Robert Walker - Extreme Instinct

"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 twisted 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.

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.