Extreme Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  She next turned off the light and stretched out on the bed. She feared the phone at her bedside, feared it might ring at any moment, feared the sound of another fire victim raging in her ear. But the last call made by the killer was to her at the Vegas Hilton. The killer had no way of know­ing she was here at Lake Powell. Just the same, she reached over and unplugged the damn thing. J.T. had been right. Why not? The peace of mind was worth it.

  She dreamily gave over her thoughts now to James Parry and Greece and their time there together. Soon she dozed and soon she fell into a deep and soul-soothing slumber.

  J.T. had made arrangements for the following morning, and now he and Jessica were flying back toward the South Rim of the Grand Canyon in a Cessna twin-engine along a route that took them zigzagging back from Page, follow­ing the course of the Colorado River until once again they were over the great chasm.

  The beauty of the magnificent canyon and its majestic size filled Jessica with emotions she'd thought long since lost. Something magical about the Grand Canyon created in the eye and the mind a religious feeling, a sense of wonder and awe at the spectacle created by nature and by God.

  “They say it'd be a great place to commit suicide,” muttered the old pilot of the plane, his whiskers white and brittle. “Say your family can get over your loss before you hit bottom, is what they say.” He laughed at the old local joke.

  During the flight, she and J.T. were treated to close inspection of the canyon walls when the seasoned pilot, learning who they were and what their mission was, took his light plane below the rim and deep into the canyon at Jessica's request. They now skimmed along the surface in the aged pilot's effort to please and impress Jessica with his agility and ability with the plane. Both pilot and crew knew that this sort of ride, along the river bottom, deep in the canyon, had long since been outlawed, and was against FAA regulations, but while J. T swallowed his teeth, Jes­sica loved every moment of the canyon up close and per­sonal. She could almost feel the spray of the water, they were so close to the surface.

  “Just imagine this place if you was one of Powell's crew, the first men to navigate the river from top to bot­tom,” said Pete Morgan, the pilot. “Now she's full of weekend rafters, playing at what Powell and his men did, hardly risking anything.”

  When they began the descent over the narrow landing strip at Yavapai East, they could see the small village atop the rim. Morgan pointed out each and labeled each for them: the ranger station with exhibits, Grand Canyon Vil­lage, the El Tovar, a handful of restaurants, bus and car parking lots, a train station complete with operating train on a small-gauge track running the length of the rim, carry­ing tourists whose legs had given out to and from the ho­tels. The airstrip was some distance from this setting, and so they continued their descent.

  On arrival, Jessica thanked the pilot for the wild and woolly ride, realizing that he'd been doing it most likely since he was a young man. They set down at the South Rim in a field just off Grand Canyon Village at Yavapai East, where the toot and whistle of the quaint little trolley- style railroad cars created a loop connecting the various lodges and hotels there. A car picked them up, the local sheriff's office seeing that they would be transported to the El Tovar, a rustic, beautifully situated hotel a towel's throw to the rim of the canyon. It was at the El Tovar that they both expected and feared discovery of the third victim, chronologically the second, #2 is #8, or so J.T. had surmised the night before, as per his doodling and as per classification by the mad killer, if this killing fit the MO.

  Sheriff Zack Colby, chewing tobacco as he spoke, wel­comed them to the area and drove them to the end of “The Rim,” as he called it, and they pulled to within inches of a grand porch leading them into the huge El Tovar Hotel. They were guided to the room where the most recent vic­tim had died, Jessica looking for signs of the killer, any­thing that fit his pattern. But the El Tovar, an enormous place with elegant dining room and gift shops, had acted quickly and had already arranged with a contractor to re­furbish the room to its original beauty—to wipe clean any hint of disagreeableness. Parts of the walls were already gone. The burning bed had been replaced by another intact bed. It was as if nothing untoward had happened there.

  “Why didn't the water sprinklers go off?” she asked, seeing the sprinkler was intact. “Or has it been repaired, too?”

  “It was found to be faulty. Something doing with the wiring,” said Sheriff Colby, raising his shoulders.

  “If you all here were so sure that the death was acci­dental, why did you call the FBI, Sheriff?”

  “I never called no FBI. FBI called us about six-forty yesterday mom.”

  “I see.” She recalled Bishop's note, the time of the Phantom's last call, and realized the killer had directed Bishop's move.

  J.T., searching about the room, announced, “Jess, there's no telephone in this room.”

  Jessica looked about. She had to agree. “Was there a phone in the room with the body?” asked Jessica. “Has that been removed, too?”

  The sheriff grabbed at his beard and shook his head. “No, never was any phone in the room. She didn't have a telephone in her room. Cost less for her that way.”

  J.T. took her aside and whispered, “Must've been frus­trating for him, Jess, not to be able to share with you at the time he wanted to. Couldn't put Flanders on the phone to beg for her life from you. Then he had to wait all day and all night to tell you about Flanders.”

  “Yeah, very inconsiderate of the victim and me, wouldn't you say?” she replied to J.T., then turned and spoke to Colby, asking, “Where was the killer's phone call to Vegas made from, then?”

  “I don't know nothing about that, but there's a public phone down in the lobby, which is being dusted for prints but that's kinda crazy since it's public, but the other rooms have phones in them. The killer, if there was a killer here, coulda called from another room, his room, if he had a room here, if there was a killer, that is.”

  Jessica bit her tongue before saying, “Believe me, she was murdered. Sheriff. Look, tell me why didn't Flanders have a phone in here.”

  “It's just that folks who work here don't get 'em, you see.”

  “What time of day or night was the body discovered?” asked J.T.

  “Just after the lunch crowd was thinning out. She com­plained of not feeling well, cramps, I'm told, so she was going to lie down till the evening dinner rush and come back on duty.”

  “Anyone see her with a man?” J.T. continued to in­terrogate the sheriff.

  “No, just the usual customer-waitress cuttin' up, you know.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Well, Muriel was a flirt, they tell me. Some say she was after a man, any man.”

  J.T. nodded at this and asked, “Were there any signs of booze in the room?”

  “Couple of empty beer cans, yeah.”

  “And I'm sure the cans are history now, too.” Jessica stepped between J.T. and Colby, asking, “Any pictures taken of the scene before it was broken down, Sheriff?”

  “Thought you'd want to see how it looked, so I brought 'em,” he replied with a mild show of pride, spreading them along the small bureau, which did not have a mirror. Jessica guessed that the mirror, too, was being replaced.

  Jessica and J.T. studied the crime scene photos, taking their time while the sheriff made comments. “We took it as accidental, you see. Had no reason to suspect murder. Firemen thought it accidental, or possibly a suicide, but nobody thought it homicide, no. Not at the time.”

  The photos were not up to standard, most of them too dark, making Jessica squint over each.

  J.T. questioned, “Hard to tell much from these photos. Was she found nude?”

  “Yes, sir.” Colby's grimace was a sign of his embar­rassment and hurt by the entire sordid affair. “She was. Things like this, murder and burning up a woman's body... things like this just don't happen around here.”

  “And her clothes, were they burned along with her?” pressed J.T.r />
  “That's right.” Colby's face lit with surprise at J.T.'s magical knowledge.

  “Tucked on either side of her?” J.T. continued to amaze.

  “Yes, sir, they were.”

  “Any odor of gasoline?” asked Jessica.

  “None so's it was noticeable, no, but I'm no fire expert neither....”

  Jessica came upon a photo of the mirror in the bath­room. “The words written on the mirror were in the bath­room?”

  “Across the medicine cabinet, yes.”

  “Hard to decipher from the photograph,” she said, but the pinched lettering read: “#2 is #8—Malicious Frauds.”

  “It's him, all right,” she announced. “Look at this, J.T.”

  “That'd be my guess,” he replied on seeing the photo.

  “We'll want to interview the house staff and authorities, including fire personnel who saw the scene before the body was removed, before the clean-up when the writing on the mirror still smelled of animal fat,” she informed Colby.

  Colby's flexible features contorted into confusion now. He repeated her words, “ 'Animal fat'?” Then he quickly added, “Yes, ma'am, ahhh, Doctor.” And where can we find the bed and the body now?”

  “Body's still at the hospital morgue, some thirty miles away, in a freezer, but the bed, well, it's six feet under.”

  “Six feet under?”

  “Somewhere out at the landfill. No way to retrieve it.”

  Jessica gritted her teeth, saying, “Where there's a back- hoe, there's a way.”

  J.T. joked, “You want to exhume a mattress and box spring?”

  “Maybe that'd be a little over the top, huh?” she asked. J.T. laughed. “Yeah, Jess, just a bit.”

  They were about to leave when Jessica noticed that the carpet was dirty with grime brought in on shoes. “The carpet hasn't been replaced,” she said. “Let's take a sec­tion from near the bed, have it analyzed for accelerants.” Jessica went to the spot she felt most likely helpful, and taking out a marker from her valise, she created a square some two by two feet where a fire bum had taken out a chunk of carpet now hidden by the new bed. Apparently the owners hadn't been able to get in new carpeting as quickly as everything else.

  “Get someone with a carpet cutter to take this square out,” Jessica was saying when she noticed a scorched, barely recognizable piece of paper just below the bed. “What's this?” she asked no one in particular.

  The two men came closer to watch her dig out her tweezers. Using the tweezers, she lifted the crumpled fleck of blackened paper residue and gently slipped it into a plastic bag, also taken from her valise. The paper measured only a few centimeters.

  “What is it?” asked Colby.

  “Something overlooked by both authorities and the maids. It may've come from the killer, and it appears to be what's left of a negative.”

  “A negative?” asked J. T„ leaning in for a closer look.

  “Could be from our photo guy. He's a mite careless,” suggested Colby.

  “Seems everyone hereabouts is a mite careless,” Jessica sarcastically added. “What kind of camera was your guy using?”

  “Minolta, thirty-five millimeters.”

  “Then this isn't from his camera, I can assure you. It's from an Instamatic.”

  “You mean he—the killer—takes pictures of them as they bum?” asked J.T.

  Again Colby winced. “That's disgusting.”

  J.T. put a hand on Jessica's shoulder and he leaned in near her, saying, “We need to do a quick check, make sure no one, including insurance agents, has been in the room for photos using a cheap Polaroid with self- developing film.”

  “No—don't you see, J.T.? This film was in the fire. Proving it was here when she died,” Jessica assured her friend.

  “We don't have sophisticated enough equipment here to determine what that fleck of paper means,” Colby as­sured them.

  “We'll send it back to Quantico for analysis,” J.T. in­formed Colby, and on closer inspection, both she and J.T. felt certain that it represented a remnant of a burning neg­ative from a Polaroid camera, likely belonging to the killer.

  Jessica stared at the clue as if it could speak to her.

  Outside, in the hallway, Jessica took J.T. aside and said, “It's no accident, his leaving this trail of bread crumbs, here the film, there the footprint.”

  “Yeah, it's as if he wants to be found and stopped, isn't it?”

  “Not an unusual subconscious wish among serial kill­ers, but this time it does appear he consciously wants to see me eye to eye.”

  “Jess,” warned J.T. in a guttural moan, “don't you dare.”

  “I have no intention of having tea with this bastard.”

  “Is that a promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “I'll hold you to it.”

  “Make sure you do.”

  Interviews with the firefighters, followed by questioning everyone who worked with Muriel Flanders, put together the portrait of a lonely, matronly woman, a woman not without a temper and flaring malice at times, a heavy chain-smoker, but hardly a fraud. Jessica began to realize that the killer knew next to nothing about his victims save their vulnerability.

  She and J.T. discussed this aspect of the murderer while en route to the hospital where the remains of Muriel Flan­ders lay waiting for them. Outside the car windows, the spectacular views of the South Rim of the Grand Canyon winked and smiled at them as the sheriff's car sped along the winding road that hugged the cliffs. All along their route, tourists in cars, vans, and buses crowded in at the overlooks to experience the vistas here.

  “I know now that he selects them on the way they carry themselves: troubled, shy, unfocused, confused, weak- looking, vulnerable people. And he labels them whatever his fevered mind imagines them to be by some bizarre scale known only in his fevered brain.”

  “And he's a poor-assed judge of character,” added J.T.

  “He just wants them to fit some preset notion—his agenda, if you will, this numbers game of his, this whole number one is number nine thing, calling Chris Lorentian a traitor, this one a fraud, old Martin a violent person when in fact none of them fit his bullshit.”

  “Agreed,” replied J.T. “Hell, one was a runaway barely out of her teens and the other a worn-out waitress who was in a dead-end situation.”

  “The third a lonely old man.”

  “Just a lonely soul.”

  “But this psycho brands the man a violent person. You see just how screwed up this creep is?'' “Projecting.”

  “What?”

  “What shrinks call projecting. The killer may be pro­jecting his own deficient character traits onto his victims, you see?”

  “You're getting good at this, J.T.,” she replied. “Maybe you have something there.”

  They rode in silence for a moment, each with his or her own thoughts until Jessica said, “Back at the El Tovar, he didn't know there'd be no telephone in the room, but by the time he realized this, he was already too far along to start over. And if he did her during a lunchtime break, he didn't have a lot of time.”

  J.T. swallowed hard, his eyes rolling back in his head. “It's fairly obvious that he's got a time line and a quota to fill.”

  “Maybe... maybe he does. Kim Desinor called it a twisted religious quest of some sort.”

  “Maybe the body will tell us more,” J.T. hopefully replied.

  They were soon at the morgue, and the body was pre­pared for them. The autopsy was like deju vu. Jessica kept wanting to say, “Didn't I just do this yesterday?”

  After an exhausting four hours over the charred remains of Muriel Flanders, Jessica and J.T. learned that J.T. was right, that the second victim wasn't Mel Martin but this poor waitress at the El Tovar Hotel in whose room was scrawled—as they pieced it together—this message:

  #2 is #8—Malicious Frauds

  After the autopsy, J.T., his eyes like slits, asked, “What's our next move, Jess?”

  “We fly
back to Lake Powell.”

  “Glen Canyon? Why?”

  She went to a map on the wall depicting the western states, including the Grand Canyon and the areas they'd been since leaving Vegas. Using her finger, she mapped out the killer's route thus far. “He took off from Vegas for here, the Grand Canyon, killed number two here, and went from here to Glen Canyon, where he did number three. There are no connections whatsoever among the vic­tims, right?”

  “Correct, none that we've found, no—”

  “Then the only common thread we have is his route, the direction he is going in. He didn't double back on us to do Muriel—”

  “Flanders, right,” J.T. said as he followed along.

  “He didn't double back; he did her just as the numbers imply, as number two. Now we need to determine where he will strike next... before he does number four.”

  “How're we going to do that?”

  “I'm not sure, but I know we have to get back to Glen Canyon as our starting point.”

  J.T. considered her logic, staring up at the wall map. “Okay, then, I'm with you.” The killer's route so far had taken them farther and farther from Las Vegas. J.T. put his hands together in the prayer position and said, “Let's do it. We've got to stay on his trail.”

  They taxied out to the airfield, allowing Sheriff Colby to get back to his normal routine, and at the airfield, they argued. Jessica wanted to fly back with the old Pete Mor­gan, who'd so thrilled them earlier, while J.T. had pointed out a pilot who looked young enough to be his son. Jessica won the argument and they flew back to Lake Powell and Glen Canyon in rip-roaring fashion, the old man giving them a little extra time in the air by flying out to Monu­ment Valley, telling them how he'd once flown over a John Wayne set, ruining a John Ford shot in a film called She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. “I was just a pup kid at the time,” he finished with a faraway glint in his eyes.

  “God, you've got to be ancient,” moaned J.T. from the backseat before he buried himself in the information they had amassed on the killer thus far. He'd rather do this than look out at the beautiful scenery at the speed they were going low over the incredible valley. Instead, he penciled in the missing words on the notepad he'd shown Jessica the day before. With this added to his notes on the killer's messages, his collection now read: