Extreme Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  What caused the change? I wonder. Who are they? Bishop's people, Harry Furth?”

  “It was Bishop himself I heard from, Western Union. Apparently they've had trouble reaching us. I think he thinks we're at this Grand Canyon Village on the South Rim by now.”

  Jessica felt somewhat relieved in that she hadn't had to hear—audibly live—the death of this third victim, at a remote hotel on the rim of the Grand Canyon. “So... was there a message on the mirror?” she asked, finishing her drink in a single gulp now.

  J.T. gritted his teeth before replying, “Wiped clean by someone at the scene, but someone remembers numbers and the single word 'Fraud,' somebody else is saying 'Malice.' But the local guys chalked it up to the victim's own sorta suicide note, you see.”

  “How long have you known about this?”

  “I didn't learn any of this before sending out our second crime-scene photos and message to Quantico when I asked it be duplicated and forwarded on to our contacts across the country. When I got back to the hotel, someone handed me the message at the desk. Did you check your mes­sages?”

  “No, no, I haven't.”

  “But at the time I got back to Santiva, my report to him went out before I learned of this news, so, well—”

  “And so what do we know, J.T.? Damn little.”

  “Do you want to get over to the canyon? It's a few hours' drive, forty minutes or less by chopper.”

  “Hand me that map of the area you've been going over,” she asked.

  J.T. produced the tourist map he'd picked up at the hotel desk, opened it, and spread it before her, its colorful backdrop showing all the national parks and must-see points in Arizona and Utah.

  “Bastard's leaving a hell of a winding trail, don't you think?” she asked, taking J.T.'s pen and marking each of the three locations on the map where murder by fire had occurred, asking J.T. to help locate the South Rim and Grand Canyon Village for her. Together, they stared at the zigzag trail of bodies left in the killer's wake.

  “Tomorrow morning, by air,” she told Thorpe. “Right now, I'm exhausted. Can hardly see straight.” Still, she asked, “What do we know of the victim?”

  “White female, late thirties. Nothing like Chris Loren­tian or Martin, I'm afraid.”

  “Doing a victim profile on this one appears hopeless.”

  “The victims are as different as night and day.”

  “Tell me this: Was the woman vacationing at the lodge? I suppose so. Why else be there?”

  J.T. sipped his drink and shook his head. “Fact is, she was employed at the lodge, a waitress. Lived in the unit for free during peak seasons.”

  “Damn, but there's precious little to tie the victims to one another.”

  “The woman led a quiet life, only vice a pack-a-day smoking habit.”

  “And the locals chalked the fire up to her habit, too?”

  J.T. shrugged. “Fire guys up that way didn't take as much care, not suspecting murder. . . Something about their one good investigator off to a confab someplace at the time, and they claim to have lost one of their last two fire-sniffing dogs to the canyon and the other to govern­ment cutbacks. The usual excuses for screwing up.”

  “Guess we can thank Newt and the new American at­titude toward responsible behavior for that.”

  “Tell you what, Jess, let's order dinner on that boat they have cruising the lake, have a peaceful evening. Get all this off our minds for a while.”

  “You're on,” she instantly agreed. “It's a date.”

  Dinner served on the lodge paddle wheeler, which went in a large circle around Lake Powell, was a delight, and with their steak and seafood dinners, they watched the sun go down in the western sky. Afterward they walked lazily back up to the lodge from the marina along a winding wharf, Jessica mentally counting the stars in the black fir­mament overhead. “You look much better, Jess. Relaxed! I know I am,” J.T. remarked, squeezing her hand.

  “Thanks, yeah, much better. Nothing like a little R and R for the soul. Now for some sleep,” Jessica agreed.

  They weaved their way through a clutch of revelers re­luctant to part for anyone, all crowded in the small lobby where the hotel clerk, seeing her, waved Jessica over. “You have a package that arrived earlier. I tried to locate you, but you were out.”

  It looked to be “business as usual” in the lodge, as if the fire of this morning had never occurred here.

  “Thank you,” she replied to the clerk, taking hold of the package rushed to her from Santiva in Quantico. A second sealed envelope, this one Western Union from Warren Bishop, was also handed her.

  Soon she and J.T. located Jessica's room, where she said good night, but at the last J.T. voiced his concern for her. “I heard that you and Repasi had something of a showdown in the autopsy room. Told ya the man's an odd duck, a weird act.”

  “Did you hear that he accused me of being in collusion with the killer, that this was all prearranged as some sort of publicity stunt? That I'm rabid for tabloid press cov­erage and will do anything to get it? Is that crazy or what?”

  “Just crazy enough to show up in the tabloids, Jess,” he joked, poking her with a relaxed fist to her shoulder.

  “I can't figure his game,” she admitted, leaning against her doorjamb.

  “Easy,” he replied. “It's Karl Repasi who wants to be in the tabloids. Remember, he's always writing a book, and publicity—any publicity, good, bad, or indifferent— sells books.”

  “I suppose you're right. I just couldn't believe his gall, the way he attacked me. Really, John, have I become that much the... the celebrity that it's gotten in the way of my being capable of doing my job?”

  “That's nonsense, Jess.”

  “Say it like you mean it, John.”

  “I do mean it!”

  “Once more with conviction!” Now she teased him.

  “I'm too exhausted to muster conviction for much, sorry, the day your professional ability is compromised by anything—anything whatsoever—Jess... well, I know you well enough, Dr. Coran, that that's the day you step away from this work.” She dropped her sleepy-eyed gaze, finished with having put J.T. on the spot, through with scrutinizing his reaction down to the least tick. “Thanks, J.T. You're a friend, a true friend. I have very few of you left, you know.”

  “Nonsense.” J.T. pointed to the mail in her hands. “You're not going over that stuff tonight, are you? You're far too exhausted.”

  “No, nothing more tonight,” she promised. “And yes, I am tired.”

  “How are you really doing, Jess? I mean, well, I know this maniac's got to you.”

  “I'm holding up,” she assured him, thinking, but barely...

  J.T. gritted his teeth and said, “And Karl Repasi's only making it more difficult for you.”

  “Leave Repasi to me, okay. I don't want to hear that you two've gotten into a fistfight behind the barn over my honor, J.T. Is that clear?”

  “All clear, Doctor.... All clear.”

  “I know it sounds crazy, J.T., but you know what I fear the most tonight?”

  “Your telephone, I would imagine.”

  She nodded. “Exactly. Crazy, isn't it? I mean, he can't possibly know I'm staying here tonight, yet.”

  “If it bothers you, unplug the damned thing.”

  “Unplug the phone? If I do that, I cut myself off from Quantico, from Bishop, everyone. No, I can't do that.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “It's not done in our profession.”

  “It's time you started thinking of yourself, Jess, and to hell with our profession.”

  She smiled back at J.T., saying, “Maybe you're right. Maybe I'll do just that, and thanks, John.”

  “What for?”

  “For being a friend.”

  TWELVE

  Woman is like your shadow: Follow her, she flies; fly from her, she follows.

  —SfiBASTIEN R. N. CHAMFORT

  Unable to sleep, her mind returning again to Karl Repasi's o
utrageous suggestions, Jessica wondered how many other less informed, less educated people in and out of her pro­fession had begun to see things through the same distorted mirror as Repasi. Certainly, Karl had always been eccen­tric, an odd practitioner even for an M.E., but she could not fathom how he had arrived at such warped assumptions and conclusions. Then again, of late, anyone connected with the FBI, or the U.S. government in any way, shape, or form, had become targets for all the paranoia free- floating about American society, from UFO freaks, delu­sional fringe groups, and the man on the street, thanks in large measure to Hollywood's portrayal of government cover-ups, particularly in hiding UFOs and alien bodies, genetic experiments, and covert operatives working under the cloak of the U.S. flag; all this had become a battle cry for the fringe element and the fanatic alike. And why not exploit this uniquely American mass paranoia with such blockbuster, billion-dollar productions as now decorated the marquees of every movie theater in the land?

  Jessica sadly realized that for many she'd become a scapegoat. Americans and people in general needed scape­goats and villains, people to point at and call less than holy, less than human, less than themselves, to point a finger at people capable of ignoring the rules all good Americans lived by.

  Hollywood had lost many of its favorite villains, the threat of Russians overrunning America long gone, the German Nazis a thing of the past, now considered histor­ical fiction by many young people, as if the Holocaust were a staged event for propaganda. Where better to place today's villain than squarely beneath the cloak of govern­ment, despite the fact that the U.S. government was made up of people just like all other citizens of the country, people who wanted white-picket fences around suburban homes in which to raise happy, healthy children? But now­adays Americans were drowning in their own paranoia, unable to see that the true villains, criminal-minded adults, were created out of Nazi like, Gestapo like upbringings, born to parents who abused children in cruel and torturous ways.

  American mass paranoia had begun long before Waco, Ruby Ridge, and Oklahoma City. And to a certain extent, healthy paranoia, cynicism, and distrust of British authority had created the republic that was America. Cynicism formed the roots of democracy. Without it, there would be no America, a nation conceived in liberty, justice for all, and skepticism of authority.

  Still, Jessica felt shocked to her core when an audience in a movie house applauded at the sight of the White House being blown away by alien invaders. She felt a wave of revulsion that films were now glamorizing such violent acts directed at the core of the nation and its sym­bols.

  Jessica wondered at what juncture healthy criticism of the government became a bitter expression of futility, threatening to destroy all social fabric and the body politic. Popular fiction and movies of late had recently taken peo­ple into a chaotic landscape, displaying the American in­ability to sort out good from evil. Yet films and popular books only mirrored what was out there, what free-floated about in the ether of a place. The root causes of the par­anoia didn't burst forth from film or the writings of horror and science fiction novelists, but from the collective soul.

  Jessica knew that ill feelings toward government and government agencies were in the popular mind long before they were in the Hollywood pipeline, long before Holly­wood embraced such scripts, before such incidents as Ruby Ridge—and that they'd grown to epidemic proportions, poisoning minds, especially those of the nation's youth, since Watergate.

  Now Waco and Ruby Ridge had convinced thousands of thousands in the land that they lived under the rule of a government capable of blowing up a busy office building in the middle of a thriving middle-American city, a build­ing housing men, women and children, for the sole purpose of getting an upper hand on the National Rifle Association. That the Oklahoma bombing was a “black ops” move in order that the president and “God Government” might point a finger at some unfortunate and beleaguered militia groups, members of which were being crucified in federal “monkey” courts where the evidence meant nothing; where defendants were railroaded to the gas chamber, as if everyone in America now lived under a pre-World War II Japanese military regime. And why would the U.S. gov­ernment have planned and carried out the bombing of Oklahoma City's federal building? According to many a teen-on-the-street interview, the simple answer was as a show of force and power over those who dared question the president, his agenda or cabinet members, Congress or the House of Representatives, the CIA, FBI, FDA, ATF, FAA, NASA, the Centers for Disease Control, the U.S. Postal Service, the governors of every state, the mayors, the courts, the cops, and meter maids.

  If you wore a badge of government at any level, you were suspect nowadays. And while writers and producers of paranoia-laden story lines only perpetuated the idea that everyone in government was for sale or had malicious in­tentions, Repasi remained right about one thing: Half- truths were good enough for the average reader who invested in a tabloid at the grocery counter.

  Unable to sleep, Jessica tried to put Repasi and his spe­cific paranoia out of her mind, and to help do so, she found herself drawn to Bishop's Western Union and the infor­mation packet that had arrived from Santiva in Quantico. She ripped open the message from Bishop, knowing what it must be, and she read:

  Phantom has left another body at El Tovar Hotel,

  Grand Canyon Village, Yavapai East. Killer

  made phone contact with your stand-in.

  Call was placed 6:09 a.m. this morning and was caught on tape.

  Urgent you contact me ASAP.

  Chief Warren Bishop

  The message was damnably brief, saying nothing of where the phone call from the killer had originated. One good thing, Jessica gratefully thought, at least the bastard still thinks I'm at the Hilton in Vegas.

  She put Warren's message aside and next took up San­tiva's larger packet, spilling out its contents across the little table below the light. Santiva and the Behavioral Science Unit were as thorough as they could be with what little they had to go on, resulting in a less than detailed report on the suspect's profile. The unit had determined that the killer operated under a psychotic delusion involving a lust need for fire, that he was on some bizarre high and on an unknown quest, having a religious source, like some myth­ical archetype journeying deep into the belly of the beast to slay his personal demons. The report said that he was a thin, unremarkable, and unimpressive character with little to recommend him save the fact he appeared non threatening.

  “Tell me something I don't already know,” Jessica moaned in response to her reading of the profile thus far.

  He likely lives alone, the report went on to say, or with one or more of his parents, if not a wife who generally leaves him alone for hours at a time and seldom if ever questions his comings and goings. He is likely a native of the Vegas area, or has lived there long enough to know it intimately. He likely works at menial jobs he considers far below his abilities and talents. He has an IQ higher than the norm, but he has major psychological complexes and psychotic episodes. He is highly organized and controlled in his dealings with victims, whom he selects randomly or due to some similarity in their dress or manner.

  “All standard and par for the course,” she muttered, “but it doesn't fit this guy. He hasn't remained in Vegas. He's come here, to Arizona, and his victims have nothing in common.”

  She realized that the Quantico unit had to feel they were working blind with the woefully insufficient information sent them. They simply didn't know enough about the Page, Arizona, killing, and they knew nothing whatsoever of the Grand Canyon murder. All they had at the time was information relative to Chris Lorentian's murder.

  As a result, for the moment, the BSU profile was as much guesswork as was psychic Dr. Kim Desinor's added remarks on the killer. In longhand, she appended a note to tell Jessica her vision or version of the killer.

  Your killer is male, most certainly, and has fix­ated

  on you, Jessica, for some reason having to do

  with a twi
sted religious search on the order

  of a crusade. The voice or voices in his head are

  directing him, but he is also a willing accom­plice,

  because he expects a great reward for what he has done,

  and on a primal level he is rewarded via the suffering he inflicts

  on his victims. On a primal plane, he enjoys both the fire

  and the burning flesh. He puts his hands into the fire to feel the burning flesh.

  His hands will be dark­ened and hairless when you find him.

  The killer is unremarkable in and of himself,

  but the voices directing him have made him dangerous.

  He feels he has the power of gods behind him.

  Out­wardly, he appears harmless and infinitely for­gettable,

  while inwardly, he means to make history on the magnitude

  of an Oswald or a Manson.

  All my best,

  Kim Desinor

  Jessica knew she could not ignore Kim Desinor's psy­chic sense. No one at the BSU group—indeed, no one at Quantico—knew that the killer was using his finger as a pen and his victims' burned bodily fluids as his ink. De­sinor's psychic sense had saved Jessica's life in the past. “Fire-blackened, hairless hands,” she said to herself. “Too bad we didn't have that bit of information when questioning the bus passengers this morning.” But there were other buses, literally hundreds coming and going along the national parks route. Could one of them be carry­ing a killer? she wondered.

  As for the killer's teasing messages, to date, no one had a clue about what the killer's messages, left at the scene of each crime, might possibly mean. Cryptologists in the documents department continued in their attempts to de­cipher the code but offered no hope at this time as to what it referred to, or where it might have come from other than the rantings of a maniac mind.

  “No hope at this time,” Jessica repeated to herself.