Extreme Instinct jc-6

by Robert W. Walker

— G. K. Chesterton

  An all-points bulletin stretching nationwide was put out on Dorphmann, but Jessica knew that any resulting action would likely only net authorities a few arrests here and there of look-alikes, deadbeat fathers, estranged boyfriends, and the like. Dorphmann had hinted that he had physically altered his appearance already, or rather that Satan had done so for him. He had burned off his fingerprints, thinking this crucial to his living the life of a nonfugitive once he'd finished the Devil's work he'd been put to; he had shaved his head, had likely put on some weight given the free food provided by the tour package. He might have altered his appearance in other ways, such as changing the color of his eyes, from contact green to frame glasses and blue eyes. There was little telling, but he obviously knew something about makeup and diversion and escape tactics, as he'd proven in Vegas and now in Salt Lake City.

  Jessica had returned to her hotel room after leaving the newspaper office, and now she felt badly that she couldn't be beside Warren Bishop when he opened his eyes, but there appeared no help for it. She had a rendezvous with a madman, a rendezvous that was long in coming, one she could put off no longer. She meant to put an end to Feydor Dorphmann's maniacal kill spree so that no one else would ever suffer at his hand again.

  She telephoned the hospital and got hold of John Thorpe, whose sleepy voice slurred a good morning to her. It was 9:40 a.m.

  "Anything new on Bishop?" she asked.

  "He's dead, or haven't you heard?" J. T. quipped.

  She pleaded with J. T., "Please stay by his side, John."

  "I will, for you, Jess. Meanwhile, I'll go over Repasi's findings on the Grey woman, see if he missed anything or failed to tell us anything of a vital nature we don't already know, right?"

  "Clever boy."

  J. T. broke the news to her that he'd gotten hold of Chief Santiva, who was en route to Jackson Hole, to report Bishop's true condition and why they had felt it necessary to plant the phony story.

  "How'd he take it?" she asked.

  ''He thought it a long shot, but agreed we had little else to gamble on with this nutcase, so he's okay with it, Jess. He still doesn't understand what Bishop and the 'other two agents' thought they were doing. He still doesn't know about the long arm of Frank Lorentian in this matter."

  "He'll know soon enough, when he touches down at Jackson Hole. Gallagher will give him an earful, no doubt."

  Jessica thanked J. T., finishing with, "For all you've done, John, over the years, thanks."

  "Hey, don't go getting maudlin on me, Jess. As for sitting this out with Bishop, it's no big deal. You're needed up in Wyoming, so get saddled up and get going. And don't worry about Warren. On the QT, they're calling him a fighter."

  "Has his prognosis improved?" she hopefully asked.

  "His condition is stable but still critical."

  "Damn…"

  "He's a tough guy. He'll weather it, and he's out of surgery and in IC, where he's under constant watch, Jess. What kind of trouble do you suppose he was in with Frank Lorentian?"

  "Most likely gambling debts. When I look honestly back on our early days together at the academy, I remember now how avid a gambler Warren always was. I'd rosily chosen to forget that aspect of his character."

  J. T. replied, "Damn, I know it. I had a girlfriend once who'd bet on which of two apple blossoms would fall from a tree first."

  "Yeah, Warren had that shortcoming, but I had no idea it had become a driving force in his life. Maybe it contributed to his divorce. I can't say."

  Jessica felt badly that friends, coworkers, his agency, his former wife, and his kids would hear through the news media that Warren Bishop had died of a gunshot wound in the course of his duty as an FBI agent. She tried to minimize the horror of it all by pretending Bishop was, in a sense, doing decoy work in his most unusual undercover operation, most possibly his last as an FBI operative, and one he was not even aware of. She rationalized spreading the lie also in that it might save lives if Feydor Dorphmann bought into it.

  "Where will you be, Jess, if he comes around?"

  "I… I'll be at the hotel, getting some sleep," she lied.

  "When will you be taking off for Jackson?"

  "Sometime this afternoon."

  "Maybe I can join you then. Call me before you make any arrangements, okay?"

  "Will do," she lied again, knowing now precisely where Feydor Dorphmann was directing her to go. J. T. didn't know it, but she might well have said her final goodbye to him.

  Rather than racing immediately off to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Jessica chose another course of action, or inaction, as the case turned out. She'd chosen to sit it out in Salt Lake City for a time, hoping now that Feydor, having had time to think things through and to "talk" with his demon god, would contact her at her hotel room.

  She knew that in Jackson Hole she'd have the backing of an entire army of FBI agents and local authorities, all wanting to put an end to the career of the Phantom; she knew that Eriq Santiva was flying there now. She understood that a coordinated effort to create a foolproof net to catch the killer would be instantly under way once Eriq took command there. The FBI crowd would bring to bear every known weapon in the arsenal of crime detection to apprehend the fiend responsible now for the deaths of three FBI men, the manhunt fueled with a vengeance not previously felt.

  Meanwhile, an FBI hotline in D.C. was inundated with tips flooding in from every corner of the country, from people in all walks of life, from wastepaper managers to basketball players to TV evangelists who claimed divine knowledge of the messages left by the killer, to academicians whose specialty-the history of the occult and religions of the world-made them TV talk-show guests on Oprah and Rosie. Everyone had some take on the killer, each as distorted and twisted as the next.

  However, not even the TV affiliates and networks, nor the newspapers buying into the exclusive coming out of the offices of the Salt Lake Herald, knew as much as the killer and Jessica Coran knew. But at least these more responsible sources named names and displayed photos of the killer, alongside his handwriting and his Dante's Inferno fetish, the nine rungs of Hades, the list of sins and victim names. They had the "story" as Jessica had fed it to them; they had the prediction that Feydor Dorphmann would kill a ninth, unknown victim to fulfill his demented contract with the Devil or devils that haunted him…

  She waited, armed with this knowledge; she waited this time for the killer to telephone her where she remained in Salt Lake City. "I'm through chasing the bastard," she firmly told herself.

  In fact, New York publishers were in a frenzy since the release of Jessica's story about her discovery that the killer was into Dante's Inferno, in a frenzy to capitalize on the moment by rereleasing Inferno in all of its previous lives and permutations. Since it fell into a public domain document, any publisher could bring it out under any lurid cover it liked, softbound, hardbound, mass-market, or trade-size editions.

  Meanwhile, Jessica waited for his call. Waited by the phone, her notepad in hand, staring down at the list of victims, studying it, wondering if he had spoken with his twisted god to gain permission to add the FBI intruders' names to his list of victims or not.

  As she waited in the silence of her hotel room for his call, she stared at the final list again, and she almost saw the final version of the list materialize before her eyes. At the bottom of the list of offenses and names, she saw her name.

  "Seems suitable enough," she jested with herself. "I am suited for the Vestibule, for sure." Her rereading of Inferno reminded her that according to Dante's description, the Vestibule was the place for the indecisive, those who had never committed to anything, including life, so that, though they had not earned a place in Hell, neither had they earned a place in Heaven, so that they were left in a state of limbo, a state of no real death.

  The Vestibule sloped down to the River Acheron, the first of three circular rivers, each of which emptied into the next, finally to flow into the frozen lake at the center of Earth, t
he nethermost well or pit of frigid water of Cocytus.

  "Call me, you bastard," she dared the phone, but it remained silent.

  She could wait no longer. She packed, called for a helicopter out of Salt Lake City's airport, and arranged for a cab to get her out to the airport. She looked again at the killer's itinerary, its final destination being Denver, Colorado, by way of South Dakota and Montana, but if he took the bait-if he read the papers and saw the reasoning, that Bishop's death, alongside those of the other two FBI agents, counted in his mad game, then he'd have only one more kill to make: her.

  She put her finger on the map of Yellowstone National Park, the stop after Jackson Hole, Wyoming. If he killed in Jackson Hole, she decided, there would be plenty of people, Repasi included, to clean up after. If she could get ahead of the bastard, be there at Yellowstone's Old Faithful Lodge, then she might take him by surprise and end this mental case's attempt to repopulate the Inferno with innocent people who got in his way. It would end one way or another with her in Yellowstone, where the bastard had wanted her all along.

  Yellowstone was the fitting place, the logical end, she realized.

  It was as if the killer knew that she'd been to Yellowstone before, that he had somehow sneaked into her home in Quantico, Virginia, and rooted around in her many photo albums to know her past. It was as if Feydor Dorphmann, or his personal devil, somehow knew that she had revealed the very first murderer in her long career as a medical examiner in Yellowstone National Park.

  Jessica recalled the last time she'd seen Ranger Samuel Marc Fronval and Yellowstone. She'd been on vacation with a girlfriend during her years just after college while she'd been employed as assistant to the M.E. in Baltimore. She was still taking finals at Georgetown University, completing her education in the field of forensics. She was twenty-four at the time. The memory calmed her into a near sleep in which she recalled every event as vividly as if it were the day before.

  She recalled seeing the unremarkable poster of a missing young woman in the park, and how calm the park rangers were the day her body was discovered. Not to disturb park visitors, the rangers put up no hue and cry about the discovery; rather, they appeared more stone-faced than ever. But Jessica had felt the menace, a bubbling excitement below the surface at Old Faithful Lodge, just beneath the veneer of gift shops, restaurant, lounge, and the tourist crowd, an excitement that went unnoticed by most. But Jessica had sensed it, had seen it in the eyes of the various rangers and staff who daily worked at the lodge. News had spread among them of a body found out at one of the hot springs.

  Jessica had instantly offered her services when she learned it was a medical emergency, and since medical assistance was some thirty miles off by air, she was enlisted.

  The helicopter she then rode in thundered through the canyon pass, brushing over treetops, scattering nesting bald eagles above the Shoshoni River on a breathtakingly clear, snow-dusted morning. The pace of the helicopter and the gorgeous scenery all around young Jessica Coran made her gasp as much with awe as with the rollicking ride.

  The pilot had said over his earphones, "We'll be there in ten minutes. Hell of a sight."

  She knew he was talking about the body and not the Yellowstone gorge below, which she marveled over alone, the pilot long jaded on the spectacular views. "You've made the run earlier then? You've seen the body?" she'd asked through the headphone set.

  "I was on call when we got word from the Park Service. The woman's been missing for three days, two nights out here. Everybody feared the worse, you know, that she slipped somewhere along the trail into a hot pool. You know those suckers just sear you to death, and the body's never found sometimes. Well, this one somehow scratched her way out and died half a mile away in thick woods."

  He banked with the curve of the canyon wall, and then they lifted in a startling flash, rising as if yanked from above by a godly hand. The pilot had introduced himself as Wayne Patterson, a bright-eyed, clean-shaven young fellow whose eyes lingered over Jessica. It frightened her a bit that he seemed so young and in control of her life at the moment.

  The dense brown hues of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone here in Wyoming bordering Montana gave way to lush forests. Pine trees below created a pillowy carpet of green life swaying beneath their wake. It didn't appear there was anywhere to land.

  ''Just where do you intend to put this thing down?'' she asked.

  "There's a ranger station with a clearing just ahead. We'll have to hike back down this way to the body, Dr. Coran. Mind my asking why"-he hesitated asking whatever was on his mind-"why, ma'am, they sent you all the way out from Baltimore?"

  "Presidential order," she joked. "Remember, his concern for the national parks ranks right up there with poverty and homelessness and every other big platform issue this year. Besides, I was in the area-Old Faithful Lodge."

  ''Oh, I get it.'' Her little joke had hurt his country pride.

  The helicopter touched down at the remote ranger station, and Jessica, her medical bag in hand, rushed from beneath the whirring blades, sand, leaves, and twigs tornadoing about her. They got into a four-wheeled land crawler and raced to the scene. In fifteen minutes they came upon a handful of men, all standing about a prone figure in the dust, covered over with a woolen blanket.

  Jessica introduced herself to the men, most of whom looked dubiously back at her, wondering about her age and sex and experience, no doubt.

  One of the men, wearing the uniform of a ranger and looking like an aged John Wayne, introduced himself, saying, "I'm Sam, Samuel Fronval. In charge of this district." He then casually pointed to the heap below the blanket and sadly announced the obvious. "She's beyond help… long dead."

  Jessica stepped closer. "I'm Dr. Coran," she replied. "Happened to be at the lodge. I'll have to examine her, pronounce cause of death."

  "Cause is pretty clear," replied another ranger, an overweight fellow who had the arms and general appearance of a white, hairless bear-and who, in fact, the other rangers called Bear.

  "She never stood a chance," mumbled a third man.

  "We figure it's that missing woman, Sarah Langley. She was hiking alone. Paid no attention to the warnings against hiking alone up in here," urged Bear.

  "Just the same, I'll have a look." Jessica went to the body and pulled back the blanket. She gasped at the horrid sight of flesh that had been literally boiled from the bones. The woman had no features, the skin having sloughed away. She was so badly burned, in fact, there seemed no way she could have come so far in her state. This strange fact stood out along with something equally strange about the nude body that immediately hit her. The victim's ankles and feet, while scalded, were not in nearly as bad shape as the rest of her body. This struck her instantly as odd.

  "Anyone remove her shoes? Were her clothes burned off her?"

  "Maybe, can't tell. No evidence she had any clothes on, but superheated water like what she got into burns clothing into nothing," replied Fronval. "I've seen it happen."

  "She didn't have no shoes on," said another ranger. "I mean when we found her."

  Jessica looked again at the body, trying to make out any sign of clothing clinging to it, but there was nothing but the clothlike blotches and peels of skin remaining, whole portions moving in the invisible wind current coming off the ground.

  "Well?" asked Fronval. "What's your diagnosis, Doctor?"

  "Yeah, how'd she manage to get so far from the pool that killed her?" asked the pilot, equally confused.

  She had to have had help, Jessica thought but kept her counsel.

  "Animals musta' got at her," said Bear with a shrug. "Maybe a coyote or some grizzly come along and drug her here. There're signs she was drugged here."

  Jessica and Fronval looked at the evidence the heavyset young man pointed to. Yes, the body had been dragged, but she doubted it was drugged, and Fronval was shaking his head, too. He near whispered to her, "If there were any bear tracks, they've been obliterated by last night's snow and destroyed
by my overanxious men, but I don't think a bear got at her."

  "Why not?"

  "No bear marks on her."

  "Gashes, you mean."

  "Bear'll tear its meat into strips. Even a coyote'd leave marks where he clamped down on her, if he could even manage to drag her dead weight this far up from the springs. So, we got ourselves a bit of a Devil's Triangle mystery here, huh? What do you think, Doctor?" urged Fronval.

  Jessica looked up from the corpse, the worst thing she'd seen in her young career as an M.E. student, the skin seared to molten, peeling sheets; sheaths of her skin had curled up, other portions of skin were missing, lost along the trail, revealing scorched, dehydrated veins, normally blue, turned to a white, milky hue, the blood boiled away.

  With third- and fourth-degree scald burns over ninety percent of her body, she could not have survived long enough to have taken ten steps, much less arrive at this destination on her own power. There were second- and third-degree burns over the remaining ten percent of her. All her facial features and hair had been dramatically boiled away. All the soft tissues, such as the eyes, scalded into oblivion. Dental records were a necessity for a one hundred percent ID on the woman, for even if she had once had a birthmark, it, too, was gone. "If she were burned to this degree in the doorway of the best burn center in the country-" she began.

  "That'd be Salt Lake City," supplied Fronval.

  "— she still would have died…"

  "But?" asked Fronval, sensing there was more.

  "But the condition in which we find her, and so far from the hot springs-where is it?"

  "Closest one is a quarter mile that way." Fronval pointed with an unlit pipe, and he next supplied the name of the hot springs that had apparently killed Sarah Langley, who, from what Jessica could tell, was a young woman in her mid- to late twenties who obviously enjoyed nature and taking her nature alone in the woods. Fronval said, "She was hiking along Firehole River. She'd been seen by a couple of fishermen up that way, least that's what Brian, here, learned before we began the manhunt for her."