Robert Walker - Extreme Instinct

In the paper account, Morganstern and Howler were listed as fire victims number six and seven and Bishop as murder victim number eight, leaving only one rung to fill. The list now appeared:

#1 is #9-Traitors Lorentian

#2 is #8-Malicious Frauds Flanders

#3 is #7-Violents Martin

#4 is #6-Heretics Whitaker

#5 is #5-Wrathful amp; Sullen Grey

#6 is #4-Avaricious amp; Prodigal Morganstern

#7 is #3-Gluttonous Howler

#8 is #2-Lustful Bishop

#9 is #1-(the last victim?) sent into Limbo… through the Vestibule and over the River Acheron

The city editor and crime editor at the Salt Lake Herald had, upon Jessica's initial visit, immediately dispatched their best reporters to the phones and the hospital for verification of Jessica's story. At the hospital, Mrs. Crighten held a press conference, detailing the kinds of wounds each of the three FBI agents had endured, how the doctors worked tirelessly on their behalf, but that all attempts had met with unsuccessful results in the cases of all three men. Beside Mrs. Crighten, there on the podium, doctors lamented the conditions they'd had to work under, their long faces giving credence to the ruse. Jessica watched televised news reports from the city desk editor's office. Her plan was working like a charm.

The newspapermen were ecstatic to get an exclusive from the famed Dr. Jessica Coran, but for it, Jessica bargained: They must release it to every other news wire service in the country. She wanted to be certain that Feydor Dorphmann, wherever he was, knew that she knew that he knew that she knew…

At the newspaper office, Jessica found huge maps of Utah along one wall, each detailing the geographic beauty of the state, distances, and famous tourist attractions. On another wall, a similar map of Wyoming hung, and Jessica stared at the roads leading from Salt Lake City to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and she realized for the first time in years just how close Jackson Hole was to Yellowstone National Park.

"Doing a travel and leisure piece on Wyoming," said a mild-mannered female editor who noticed Jessica's interest in the map. "You know, places to get away to that aren't too far and aren't too expensive for the middle crowd here in Salt Lake."

"I'm interested in Yellowstone," Jessica told her. "You have any detail maps of Yellowstone?''

"It's one of the major highlight of the article, and yes, I do." The woman dug into a desk and came up with a detailed map of the park itself, spreading it in lumpy and crude fashion across the papers and junk that populated the top of her desk. "It's really a breathtaking, fantastic place, almost like stepping onto another planet," said the editor.

Jessica studied the map, which brought back instant memories of a time when she had once visited Yellowstone National Park as a young assistant M.E. on vacation with a girlfriend. ''Yes, I once visited Yellowstone, many years ago," Jessica told the other woman as she studied the large yellow mass, the park that formed the northwestern corner of the state of Wyoming.

"My husband and the boys loved it," the woman continued. ''The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, that was their favorite, and the fishing, of course. Me, I became fascinated with the geysers and hot springs and mud pots."

Jessica scanned the map, her eyes gliding as if directed by a Ouija board pointer to a select few of the more than ten thousand geysers, hot springs, and boiling mud pots in the park, gasping at their resemblance to Feydor's words of earlier. There on the map, she read of the Devil's Well and Hellsmouth geysers in Lower Geyser Basin near Old Faithful and Old Faithful Lodge. A flood of memories, too disconnected and too disorganized at the moment to make any but fleeting sense to her, assaulted her senses while the editor continued to carry on about the grandeur that was Yellowstone.

"And can you imagine people coming here from the East and telling us, the Forestry Service in particular, that we need to build protective walls and fences throughout the parks? What utter nonsense. People have no idea the scale of nature out here. Why, it's enormous. Would anyone seriously entertain the thought of putting a fence around the Serengeti Plains in Tanzania or Victoria Falls or Niagara for that matter?"

Jessica only half-heard the woman. Her mind was on Dorphmann. Feydor's thinking, his quest, came into full focus. Finally, Jessica knew where he'd been headed from day one, what his final destination must be, and how he planned to kill victim number nine. "May I keep this map?"

"Ahhh, sure, sure… I've got enough material on the park that I don't need it any longer. I've pretty well put the story to bed."

"Whatever it cost." She dug into her purse.

"No, take it. Anything to help get this madman you're chasing. And I'm dreadfully sorry about those three brave agents."

Jessica swallowed her desire to confide any sliver of truth to the woman. "Yes, it has hit the agency hard, just as the previous five murders by this maniac have."

"Good luck on your manhunt, Dr. Coran. We all know one thing."

"And what's that?" she asked, folding the Yellowstone map back into its original shape.

"That you're the best person for the job."

"Thank you. I hope that's so."

"Well, obviously, from what you've told us, the killer certainly thinks so."

She smiled for the first time in twenty-four hours. "Yes. Yes, that certainly is so."

After the phony story was put to bed, a phone call to the hospital told her that Bishop died at 3:19 a.m. while still on the table, undergoing surgery, and that Agents Morganstern and Howler had also both died of wounds suffered in the fire. Excellent, she thought. Mrs. Crighten had played her part well.

An all-points bulletin stretching nationwide was put out on Dorphmann, but Jessica knew that any resulting action would likely only net authorities a few arrests here and there of look-alikes, deadbeat fathers, estranged boyfriends, and the like. Dorphmann had hinted that he had physically altered his appearance already, or rather that Satan had done so for him. He had burned off his fingerprints, thinking this crucial to his living the life of a nonfugitive once he'd finished the Devil's work he'd been put to; he had shaved his head, had likely put on some weight given the free food provided by the tour package. He might have altered his appearance in other ways, such as changing the color of his eyes, from contact green to frame glasses and blue eyes. There was little telling, but he obviously knew something about makeup and diversion and escape tactics, as he'd proven in Vegas and now in Salt Lake City.

Jessica had returned to her hotel room after leaving the newspaper office, and now she felt badly that she couldn't be beside Warren Bishop when he opened his eyes, but there appeared no help for it. She had a rendezvous with a madman, a rendezvous that was long in coming, one she could put off no longer. She meant to put an end to Feydor Dorphmann's maniacal kill spree so that no one else would ever suffer at his hand again.

She telephoned the hospital and got hold of John Thorpe, whose sleepy voice slurred a good morning to her. It was 9:40 a.m.

"Anything new on Bishop?" she asked.

"He's dead, or haven't you heard?" J. T. quipped.

She pleaded with J. T., "Please stay by his side, John."

"I will, for you, Jess. Meanwhile, I'll go over Repasi's findings on the Grey woman, see if he missed anything or failed to tell us anything of a vital nature we don't already know, right?"

"Clever boy."

J. T. broke the news to her that he'd gotten hold of Chief Santiva, who was en route to Jackson Hole, to report Bishop's true condition and why they had felt it necessary to plant the phony story.