Robert Walker - Extreme Instinct

"Powerful enough to buy himself a medical examiner and an FBI field chief?"

Repasi dropped his gaze.

"Enough said," she bitterly replied, storming off.

Neil Gallagher caught up with her and offered her a ride to the hospital. He started in by asking questions about Warren Bishop, how well she knew him, for how long, what sort of man he was. She pleaded for him to give her a break. "Can we please talk about this later?" she asked, silencing him. During the long, lonely ride over to where Warren Bishop lay in a coma, Jessica pieced all the parts together. And she felt like a fool. J. T. had warned her to be wary of Frank Lorentian, not to turn a blind eye to his threats or the reach of his power, and what had she done? She'd put the billionaire thug out of her mind and he had in fact blindsided her; he had gotten to someone she loved, and he had ruined Warren Bishop's career in the bureau as a result, managed to get two of his own men maimed for life, no doubt, and they had managed to let the beast they were all after escape once more.

She wondered how charges could be brought and made to stick against Lorentian. She wondered if Warren and the other two men would cooperate once he and they recovered. But realistically speaking, she knew that Frank Lorentian was about as untouchable an outlaw as they came, for he was an outlaw with enough money to buy anyone or anything required to float just above the law, up there with the likes of many another wealthy American baron.

The wait at the hospital was long and drawn out. Finally, Neil Gallagher approached her to say, "I'm sorry about your friend, Bishop. I hope he fully recovers."

"Why? So you can hang him out to dry?"

"No one in the operating rooms up there is going to come out of this unscathed, Dr. Coran. We will get at the truth here. Friend or not, Bishop interfered in this investigation, short-circuited a very real possibility of capturing this madman you've all chased here to Salt Lake. I have my duty, too, Doctor."

"Do your duty, then, Gallagher."

"When this is all over, I'll want a statement from you, Doctor."

"I apparently didn't know Warren as well as I thought."

"Obviously." Gallagher began pacing before her. He'd been watching her write on a notepad.

"Shouldn't you be orchestrating the manhunt for the Phantom?" she asked.

"I have my best, most trusted people on it. Believe me. We'll have him. We'll have him soon. It would help greatly if one of those three upstairs could give us something on the man we're after. And what about you, Dr. Coran? Have you been thoroughly forthcoming about what you know of this maniac who likes to fry women into oblivion?''

"Men and women, it makes no difference with this guy so long as he has the log to burn," she replied snappishly. "I've told you all I know."

"What's that you've got there?" he asked, pointing to her notepad.

''He intends to kill a total of at least nine victims, according to our math."

"Nine? Why nine? Why not seven, like that film, or twenty or fifty or a hundred?''

"All I know is that he intends to fill up this… this ascending and descending"-hole, she wanted to say, but instead finished with-"scale."

"Scale? The scale you showed me earlier?"

"Which, if he's allowed to carry on, will soon look like this," she replied, handing him the hospital logo notepad she'd been working over.

Gallagher raised it to his eyes and read the newly developed listing for murder. It read:

#1 is #9-Traitors

#2 is #8-Malicious Frauds

#3 is #7-Violents

#4 is #6-Heretics

#5 is #5-Wrathful amp; Sullen

#6 is #4-?

#7 is #3-?

#8 is #2-?

#9 is #1-the last victim?

"We suspect this maniac has some fixation with themes found in Dante's Inferno," she confessed, for giving information to Gallagher, for some reason, always felt like a confession, she thought.

"Dante's Inferno?" he reacted, looked up from the new list, and now he stared through Jessica, asking, "What kind of madman is this guy?''

"Some might say he is on a quest of some sort, the meaning of which only he fully comprehends. None of this means anything to the rest of us; it's all concocted in his fevered brain, and I'm sure Dante Alighieri didn't in 1321 ever expect his lurid descriptions of Hell to ever fuel a twentieth-century madman's killing lust."

He complimented, ' 'Ingenious of you to figure out this much."

''Luck and happenstance have had much to do with getting this far, but the fact remains, he's at large. There're too many holes, unanswered questions."

"Logically, your numbers appear accurate; this is most probably accurate." Gallagher pressed a finger into the list. "The man intends to kill nine victims."

"Unless he rolls it over, goes back through the rungs to number one again after hitting nine," she suggested.

"All madness, complete madness."

"We have reason to believe he's hearing voices, that he's driven, obsessed, possibly possessed, or at least he believes himself possessed."

"Of a demon?"

"Or demons. I've sent this list along to Quantico, from where it has now gone out to the nation's leading academicians and the mental health professionals in the hope someone somewhere might recognize the thinking. Put it together with the fevered mind that has obsessed over it."

"Yeah, I see, like they did in the Unabomber case."

"Yeah, something like that."

"I read something about it."

"Read something about it? The Unabomber case, you mean?"

"No, no… your case, Dr. Coran."

"Where?"

"Your earlier list, the first one you showed me. It was published in The New York Times, the L.A. Times, and every other major newspaper in the country as well as being aired on national television."

"No one told me!"

"Sorry, I thought you knew."

"I've been… out of touch…"

"Thinking seems sound enough. Someone, somewhere must know this head case and his background, where he lives, right?"

"Yeah… we can only hope. We've also got a line of inquiry following an itinerary, a bus schedule we believe he is on. That's how I got here as quickly as I did."

''Yeah, you mentioned as much when you first informed us."

Jessica wondered how Repasi was connected to Lorentian, and she decided that Karl was hired to keep a running tab on the progress in the case, and that Warren, who had somehow become hopelessly indebted to Frank Lorentian, had succumbed to using his office for Lorentian's personal vendetta in this matter. Repasi was in the hospital, too, but he was busy downstairs with the autopsy on the latest victim, whom Jessica felt guilty over since she had not even gotten the woman's name.

"I'm going down to the morgue to see Dr. Repasi," she told Gallagher.

"I'll accompany you, Doctor."

"As you wish."

They found Repasi just finishing up. When he saw them, he said, "No surprises. Same MO down to the gasoline hot spots about face and upper torso."

Jessica needed to get away from the body and the smell of smoldering flesh adhering to the room. She felt as if she could no longer breathe. Gallagher, a sensitive man, saw her need and ushered her out almost as soon as he'd accompanied her into the morgue.

Gallagher escorted her to a hallway, and at the end of the corridor they found a balcony that overlooked the now darkened city. The warm, fresh air felt good on Jessica's skin, and it invaded her nostrils, attempting battle with the odors from the death room that had taken hold.

Gallagher now asked, "This bus itinerary-it tells you where his next destination will be? Can we get there before him?"

"I'd hoped that for Salt Lake, but we were too late for Salt Lake."

"Thanks to Bishop, yes."

"I wish you wouldn't condemn Warren before he's even had a chance to… to defend himself."