Extreme Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  Warren, looking sleepy and fatigued, like a bear just out of hibernation, walked Jessica aside and apologetically said, “I wish I could fly up there with you, Jess, but I can't drop everything here. Too many pressing and polit­ically charged problems, and being the guy in charge...”

  “No need for apologies, Warren. You and your men have done quite enough.”

  “Furth'll get on the voice tape, see if we can learn any­thing from it, and there'll be Arizona-Utah branch agents there to meet you in Page.

  “Jess, promise me you'll take every precaution against this guy. Obviously, for some screwball reason, he has it in for you.”

  “No need to worry about me, Warren, and I fully un­derstand. I have a pretty fair idea of the scope of your responsibilities here. Don't forget, I'm in love with a field chief.”

  “Just the same, I may follow you on a later flight.”

  “We could be back in a day or two, depending.”

  “Then again, you might not. We've hardly had time to recapture... old times.” For a split second, the look in his eye gave Jessica a start. She feared he might suddenly surprise her by taking her into his arms and passionately kissing her. To stave off the moment, she turned to search for where J.T. had gotten off to, and seeing that he was busy with the young chopper pilot, she said, “I'd best board before J.T. bores the pilot to death.”

  “Wait, Jess,” he said, giving her a bear hug and a kiss on the forehead. “A little brotherly kiss, huh?” he asked. “Just want you to know that you can count on me, Jess.”

  “Thanks, Warren... but I know that—always have.”

  “Have a safe flight.”

  “I'm sure we will.”

  “Some of most fantastic scenery on the continent be­tween here and Page. You'll enjoy it. And don't forget to look up at the stars once in a while, for the soul.”

  “Hey, I look up plenty. Last time I came on vacation out West, I was practically a youngster. Visited Yellow­stone up in Wyoming. Did some hiking, fishing, and photo hunting.”

  “Yeah, I can see you in Yellowstone,” he replied, smil­ing wide. “You always did love the outdoors, nature. Time you got back to it, maybe.”

  “Perhaps you're right.” She smiled and turned, saw that J.T. had already seen to their bags and was waving for her to board. At the helicopter, the rotors already spinning and sending up a whirlwind of dust, the young pilot— young enough to be one of Jessica's nephews—stood alongside his chopper, a sight-seeing chopper pressed into sudden service by the FBI.

  “How safe is this thing?” she wondered aloud.

  “We take special care of our birds at Vermilion Cliffs Tours,” the bush-cut-headed pilot replied with a smile. The young man told Jessica to sit up front in the copilot's seat, having learned she had experience as a pilot herself. J.T. had nestled into the back of the helicopter.

  Still, Jessica impulsively rushed back to Warren for a final word, her eyes moist with a mix of emotions. She'd been on a roller coaster of confused emotions since the first telephone call forced on her by this madman with a torch. “Warren, you be good to yourself, and you take care of yourself, too,” she finally said to him, unsure if any words she might utter could possibly ease his apparent loneliness and pain. “I'm sorry this once I can't be there for you, Warren.”

  He smiled, laughed even, and his usual gruff voice be­came melancholy, sweetly tolling in a rhythmic, metered away. “Don't worry about this tough old 'gator. Hell, my hide's as thick as pine bark. It's just... well, you touch something in me that never fails to peel a layer or two off.”

  “Bishop, you're as tough as my Aunt Sarah,” she joked, making him roar with laughter, and she mirthfully joined him when she caught sight of J.T., who'd been watching from the chopper, a frown signaling a groan es­caping him. To spite J.T., Jessica hugged Bishop a second time, and from over Bishop's dropped shoulder, Jessica could see a deeper frown turning Thorpe's face into a large prune like growth, ugly even from this distance. She now quickly boarded the whirlybird, and Bishop waved them off.

  Jessica was soon settled into the cockpit passenger side of the helicopter. She'd learned to fly small planes and she loved flying, but she had never flown a chopper. It looked like great fun, and she talked to the pilot the entire time, even while he went through his preflight check, telling him of her love for flying.

  The young pilot beamed. He shared her love of the air.

  The inky sky was giving way to light the way a water- color painting gave way from one color to another, bleed­ing into one another, and on their way to the Grand Canyon, the sun was meeting them. Within the hour, Jes­sica and J.T. were treated to an aerial view of the colossal Hoover Dam, one of America's seven modern civil engi­neering wonders, on beautiful Lake Mead, the dam's res­ervoir, which equated to the largest man-made lake in America.

  Even from this height, Jessica saw that the dam dwarfed everything around it, even the mountainsides into which it nestled. Cars and trucks drove across its razorback high­ way, which capped the Great Pyramid scale of the dam.

  The pilot obviously spent more time flying tourists than marshals of the law, and he automatically explained what they were looking at. “Construction of the dam began in 1931, and the last concrete was poured two years ahead of schedule, in '35. Power plant wings were completed in '36, and the first generator began operating in October the same year. The seventeenth and final generator went into com­mercial operation in 1961.”

  Jessica and J.T. took it all in; the place inspired awe.

  Young Joseph Duncan, the pilot, continued to fill them in on the facts, as he'd long since memorized them. “Hoo­ver Dam represents a godsend for Colorado, Arizona, Ne­vada, and California for electricity, domestic water needs, irrigation, generation of low-cost hydroelectric power. It was named one of America's seven modem civil engi­neering wonders in 1994 by the American Society of Civil Engineers.”

  All Jessica knew was that it shone in the morning sun like some majestic giant's stone palace. She watched a lone bald eagle soar above the dam. The combined sight was breathtaking.

  The pilot spoiled the moment, informing them of the army of men and machines, and the years of toil, required to build the dam, finishing with a story about “those poor unfortunates who gave their lives in the mammoth under­taking, some having literally done so, as they are still en­tombed in the dam, having fallen in with the tons of concrete as it was poured... on various occasions.”

  J. T„ through his headset, replied, “I heard that was all a lot of nonsense, that no one died in that fashion, and no bodies are inside that colossal accumulation of rock and mortar.”

  The pilot shrugged before replying, “Ahhh, who's to say? But it's what we tell the tourists.”

  From there they flew over the fantastic beauty of the East Rim of the Grand Canyon, a wonderland of carved rock formations, tight and shadow, depth and distance through which trickled the dwarfed Colorado River. Jes­sica couldn't take her eyes from the sheer size of this mag­nificent geologic formation, doing so only when J.T. pointed out two enormous birds of prey flying low over the canyon below them.

  “Buzzards?” she asked.

  “California condors,” replied Duncan. “They released about nine or ten in the canyon last year, trying to make a comeback from extinction. Nobody's seen a sight like this in seventy years here at the canyon. Let's go in for a closer look, shall we?”

  Ignoring a new law that outlawed air traffic below the rim of the canyon, Joseph Duncan recklessly dove toward the condors, trying to mimic their natural flight, trying to keep up with them and at the same time keep from getting too near canyon outcroppings, walls, and floor. Once the condors disappeared from sight, he began to meander with the Colorado River instead.

  Jessica found the flight the most exhilarating experience of her life, while J.T. began to clutch at the sides of the seat he was in and to moan fearfully. The flight reminded her of a similar one, years and years before, through the Grand Cany
on of the Yellowstone in Wyoming, where she'd performed her first duty as a medical examiner in the field. It had been during the trip to the national park to get away from the stresses of her new job as assistant M.E. at Baltimore Memorial Hospital in Maryland. She was still very much the student of medicine in those days. Park authorities alerted to a death at one of the thousands of hot springs in Yellowstone, and learning of her pres­ence, asked her to come out and have a look at the body, which was in a remote area of the park. They'd had to helicopter to the location. It had proved also to be Jessica's first encounter with a murderer.

  But there was no time to tarry on memories or the beauty and grandeur of the Grand Canyon here in Arizona, and so they were soon raised again above the canyon rim, and in minutes the chopper whirred away from the beau­tiful sight of the great and enormous mother of all canyons.

  Warren had been right about the scenery. It was a reli­gious experience. Utterly and magnificently wild, as Yel­low stone had been. Since her visit to Yellowstone, Jessica had been a member of the National Parks and Conservation Association, the organization that published National Parks magazine and fought to keep wilderness areas wild. It was the lone voice fighting not only to keep the national parks for the people but also to keep them wild, because there was ever a hue and cry to develop park areas or to sell off mining or lumber rights to the highest bidder. Oth­ers wanted every possible hazard of the parks eliminated by boardwalks, guardrails, fences, signs, and signposts every few feet, despite the fact that every known and un­known hazard could never be completely eliminated by structures or regulations any more than traffic hazards could be eliminated from the L.A. superhighways.

  Now they were flying away from the Grand Canyon and straight over the famous Painted Desert of Arizona, where Navajo Indian hogans and circular patches of land marked the circle of the Navajo family unit, easily visible from the sky, where each isolated house stood. To Jessica's surprise, they weren't finished with the Grand Canyon just yet, for on the other side of the Painted Desert awaited the great and magnificent North Rim of the Grand Canyon.

  “This here's the northernmost section of the canyon,” Duncan explained, and from the air, this strange and beau­tiful place looked the part of a scarred alien landscape, another planet, its rainbow of hues like so many elusive patinas, each layer of the “mountains growing into the earth,” as Native Americans said of the canyon walls, painted by light and shadow, ever changing with each passing moment, each passing cloud.

  The sunrise here became a trumpet sound, a tolling bell, telling everyone on the ground to rush to the rim for sights that would never come again, for tomorrow's sights here would be different In a sense, the Grand Canyon equaled visible time. Looking across at the bands of sediment, one stood staring into the earth's history of aeons ago. It was no different from what astronomers said about looking back through time via their most powerful telescopes, but here the human eye had no need of any mechanical device to see into the shadowy beginnings of Earth's turbulent creation.

  Helicoptering was nothing like jetting about Jessica felt In a chopper, you floated, feeling like you were sitting on a moving platform or flying carpet, and in fact you were at the center of a big glass bubble from which you could view everything. The cockpit of an airplane had an entirely different feel. You could hardly see in all directions in a small plane; hell, you couldn't see over the dash in front of you in many models, and in a plane you glided down to earth, but not so in a bobbing helicopter. In a chopper you floated down to earth.

  While Jessica worked the radio to call ahead to local law enforcement people, the chopper now quickly de­scended. Decreasing altitude, the pilot deftly maneuvered the joystick, and they gently helicoptered down at Page, Arizona, the brilliant orange and yellow earth and the az­ure waters around Glen Canyon Dam winking up at them in the morning sun. The waters all around the hills and mountains here created a cerulean blue against the desert reds, a spectacular sight In fact, spectacular sights abounded here. In the distance, as they'd approached, Dun­can had pointed to the towering pinnacles of Monument Valley, a backdrop to seemingly every John Wayne West­ern.

  They had found Page's small business airport, where commercial helicopters and small jets flew sightseers over Lake Powell and Monument Valley for just under one hun­dred forty bucks. Here Jessica and J.T. were met by a local sheriffs car, transporting them within ten minutes to Wahweap Lodge and Marina, nestled amid Lake Powell's spiky inlets, the whole a man-made crater lake that had come into being with the building of Glen Canyon Dam.

  The lodge was extraordinary, and it was instantly ob­vious why so many boaters and vacationers gathered here; and out over the lake all manner of pleasure craft could be counted, from pontoons to speedboats and cruisers. The huge, multifaceted lake with its hidden fissures and miles- long fingers, having once been a land of rocky slopes, mountains, and crevasses, was now a favorite playground for water enthusiasts, as the great dam built on the Colo­rado River had created a vast lake here that had raised the water level, flooding the valleys here, burying below the waterline many sacred Native American pictographs and wall paintings in the trade-off, much to the chagrin, an­noyance, and anger of Native American activists, old- timers, and the ghosts of ancestors past.

  Jessica herself questioned the trade-off, wondering why the pictographs couldn't have at least been chiseled out and removed for display in a museum on the West some­where. But her main concern this morning at the lodge on the man-made lake was to catch a killer. Coming in view of the building where Mel Martin was murdered, she reached for her black valise and gripped it hard, girding herself for what she surely would find inside the lodge.

  EIGHT-

  Ruthless as the old devil gods of the world's first darkness.

  —Sir Phillips Gibbs

  As they approached the marina with its hundreds of scat­tered boats of various sizes—looking like so many birds perched atop the shimmering water—Jessica could see that Wahweap Lodge was of modem construction. Still, the colors and grounds were in keeping with the surroundings, making for a creamy blend of sand, brown, and earthy hues. It was a sprawling lodge, and it appeared filled to capacity, its vacationing horde of boaters and weekenders making the best of the heat by staying near the water.

  The drive to the lodge from the airport was quick and simple, and when they entered the main doorway into the lavishly furnished western decor of the lobby, Jessica's eyes went instantly to the extremely beautiful and lifelike portraits of Native Americans—men, women, and chil­dren—adorning the walls. The local artist or artists who'd captured these figures had brought them into sharp focus and rendered them extremely attractive. The walls were also hung with Western lore items, from bullwhips to taste­fully done Native American artifacts and art.

  She and J.T. had little time to glance about, however, for the night manager, held past his normal duty hours now, shakily introduced himself as Mr. Nathan Wood. The man looked as if he'd been pummeled and dragged over rocks from behind a pickup truck, and he, alongside the local sheriff's deputy who had acted as their chauffeur, directed them to the fire room, where two uniformed Ar­izona State patrolmen (Jessica liked to call them “pa- troopers,” as she did as a child) stood milling about.

  Jessica noticed a small cardboard box near one of the officers' feet. She let it go, peeking inside to where the body still lay waiting for her and J.T.'s arrival, untouched and unmoved. It was 5:55 a.m., and the Arizona sun rained in through half-open drapes, blinding Jessica to the amount of fire damage before her. It seemed the bathing sunlight was fast attempting to wash the fire-blackened room clean, softening its appearance, and in an elusive, illusionary way, it succeeded.

  “Protective wear,” Jessica said to J.T. as she snapped open her valise and snatched out a white linen lab coat, rubber gloves, and a face mask. She dabbed a bit of Vicks VapoRub below her nose to cut the smell of death.

  Stepping into the fire death room, a bump here against the bureau
, a grind there against the bedpost, and Jessica knew her clothes would be painted in fire grease had she not taken precautions.

  Two local FBI men and fire officials looked hard at Jes­sica and Thorpe; these men were expecting them and had remained, milling about, sipping coffee, curious about the new wave of FBI folk who'd been brought in, wondering why the doctors had come all the way from Vegas to be here. One of the two Arizona-Utah field agents looked to have taken charge, and he quickly stepped forward and offered J.T. his hand, explaining, “I'm Tom McEvetty. It was me and my partner, Kam—”

  The partner hustled nearer and with a hand as large as a griddle, awkwardly leaned over and almost fell atop the charred body on the bed as he poked his hand out, saying, “I'm Kaminsky, Ed Kaminsky, special agent, Mac's part­ner. Friends call me Kam.” Kam's gloved hand, dripping with goo, was still held out to Jessica after he'd taken J.T.'s handshake.

  Jessica finally took Kam's gloved hand in hers, and they shook with Mac looking on. “Nice to meet you both,” she assured the Arizona bureau men who'd hauled ass to get here from Flagstaff.

  Frowning at his partner, McEvetty continued, “Any­way, we responded to the call from Vegas to get up here from Flagstaff's soon as we could, but it's a long way from Flagstaff. We flew in, same as you. Your man in Vegas contacted local authorities, and those two fellas outside in uniform were the ones who rammed the door, but too late, I'm afraid.”

  The one called Kam took it from there, saying, “The patrolmen discovered the fire and the body, but no sign of your shadow man, this Phantom guy, save a sooty foot­print, which you might be interested in.”

  McEvetty, a large, bull of a man, shuffled his weight past Jessica and J.T. in the crunched space, and now he pointed to a large smudge on the light blue carpeting just outside the threshold, where a small cardboard box had been placed over the print, saying, “So's nobody can ac­cidentally smudge the print before it gets placed in a cast.”