worth.
Still, in the thick terry-cloth robe she'd bought while in Hawaii some years before, Jessica was startled when someone banged bearlike on her door, screaming something unintelligible from the other side. She wondered if it were Karl and his crew, disappointed at her earlier lack of response, but a look through the peephole revealed a stranger mouthing the words, 'Fire! Fire in the building! Get out!'
THREE
Some say the world will end in fire.
Still in her robe, Jessica threw open the door. She could smell the faint odor of smoke as it wafted through the hallway. Somewhere, overhead sprinklers had gone into service, while her room and the hallway remained dry. Instantly, she recalled the bizarre phone call and the room number the desk had given her when she'd asked to be patched through to the mystery caller.
She instantly returned to her phone and again dialed the desk, shouting, 'There's a fire up here somewhere, and I believe its origin is room seventeen thirteen. Get the fire department up here, now!'
As she held the receiver in one hand, she worked a pair of panties beneath the robe and up her legs. She then thought of J. T., who was on the floor above. She dialed his room, telling him to get out, that there was a fire on the seventeenth floor. He thought she was pulling his leg until she screamed, 'Goddamn it, J. T., move!' With that, she slammed down the receiver.
She looked about for something to throw on, grabbed a pair of Guess? jeans, a pullover T-shirt with a Magic basketball logo on it, her card key to the room, and she then rushed barefoot toward the elevator, where she found the stairwell. Along with others in various stages of dress and undress, she moved along in an attempt to get below the fire, telling others she suspected it to be three or four floors below them. One or two of her traveling companions were curious how she knew this fact.
'The odor is quite pungent,' she explained, 'and that means it's rising toward us, or at least that'd be my guess,' she told others within earshot.
Once on the fifteenth floor, they first heard and then saw firemen storming up the stairwell. Other firefighters were unloading from the elevators and spilling into the hallways above, or so it sounded, some shouting like commandos at the civilians, moving them out and down. Jessica lingered on the stairwell above the fifteenth floor, waiting while others, in various stages of panic, passed her by, some assuring her that the only safe place was the lobby below. Firemen called out to her, telling her she could take the elevator on fifteen for the lobby below.
A crowd too large for the limited number of elevators had emerged by now, and J. T. found Jessica on the stairs, where she'd remained a flight below seventeen. 'Hell of a welcome to the Hilton, huh?' J. T. said.
'Yeah, I'd just gotten my shower, and now I'm going to smell like fire,' she replied. 'Look, I've got to go up there, have a look at the room where the blaze started.'
'Funny no alarms or waterspouts went off,' he replied. 'You suppose all the fire detectors and sprays in all the rooms may be, you know, inoperable or something?'
This high up in a building, she little wondered at J. T.'s distress. A skyscraper could quickly turn into a death trap for those reposing inside.
'Do you have your ID on you? I just grabbed my key and left everything in the room,' she confessed.
'Yeah, I have mine with me, but Jess, why do you want to go chasing a fire?'
'I have a grave feeling someone has died in this fire.'
J. T. stared a moment. 'You getting spooky on me, like that psychic detective Dr. Desinor or something, Jess?'
'No… I heard her death…'
'Heard?'
'Over the phone. She called just before the fire reached her-said something about gasoline, about someone's wanting to kill her. Said her name was Chris Lorentian.' Despite the fact that Jessica spoke her remembered thoughts to J. T., she believed her own thoughts sounded too insane to utter.
He shook his head. 'Are you sure you didn't just dream this up?' he replied. 'Jess, it's just a fire right now. We don't know that anyone's died in it.'
'But I'm telling you someone has, and that I spoke to her.'
J. T. looked away, his expression saying, Come on, Jess, the reception's already under way downstairs, and those gambling tables are waiting for us, too. But thankfully, he did not say it. Instead he asked, 'But why'd she call you? How'd she know about you?'
'How the hell…' she burst out but slowed down, taking a deep breath. 'I don't know the whyfors or the how- tos here, J. T. I'm in the dark. I mean, victims usually talk to me, but normally they're dead when they do their talking,' she added. 'This… this is just weird. This victim, I think, I fear, spoke aloud and directly at me. I don't know how or why… or what to make of it, John.'
'Easy, Jess,' he offered.
'Let's just get up there and have a look.'
John Thorpe could only stare, his mind racing to put the incomplete details together as they climbed toward the seventeenth floor, where they were met with resistance from firefighters who blocked their way until J. T. flashed his FBI identification and announced who they were.
'FBI?' asked the fireman loud enough for the fire marshal inside to hear him. 'How did you guys get this one so soon?'
The fire marshal came to the door and introduced himself as Fire Detective Charles Fairfax, a tall, firm- looking man in an untoggled fire coat and flopping, loosely pulled-on fire boots. 'I was downstairs in the casino myself when my beeper went off,' he explained. 'Dr. Repasi had me paged.'
Jessica hardly looked the part of an FBI medical examiner at the moment, but Fairfax, a tall, gaunt man with deep-cut wrinkles and leathery, perhaps fire-retardant skin, she mused, took her appearance in stride. She was barefoot, her hair wet, her T-shirt inappropriate. Fortunately, J. T. had his ID and was dressed in a suit for the reception downstairs. The building was full of forensics people, and apparently the fire marshal was also in attendance for the conference.
'Have you come to any conclusions, Detective Fairfax?'' Jessica asked.
''Flat out murder by fire. No surprises, really, except for the mirror.'
'Mirror?'
'You'll see it inside. Anyway, there's an accelerant pattern that shows up under blue light clearly enough that tells us she was doused with what we believe to be ordinary gasoline, which was ignited by an unknown source. No book of matches for this guy. Some of our guys think the fire was ignited by a torch wand, which would give the killer some distance from the blaze.'
'How do you know it was a torch wand?'
'A second accelerant pattern, a bit distinct from the first. Appears he may have fired up a butane torch and sprayed the gasoline with the butane flame. But this is all guesswork until we can get the lab analysis work done, of course.'
'Understood.'
'I mean we've got a lot of experience standing in the room. Myself alone, I've seen more than two thousand suspicious fires.'
J. T. whistled in response.
'You know fire's the third-'
'Greatest cause of death in the country, yes,' finished Jessica.
'Some six thousand Americans a year die by fire, and fifty percent of 'em come up suspicious, requiring the fire marshals. So we see a lot, and nowadays, what with modern science to back us up, we can put quite a case
