Robert Walker - Extreme Instinct

But Jessica was mentally adding an eighth item to her list of what she suspected was true about the Phantom, what she'd report to headquarters about the Hell-bound bastard:

8. He killed indiscriminate of sex.

Jessica felt a sudden need to sit down somewhere. Seeing her sudden loss of composure, J. T. whisked her outside and found a nearby room, where a Spanish maid was busily cleaning the bathroom. J. T. sat Jessica on the bed, slipped the maid a twenty, and flashed his credentials, telling the maid he was a doctor and that they would need the room for a half hour. "Come back then," he instructed.

The maid gave him a wink and a cynical smile, said something in Spanish, and disappeared.

"How can he be a man?" Jessica asked.

"Maybe Mel in there had an unusually high voice, and besides, fear can constrict the vocal cords, Jess. Let me get you some water."

"You don't have enough water, J. T."

… as surely as a passion grows by indulgence and diminishes when restrained; as surely as a disregarded conscience becomes inert, and one that is obeyed active; as surely as there is any meaning on such terms as habit, custom, practice; so surely must the human faculties be moulded unto complete fitness for the social state; so surely must evil and immorality disappear, so surely must man become p erfect.

— Herbert Spencer

When Jessica and J. T. returned to the odorous death room, they found a big-boned, stout, black-haired man in a flannel shirt and rubber gloves crawling about the floor, sniffing at things in bird-dog fashion. McEvetty shushed them on entering, saying, "Fire investigator. He was here earlier, but went out for a smoke."

The chief fire investigator, from whom a series of hems, haws, and hums now steadily flowed as he crawled about the floor and examined all sides of the room and the bed, suddenly leaped elflike to his feet, coming face-to-face with Jessica.

"Just checking my earlier findings," he told her.

McEvetty quickly introduced Jessica and J. T. as principal investigators on the case to Page's fire marshal. The fire investigator's name was Roy Brightpath, yet he looked like a man chiseled from the granite of this place, his skin the color of bronze. Jess realized immediately that he was part Native American.

"We at first thought it was just a guy fell asleep with a cigarette in his hand, but moment we come in, we could smell the accelerants. Dog couldn't place it anywhere but over the bed. Lennie, my lab guy, came over, took one whiff, and said it was a mix of gasoline and butane. 'Course, we'll verify that with analysis sometime late today, but Lennie's the best, and I'm pretty sure, pretty sure." He extended a gloved hand, and they shook. She saw by his bars that he was a captain, which meant some years of experience.

"I wasn't expecting the victim to be… male, that the victim's a man. I mean, I spoke to him on the phone moments before he died, and he… he sounded like a woman," replied Jessica, pirouetting about and staring, still shaken at this turn of events.

"Whoa up, there," said Brightpath. "Whataya mean, you spoke to him?"

"Just before he was murdered," she confessed. "J. T., will you explain?" she asked.

J. T. brought Brightpath and the others up to date on what had occurred between the killer and Jessica thus far. When he finished, Jessica asked, pointing to Martin's body, "Who was he? Does anyone know anything about the victim?"

"An older gentleman on vacation, late sixties, alone from what the detectives can gather," replied Brightpath, whose skin, tinged with a red hue, made him a walking, talking ironic twist on the word "fireman." Jessica guessed his roots must be somewhere in the vast family of the Navajo or Hopi. He was short and stout with a wide face that, under better circumstances, appeared to enjoy a white-toothed grin. She guessed as much from the smile lines and wrinkles.

"Smoked Camels without filters," continued Brightpath, ''carried a billfold full of pictures of his grandkids, beautiful children."

Kam took up Brightpath's slack, adding, "Recently widowed, kids got together money to send him on this trip to see the West, the great natural resources of the national parks, or so his co-travelers have told us. So, he's on this trip, which is the dream of a lifetime, and whammo! This happens."

McEvetty quickly stepped in, saying, "We heard about your case in Las Vegas, but this time the victim's male, an over-the-hill guy by all appearances. Nothing like your victim in Vegas, so-"

"But you didn't know about the writing on the mirror in Vegas, did you?" she asked. "Thought you'd have a little fun since we flew all the way to Page anyway. Is that about it, McEvetty?"

The Arizona-Utah agent took in a deep breath, released it slowly, and said, "Sorry. We thought it was, you know, unrelated."

"You thought?" she replied sarcastically.

Brightpath, ignoring them, said, "Dead guy's name was Melvin"-he checked his notes-"Melvin Bartlett Martin. That's according to both the seared wallet left on the table beside the bed and according to the agents here, who got their info from the night clerk."

McEvetty added, "Martin had the room all to himself, but he dined with another man, according to the waitress who served him last night."

"Left the lounge after purchasing that bottle of wine sitting over there unopened," Kaminsky added, pointing at the 1989 Chardonnay label.

"It didn't pop from the temperatures in here?" asked J. T.

Brightpath shook his head. "Epicenter of the fire was over the bed. Never got that hot the other side of the room. Not even to burn the wallet on the nightstand."

Jessica nodded, replying, "Just like our fire murder in Vegas."

McEvetty raised a meaty finger to his lip and said in such a tone that Jessica saw a lightbulb go on over his head, "Let's check the wine bottle for prints."

"And dust the whole room, and scan it with an infrared laser, if you can get hold of one, for signs of any human secretions," Jessica added, thinking it most likely a waste of time. Still, they must be thorough and hope that this madman would continue to make mistakes, as he had in leaving his prints in the messages and his voice on tape only a few hours earlier, and in leaving his shoeprint, laden with black soot, in the baby-blue-carpeted hallway here in Page, Arizona.

"I'm not so certain your theory about this monster's right, Jess," J. T. muttered in her ear. "I mean about him getting off sexually on burning corpses. Wouldn't that mean he'd need a woman, a female victim? And what about the time element?"

"No, he doesn't need a female victim, not necessarily," Jessica replied, "not if they're all so much kindling for his fantasy, no. As for time, he's spent quickly, perhaps even before he does them. He may get off on the anticipation alone."

"So, in essence, it appears this guy doesn't care what sex his victims are."

"You can't use your own sexual excitement barometer to gauge this guy against, John. He's obviously not interested in them in any sexual sense you and I can fathom," she replied, searching cursorily over the body for any signs of blunt-force injury, but she was unable to see much in the smoke-laden light. "I give him this much," she began. "He's intent on remaining a faceless bastard, careful and controlled, so…"

J. T. leaned in, for she was as much as talking to herself. "So?" he asked.

"So, I guess you're dead right, J. T." John Thorpe's big, round brown eyes grew larger. "How's that?"

''We've got to crack this code of his." She now looked at and pointed to the message left by the killer. "It's got to make sense to someone somewhere. This guy has had to've talked to someone about himself, his fantasy, his sexual needs, his plans, his obsession-madness… and maybe his interest in numbers and words such as 'traitors' and violents.' "