," Jessica assured her friend.
"We don't have sophisticated enough equipment here to determine what that fleck of paper means," Colby assured them.
"We'll send it back to Quantico for analysis," J. T. informed Colby, and on closer inspection, both she and J. T. felt certain that it represented a remnant of a burning negative from a Polaroid camera, likely belonging to the killer.
Jessica stared at the clue as if it could speak to her.
Outside, in the hallway, Jessica took J. T. aside and said, "It's no accident, his leaving this trail of bread crumbs, here the film, there the footprint."
"Yeah, it's as if he wants to be found and stopped, isn't it?"
"Not an unusual subconscious wish among serial killers, but this time it does appear he consciously wants to see me eye to eye."
"Jess," warned J. T. in a guttural moan, "don't you dare."
"I have no intention of having tea with this bastard."
"Is that a promise?"
"Promise."
"I'll hold you to it."
"Make sure you do."
Interviews with the firefighters, followed by questioning everyone who worked with Muriel Flanders, put together the portrait of a lonely, matronly woman, a woman not without a temper and flaring malice at times, a heavy chain-smoker, but hardly a fraud. Jessica began to realize that the killer knew next to nothing about his victims save their vulnerability.
She and J. T. discussed this aspect of the murderer while en route to the hospital where the remains of Muriel Flanders lay waiting for them. Outside the car windows, the spectacular views of the South Rim of the Grand Canyon winked and smiled at them as the sheriff's car sped along the winding road that hugged the cliffs. All along their route, tourists in cars, vans, and buses crowded in at the overlooks to experience the vistas here.
''I know now that he selects them on the way they carry themselves: troubled, shy, unfocused, confused, weak-looking, vulnerable people. And he labels them whatever his fevered mind imagines them to be by some bizarre scale known only in his fevered brain."
"And he's a poor-assed judge of character," added J. T.
"He just wants them to fit some preset notion-his agenda, if you will, this numbers game of his, this whole number one is number nine thing, calling Chris Lorentian a traitor, this one a fraud, old Martin a violent person when in fact none of them fit his bullshit."
"Agreed," replied J. T. "Hell, one was a runaway barely out of her teens and the other a worn-out waitress who was in a dead-end situation."
"The third a lonely old man."
"Just a lonely soul."
''But this psycho brands the man a violent person. You see just how screwed up this creep is?"
"Projecting."
"What?"
"What shrinks call projecting. The killer may be projecting his own deficient character traits onto his victims, you see?"
"You're getting good at this, J. T.," she replied. "Maybe you have something there."
They rode in silence for a moment, each with his or her own thoughts until Jessica said, ''Back at the El Tovar, he didn't k
now there'd be no telephone in the room, but by the time he realized this, he was already too far along to start over. And if he did her during a lunchtime break, he didn't have a lot of time."
J. T. swallowed hard, his eyes rolling back in his head. "It's fairly obvious that he's got a time line and a quota to fill."
''Maybe… maybe he does. Kim Desinor called it a twisted religious quest of some sort."
"Maybe the body will tell us more," J. T. hopefully replied.
They were soon at the morgue, and the body was prepared for them. The autopsy was like dйjа vu. Jessica kept wanting to say, "Didn't I just do this yesterday?"
After an exhausting four hours over the charred remains of Muriel Flanders, Jessica and J. T. learned that J. T. was right, that the second victim wasn't Mel Martin but this poor waitress at the El Tovar Hotel in whose room was scrawled-as they pieced it together-this message:
#2 is #8-Malicious Frauds
After the autopsy, J. T., his eyes like slits, asked, "What's our next move, Jess?"
"We fly back to Lake Powell."
"Glen Canyon? Why?"
She went to a map on the wall depicting the western states, including the Grand Canyon and the areas they'd been since leaving Vegas. Using her finger, she mapped out the killer's route thus far. "He took off from Vegas for here, the Grand Canyon, killed number two here, and went from here to Glen Canyon, where he did number three. There are no connections whatsoever among the victims, right?"
"Correct, none that we've found, no-"
"Then the only common thread we have is his route, the direction he is going in. He didn't double back on us to do Muriel-"
"Flanders, right," J. T. said as he followed along.
"He didn't double back; he did her just as the numbers imply, as number two. Now we need to determine where he will strike next… before he does number four."
"How're we going to do that?"
"I'm not sure, but I know we have to get back to Glen Canyon as our starting point."
J. T. considered her logic, staring up at the wall map. "Okay, then, I'm with you." The killer's route so far had taken them farther and farther from Las Vegas. J. T. put his hands together in the prayer position and said, "Let's do it. We've got to stay on his trail."
They taxied out to the airfield, allowing Sheriff Colby to get back to his normal routine, and at the airfield, they argued. Jessica wanted to fly back with the old Pete Morgan, who'd so thrilled them earlier, while J. T. had pointed out a pilot who looked young enough to be his son. Jessica won the argument and they flew back to Lake Powell and Glen Canyon in rip-roaring fashion, the old man giving them a little extra time in the air by flying out to Monument Valley, telling them how he'd once flown over a John Wayne set, ruining a John Ford shot in a film called She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. "I was just a pup kid at the time," he finished with a faraway glint in his eyes.
"God, you've got to be ancient," moaned J. T. from the backseat before he buried himself in the information they had amassed on the killer thus far. He'd rather do this than look out at the beautiful scenery at the speed they were going low over the incredible valley. Instead, he penciled in the missing words on the notepad he'd shown Jessica the day before. With this added to his notes on the killer's messages, his collection now read:
#1 is #9-Traitors
#2 is #8-Malicious Frauds
#3 is #7-Violents
Where is it leading… Where will it end? John Thorpe wondered now as he stared at the killer's sick compilation of words and numbers. And what does it have to do with Jessica Coran? Why is this madman fixated on her?
THIRTEEN
He who takes a stand is often wrong, but he who fails to take a stand is always wrong.
— Anonymous
On returning to the Wahweap Lodge on Lake Powell in Page, Arizona, Jessica learned that a call from Warren Bishop was waiting for her. He'd left her his direct line. She immediately sought her room and telephone, placing a return call to Warren. Sheriff Colby at Yavapai East had mentioned that Bishop had left word there, too, for her to call him, but she'd not wanted to waste any more time there, deciding that a call from her room at the Wahweap would be far more convenient and productive.
Bishop came right on once Jessica announced herself to his secretary. There was a trace of desperation in his voice when he asked, "Jessica? Jessica, how are you?"
''Fine. We just returned from investigating the incident at the El Tovar at the canyon."
"So, you did get my message after all. I've been anxious to hear back from you. I got a cryptic message from Repasi that you and Thorpe went to Yavapai East without him, but otherwise I had no idea of your steps."
"Yes, well, I'm sorry I didn't call you sooner, but you're out of range of my cellular phone, Warren, and as you might imagine, we've been damned busy here. By the way, what else has… did Repasi have to say about me?''
"What do you mean?"
Jessica told him of Repasi's allegations. She waited for a response.
Bishop was either stunned or trying to find words to reply. Finally he said, "That's the most asinine thing I've heard in my entire career with the FBI, and I've heard some pretty bizarre shit."
"So I hear the Phantom telephoned me there in Vegas again?"
"Harry Furth and the actress we hired to mimic you received a call detailing the burning death of a woman there at the El Tovar. We contacted the local sheriff's office there, and they confirmed that there had been a fire death at the El Tovar. That's when we sent separate telegrams to you and John Thorpe there."
"John got word early, but my message got held up, I'm afraid."
"So, then you've seen the body at the canyon? Is it part of the string?"
"It most definitely is, yes."
"We have the killer's own voice clearly now on tape then. We can assume it's him. He speaks to you directly."
"Bloody bastard. What does he say?"
"More than enough to nail him to the cross."
"And he thinks I'm still there, in Vegas, then."
"Ahhh, not exactly. He somehow figured out our ruse, I'm afraid. Good news is, he doesn't know where you are."
"That is good news." Jessica then repeated herself, asking, "What does he say on the tape?"
"Enough to hang himself many times over. Care to hear it?"
She braced herself. "Go ahead. Play it."
Bishop fiddled with the machine at the other end for a moment before the chilling voice of the killer came over the line, saying, "I'm sorry I couldn't reach you earlier, Dr. Coran. I did so want your… participation.''
"What is it you want?" asked the actress playing her.
"I've taken the liberty of sending another evil soul to her reward. I'd hoped to contact you so that you could share the moment with us, but unfortunately, that was not to be. Fate stepped in."
"What do you mean by us"! Who are you and who is this us?"
Either the actress was good, or Furth was feeding her questions to ask the killer. Either way, she sounded an exact duplicate of Jessica's voice.
"Us, me, number two, the malicious fraud bitch, my god, and you, Doctor, you," replied the monster.
"Charon… we know you want our help, Charon."
He laughed and said. "You think yourself clever, Doctor, but you are an ignorant creature, unaware of your own nature. Charon is no longer here with us! I am Nessus now."
"All right, then, Nessus. Why are you doing this?"
"Telephoning you?"
"Killing innocent people!"
"No one is innocent."
"Why must you call me, report to me?"
Jessica thought it the question of the hour, the same question Repasi was asking.
"I only do my lord's bidding for all of us."
"Why are you calling me? What have I ever done to you?"
"You've offended my god."
"Who is?" The actress had been coached well to keep the killer on the line as long as possible, and since she had no emo
tional interest invested, she was able to remain far more calm than Jessica had been capable of, Jessica believed.
"What god is that?" she urged him on and awaited an answer, but when none came, she added, "Won't you tell me?" The actress's voice was close, near identical to Jessica's own, but perhaps due to her calmness, somehow the killer detected the subterfuge.
"Wait a minute, you're not Dr. Coran. Who the fuck is this?'' He slammed down the receiver.
"That's it," said Warren, coming back on the line now.
"Did Harry Furth get a fix on where the call originated from?"
"He did, and that's why I've been so frantic to get in touch with you all day."
"So, where did it come from?"
"Are you sitting down?"
"I am."
"Two hours from Page."
"Here Page?"
"Arizona, yes. Someplace called Long Valley Junction. Between Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon."
"He was only two hours ahead of J. T. and me at six this morning?"
"It would appear so, yes, but the route he's taking remains a mystery."
She gasped into the receiver.
"You okay, Jess?"
''Any leads from the call? Anybody know what the hell he means by Charon and now by calling himself Ness-it, Ness-what?''
"Nessus, and no, but we do know he paid for the call with Chris Lorentian's phone card."
"Why doesn't that surprise me?"
"I'm flying up there."
"Not on my account."
"This business began in my jurisdiction. I've got every reason to pursue it with you."
She unnecessarily shrugged. "I've never known you to do anything but what you intended. If you intend coming, come ahead. I won't argue, but it's getting a bit crowded here."
"What do you mean, 'crowded'?"
"The Arizona guys, Karl Repasi, J. T., me, and now you."
"Oh, yeah. I see what you mean."
''Repasi says he has your blessings coming here to Page… claims he simply wants to help us out, forensically speaking. Then he attacks me."
"Out to prove himself better than you or something? I'm sorry. I had no idea."
''J. T. warned me to be wary of him. J. T. questioned Karl's motives from the start."
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