Jessica's mouth had gaped open with her thoughts.
“Well, Dr. Coran?” pushed Gallagher.
“Let her be,” snapped Thorpe.
Jessica said, “Someone here must've seen what happened to Dorphmann!”
“He's resting comfortably in Hellsmouth,” pronounced Corey Rideout over Santiva's and Gallagher's considerable shoulders. “Isn't that right, Dr. Coran?”
Karl Repasi came into Jessica's line of vision, and she heard him ask, “Is that right, Dr. Coran?”
Jessica's eyes lit up, and she reached out with her half- bandaged right hand, the bandage like a spectral gauze peeling from a mummy, laden as it was now with the sulfur-filled, phantasm-like breezes here. She pointed to Rideout, asking, “Then you saw him die?”
Everyone turned to Rideout for an answer. He'd been ahead of the other men with his high-powered rifle, in search of the killer and first to hear Jessica's distressed cries, and first to find Jessica here. It had been Rideout who had lifted her onto the boardwalk with the help of other rangers.
“Well?” asked Santiva, “Did you see the man drown in that?” He pointed to the boiling, steaming water alongside the boardwalk. Rideout had their attention, including Jessica's. His answer must corroborate her story. It meant at least a second witness to the man's final demise, that she would not be alone in that judgment, as she had been alone all along with the man's evil phone calls.
“Well, no, I didn't exactly see him go down, no... but I sure heard his screams, screams straight outta Hell. All the rangers and savages with me—park employees, I mean—they all heard him, too, didn't you, boys?”
A wave of agreement went up among the rangers and park employees, known in Yellowstone parlance as savages.
“He tried to drag me into Hell with him,” she explained. “Had some idea that an exchange would be made, that his soul would be set free for mine. It was some supernatural message he'd received from the ruler of Hades himself.”
“Satan himself wanted a go at you, heh, Dr. Coran?” asked Repasi. “That should play big in the press.”
“Shut up, Karl!” shouted J.T., losing control. “One more word from you and I'll knock your lights out.”
Repasi ignored J.T., continuing with, “You must admit, Jessica, your ahhh... relationship with this fiend is big news. The National Enquirer's gotten hold of it.”
“And how much did they pay you for it, Karl?” snapped Santiva.
“Damn you, Repasi,” J.T. exploded, gaining his feet and shoving the other man away from Jessica. “Go chew on somebody else's bones.” When J.T. returned to Jessica, continuing to minister to her medical needs, he said to her, “Karl's rantings can't be taken any more seriously than those of that madman Dorphmann.”
Repasi called out, “I never meant to imply for one moment that Jessica was the root cause either of this man's obsession or the god-awful acts he has committed in the name of that obsession.”
“Well, thank you for that,” replied Jessica, but she didn't believe Karl was here in the interest of mending fences.
Gallagher quickly agreed with Repasi's last words. “Dr. Repasi is absolutely correct, Dr. Coran. Listen to him.”
“Thank you, gentlemen,” she replied. “Whatever the truth, we may never know, not completely. All the same, I'm just glad that we've been able to put an end to this madness.”
“But did we?” asked Repasi. “Or did Dorphmann end it?”
“Either way, it's over,” Jessica countered. “Thank God.”
“Whose god, yours or Dorphmann's?”
“Goddamn you, Repasi,” said J.T. “I mean, it! Shut up!”
Around them, the park was coming awake, into the light of a new dawn. There was a softness to the light as it filtered in among the steam pools here, like a scene filmed through a filter, Jessica thought.
“Dorphmann was a raving lunatic, a madman,” muttered Santiva. “No doubt his god was also a lunatic.”
“A lunatic god,” muttered Repasi. “Very good, Agent Santiva.”
Eriq ignored Repasi and spoke directly to Jessica. “We'll have the pool dredged now that light is coming on. We'll recover the body.”
“Maybe the skeletal remains, the bone and teeth,” she replied, “but nothing else.”
J.T. quickly added, “We have the bastard's dental records. We'll ID him.”
“Problem is, sometimes these pools don't give back anything of a person who's fallen victim to 'em,” said Rideout. “We might get lucky, maybe in a few days, what little remains of the man might rise to the surface, maybe not.”
“Just hafta wait and see's all,” added one of the rangers standing by. How's Sam Fronval?” asked Jess.
“Hold still, Jess,” complained J.T. as he continued bandaging her hands. “Both your hands are badly scalded. It's going to be a while before you wield a scalpel again.”
“How bad, J.T.? How bad is Fronval?”
The ranger in charge replied, “Sam's a tough ol' bird. From what everyone could tell, he's going to be all right. The medics took him on down to Mammoth, to the hospital there. He was sittin' up and cursin' when they hauled his ornery ass off.”
This made for an eruption of laughter from all those who knew Sam.
“I'm more worried about your bums, Jess,” J.T. told her.
Jessica considered her injuries. “I don't feel any pain. How bad off can I be?”
“You will,” he replied.
Her eyes implored him for the truth.
“Don't worry. Like I said, it'll take some time, but you'll heal. Your ankles and feet aren't quite so badly burned. You must have had quite a struggle with that maniac. I can't believe you got so close!” He was angry with her. “Can't believe you let him get his hands on you. Damn you, Jess.” J.T. was near to tears, and to combat them, he finished off the bandages about her feet and ankles, shouting orders to the rangers to get a stretcher out to them and to have an ambulance waiting, that he wanted Dr. Coran transported to the nearest bum facility.
“That'd be Mammoth hospital, over to Mammoth,” said Rideout. “We don't need to wait for assistance. I'll take her in my bird.”
Jessica felt herself being lifted in the hands of her pallbearers, but these pallbearers were carrying her away from the death that Dorphmann and his Devil had planned for her, Gallagher, Repasi, J.T., Santiva, and Rideout, all fussing for the privilege to help her away from the grave. She closed her eyes, exhaustion settling in over her, and she blacked out.
EPILOGUE
Fire is an event, not an element.
—Stephen Pyne
Later, at Old Faithful Lodge, the team recuperated, sitting out on the massive deck, drinks in hand, watching from comfortable knotty pine chairs the eruption of Old Faithful every half hour or so. Everyone was pleased that the Phantom had finally been put down, and a twenty-four-hour watch had been placed on Hellsmouth in the hope that something of Feydor Dorphmann might return to the cauldron's surface.
Jessica remained in Mammoth for now, her injuries being attended to by people who knew a great deal more about rehabilitating burned tissue than J.T. or Repasi or anyone else on the deck here. The bus that Feydor Dorphmann had been using for the greater part of his trek to his wished-for freedom from his demon had arrived, bus 67, carrying its cargo of sight-seeing passengers and Doris, the tour guide. J.T. recognized the Vision Quest bus as soon as it pulled up at midday. Had Dorphmann not been interfered with in Salt Lake City, if J.T. hadn't run down the bus and tour group that one Chris Dunlap had attached himself to, if Dorphmann hadn't had the run-in with Warren Bishop, the fiend might well have remained on this schedule, today's schedule. Feydor Dorphmann would be arriving this moment at Old Faithful Lodge, awaiting Jessica's arrival in a less agitated state of mind, far more prepared to face her and put an end to his fevered brain one way or another.
J.T. considered this possibility. What might Dorphmann have done differently had he the luxury of time?
The night Dorphmann had arrived here, he believed he must kill two more sinners for his crusade or puzzle before facing down Jessica Coran. Dorphmann had hastily done just that, killing two more innocent bystanders, hurrying his showdown with Jessica.
Again J.T. wondered how differently things might have worked out if Feydor Dorphmann were just now getting down from bus 67, which J.T. stood staring down at now from the deck overlooking the front entry to Old Faithful Lodge. He imagined the monster among the meek travelers now searching impatiently for their bags.
J.T. found himself vacating his position above the bus to stand at the side of the bus tour director. She didn't know who or what he was until he flashed his FBI credentials and asked if he might have a word with her.
“I could use a drink,” the heavily made-up lady with the name tag of Doris replied.
J.T. waltzed her into the lounge, which was, at this hour, nearly empty.
“How can I help you?”
“I thought you'd like to know that Dorphmann, the man you knew as Dunlap, was killed here by an FBI agent early this morning out at one of the hot springs.” Doris's mouth hung open for a moment, and after a deep breath, she said, “That's good news.”
“You don't sound convinced of that.”
She was understandably shaken. She told J. T„ “I knew from day one he was a sad man. Lonely, I figured, like... well, like so many. But he warmed a bit the last few days he was with us. Ask anyone on the bus. I mean, he seemed such a... a nice man....”
“Really?” I mean after we got the ice to break with him. I mean he was always helping others on and off the bus with a smile, bought little presents in the gift shops not for himself or his family—guess he had no family—but for people on board the bus, strangers to him. Couldn't get him to join in on the sing- alongs, but Chris, Mr. Dunlap... Dorphmann, always offered a kind word to me about my voice. Said I was a fine entertainer, that I could play Caesar's Palace in Vegas if given a chance.”
“I see.”
“I just can't believe it—that he'd kill anyone, and in so brutal a fashion as they say. Are you writing a book, too?” she asked.
“Ma'am?”
“In Jackson Hole I met another medical man, an M.E. like yourself. Said he was writing a book in which this case would figure prominently.”
“Oh, yeahThat'd be Dr. Repasi.”
“Yes, that's him. So, are you?”
“Writing a book on the case? No, not me.”
J.T. thanked the woman, paid for their drinks, and said good-bye. He momentarily wondered how Karl Repasi intended to portray him in the book, if he'd be mentioned at all; then he wondered how Karl meant to portray Jessica, and he wondered if anything remained of the teeth in libel laws. Then he promptly forgot about Repasi and his damned book.
Several days had passed and Jessica had returned to the lodge, where she was the guest of the FBI. Santiva had told Jessica to take off as many days as she felt necessary, while he, J.T., Gallagher, Repasi, Rideout, and everyone else returned to their normal lives. Jessica was left to wonder what exactly “normal life” meant. She feared she would never know the feeling of a steady existence. She feared for her friend Warren Bishop, whose wounds had thankfully healed to the point where he was talking of leaving the hospital in Salt Lake City but the moment he did so, the FBI brass wanted to see him. He was up on charges of selling his position and influence, his connection with Frank Lorentian in this affair now public information. She worried for Warren, knowing that if he had any future with the bureau at all, it would be a dim one, three steps back At the hospital in Mammoth Springs, Jessica had received telegrams, flowers, and cards from well-wishers, friends, relatives, colleagues, and strangers. With hands heavily bandaged, she had a nurse open them all for her. One enormous flower arrangement had been waiting for her in her room, brought in moments before she'd come up from the ER. The arrangement's size and beauty, twenty-four mixed-colored roses, had her believing that it must be from James. A nurse read the card to her, saying, “ 'Thank you for sending that murdering pervert straight to Hell.' Signed 'Frank.' And there's a... a sizable check made out to you, Dr. Coran.”
“Check? Let me see that.” She looked at the amount. It was a stunning one-hundred-thousand-dollar check. She hoped that Frank Lorentian had finally found some closure in the horrid death of his daughter. Obviously, his answer to everything in life was wrapped in green. In the meantime, he had bought and paid for one FBI agent who'd subcontracted out to a once-reputable medical examiner already. And Karl Repasi planned an early retirement on royalties from a book that promised the unvarnished truth in the Phantom case. Enough was enough, Jessica concluded, and asked the nurse, “Would you please give these flowers out among all the other nurses on the floor? And make arrangements for me to see whoever's in charge of accepting donations for your burn center? I'll be wanting to make a sizable donation.”
That'd been a week before, and now Jessica was back on her feet, so to speak, with the help of a pair of crutches she hated. Jessica now hobbled from the lodge on crutches she was tiring of. She breathed in the fresh air of this morning, the sun bright in a cartoon-blue sky set off by milk-white clouds whipped up only in Wyoming. It took her considerably more time to get out to the hot pools on crutches than the last time she'd been here, but she made her way out to Hellsmouth, and now she stood over the bubbling repository and stared down at the spot where she and Dorphmann had combated for life. Nothing, not so much as a finger bone belonging to Dorphmann had been given up by the monster hot pool. The hot-pool watch for signs of Dorphmann's remains had eased off somewhat by now, most rangers and staffers of the opinion that Hells- mouth wasn't in the mood to return any fragment of its catch.
Clouds of sulfur, white and shapeless, rose up to greet Jessica, taunting her with their silent, unending parade from out of the depths of this place. She agreed with the rangers: Nothing of Feydor Dorphmann would ever be found here, and what little of him that might be coughed up would quickly be covered over by layers of silicified mud and rock, in which case the only way to recover his skull or teeth or bones would be to launch a bizarre archaeological dig here. Not likely, she conceded. Not at the expense of time and money and energy required to cover the entire lip of the searing hot pool that stretched away from her in an irregular circle with roughly a hundred-yard diameter.
Alone now for the first time since Feydor Dorphmann had attempted to drag her into the Infemo with him, Jessica stared deep and long into the blistering, watery abyss that had claimed Dorphmann. With the sun at her back, Jessica's shadow rippling atop the pool, this place didn't look as frightening and fearful as it had in the dark. She could see the pretty blue eye of the burning cauldron; she could see into the winding depths of the pool, the epicenter that appeared to reach down into Dante's Inferno, to the River Styx, the City of Dis, where suicides wandered the Forest of the Dead. She imagined the hot spring as the liquid eye of Satan himself, ever glancing upward into the world of man, ever anxious to make of man a monster after his own failed angel's heart. She saw the allure of the pool here beneath the sun, God's eye.
Somehow no one else, no matter how close, not J.T., not Eriq, not even Jim Parry would ever completely understand what had happened here between her and this man she had never known before his first contact with her. The others did, however, understand her need to be alone for a while, that she needed time and space and aloneness, something only mystics, seers, and old wise men in Hawaii and a few other places on the globe understood. Still, J.T. and the others, and even James, who'd called on hearing of her hospital stay, understood and respected her privacy.
She needed peace. She needed to sort out things.
She needed to face her own devils and hopefully come away a better, more enabled person and not the shattered creature that Feydor Dorphmann had become.
She leaned a little toward the pool and spit into it. “Damn you!” she shouted into the pool. “Damn you, Dorphmann, and al
l your kind!”
A large, gaseous bubble arose in response, sending a flume of sulfuric acid skyward and near Jessica's face.
“Tit for tat, heh?” she asked the natural formation, which seemed to mock her.
Overhead she heard the wild, free cry of an eagle, and she looked upward to see it disappear into the sun. Still leaning on her crutches, she felt one of them give way as it slid off the boardwalk, almost sending her over the side. She regained her balance, gasping and kneeling before the fiery pool.
She felt weak, helpless before the enormity of the evil she felt dwelling here, spouting its venom into the atmosphere. She had only destroyed a man who'd been touched by this evil via birth, the brain, the DNA perhaps. She hadn't begun to destroy the evil itself. She knew it would return with a vengeance, a vengeance directed at her, again and again.
“Pardon me, miss,” came a voice to her left, “but suicide is no answer to anything.”
She'd gone to her knees, attempting to retrieve the lost crutch. She looked up at an elderly man in jogging fatigues offering her a hand.
“No, you misunderstand,” she told him. “I... I just dropped my crutch.” Her hands, wrists, and feet had healed well, as she'd been told by the Mammoth doctors, but the bandages made her look like the leftover result of a previous suicide attempt. It was not surprising that the old man thought so, too. “Of course,” the man replied, “how clumsy of me to suggest—”
“Could you reach my crutch?”
The man obliged, actually stepping off the boardwalk to retrieve the crutch. “Be careful,” she pleaded.
“There's something odd here,” he said.
“What's that?”
“Something down here, below the walkway.”
Jessica leaned in and stared below the walk to see a discarded black case, Dorphmann's case, the case he'd been carrying that night. Why had no one else found it?
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