Robert Walker - Extreme Instinct

Jessica made the short walk and found the storefront shop window filled with books. Inside, she found a musty place filled with used books on wood and crate shelves. A huge orange cat lay asleep on the cash register. She finally found a dog-eared, paperback copy of Dante's Inferno. She paid two dollars and twenty-five cents for the copy and began revisiting Hades in the lobby of the hotel, and later in her room to be near the phone so she could keep trying to raise J. T., to let him know her whereabouts in the city.

Jessica hadn't seen or thought of Dante's strange panorama of Hades since her school days, when it was required reading in her AP class. She read it anew with the fanatical killer in mind, imagining his imaginings now. Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, in its entirety, was enormous, but it had been his depiction of Hades that captured the imagination of generations since its publication in 1321, and apparently their killer had been no exception.

Rivers of boiling blood, that was what the killer had turned his victims' bodies into. The Wood of Suicides, where the naked forms of men, women, and children dangled from thorny prongs of dead trees like so much litter and parchment; vile creatures such as the flying Geryon, Minotaurs, Centaurs guarding vestibules and black corridors, monsters at every turn, and those souls damned to living out putrid lives in the land of Dis or Satan, inside the body of the beast.

She read on and recalled the Furies, Medusa, and the Harpies, all of whom peopled Satan's world, an enormous inverted, three-dimensional mountain created when Satan and all his followers fell to the earth. She skimmed, recalling far more than she now read. Some said the Grand Canyon was created by Satan's fall to Earth.

Her eyes grew weary over the words, and for a time she felt alone with the mad Phantom, alone with the Devil. And she lay on the covered bed in her room here at the Little America Hotel in Salt Lake City, and here she nodded off with Dante's elaborate, allegorical window into Hell on her lap.

It was six twenty-five now, a light pattering rain having begun at the windows when the nightmare result of her cramming metamorphosed into a garish dream that carried her along a spiraling red river of blood without any chance of refusing. It was a river filled with muck and putrid odors so horrid they could not be swallowed. She felt herself going down into the deepest recesses of the human psyche where the demons dwelled, although some of the shadows in the room with her seemed corporeal enough to shake her from slumber. In the dark underworld, she saw herself staring back at her.

On waking, she shuddered, clawed her way to a sitting position on the made bed, and picked up the phone's receiver. She again dialed for J. T. at Ruby Inn in Bryce to inform him of the breakthrough, that the killer was working with the Dante mythos.

This time she got through. Obviously John had gotten a room at the inn, for they patched her through to his room.

"Jess, thank God, I've been worried sick about you," he almost shouted. "Where are you?"

Jessica thought she heard a voice in the background. "Are you alone?"

"Not entirely, no."

"Well, good for you. The breakfast waitress?"

"How'd you guess?"

She told him her whereabouts and updated him on the search for the killer, and as J. T. calmed, she informed him of the Dante connection. "That's wonderful news," he told her, adding, "and I have some good news, too. We located the bus he's been traveling on all this time."

She saw the noose tightening for Charon and Nessus. "Miraculous! How'd you do it?"

''Blood, sweat, tears, and a search under the registration of a Chris Dunlap. Bishop's idea."

"Bishop's there with you-good. Now tell me what you've got."

"No, Warren's probably in Salt Lake by now, Jess. You've got to get over to the Hilton. That's where Bishop will be, flushing this creep out. He's got his number now. He knows the tour number, the bus plate, and by now the creep's room number. It's just a matter of time now."

"Give me the details, J. T.!" She was shouting in excitement now. "What've you got?"

"The bus tour Chris Lorentian booked, she booked as Chris Dunlap, and it was on the VisionQuest bus line. The tour number is thirteen fourteen and the number of the bus is sixty-seven." He added the Utah plate numbers. "Got that?"

She jotted down the information on the hotel stationery beside the bed. "Excellent work, J. T. And you say Bishop's here in the city?"

"Yeah, he left here by helicopter some time ago."

"He must not be here yet, else he would have contacted me here through the field office."

"I don't know why he hasn't, Jess, but he's a good man. Who knows, a take-charge guy like him? Maybe he wants to handle it himself. I saw him dress down Karl Repasi for you while he was here, gave him an earful. Thought you'd like to know."

"Thanks. I've got to get over to the Hilton. See what's happening or what has happened in my absence there."

"Go lightly, Jess. Promise me you'll be careful."

"My middle name is careful. Talk to you later, J. T. I'm at this number." She gave him the number and name of the hotel she was staying at. "Now I've got to get a cab and get to the Hilton. Good-bye, J. T."

"Jess!"

"What?"

"I should be there with you."

"J. T., you've pinpointed the exact location of the killer. Something no one else has been able to do. You did great."

"Jess, be careful out there!" But she hung up on J. T.'s cautionary words.

Jessica quickly dressed, snatching on her undergarments, a pair of slacks, a pullover shirt and sneakers, and she tied her hair back with a ribbon. She grabbed up the receiver again and asked the desk to get her a cab. She found her purse, valise, and keys when the phone rang, likely the desk to let her know that a cab waited for her.

But when she lifted the receiver, she heard the faint, choking, gagging sound, followed by more evidence of someone in distress. Then he came on the line, saying, "I've found you, Dr. Coran. And I've found number five."

Jesus, her mind raced, how could he know she was here? How had he gotten her number? As if to answer her thoughts, he said, "You aren't hard to figure, Doctor. I knew you'd follow, and all I had to do was page you at the desk. They wouldn't give me your room number, but they put me through to you."

He must have randomly selected hotels around the city and taken his chances, she surmised. He wasn't supernatural. "Your time is running out, Charon or Nessus or whatever you choose to call yourself today," she informed him, summoning her strongest voice.

"Really? I thought it the other way around. Listen to this!"

"Wait! I've been reading Dante's Inferno."

This silenced the killer for a moment. "So, now you know where you're headed? I know where you belong, Doctor Coran."

"Everyone knows where you are now, Nessus," she threatened. Bishop and the others did know his approximate whereabouts. They knew he was somewhere in the Hilton. They were converging on his room, however, and not the room belonging to the unfortunate number five. Even so, she wondered where precisely Bishop and the others were now in relation to the killer. At any rate, she must keep the monster on the line for as long as possible. "I know where you're at right now," she coldly informed him.

"Impossible," he replied.

"You're here, in Salt Lake."

"Of course, but that comes as no surprise to either of us, does it?" He began a snorting laugh.

"You're in the Hilton here in Salt Lake, and everyone knows it."

This fact coming from her silenced his laughter.

"The FBI have you surrounded," she informed him as casually as the most jaded telephone operator.

"Lies become you, bitch! Listen to this, your answer."