Extreme Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  He coldly said, “I'll have to wait, see what he says about all this.” Feydor, every FBI agent in the territory, every cop with a gun is now going to shoot to kill, knowing you killed three of their own. The stakes have gone up, Dorph­mann. We not only know who you are, Feydor, but we know your shoe size and preference, we have your finger­prints and likeness, and it will appear in every newspaper and on every television screen across this country. There's no place you can hide now.”

  “Don't waste your breath, Dr. Coran. I've had assur­ances none of that will matter once I've finished with you.”

  “Even if you succeed, Feydor, in killing me, number nine, there'll be no place for you to hide.”

  “Satan will provide. He's already removed my finger­prints and my hair, and he's working on my bone structure, my height, weight, skin color. You see, it's all part of the deal.”

  How do you bargain with a madman? she wondered. “Give yourself up, give yourself up to me this moment. Tell me where you are and I'll come there personally to see no harm comes to you.” It was a half-truth. If he invited her, she would see to it he was put out of his misery before he could fire-kill her.

  “Harm? You have no idea how much harm I've already gone through, you foolish bitch. No, I won't be giving myself up. There's still work to do. Still, I do want you to come for me.”

  “Where and when?” she replied instantly, challenging him.

  “Soon, soon now you will know.”

  She knew it was hopeless, but to encourage him, she added, “Read the morning papers, Feydor, then contact me again if you don't believe me. Will you do that, Fey­dor?”

  “I told you! I have to talk to him.”

  “Where are you now?” she pleaded. “Are you still in the city?” He cut her off.

  Jessica looked up to see Mrs. Crighten staring at her with the frozen look of a statue, shaken at hearing just one side of Jessica's conversation with the killer. “I wouldn't have your job for all the money and prestige in this life,” Mrs. Crighten finally said.

  Jessica turned to the aide and said, “Let's go.”

  As Jessica was about to leave the hospital, J.T. located her and shouted for her to wait. She'd already gotten com­fortable in the car and was about to depart from the parking garage. “Mrs. Crighten told me where I could find you, Jess. You're taking on too much alone again. Let me help you,” he pleaded.

  “You can help by being here when Warren Bishop re­covers. He's going to need a familiar face at his bedside. Will you be there, John?”

  He took in a deep breath. “Mrs. Crighten told me he called you at her office. How does this fiend find you, Jess? It's uncanny. It's almost as if—”

  “As if what?”

  “Nothing, never mind.”

  “You starting to think like Repasi, that we... the killer and I have some sort of link?”

  “No, no .. . nothing like that, Jess.”

  “Then what? That there's some kind of supernatural psychic link at work? What?''

  “I don't know.”

  “He's shrewd, smart, J.T. He knows we'd be at an area hospital; he goes the rounds with the yellow pages, just like you or me. That's all.”

  “Where'll you be, Jess?”

  “Getting the story out. Talk to Crighten about it. We're going to spread the news that the Phantom has added three more kills to his kill list.”

  “Hey, I get it. Fill up his list for him and maybe no one else will be hurt on your account, right?”

  She gritted her teeth before replying, “You really are beginning to sound like Karl.”

  “I think it's a brilliant stroke, Jess.”

  “Only if it works. Now, let me put it into motion.”

  “Have you cleared it with headquarters?”

  “No, no, I haven't. Something like this, the fewer who know the real story, the better.”

  “All the same, if you want, I'll let Santiva in on the facts.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, do that. And J.T., thanks again.”

  “Where'11 you be after you finish up with the news- people?”

  “On to Jackson Hole with the others, it would appear.”

  “Gotcha. I'll join you there as soon as possible.”

  The car pulled from the lot at Jessica's request. The car pulled upward on a slanting concrete hill and out into the predawn light of Salt Lake City. “Take me to the major TV stations first,” she asked Crighten's aide, who yawned and apologized, saying she was not used to such crazy hours.

  Jessica finished the rounds of TV and newspaper offices in Greater Salt Lake City and then said good-bye to Crigh­ten's aide Sue Norris when the young woman dropped her off at Gallagher's nondescript FBI branch headquarters building. With Gallagher, Repasi, and that crew long ago off to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, a beautiful western town turned tourist haven nestled in Snake River Valley, amid the foothills of the Grand Tetons, Jessica freely acquired the fax forwarded to Salt Lake City headquarters from Eriq Santiva. As promised, she had every stitch of information they had on Feydor Dorphmann forwarded to the Salt Lake Herald. Returning to the Herald editors, she orchestrated the morning headline and layout of photo and computer- enhanced photo of the killer, alongside a sidebar carrying what Jessica and J. T had composed of the killer's cryp­tograms and the nine rungs of Hades in Dante's Inferno. In the paper account, Morganstern and Howler were listed as fire victims number six and seven and Bishop as murder victim number eight, leaving only one rung to fill. The list now appeared:

  #1 is #9-Traitors Lorentian

  #2 is #8-Malicious Frauds Flanders

  #3 is #7-Violents Martin

  #4 is #6-Heretics Whitaker

  #5 is #5-Wrathful & Sullen Grey

  #6 is #4-Avaricious & Prodigal Morganstern

  #7 is #3-Gluttonous Howler

  #8 is #2-Lustful Bishop

  #9 is #1-(the last victim?) sent into Limbo... through the Vestibule and over the River Acheron

  The city editor and crime editor at the Salt Lake Herald had, upon Jessica's initial visit, immediately dispatched their best reporters to the phones and the hospital for ver­ification of Jessica's story. At the hospital, Mrs. Crighten held a press conference, detailing the kinds of wounds each of the three FBI agents had endured, how the doctors worked tirelessly on their behalf, but that all attempts had met with unsuccessful results in the cases of all three men. Beside Mrs. Crighten, there on the podium, doctors la­mented the conditions they'd had to work under, their long faces giving credence to the ruse. Jessica watched televised news reports from the city desk editor's office. Her plan was working like a charm.

  The newspapermen were ecstatic to get an exclusive from the famed Dr. Jessica Coran, but for it, Jessica bar­gained: They must release it to every other news wire serv­ice in the country. She wanted to be certain that Feydor Dorphmann, wherever he was, knew that she knew that he knew that she knew .At the newspaper office, Jessica found huge maps of Utah along one wall, each detailing the geographic beauty of the state, distances, and famous tourist attractions. On another wall, a similar map of Wyoming hung, and Jessica stared at the roads leading from Salt Lake City to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and she realized for the first time in years just how close Jackson Hole was to Yellowstone National Park.

  “Doing a travel and leisure piece on Wyoming,” said a mild-mannered female editor who noticed Jessica's in­terest in the map. “You know, places to get away to that aren't too far and aren't too expensive for the middle crowd here in Salt Lake.”

  “I'm interested in Yellowstone,” Jessica told her. “You have any detail maps of Yellowstone?”

  “It's one of the major highlight of the article, and yes, I do.” The woman dug into a desk and came up with a detailed map of the park itself, spreading it in lumpy and crude fashion across the papers and junk that populated the top of her desk. “It's really a breathtaking, fantastic place, almost like stepping onto another planet,” said the editor.

  Jessica studied the map, which brought ba
ck instant memories of a time when she had once visited Yellowstone National Park as a young assistant M.E. on vacation with a girlfriend. “Yes, I once visited Yellowstone, many years ago,” Jessica told the other woman as she studied the large yellow mass, the park that formed the northwestern comer of the state of Wyoming.

  “My husband and the boys loved it,” the woman con­tinued. “The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, that was their favorite, and the fishing, of course. Me, I became fascinated with the geysers and hot springs and mud pots.”

  Jessica scanned the map, her eyes gliding as if directed by a Ouija board pointer to a select few of the more than ten thousand geysers, hot springs, and boiling mud pots in the park, gasping at their resemblance to Feydor's words of earlier. There on the map, she read of the Devil'sWell and Hellsmouth geysers in Lower Geyser Basin near Old Faithful and Old Faithful Lodge. A flood of memories, too disconnected and too disorganized at the moment to make any but fleeting sense to her, assaulted her senses while the editor continued to carry on about the grandeur that was Yellowstone.

  “And can you imagine people coming here from the East and telling us, the Forestry Service in particular, that we need to build protective walls and fences throughout the parks? What utter nonsense. People have no idea the scale of nature out here. Why, it's enormous. Would any­one seriously entertain the thought of putting a fence around the Serengeti Plains in Tanzania or Victoria Falls or Niagara for that matter?”

  Jessica only half-heard the woman. Her mind was on Dorphmann. Feydor's thinking, his quest, came into full focus. Finally, Jessica knew where he'd been headed from day one, what his final destination must be, and how he planned to kill victim number nine. “May I keep this map?”

  “Ahhh, sure, sure... I've got enough material on the park that I don't need it any longer. I've pretty well put the story to bed.”

  “Whatever it cost.” She dug into her purse.

  “No, take it. Anything to help get this madman you're chasing. And I'm dreadfully sorry about those three brave agents.” Jessica swallowed her desire to confide any sliver of truth to the woman. “Yes, it has hit the agency hard, just as the previous five murders by this maniac have.”

  “Good luck on your manhunt, Dr. Coran. We all know one thing.”

  “And what's that?” she asked, folding the Yellowstone map back into its original shape.

  “That you're the best person for the job.”

  “Thank you. I hope that's so.”

  “Well, obviously, from what you've told us, the killer certainly thinks so.”

  She smiled for the first time in twenty-four hours. “Yes. Yes, that certainly is so.”

  After the phony story was put to bed, a phone call to the hospital told her that Bishop died at 3:19 a.m. while still on the table, undergoing surgery, and that Agents Morganstern and Howler had also both died of wounds suffered in the fire. Excellent, she thought. Mrs. Crighten had played her part well.

  EIGHTEEN

  Do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on men unless they act.

  —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 non- fugitive 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 re releasing 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.