Both Repasi and Osborne exchanged a long stare, and they came to the same conclusion as J. T. during that moment of silence. Jessica finally spoke their fears aloud. 'He may be just getting started.'
Repasi instantly replied, 'Yes, it's what he wants, isn't it? He'll continue to bait you this way, won't he? But what is his ultimate goal in all this?''
'He may'-she didn't want to believe it-'he may just want to outfox me.'
Repasi twisted the invisible knife, adding, 'He'll go on killing until someone stops him.'
'And who's going to do that, Karl? You?' asked Osborne, a sheepish grin building on his face.
She drew in a deep breath of air. 'It's either what he apparently wants, or it's an attempt to cover his true motive for killing Chris Lorentian.'
J. T. instantly jumped on this theory. 'Ingenious. Kill someone for common enough reason and mask it with a wild charade like this, calling you, Jessica, and getting the FBI chasing some mad lunatic when in fact the killer knew Chris Lorentian and he acted coolly, calculatedly in both the murder and in planning exactly how to throw authorities off. Could be… could be…'
'Are you going to…' Osborne's assistant cleared his throat with a handful of words and tried again.''Are you going to tell Frank Lorentian that his daughter died because some sick wacko crazy wants to play cat-and-mouse with you, Dr. Coran?' The assistant stood, arms across his chest, across the table from them, the younger man unable to hold his words back. ''I was there when the man identified his daughter's remains… what was left of her to identify, that is. The man crumpled.'
She looked at Osborne's man. 'I'm not sure what I'm going to tell the father at this point, Doctor, and I suggest no one speaks to the press of this until we've had time to learn more about this psychopath.'
Osborne raised a hand and began to object, but she cut him short with, 'Is that understood?' With that, she and J. T. left the autopsy room.
'What's next, Jess?'
'We find out more about Chris Lorentian. Where she went when she ran away, where she was staying and with whom. Her hideouts and haunts. Apparently she didn't run so fast and so far as she might've; perhaps if she had, she'd be alive today; perhaps she was being given sanctuary by a friend or friends?'
'So we find out who she hung with…'
'Who she knew. Where she was before this monster's path came to cross hers. We find out where she had her last meal, where she last bathed, where she last shopped, and we find out what her plans were.'
'Sounds logical, but shouldn't you leave it to the local cops to talk to Lorentian?'
'I could, but I don't think the killer expects anything less from me. I've already abdicated the autopsy to Lester. God, I don't think I could've handled this one, knowing what we know… that she died because of… of some twisted sicko's attachment to… to me, because-'
'Don't do this Jess. Don't go there.'
'— because some whacked-out, wackity-wack read about me in the newspapers and came after me, and-'
'Jess, Jess… don't do this to yourself. There's no way this is your fault.'
'You think Frank Lorentian will see it that way, J. T.? I wouldn't blame the man one bit if-'
'Stop this right now, Jess. This young woman's death is not your fault.'
Jessica fell silent.
They located Osborne's secretary, a pleasant, middle-aged woman with a broad smile who quickly looked up Lorentian's number and address, asked if they'd like for her to get Mr. Lorentian on the phone or simply to type out all the information for them. She also asked if they'd like a cup of freshly brewed coffee, rattling off several names of designer brands.
Jessica declined the coffee and took the address, thanking the woman on her way out.
Jessica and J. T. went directly for the Desert Imperial Palace, owned and operated by Frank Lorentian. They were quickly across the city, despite the congestion, thanks to a cabbie who knew every byway and back road. In fact, they faced more roadblocks inside the gambling casino than outside, designed as it was to keep people in the maze. And after several thwarted efforts to get in to see Frank Lorentian, they were finally led to the man's suite.
Lorentian looked like a shriveled gnome in his bathrobe and glasses, his skin a file-cabinet gray. His eyes, sunken deep, depressed, looked like those of a tortured ghost. His eyes looked through them rather than at them, a sure sign he remained sedated. From telltale signs about the room, he also appeared to have been drinking heavily, despite the certain caution of his doctor not to mix booze and pills, and despite the early hour.
Jessica thought the room stank of cigar smoke. When Lorentian turned his sad eyes away from them, he contemplated the world outside through a slit in the heavy drapery. In silence, he peered out at the desert sun and at the expanse of concrete that was dwarfed by the mountains in the distance. He worked at bolstering himself up, to stand tall and erect, larger than his own frame and depression allowed. When finally he turned to face them again, Jessica saw a devastated, shaken, physically hollowed-out, walking corpse, a man who might easily court death himself in a mad effort to find his lost child.
Lorentian's right hand was marred, missing several fingers. She imagined that in his youth, he'd been a rough, stubborn, hard-fighting street tough in Chicago or L.A. or perhaps New York, a man who generally got what he wanted. Jessica had seen larger-than-life photos of him adorning the walls downstairs in the business office, but somehow he had become a shell, the carved-out remains, a wandering shadow of the man in the pictures. She wasn't at all sure if he'd been in ill health for some time, or if this were the cataclysmic effect of his daughter's disappearance and now her death, but she imagined the latter was at work on him. She could imagine no worse blow to an indomitable spirit than the loss of a beloved child.
Lorentian was a small man in stature, and now in his expensive robe, he wandered the room, unable to make himself clear as he indicated a place for them to sit. The room screamed from outlandishly lavish furniture and decor, the floor-length windows covered in purple and burgundy, someone's idea of royalty. The false palace- penthouse suite-had become the father's mourning room, the ornate, crystal chandeliers ostentatious and vulgar alongside the decadent furnishings, which mixed Oriental with rococo. Jessica sensed a taste of vulgarity in the man as well.
'I'm Dr. Jessica Coran and this is Dr. John Thorpe, sir,' she began.
'I know who you are!' It sounded an attack, the way he put it, but then he tempered himself. 'I've been expecting you. Rollo from downstairs told me you were coming up.' He looked anguished, caught on an unrelenting tenterhook that had risen from the depths of Hell to enter his entrails and tug and tear and rend from him all remnants of his soul. ''I know who you are, Dr. Coran, and I was told this… this bastard who killed Chris… he talked to you? Called you at your hotel room, so that… so that you heard her in the fire, heard her screaming?' His heartfelt anguish was unbearable. He looked into Jessica's eyes for her answer. 'Well? What kind of human trash does this to an innocent child, and what connection do you have with this monster? What did he say to you?''
So much for professional silence, Jessica thought. Obviously Osborne, his assistant, or Repasi, or all three, had already spoken to Lorentian about the events of the night before in complete detail. We're all extremely sorry for your loss, Mr. Lorentian, she mentally ventured, instantly realizing that this kind of tiptoeing about wasn't going to suffice here. She said, ''Violence, it seems, is part of our human nature, sir; and no one is immune or safe from its influence.'
'Indeed,' J. T. gunned his agreement. 'We're going to work hard, Mr. Lorentian, to locate the killer and bring him to justice. You can count on the FBI.'
'FBI!' He spat his contempt. 'Justice,' muttered the gray-haired, ashen-faced Lorentian. 'You think there can ever be any justice after this? Just tell me one thing: What did this bastard say to you, Dr. Coran?'
She shook her head. 'He didn't say anything to me. He had.. he had your daughter do all the talking.'
Lorentian's eyes welled up and he instantly wiped them with a monogrammed handkerchief. 'Did she… did she suffer long?'
'No, not at all,' Jessica half-lied, knowing that Chris did not die instantaneously, that is, without the time it took for the dying heart, mind, nerves, and cells to shut down completely; the death process, even amid flames, took a certain amount of time. Instantaneous death came only with explosions or high-velocity impacts such as airplane crashes in which the body became fragmented in the blink of an eye, as with ValuJet Flight 592's crash in the Everglades. Fire victims, such as Chris, did not circumvent the dying process. Few people ever died instantly.
