Extreme Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  “No, the traces of butane were at much greater concen­tration levels than caused by a lighter, and no lighter was recovered from the bed.”

  J.T. exchanged a look of confusion with Jessica before asking Repasi, “Then they're clearly saying that our killer used some sort of butane torch?''

  “That's what Charles Fairfax believes,” Lester Osborne replied, and believe me, Charlie's the best fire investigator in the city. He's an old friend of mine, and he was in the hotel... for the convention.” Repasi quickly added, “I'd seen him in the casino, so I had him paged when I saw what I... we had.”

  Lester nodded, saying, “Karl knows I don't even step into a fire-death scene until Charlie's completed his work. Saves me oodles of time and effort.”

  “And, last night, more time at the gambling table as luck would have it, right, Les?” Repasi teased. Repasi then turned to Jessica and said, “We told Lester here what you told us; told him about the whooshing sound you heard over the phone.”

  Jessica's eyes glazed over in thought as she pictured a butane torch with a long wand so the killer wouldn't burn his pinkies. Then he leans in over the smoldering body and sticks his fingers into the soup he's created of the victim to pen his cryptic message.

  Repasi pushed her buttons further, asking, “Don't you see, Dr. Coran? You say you heard a great whoosh of air over the phone just before she screamed? Don't you see? Fairfax's instincts verify what you heard, Doctor,” Repasi told her.

  “That sounds about right, Karl. Now, is there anything else you two wish to share?” asked Jessica, trying to re­main calm.

  “Her hands were tied with a man's tie, her feet with a belt, and small remnants of a handkerchief were found amid the charred bedclothes.”

  “Any prints on any of these items?”

  “None.”

  “Burned away, wiped clean, or he wore gloves.”

  “The phone?” she asked.

  “Nada.

  “All carefully planned down to the nth detail, and then he leaves prints in the message,'' Jessica said, wanting to curse the bastard responsible for this, responsible for kill­ing Chris Lorentian for what appeared to be a random se­lection just to taunt Jessica Coran into giving him her undivided attention. Or did the killer know Chris? Was the charade some sort of attempt to hide the true nature of the murder?

  “How did you know there'd be prints in the message?” asked Repasi.

  Osborne added, “Yeah, Jess, where did that come from?”

  “I smelled it, realized it was grease from fatty tissues. I just took a wild guess.”

  “Some wild guess,” replied Osborne with a little shake of the head.

  “I'd like to talk to Lorentian myself. Learn what I can about Chris. See if it helps,” she suggested.

  “My secretary outside has his number,” replied Os­borne. “Feel free.”

  Repasi followed her to the door and stopped her, asking, “Are you making it an FBI matter?”

  “I think the killer already has, don't you?”

  Both Repasi and Osborne exchanged a long stare, and they came to the same conclusion as J.T. during that mo­ment of silence. Jessica finally spoke their fears aloud. “He may be just getting started.”

  Repasi instantly replied, “Yes, it's what he wants, isn't it? He'll continue to bait you this way, won't he? But what is his ultimate goal in all this?”

  “He may”—she didn't want to believe it—”he may just want to outfox me.”

  Repasi twisted the invisible knife, adding, “He'll go on killing until someone stops him.”

  “And who's going to do that, Karl? You?” asked Os­borne, a sheepish grin building on his face.

  She drew in a deep breath of air. “It's either what he apparently wants, or it's an attempt to cover his true mo­tive for killing Chris Lorentian.”

  J.T. instantly jumped on this theory. “Ingenious. Kill someone for common enough reason and mask it with a wild charade like this, calling you, Jessica, and getting the FBI chasing some mad lunatic when in fact the killer knew Chris Lorentian and he acted coolly, calculatedly in both the murder and in planning exactly how to throw author­ities off. Could be... could be...”

  “Are you going to...” Osborne's assistant cleared his throat with a handful of words and tried again.”Are you go­ing to tell Frank Lorentian that his daughter died because some sick wacko crazy wants to play cat-and-mouse with you, Dr. Coran?'' The assistant stood, arms across his chest, across the table from them, the younger man unable to hold his words back. “I was there when the man identified his daughter's remains... what was left of her to identify, that is. The man crumpled.”

  She looked at Osborne's man. “I'm not sure what I'm going to tell the father at this point, Doctor, and I suggest no one speaks to the press of this until we've had time to learn more about this psychopath.”

  Osborne raised a hand and began to object, but she cut him short with, “Is that understood?” With that, she and J.T. left the autopsy room.

  “What's next, Jess?”

  “We find out more about Chris Lorentian. Where she went when she ran away, where she was staying and with whom. Her hideouts and haunts. Apparently she didn't run so fast and so far as she might've; perhaps if she had, she'd be alive today; perhaps she was being given sanctuary by a friend or friends?”

  “So we find out who she hung with...”

  “Who she knew. Where she was before this monster's path came to cross hers. We find out where she had her last meal, where she last bathed, where she last shopped, and we find out what her plans were.”

  “Sounds logical, but shouldn't you leave it to the local cops to talk to Lorentian?”

  “I could, but I don't think the killer expects anything less from me. I've already abdicated the autopsy to Lester. God, I don't think I could've handled this one, knowing what we know... that she died because of... of some twisted sicko's attachment to... to me, because—”

  “Don't do this Jess. Don't go there.”

  “—because some whacked-out, wackity-wack read about me in the newspapers and came after me, and—”

  “Jess, Jess... don't do this to yourself. There's no way this is your fault.”

  “You think Frank Lorentian will see it that way, J.T.? I wouldn't blame the man one bit if—”

  “Stop this right now, Jess. This young woman's death is not your fault.” Jessica fell silent.

  They located Osborne's secretary, a pleasant, middle- aged woman with a broad smile who quickly looked up Lorentian's number and address, asked if they'd like for her to get Mr. Lorentian on the phone or simply to type out all the information for them. She also asked if they'd like a cup of freshly brewed coffee, rattling off several names of designer brands.

  Jessica declined the coffee and took the address, thank­ing the woman on her way out.

  Jessica and J.T. went directly for the Desert Imperial Palace, owned and operated by Frank Lorentian. They were quickly across the city, despite the congestion, thanks to a cabbie who knew every byway and back road. In fact, they faced more roadblocks inside the gambling casino than outside, designed as it was to keep people in the maze. And after several thwarted efforts to get in to see Frank Lorentian, they were finally led to the man's suite. Lorentian looked like a shriveled gnome in his bathrobe and glasses, his skin a file-cabinet gray. His eyes, sunken deep, depressed, looked like those of a tortured ghost. His eyes looked through them rather than at them, a sure sign he remained sedated. From telltale signs about the room, he also appeared to have been drinking heavily, despite the certain caution of his doctor not to mix booze and pills, and despite the early hour. Jessica thought the room stank of cigar smoke. When Lorentian turned his sad eyes away from them, he contem­plated the world outside through a slit in the heavy drap­ery. In silence, he peered out at the desert sun and at the expanse of concrete that was dwarfed by the mountains in the distance. He worked at bolstering himself up, to stand tall and erect, larger than his own frame and depr
ession allowed. When finally he turned to face them again, Jessica saw a devastated, shaken, physically hollowed-out, walk­ing corpse, a man who might easily court death himself in a mad effort to find his lost child.

  Lorentian's right hand was marred, missing several fin­gers. She imagined that in his youth, he'd been a rough, stubborn, hard-fighting street tough in Chicago or L.A. or perhaps New York, a man who generally got what he wanted. Jessica had seen larger-than-life photos of him adorning the walls downstairs in the business office, but somehow he had become a shell, the carved-out remains, a wandering shadow of the man in the pictures. She wasn't at all sure if he'd been in ill health for some time, or if this were the cataclysmic effect of his daughter's disap­pearance and now her death, but she imagined the latter was at work on him. She could imagine no worse blow to an indomitable spirit than the loss of a beloved child.

  Lorentian was a small man in stature, and now in his expensive robe, he wandered the room, unable to make himself clear as he indicated a place for them to sit. The room screamed from outlandishly lavish furniture and de­cor, the floor-length windows covered in purple and bur­gundy, someone's idea of royalty. The false palace— penthouse suite—had become the father's mourning room, the ornate, crystal chandeliers ostentatious and vulgar alongside the decadent furnishings, which mixed Oriental with rococo. Jessica sensed a taste of vulgarity in the man as well.

  “I'm Dr. Jessica Coran and this is Dr. John Thorpe, sir,” she began.

  “I know who you are!” It sounded an attack, the way he put it, but then he tempered himself. “I've been ex­pecting you. Rollo from downstairs told me you were com­ing up.” He looked anguished, caught on an unrelenting tenterhook that had risen from the depths of Hell to enter his entrails and tug and tear and rend from him all rem­nants of his soul. “I know who you are, Dr. Coran, and I was told this... this bastard who killed Chris... he talked to you? Called you at your hotel room, so that... so that you heard her in the fire, heard her scream­ing?” His heartfelt anguish was unbearable. He looked into Jessica's eyes for her answer. “Well? What kind of human trash does this to an innocent child, and what con­nection do you have with this monster? What did he say to you?”

  So much for professional silence, Jessica thought. Ob­viously Osborne, his assistant, or Repasi, or all three, had already spoken to Lorentian about the events of the night before in complete detail. We're all extremely sorry for your loss, Mr. Lorentian, she mentally ventured, instantly realizing that this kind of tiptoeing about wasn't going to suffice here. She said, “Violence, it seems, is part of our human nature, sir; and no one is immune or safe from its influence.”

  “Indeed,” J.T. gunned his agreement. “We're going to work hard, Mr. Lorentian, to locate the killer and bring him to justice. You can count on the FBI.”

  “FBI!” He spat his contempt. “Justice,” muttered the gray-haired, ashen-faced Lorentian. “You think there can ever be any justice after this? Just tell me one thing: What did this bastard say to you, Dr. Coran?”

  She shook her head. “He didn't say anything to me. He had... he had your daughter do all the talking.”

  Lorentian's eyes welled up and he instantly wiped them with a monogrammed handkerchief. “Did she... did she suffer long?”

  “No, not at all,” Jessica half-lied, knowing that Chris did not die instantaneously, that is, without the time it took for the dying heart, mind, nerves, and cells to shut down completely; the death process, even amid flames, took a certain amount of time. Instantaneous death came only with explosions or high-velocity impacts such as airplane crashes in which the body became fragmented in the blink of an eye, as with ValuJet Flight 592's crash in the Ev­erglades. Fire victims, such as Chris, did not circumvent the dying process. Few people ever died instantly. The phrase, “he died instantly” was something the living con­soled themselves with, but death came in stages for a trapped fire victim: Once the fire has reached you, you might pray to the fire god for the smoke to render you unconscious, for the fire itself will burst your skin after the initial blistered epidermis has been fried off; next the blood is boiled to a searing pitch, followed by shock, fol­lowed by the lethal failure of multiple organs and loss of consciousness and heartbeat. All of this takes time, even under the heat of a directed torch.

  When Lorentian remained silent, Jessica again spoke, leading him to where she needed him to be in his thinking. “We want to see this bastard fry, Mr. Lorentian, fry in Nevada's electric chair, you understand?”

  “We don't got the chair in this state. They do lethal in­jection or gas. Either way it's too good for this... this .. . What kind of man does this kind of thing?''

  “Maybe for this creep, they'll make an exception,” sug­gested J.T.

  He stared long and hard at J.T. but only replied, “Maybe... maybe somebody will....” The innuendo re­sounded clearly enough.

  J.T. said nothing in reply.

  “We're afraid—no, we're sure that this fiend will kill again, Mr. Lorentian. We need your help.”

  He turned to look at Jessica, some of the old man's fire churning in the sad eyes now. “My help? You want my help?” He laughed. “Government people wanting my help. And they send you, of all people. The way I hear it, this bastard was pandering to you, Coran, when he killed my little girl, that he gets his rocks off by insulting you with this phone-in murder. Some are saying you chased this pervert here, cornered him here, and this is the result, my little girl is dead.”

  “No, no, sir, there's no truth to that.”

  He ignored her. “Maybe I ought to hold you responsible for this, Dr. Coran.”

  The gloves had come off, and the tranquility in the old gangster's voice was more chilling than any temper tan­trum.

  J.T. shot to his feet and firmly said, “Just a minute, sir. None of this is Dr. Coran's fault. She didn't drive this man to his madness. She didn't create his fixation. The storm was out there and moving toward your daughter indepen­dent of Jessica.”

  Jessica stood beside J.T. now, placing a hand on his arm, the gesture telling him she preferred to fight her own battles. She now stepped closer to Lorentian. “We knew nothing of this killer before yesterday, before his first con­tact, and I don't know why he chose to contact me, Mr. Lorentian. Again, I say, we need your help, sir, before the... before he strikes again.” She then turned on J.T., holding up a hand to him, saying, “It's okay, J.T. Mr. Lorentian has every right to be upset. We're all upset.”

  “I don't see how I can help you, so if you please... leave an old man to his grief.”

  “Sir,” J.T. interjected, his hand up like a schoolboy, “we're all shaken and upset by the events that have—”

  “Upset... you're upset. My world has crumbled, and you're upset.”

  “Maybe another time,” J.T. suggested.

  “We need to know where your daughter was staying, with whom she spent her last hours, sir,” Jessica pleaded. “We have a killer to track.”

  “If I'd known where she was, I'd have dragged her home. I didn't have no idea then, and I don't have no idea now.”

  “You checked with all her friends?”

  “Yeah, of course.” He began pacing again, his body language telling Jessica that he meant to hide something.

  “And they were all honest with you?”

  “As far as I was able to tell, yeah.”

  “And you had no reason to doubt any of them?”

  He hesitated. He stepped about the room more. He paced back toward the drapes, stared out again, and finally, he again approached the doctors. He wrapped his arms about himself like the king of Siam in The King and I while Jessica continued to read his body language and patiently awaited his reply. He finally admitted, “She was being closely watched.”

  “Really?” Jessica was legitimately surprised. “You had her in your sights? The whole time?''

  “Obviously not... not entirely, anyway. I... knew where she was... for the first two nights... of her dis­appearance.” Talking
about this was difficult for him, as if his stomach were tossing dry tennis balls into his throat, as if all the guilt and remorse were lodged in his chest and vocal chords. “She somehow... found out I knew... got angry... at Sharon and... and sneaked off from her as well.”

  “Sharon?”

  “Sharon Pierson. Her... one of her best friends.”

  “Who was on your payroll?”

  His eyebrow arched upward and darted toward Jessica, an indication he was impressed. “Sharon owed the casino. It was her way... of paying me back.”

  “This Sharon calls you up with the deal the moment Chris shows up at her place?”

  “No, it was my suggestion... should my little girl ap­pear. I got the distinct impression she might've been hiding out at Sharon's. Chris”—saying her name aloud was pain­ful for him as well—”she'd run off before. I thought I'd give her time to... to cool down, you know? Figured she'd be back soon enough, but by the third day... and with Sharon swearing she hadn't seen Chris, I dropped a dime to a friend on the force to locate her.”

  “Did this friend file a Missing Persons report?”

  “We don't work that way, no.”

  “But there was a report made out on her,” countered J.T.

  Jessica suggested, “Her friend Sharon? When you called Sharon, she had thought Chris had returned home, and she told you so, right? And Sharon made the official call to the police? Is that how it happened?”

  “Close enough...” He nodded and fell into a seat, looking like a deflated balloon. “Like Shakespeare, huh?”

  “Sir?” asked J.T.

  “The Comedy of Errors.''

  More like the tragedy of King Lear, Jessica thought but did not say.

  Lorentian went on, “I thought I had it covered, where she was staying, and I was right. But she slipped out on Sharon, 'cause she knew Sharon owed me and would keep me apprised. We figure she heard Sharon talking to me on the phone. Money... she hated it and she loved it, sweet kid... sweet Chris.” He was overcome with grief, the tears freely raining now.