Robert Walker - Extreme Instinct

Again J. T. wondered how differently things might have worked out if Feydor Dorphmann were just now getting down from bus 67, which J. T. stood staring down at now from the deck overlooking the front entry to Old Faithful Lodge. He imagined the monster among the meek travelers now searching impatiently for their bags.

J. T. found himself vacating his position above the bus to stand at the side of the bus tour director. She didn't know who or what he was until he flashed his FBI credentials and asked if he might have a word with her.

"I could use a drink," the heavily made-up lady with the name tag of Doris replied.

J. T. waltzed her into the lounge, which was, at this hour, nearly empty.

"How can I help you?"

"I thought you'd like to know that Dorphmann, the man you knew as Dunlap, was killed here by an FBI agent early this morning out at one of the hot springs."

Doris's mouth hung open for a moment, and after a deep breath, she said, "That's good news."

"You don't sound convinced of that."

She was understandably shaken. She told J. T., "I knew from day one he was a sad man. Lonely, I figured, like… well, like so many. But he wanned a bit the last few days he was with us. Ask anyone on the bus. I mean, he seemed such a… a nice man…"

"Really?"

"I mean after we got the ice to break with him. I mean he was always helping others on and off the bus with a smile, bought little presents in the gift shops not for himself or his family-guess he had no family-but for people on board the bus, strangers to him. Couldn't get him to join in on the sing-alongs, but Chris, Mr. Dunlap

… Dorphmann, always offered a kind word to me about my voice. Said I was a fine entertainer, that I could play Caesar's Palace in Vegas if given a chance."

"I see."

"I just can't believe it-that he'd kill anyone, and in so brutal a fashion as they say. Are you writing a book, too?" she asked.

"Ma'am?"

"In Jackson Hole I met another medical man, an M.E. like yourself. Said he was writing a book in which this case would figure prominently."

"Oh, yeah… That'd be Dr. Repasi."

"Yes, that's him. So, are you?"

"Writing a book on the case? No, not me."

J. T. thanked the woman, paid for their drinks, and said good-bye. He momentarily wondered how Karl Repasi intended to portray him in the book, if he'd be mentioned at all; then he wondered how Karl meant to portray Jessica, and he wondered if anything remained of the teeth in libel laws. Then he promptly forgot about Repasi and his damned book.

Several days had passed and Jessica had returned to the lodge, where she was the guest of the FBI. Santiva had told Jessica to take off as many days as she felt necessary, while he, J. T., Gallagher, Repasi, Rideout, and everyone else returned to their normal lives. Jessica was left to wonder what exactly "normal life" meant. She feared she would never know the feeling of a steady existence. She feared for her friend Warren Bishop, whose wounds had thankfully healed to the point where he was talking of leaving the hospital in Salt Lake City but the moment he did so, the FBI brass wanted to see him. He was up on charges of selling his position and influence, his connection with Frank Lorentian in this affair now public information. She worried for Warren, knowing that if he had any future with the bureau at all, it would be a dim one, three steps back.

At the hospital in Mammoth Springs, Jessica had received telegrams, flowers, and cards from well-wishers, friends, relatives, colleagues, and strangers. With hands heavily bandaged, she had a nurse open them all for her. One enormous flower arrangement had been waiting for her in her room, brought in moments before she'd come up from the ER. The arrangement's size and beauty, twenty-four mixed-colored roses, had her believing that it must be from James. A nurse read the card to her, saying, '' 'Thank you for sending that murdering pervert straight to Hell.' Signed 'Frank.' And there's a.. a sizable check made out to you, Dr. Coran."

"Check? Let me see that." She looked at the amount. It was a stunning one-hundred-thousand-dollar check. She hoped that Frank Lorentian had finally found some closure in the horrid death of his daughter. Obviously, his answer to everything in life was wrapped in green. In the meantime, he had bought and paid for one FBI agent who'd subcontracted out to a once-reputable medical examiner already. And Karl Repasi planned an early retirement on royalties from a book that promised the unvarnished truth in the Phantom case. Enough was enough, Jessica concluded, and asked the nurse, ' 'Would you please give these flowers out among all the other nurses on the floor? And make arrangements for me to see whoever's in charge of accepting donations for your burn center? I'll be wanting to make a sizable donation."

That'd been a week before, and now Jessica was back on her feet, so to speak, with the help of a pair of crutches she hated. Jessica now hobbled from the lodge on crutches she was tiring of. She breathed in the fresh air of this morning, the sun bright in a cartoon-blue sky set off by milk-white clouds whipped up only in Wyoming. It took her considerably more time to get out to the hot pools on crutches than the last time she'd been here, but she made her way out to Hellsmouth, and now she stood over the bubbling repository and stared down at the spot where she and Dorphmann had combated for life. Nothing, not so much as a finger bone belonging to Dorphmann had been given up by the monster hot pool. The hot-pool watch for signs of Dorphmann's remains had eased off somewhat by now, most rangers and staffers of the opinion that Hells-mouth wasn't in the mood to return any fragment of its catch.

Clouds of sulfur, white and shapeless, rose up to greet Jessica, taunting her with their silent, unending parade from out of the depths of this place. She agreed with the rangers: Nothing of Feydor Dorphmann would ever be found here, and what little of him that might be coughed up would quickly be covered over by layers of silicified mud and rock, in which case the only way to recover his skull or teeth or bones would be to launch a bizarre archaeological dig here. Not likely, she conceded. Not at the expense of time and money and energy required to cover the entire lip of the searing hot pool that stretched away from her in an irregular circle with roughly a hundred-yard diameter.

Alone now for the first time since Feydor Dorphmann had attempted to drag her into the Inferno with him, Jessica stared deep and long into the blistering, watery abyss that had claimed Dorphmann. With the sun at her back, Jessica's shadow rippling atop the pool, this place didn't look as frightening and fearful as it had in the dark. She could see the pretty blue eye of the burning cauldron; she could see into the winding depths of the pool, the epicenter that appeared to reach down into Dante's Inferno, to the River Styx, the City of Dis, where suicides wandered the Forest of the Dead. She imagined the hot spring as the liquid eye of Satan himself, ever glancing upward into the world of man, ever anxious to make of man a monster after his own failed angel's heart. She saw the allure of the pool here beneath the sun, God's eye.

Somehow no one else, no matter how close, not J. T., not Eriq, not even Jim Parry would ever completely understand what had happened here between her and this man she had never known before his first contact with her. The others did, however, understand her need to be alone for a while, that she needed time and space and aloneness, something only mystics, seers, and old wise men in Hawaii and a few other places on the globe understood. Still, J. T. and the others, and even James, who'd called on hearing of her hospital stay, understood and respected her privacy.

She needed peace. She needed to sort out things.