Extreme Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  Despite full disclosure in the newspapers about the killer, there still remained, she could be absolutely sure, an enclave of people here in the vast wilderness of Yel­lowstone who had been wholly untouched by the story. Few if any down at Old Faithful Lodge would show the least alarm, she imagined.

  She learned that she was right, that there would be no general alarm sounded—nor did she want one—as she ex­plained over the radio to Samuel Marc Fronval, a descen­dant of French-Canadian Native Americans and the head guy among the rangers here. She knew Fronval from years past, and he'd taken her warnings in such calm stride that she wondered if he'd gone feeble, but then maybe it was the place.

  It was as if this place could not be touched by such gross evil, but Fronval had to know better. Still, it was a vacation destination for hundreds of thousands annually. People came here to view the fantastic geological wonders of the infinitely varied hydrothermal features of this region, from the obsidian sand at Black Sand Geyser Basin to the vivid blue, giant eye of Morning Glory Pool in Upper Geyser Basin. People came here to marvel at the extraordinary silica that dissolved in hot water precipitates as the min­erals brought from the depths of the planet cooled to create grottoes and fountains and caverns turned inside out. Algae did the rest, painting the geyserite in all the hues of the rainbow. Rainbows captured in rock, strewn about the earth.

  Jessica recalled in particular the spectacular Minerva Terrace at Mammoth hot springs as an outstanding ex­ample of the variegated patterns that travertine formed as it was deposited on the surface of the cooling waters of the hot spring. The place looked like a limestone cave turned inside out. The place made the clumsiest of amateur photographers suddenly gifted.

  People were indeed here to play, to party, to have fun, and not to be concerned about what went on in the world at large. The fact that there was a serial killer at work, and that he was winding his way from vacation spot to vacation spot here in the West, and that he was bent on taking people's lives by burning them to death for some hideous purpose no one would ever fully understand except for the killer himself, remained of no consequence to the typical tourist or merchant preying upon the tourist. And God for­bid that Jessica's manhunt should interfere with business as usual here. Oddly, however, Jessica's radio call to Fronval below seemed to “devil” the helicopter pilot more than anyone on the ground. Fronval had promised to put extra men on alert in and around Old Faithful Lodge, the grand hotel of the park, within shouting distance to Old Faithful, where every thirty to thirty-five minutes, the magnificent, most famous geyser of them all spouted its hot whale spray to an adoring American public.

  Still, Fronval promised Jessica a full green light when she arrived by having her way cleared, pleased to be hear­ing from her after all these years. Fronval had kept up with her career, and she his. He remained one of Yellowstone's best loved and most respected rangers.

  Coming back to Yellowstone would, under normal cir­cumstances, have been a balm to her, a reunion for her heart and soul. The place held a spectacular appeal that no words could capture; rather, it silenced men—and even women, she jokingly thought. It was a spiritual place, a place to renew body and soul. Perhaps this was its appeal to one Feydor Dorphmann as well.

  Off the left side of the helicopter now, she could see the billowing clouds rising from hot water pools, searing hot springs that welled up out of the earth's crust at temper­atures of more than 180 degrees, 205 degrees in other places here. Enough boiling water to scald the entire hu­man race, she thought.

  A handful of the pools were swimmable, but every hot spring in the park remained outlawed, off-limits to every­one, since only a trained park ranger could tell the differ­ence between a safe and a deadly pool, and even some of these so-called experts had, on occasion, become victims of the pools and their own bad or impaired judgment, ig­norance, or possible suicidal thoughts.

  Jessica was immediately shocked back to the present when Corey Rideout shouted, “There's a fire down there at the lodge!” Rideout pointed down toward the lodge.

  Jessica stared down at the scene, certain there lay a body in the flames below, a body that the killer, in his obsession, knew only as number seven. “Damn him... He is here. He is here!”

  TWENTY-

  Act nothing in furious passion. It's putting to sea in storm.

  —Thomas Fuller

  Feydor knew that time was of the essence, that it was only a matter of time before they caught up to him and put an end to his—their—plans. He was angry with his demon god for not allowing him to count at least the two men in Salt Lake that he'd torched, the two that had died in the hospital. But there was no arguing with the supernatural being, the source of evil. That meant he must kill two more here at Yellowstone before Jessica Coran arrived.

  He knew she would come. Satan had assured him that she must, and he was right. Feydor had seen the approach­ing helicopter. She must be aboard.

  He needed one more victim. The Tolliver woman was easy. He'd flattered her in her little gift shop downstairs, bought her a box of chocolates, and had shown up at her room. He'd used the syringe on her, and while she battled, bruising him in the bargain, he'd managed to subdue her and let the drugs do the rest. Then he did her as he'd done the others.

  Time was fleeting now, however, and he had no victim in mind, nothing prepared. Still, he had his tools in hand. He just needed to be smart about this thing.

  He wandered the hallways, going from floor to floor, looking at room numbers, trying doors to see if anyone had foolishly left one unlocked, keeping his eyes and ears alert, watching anyone who happened in or out of a room, up or down a stairwell or corridor. He began stalking for his next victim, number eight is number two, the lustful.

  He needed a soul to send to that special rung of Hades reserved for those whose minds and hearts were filled with only lust. But it was late, everyone in their beds asleep, silent. Whom might he find to fill in?

  “Return to the fire,'' Satan said inside his head.

  “Coran is here. It's not time yet to face her. You said so.”

  “There, staring into the fire, you will find those who lust.”

  It appeared the only way. “Of course, the fire.”

  Feydor expected to hear Dr. Stuart Wetherbine next, ob­jecting to this final step, but Wetherbine kept silent. Weth­erbine had remained silent for a long time now. Perhaps he'd been silenced by Satan.

  Dorphmann knew now he must return to the seventh fire, where people would be milling about, gawking. Somewhere in the crowd, he'd find the one whose eyes shimmered with a lustful glow, the sinner he looked for. He'd have to be careful, however. Coran and others there would be searching all the faces, too, searching for him.

  Jessica had instantly gotten on the radio to inform Sam Fronval of the danger overtaking his lodge. Fronval shouted back, “We know we've got a fire! We've got help on the way.”

  “It's got to be him, Sam! The coincidence is too much.”

  “We found no one at the fire but the woman who died in it, Jessica, but he did leave a message for you.”

  “Let me guess: Number seven is number three—glut­tonous.”

  “Jesus, Joseph, and Jessica! How'd you know that? Never mind, I don't want to know,” said Fronval. “Victim was Lorraine Tolliver, big woman who worked in the gift shop and lived at the lodge, room four twenty-two.”

  “If he's true to form, Sam, he's seeking out another victim as we speak.”

  “Why didn't you bring more men with you, Jessica? We can't cover the entire lodge. There are more than six hundred rooms in use here. And each wing of the lodge goes off in another direction, like the spokes of a wheel. There's the original lodge and the add-ons.”

  “If he doesn't kill again tonight, he'll kill again tomor­row night.” Jessica then told Rideout, “Get me down there.”

  “Gonna scare the shit out of Henry if we set down too close to the lodge,” complained Rideout, the chopper pi­lot.

  Jessica
frowned and asked, “Henry? Who's Henry?”

  “An old buffalo who doesn't roam with the herd any­more, but hangs about the lodge. He's been there for years, but he's unpredictable. I don't want him charging my bird.”

  “Get me in as close as you can, then, without setting us down on a hot spring.”

  Rideout did so, and Jessica said, “Get back up in the air, and radio us if you see any other fire than the one we already know about.”

  “Will do, and good luck. Dr. Coran, or should I call you The Sanitizer?” he joked.

  “Thanks,” she called back over the noise of the rotors. “Now get back up in the air.”

  Jessica was guided to the location of the fire by a ranger sent to the helicopter in order to take her directly to Samuel Fronval. Fronval stood in the hallway, smoke haloing him, as he tried in vain to disperse the crowd of curious on­lookers who were in the way. Jessica pushed through the crowd, looking all about for any sign of Feydor Dor­phmann, knowing full well that he'd been in similar crowds earlier, watching her every movement.

  She saw a small man somewhat resembling Dorphmann, and she pointed the man out to Fronval, who immediately had his rangers grab the man in pajamas, whose shock soon translated into swear words.

  Others in the crowd, seeing the detention of one of their own, and being asked by rangers in hats and carrying guns if they'd seen or heard anything unusual, began to dis­perse. Questioning a crowd, Jessica knew from experience, was the quickest way to break one up.

  Jessica looked in on the fire room, saw the ugly message left by Dorphmann, saw the ugly remains on the bed. Fire­fighters were still squelching small eruptions in the room. She backed out, her face blackened from smoke. Ex­hausted, she leaned against the log wall, Fronval telling her he was sorry to have to see her under such conditions but welcoming her to Yellowstone just the same.

  She looked into his clear, blue-ice eyes, and saw the same man in there, but outwardly he'd aged a great deal, his hair now a snowy white, his face a road map of wrin­kles, every one of them no doubt earned.

  “Yeah, it's good to see you again, too, Sam.”

  “I'm due to retire in a few months,” he told her. “Damned ugly thing that's happened here on my watch.”

  “I'm sorry, Sam, truly I am.”

  “Read about what happened in Salt Lake.”

  She glanced down the long, narrow corridor to see a thin, emaciated man carrying a black case. The man seemed bent on following someone, his step in tune with a woman ahead of him.

  “My God, it's him. It's Dorphmann, there,” she said, pointing.

  “Where?” asked Fronval, staring past the little man she pointed at.

  “There!” She raised her gun and shouted for people to drop to the floor, and anyone remaining in the hall did so. But Dorphmann was gone. She raced, stepping over people as she did so, for the spot where he'd been.

  “Are you sure of what you saw?” asked Fronval, catch­ing up to her.

  They stood at a juncture in the hallway where four sep­arate wings spread out in four directions, any one of which Dorphmann could have stepped down. “Any doors, maids' closets along these corridors?” Jessica stared down each section of the maze.

  “This way,” Fronval suggested, going to a maids' closet, but it was locked.

  “No way he could've ducked in here.”

  Out of the side of her left eye, Jessica saw a flitting shadow appear and disappear in the opposite corridor wing. “There he goes!” she shouted and gave chase, her gun raised.

  Fronval stayed close behind. He knew the complicated labyrinth of the many-sided, many-added-on hotel, which had stood here since the early 1900s, a place where Pres­ident Theodore Roosevelt had slept. “AH the corridors eventually will lead back to the main hall,” Fronval as­sured her from behind. “He's got to be making for an exit somewhere.”

  “The only other exits are where?”

  “At the ends of each corridor, but there is one door midway.”

  “For all we know he's booked a room himself under an assumed name. He may simply have ducked into his room.”

  “We'll do a door-to-door search of this corridor on this floor,” suggested Fronval. “It'll have to do.”

  A door between two sections of the hotel ahead of them creaked closed. “There!” Jessica shouted, racing after, leaving Fronval catching his breath.

  Jessica, out ahead, spied a shadow racing off down the hallway on the other side of the door, still hustling with a black case in his grip. It had to be Feydor Dorphmann. She was so close that she might get a shot off if she gam­bled, but stopping to aim could cost her. She could again lose sight of him.

  She took the gamble, stopped, and leveled the gun as the disappearing shadow turned a comer and was gone. “Damn! Damn!”

  She found a stairwell, and exit sign, and a window at the end of this corridor. She heard the exit door below open and she rushed to the window to stare out into the night, hoping to see him come into view, running from the building. She prepared to blow a hole through his damned head when he did so, but no one appeared from the exit below. A noise filtered up to her. Someone pushing through yet another door, a gunshot, and silence.

  She raced down the stairs and pushed through a door on yet another corridor leading to the center of the com­plex, and there, on the floor, lay Sam Fronval, a bullet hole seeping blood from his stomach, his walkie-talkie ly­ing some feet away.

  “Bastard run right up on me and fired. I didn't expect—”

  “Save your breath, Sam!” she ordered and got on the two-way radio, calling for anyone listening, “Get those medics from room four twenty-two to... to... where the hell are we, Sam? Sam?”

  “Main floor, corridor B, near center exit,” the old ranger said, moaning now with the pain.

  Jessica ripped the leather pouch from the radio and tore Fronval's belt from his pants with an effort She wrapped the belt around the wound, shoved the leather pouch in tight against the bleeding, small-bore hole, and tightened the belt around wound and makeshift bandage as best she could, all to the complaints of Fronval, who kept saying, “I'm all right Jessica! Get on after the bastard! Don't let him get away now! Go! Go!”

  Jessica wouldn't leave until others arrived on the scene to care for Sam. She raced off in the direction the killer had taken, finding herself in the deserted, stone-silent main hall, off which stood the gift shop, the ranger information station that posted the time for the next eruption of Old Faithful, the massive dining room, a breakfast place, a lounge.

  There were exits on all sides and through any number of other rooms. It was before hours, so no one was work­ing here. Not a sound to be heard.

  Jessica looked up at the mammoth heart of the old hotel, a living monument to the early interest in Yellowstone and the great white American hunter. This area was the original lodge, the workmanship magnificent, lost to the ages. And everything was on a grand, gaudy Gilded Era scale. She imagined the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, and the Mor­gans, all the powerful barons of the turn of the century meeting here, settling on prices of goods and services, en­joying themselves in a luxury not even dreamed of by oth­ers of their day. The main hall sported a wraparound second floor and elegant balcony, so huge a hundred mod­em-day tourists could stand upon it and watch Old Faithful blow its fifty-foot plume skyward from this observation point and never leave their seats.

  Above the second-floor veranda there were rooms and more rooms and additional floors. All the walls were lined with stuffed animal heads, from bison to elk to bear, and beside these hung great, opulent oil paintings depicting scenes and events of a bygone era. Native American blan­kets and rugs hung everywhere.

  All of it stood stark, silent She hadn't a clue as to Fey­dor Dorphmann's immediate whereabouts.

  Then she heard a noise, a pattering, metallic noise. It seemed to be coming from the dining area. She pushed through the closed double doors to stare in at the elegant, wood-motif dining hall, where a massive fi
replace, large enough to house a small family for a portrait picture, stood at the center of the room.

  Dorphmann could be hiding on the other side of the fireplace and no one could see him.

  She glided into the dark room, its lodge pine interior usually inviting but currently menacing. Again, she heard noise—the sound of muffled music, pots and pans, coming from the kitchen area.

  She moved slowly, cautiously, her gun extended in two hands before her.

  When all had calmed at the lodge and a fire company had put out the blaze, it was predawn before anyone took a breath. Rideout had come down from the air for good and had found breakfast in the lodge kitchen where he once worked as a boy, before his ranger days. It had finally dawned on him where he'd heard Coran's name before. Old Fronval had spoken of her on occasion when telling a story of how a murder in the park had been uncovered by a young female doctor and himself.

  Rideout shook his head and stared out a back window, where he could see the east wing of the lodge, scattered ghost clouds from the geysers drifting by, and through a window, he saw a sudden rush of flame in a room several hundred yards away. He instantly got on the house phone and called Fronval's office, getting some female subordi­nate of Sam's.

  “Fire! There's another fire! He's struck again, east wing, near the end. I'm going after the bastard!” he shouted over the woman's questions.

  Rideout dropped the receiver and snatched a high- powered rifle from one wall, cartridges from a drawer, and began loading the weapon when the door burst open and Jessica Coran had him in her sights, shouting, “Drop the weapon! Now!”

  Corey Rideout's call had had the effect of instantly re­calling the fire trucks into action. He and Jessica now raced together for the east wing, Rideout yelling after her to wait for him as he tried to load the weapon kept at all times in the kitchen by the lodge's number one cook. Rideout had known about the legendary cook, who carried his weapon about the place whenever he felt the need.