Extreme Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

Bishop, exhausted from what appeared lack of sleep, dropped stone like into a chair beside J.T., who then con­tinued, “He's a killer of opportunity. He bides his time, seeking out the weakest to prey upon, someone lonely or despondent, someone alone, and he pounces.”

  “I follow you so far.”

  “Step out to the restaurant with me for a moment.”

  “I'm not hungry. Get on with it, Dr. Thorpe.”

  “Please, come along,” J.T. gently urged.

  Taking a narrow passageway, they came upon the dining area. It was dinnertime, especially for the bus tour crowd staying the night at the inn. “Notice how many of these people around you here at the inn, Bishop, are just that— vulnerable one way or another?”

  “They're mostly elderly people—couples, and in packs. What do you mean?”

  “Women alone, women traveling with their daughters, single women, single men in search of a mate along with their adventure into the wilderness parks. Sure, there are a lot of couples, but there are also the singles. Melvin Martin was a single man traveling alone, and now this Whitaker woman, a single woman traveling alone.”

  “Then the killer could still be at this lodge, camouflaged among the bus tour crowds,” suggested Bishop. “So, you and Jessica have concluded that he's traveling by bus, I see.”

  “How do you suppose he learned we—Jess, rather— was staying at Wahweap Lodge when he was here, killing again? He's following a bus route, and he has us marching to his drumbeat, and he knows it.”

  “Then he's thought this thing through thoroughly, hasn't he?”

  “We believe so. As you know, he's been baiting Jessica all along. The creep was milling around in Page while we were there, just... just to taunt us.”

  “Yes, Jessica feared her path and his might cross there.”

  “He knew enough to telephone her there, so he either saw her there or assumed she would follow him there....”

  “And if he assumed... Well, either way, he's as shrewd as he is psychotic. I got Jessica's wire, flew out to Page only to discover you had all rushed here.”

  Bishop's apt description of the Phantom as a shrewd psychotic recalled Mad Matt Matisak to mind, along with a host of other satanic killers whom Jessica had helped, either directly or indirectly, to put down or behind bars, and he wondered, as Repasi had, if the Phantom might not be someone with a long-ago grudge to settle with Jessica. He suggested this to Bishop, who quickly informed him that it was unlikely, since a thorough check of all former such opponents revealed no one missing from lockup.

  “But what if someone in lockup is holding the strings, telling this puppet what to do and say to terrify Jessica?”

  “Maybe... it's a possibility, but Quantico says no. And Santiva has taken measures to stop all communiques going out of federal asylums and federal prisons housing anyone who could conceivably hold a grudge against Jess.”

  “You should have seen Jessica last night after that bas­tard telephoned her again, Bishop. Mother wanted her to hear Eloise Whitaker's last screams.”

  “Lowlife-SOB-motherfreaking-rat-bastard.”

  “Yeah, my sentiments exacdy.”

  “Maybe it's possible then, at some point, he was at Wahweap Lodge in Page while you two were there,” sug­gested Bishop, imagining it

  “I suspect our paths crossed. The killer didn't have to wait there long, just long enough for the tour guide to round everyone up, minus Melvin Martin, of course, but then a check with Martin's tour bus company turned up no one traveling as Chris Lorentian, so Melvin may not've been a part of the same tour group as the one the killer is traveling with. Actually, as it happens, Melvin was trav­eling in exactly the opposite direction when their paths crossed. His tour was passing through the national parks from the north down on a journey for a destination south­west—for Vegas, in fact And the morning after Chris Lor­entian was killed? The hotel parking lot in Vegas was crammed full with touring buses.”

  “He made his escape from Vegas on a tour bus?” Bishop's shake of the head spoke volumes. “We had men watching the buses for anyone looking suspicious.”

  J.T. frowned, knowing it sounded somewhat ridiculous, but he replied, “What better way to blend in than to join a gaggle of tourists? And we never found Chris's credit cards or her purse. Besides, as the FBI profile says, this guy is so unremarkable as to be virtually invisible.”

  “And using a unisex name like Chris, I suppose the tour guide would have little reason to question his sex when he went to use that ticket” Bishop sent his balled fist down on a table, the noise startling everyone in the restaurant area.

  “Right” agreed J.T.

  “So, supposing they were both—killer and victim— touring with the same or similar bus tour companies,” sug­gested Bishop, warming now to the game of supposition they were playing, “they strike up a conversation, maybe have dinner together, and he slips his victim something in a drink....”

  “Just enough drugs to incapacitate. Then he goes up to the victim's room, concerned about the victim's pallor, which the bastard remarks upon at dinner,” added J.T.

  “And the rest, as they say, is smoke and history. Bishop's hard-set jaw began to quiver. “Cold, methodical bastard. Quite sure of what he wants, but I'll be damned if I know. Tell me what you know of this untapped phone call Jessica had from the creep at Wahweap Lodge.” J.T. wondered for a moment how Bishop knew the call had been untapped, but he mentally shrugged it off. There'd been no time for Jessica to place a tap on the phone. Bishop must have assumed as much.

  J.T. now launched into as detailed a description of the killer's last communique as he could muster. He told Bishop all that Jessica had revealed to him about the phone call, and he ended with the killer's professed reason for doing people: “In order to climb from Hell himself, or so he said.”

  “Nifty and the freshest excuse for murder I ever heard,” Bishop sarcastically replied.

  J.T. nodded. “The devil made me do it.”

  “In your search with the bus companies...” began Bishop.

  “Yeah?”

  “Did you ask after the name she'd registered under at the Hilton?”

  “My God. I'd forgotten. Chris Dunlap.”

  “Let's get back on the horn then.”

  They rushed back to the phone J.T. had left in the man­ager's office.

  J.T. and Bishop double-teamed the effort, and they tied up the phone lines out of Ruby Inn with the help of the cache of tour guides they'd rounded up, making phone calls to all the various bus companies working the national parks routes in Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Colorado, and Wyoming. They'd thought themselves clever by lim­iting themselves to the national parks tour packages in this area, since the trail of the killer appeared to be that of a tourist interested in the Grand Canyon, Glen Canyon Dam, Bryce Canyon, and the Zion area. They then narrowed their search to buses going to, through, or toward Salt Lake City, Utah, in the past twenty-four hours.

  The search proved frustrating, however. The bus dis­patchers they talked to were, to a person, reluctant to re­lease information over the phone without proof of Bishop's or J.T.'s credentials. The tour guides had far better luck, their voices and tour package numbers familiar to those within a given company.

  Further vexing Bishop and J.T., some of the bus com­pany records seemed in disarray, despite their systems' computerized promises.

  At one point J.T. found himself disappointed to the point of considering murder.

  Finally, after two and a half hours of nonsense, someone at the other end of the line said, “Yes, yes, sir... I do have a Chris Dunlap registered on our bus tour number thirteen fourteen, which is due into Salt Lake... ahhh, an hour and a half ago!”

  J.T. had to check which bus company he was now speaking to, he'd been on the phone with so many today. It was the Vision Quest bus line. One of their buses had almost run over Jessica that morning.

  “Thirteen fourteen? That's the number to identify the bus?” he asked. “No, no... that's
the tour group number. Bus number is sixtyyyyy... seven.”

  “License number? “Bus travels through sixteen states. Which license num­ber do you want, sir? Arizona, Nevada plates?”

  “Utah... Utah plates' U do.” The voice at the other end slowly enumerated each num­ber.

  “Where is the bus now? What lodge or hotel is it at?''

  “Salt Lake Hilton, downtown Salt Lake City, sir.”

  “Thank you, God, thank you.”

  “Sir, our safety record to date has been—”

  “Yes, yes, sterling, I'm sure. Thanks.” J.T. finally hung up on a call that had netted them useful information. He felt elated and grabbed the receiver back up to call Jessica, when he realized he had no way of reaching her. She'd managed to do exactly as she'd promised not to do: She was in the snake pit with this guy. She'd promised to con­tact J.T. here at the Ruby Inn, but so far she hadn't, and it was nearing dusk.

  He turned to Bishop, who'd been on another line close to him, but found Warren had disappeared. He went in search of Bishop to find him conferring in a shadowed vestibule between the hotel and the laundry room with Dr. Karl Repasi. J.T. at first assumed that Bishop was getting Repasi's take on the Eloise Whitaker murder when sud­denly he saw Bishop erupt in passion, shoving Repasi so hard the other man's weight sent him through the laundry room door, where he toppled to the floor and stayed there while Bishop pointed a dagger like, accusatory finger and swore at Repasi some unintelligible words.

  J.T. was pleased to see someone literally take Repasi to the cleaners. “All right!” J.T. said with a wide grin, feeling it served Repasi right.

  Not wanting Bishop to think him a snoop, J.T. stepped back from sight and waited to catch Bishop on his return to the manager's office. When Bishop did so, there was a slight pinkish-redness about his cheeks, giving his Bill Clinton look-alike features an even more Clinton-like look, but the square-shouldered Bishop remained otherwise un­ruffled. J.T. brought a smile to Bishop's face when he quickly unloaded his good news, saying, “Warren, I've got the whereabouts of the impostor Chris Dunlap.”

  Bishop's eyes widened like those of a predator. “Let me see that.” He grabbed J.T.'s notes from his hand and stared hard at the data. “I'm on the chopper to Salt Lake.”

  “I'm with you,” J.T. replied.

  “No, you've got to man a phone here and find out where Jessica is. Tell her to meet us at the Hilton, should she get in touch.”

  J.T. frowned and complained of being left back.

  “She'll need to hear this from you,” Bishop said, his large index finger on the notepad J.T. had been using.

  The frown remained on J.T.'s face as he watched Bishop disappear for the waiting helicopter where Bishop got on the radio, calling out the cavalry, J.T. assumed. In a moment, Bishop was lifting off into the sun-dappled sky and blood-red-and-orange rock formations of Bryce Canyon, the helicopter speeding toward Salt Lake.

  Checking with the various bus companies all this time had been annoying and frustrating, but having to sit here while Bishop raced off to become Jessica's hero was equally repulsive.

  FIFTEEN

  Whomever is abandoned by hope, has also been abandoned by fear; this is the meaning of the word “desperate.''

  —Arthur Schopenhauer

  Jessica had taken a room at the Little America Hotel and Towers at 500 South Main, in the heart of the hotel district in Salt Lake City. Little America, she was told, was one of the places on the tourist visit list, and many a bus tour stopped here. Maybe she'd get lucky, she hoped. The city's oldest landmark hotels populated this area as well, and all of the touring buses coming into the city found their way to the hotel district.

  Once settled into her room, Jessica made calls to local authorities and the FBI to alert them to the fact she was chasing a fugitive serial murderer on a kill spree, whom she believed to be in the area. The reaction from local authorities and the FBI was instantaneous. Undercover op­eratives were set up in all the major hotels, and police were placed on alert to back up the government men. This took time, but once this network had been established, Jessica got on the phone in search of J.T. and Warren Bishop. Unable to locate them immediately, she took the oppor­tunity to contact Eriq Santiva, to bring him up to date on the case.

  After she enumerated all developments and lamented the lack of progress until now, she assured Eriq that they were closer to a resolution than ever before, explaining that J.T. was researching the bus lines. “And as soon as we have the bus line he's using, we'll know where the Phantom is staying tonight,” she assured Santiva. “Then we move in on the bastard.”

  “Take all precautions, Jess. He sees you, he'll likely do anything to kill you. Wear a vest, hang back. Let the others do their work.”

  “I'll be happy to do just that.”

  Santiva replied, “Here, we've taken everything you've given us and put it into the hands of every medical expert and academician in the country who might have a clue, Jess.”

  “We've got a bit more of the puzzle pieces since the last time J.T. forwarded information, Eriq.”

  “Want to share?”

  She thought again of the killer's messages, and how they'd looked on paper, and she remembered J.T.'s having added that #5 would be #5. She thought it a peculiar nu­meric anomaly for the numbers to crisscross in such a fash­ion. She pictured the list in her mind, trying again to make some sense of it.

  “Well?” asked Santiva, becoming impatient.

  “Take this down,” she said, and fed the list to him, jotting it down again for herself on the hotel's stationery. It read:

  #1 is #9—Traitors

  #2 is #8—Malicious Frauds

  #3 is #7—Violents

  #4 is #6—Heretics

  #5 is #5— ?

  “Someone out there's got to know where this guy's coming from—or going to with all this,” she finished.

  “You think?” Eriq replied.

  “He said something about, I don't know, Satan's pit, dragging himself up from the pit and dragging me down into it. Something about the Devil's well. I'm paraphras­ing. I wasn't exactly in any mood to memorize his every line when he surprised me the other night with Eloise Whitaker's fire assassination.”

  “I can't imagine what you must be feeling about now, Jess. I'm coming out there to be with you. You need me there.”

  “No, no, Eriq. Bishop's close at hand, and I've got help here on all sides from our guys in Salt Lake. They're a little stiff, Mormons as well as FBI men, but they'll do.”

  “If you're sure, Jess.”

  “Anything on the handwriting, the prints, anything?”

  “He's wearing a pair of cheap sneakers with a Sonics logo on them.”

  “Sonics logo on the bottom of the heel? Hair burned off the back of his hands and forearms. Thanks.”

  “At the toe—big toe, actually. You get those shoes, we've got positive ID on that print taken at Page.”

  “Anything else? What about the two aliases he's used, Charon and Nessus?”

  “Sorry, but a check of VICAP files and several other listings brought up zip on the computers. Whoever he is, he's never been apprehended before as a violent offender.”

  “He's too methodical to not be a recidivist, Eriq,” she complained. “He's killed with fire before Chris Lorentian. I just know it. I know it in my bones.”

  “If he has, he may've gone straight into the asylum, bypassing criminal conviction, in which case we have nothing on him. We're running the prints through state and local institutions for the insane now, but so far—”

  “Nothing.” Her exasperation trailed her breath. If the killer had never gone through the court system and been convicted as criminally insane, then he would not be in a facility for the criminally insane, either state or federal. “Call me when you have something.”

  “Will do. Are you sure you have plenty of backup there?” he asked. Salt Lake FBI branch has me on their radar. They're looking out for me; been good to me,” she
lied, not wish­ing to tell him that she had informed Salt Lake of the situation but that she had not bodily joined forces with them, preferring to remain an independent part of the com­ing equation. So far as Salt Lake was concerned, the fugitive was theirs if they could surround him and tie the noose.

  Jessica feared nightfall, which was fast approaching. She feared he would strike again, close by, and she didn't know how to stop this shadow monster. She feared she'd be the first to know when he struck, that he would somehow know where to phone it in, like a cat with a prize to offer her, another dead body, #5 is #5.

  She began to strip away her clothes, stepping into the bathroom, turning on the shower, and getting under its soothing spray. While relaxing, she thought of James Parry and a paradise thousands of miles off. After showering, she returned to the phone and dialed Jim's home. It would be mid afternoon in Hawaii, and Jim might not be at home, but she needed to hear his voice, needed reassuring, needed to know that he still loved her.

  “Jessica? It's you. I've been worried about you; haven't been able to get in touch. You're on a manhunt. I talked to Bishop in Vegas. He gave me a number to reach you, but you'd already left.”

  “Jim, I just called so you wouldn't worry, but it's nice to know you do.”

  “I've missed you terribly.”

  “Me, too....”

  “Tell me exactly what's going on there, every detail,” he asked. “I'm given to understand that this bastard you're after has threatened you over the phone?”

  “It's a bit more complicated than threats,” she replied before launching into a detail-by-detail update on what had occurred since that first night in Las Vegas. Parry, stunned at the revelations and fearful for Jessica, remained silent for a long pause after she finished speak­ing. “Jessica, if I know my literature, that numbering of one through nine, and the words 'heretics”frauds,”trai­tors'—it all sounds a bit familiar, like the nine rungs of Hell in The Divine Comedy.”

  “The Divine Comedy. Are you sure?”