Robert Walker - Extreme Instinct

Jessica recalled the last time she'd seen Ranger Samuel Marc Fronval and Yellowstone. She'd been on vacation with a girlfriend during her years just after college while she'd been employed as assistant to the M.E. in Baltimore. She was still taking finals at Georgetown University, completing her education in the field of forensics. She was twenty-four at the time. The memory calmed her into a near sleep in which she recalled every event as vividly as if it were the day before.

She recalled seeing the unremarkable poster of a missing young woman in the park, and how calm the park rangers were the day her body was discovered. Not to disturb park visitors, the rangers put up no hue and cry about the discovery; rather, they appeared more stone-faced than ever. But Jessica had felt the menace, a bubbling excitement below the surface at Old Faithful Lodge, just beneath the veneer of gift shops, restaurant, lounge, and the tourist crowd, an excitement that went unnoticed by most. But Jessica had sensed it, had seen it in the eyes of the various rangers and staff who daily worked at the lodge. News had spread among them of a body found out at one of the hot springs.

Jessica had instantly offered her services when she learned it was a medical emergency, and since medical assistance was some thirty miles off by air, she was enlisted.

The helicopter she then rode in thundered through the canyon pass, brushing over treetops, scattering nesting bald eagles above the Shoshoni River on a breathtakingly clear, snow-dusted morning. The pace of the helicopter and the gorgeous scenery all around young Jessica Coran made her gasp as much with awe as with the rollicking ride.

The pilot had said over his earphones, "We'll be there in ten minutes. Hell of a sight."

She knew he was talking about the body and not the Yellowstone gorge below, which she marveled over alone, the pilot long jaded on the spectacular views. "You've made the run earlier then? You've seen the body?" she'd asked through the headphone set.

"I was on call when we got word from the Park Service. The woman's been missing for three days, two nights out here. Everybody feared the worse, you know, that she slipped somewhere along the trail into a hot pool. You know those suckers just sear you to death, and the body's never found sometimes. Well, this one somehow scratched her way out and died half a mile away in thick woods."

He banked with the curve of the canyon wall, and then they lifted in a startling flash, rising as if yanked from above by a godly hand. The pilot had introduced himself as Wayne Patterson, a bright-eyed, clean-shaven young fellow whose eyes lingered over Jessica. It frightened her a bit that he seemed so young and in control of her life at the moment.

The dense brown hues of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone here in Wyoming bordering Montana gave way to lush forests. Pine trees below created a pillowy carpet of green life swaying beneath their wake. It didn't appear there was anywhere to land.

''Just where do you intend to put this thing down?'' she asked.

"There's a ranger station with a clearing just ahead. We'll have to hike back down this way to the body, Dr. Coran. Mind my asking why"-he hesitated asking whatever was on his mind-"why, ma'am, they sent you all the way out from Baltimore?"

"Presidential order," she joked. "Remember, his concern for the national parks ranks right up there with poverty and homelessness and every other big platform issue this year. Besides, I was in the area-Old Faithful Lodge."

''Oh, I get it.'' Her little joke had hurt his country pride.

The helicopter touched down at the remote ranger station, and Jessica, her medical bag in hand, rushed from beneath the whirring blades, sand, leaves, and twigs tornadoing about her. They got into a four-wheeled land crawler and raced to the scene. In fifteen minutes they came upon a handful of men, all standing about a prone figure in the dust, covered over with a woolen blanket.

Jessica introduced herself to the men, most of whom looked dubiously back at her, wondering about her age and sex and experience, no doubt.

One of the men, wearing the uniform of a ranger and looking like an aged John Wayne, introduced himself, saying, "I'm Sam, Samuel Fronval. In charge of this district." He then casually pointed to the heap below the blanket and sadly announced the obvious. "She's beyond help… long dead."

Jessica stepped closer. "I'm Dr. Coran," she replied. "Happened to be at the lodge. I'll have to examine her, pronounce cause of death."

"Cause is pretty clear," replied another ranger, an overweight fellow who had the arms and general appearance of a white, hairless bear-and who, in fact, the other rangers called Bear.

"She never stood a chance," mumbled a third man.

"We figure it's that missing woman, Sarah Langley. She was hiking alone. Paid no attention to the warnings against hiking alone up in here," urged Bear.

"Just the same, I'll have a look." Jessica went to the body and pulled back the blanket. She gasped at the horrid sight of flesh that had been literally boiled from the bones. The woman had no features, the skin having sloughed away. She was so badly burned, in fact, there seemed no way she could have come so far in her state. This strange fact stood out along with something equally strange about the nude body that immediately hit her. The victim's ankles and feet, while scalded, were not in nearly as bad shape as the rest of her body. This struck her instantly as odd.

"Anyone remove her shoes? Were her clothes burned off her?"

"Maybe, can't tell. No evidence she had any clothes on, but superheated water like what she got into burns clothing into nothing," replied Fronval. "I've seen it happen."

"She didn't have no shoes on," said another ranger. "I mean when we found her."

Jessica looked again at the body, trying to make out any sign of clothing clinging to it, but there was nothing but the clothlike blotches and peels of skin remaining, whole portions moving in the invisible wind current coming off the ground.

"Well?" asked Fronval. "What's your diagnosis, Doctor?"

"Yeah, how'd she manage to get so far from the pool that killed her?" asked the pilot, equally confused.

She had to have had help, Jessica thought but kept her counsel.

"Animals musta' got at her," said Bear with a shrug. "Maybe a coyote or some grizzly come along and drug her here. There're signs she was drugged here."

Jessica and Fronval looked at the evidence the heavyset young man pointed to. Yes, the body had been dragged, but she doubted it was drugged, and Fronval was shaking his head, too. He near whispered to her, "If there were any bear tracks, they've been obliterated by last night's snow and destroyed by my overanxious men, but I don't think a bear got at her."

"Why not?"

"No bear marks on her."

"Gashes, you mean."

"Bear'll tear its meat into strips. Even a coyote'd leave marks where he clamped down on her, if he could even manage to drag her dead weight this far up from the springs. So, we got ourselves a bit of a Devil's Triangle mystery here, huh? What do you think, Doctor?" urged Fronval.

Jessica looked up from the corpse, the worst thing she'd seen in her young career as an M.E. student, the skin seared to molten, peeling sheets; sheaths of her skin had curled up, other portions of skin were missing, lost along the trail, revealing scorched, dehydrated veins, normally blue, turned to a white, milky hue, the blood boiled away.

With third- and fourth-degree scald burns over ninety percent of her body, she could not have survived long enough to have taken ten steps, much less arrive at this destination on her own power. There were second- and third-degree burns over the remaining ten percent of her. All her facial features and hair had been dramatically boiled away. All the soft tissues, such as the eyes, scalded into oblivion. Dental records were a necessity for a one hundred percent ID on the woman, for even if she had once had a birthmark, it, too, was gone. "If she were burned to this degree in the doorway of the best burn center in the country-" she began.