grabbing his partner by the lapels.
'All right, all right… enough with this machismo crap,' said J. T. in an attempt to quell the sudden animosity. He then proceeded to offer up what little they had gotten from Sharon Pierson, finally telling the detectives, 'We'd hoped to get more, but Miss Pierson obviously knows very little that might help in the investigation.'
'Listen,' Jessica told J. T., waving the newspaper story, 'I'm going to let you three men coordinate information on this, okay, J. T., and I'm going to get back to the hotel, put in a call to Eriq Santiva before he hears what's going on without my input.'
'Sure, sure,' agreed J. T. 'We can manage here.'
With that, Jessica beat a hasty retreat, glad that she had conveyed to Sternover that she knew exactly whose payroll he was on. He didn't dare rough up or harm Pierson, not now.
Jessica flagged a cab, and in the ride back to the Flamingo, she stewed about all that had happened and all that she felt must happen in the next few hours. She needed to coordinate with local law enforcement through proper channels, and this meant she needed Quantico's okay and support as well as their manpower. She also very much needed a psychological profiling team assigned to this fire phantom. Most of all, she needed Quantico's immense storehouse of knowledge, its computers, to search for like killings that might be tied to the Phantom.
And she needed to get to Eriq before the news services did, if she weren't already too late.
Jessica's phone call to Eriq Santiva at Quantico Headquarters netted a good feeling of backup. While Eriq had the physical evidence of the crime in his hands, and he had gotten bits and pieces of what had gone on in Las Vegas, at the time of Jessica's second call, Eriq had not gotten all the details of how the killer had chosen Jessica as his conduit to authorities until now, until she told him. She also told him that the newspapers had jumped on the story there in Las Vegas, calling the killer the Fire Phantom.
Eriq assured her that FBI would put all of its powerful machinery into motion at Jessica's request for assistance, and Eriq meant to personally see to the back-shelving of other important cases in the bargain. 'Quantico is at your disposal, Jess. Anything you need. I'll put the red flag on the locals and the field office there. You need it, you got it.'
'Thanks, Eriq.' She thought, He's now a good and tried friend and associate.
'If you say the word, Jess, I'm on the next flight there.'
'That's not necessary.'
'Then you're all right?'
'Yeah, I'm dealing-'
'As usual? There's nothing usual about this business, Jess. My concern is not just for your physical safety. I'm also concerned about your emotional state. This kind of thing, the way this guy is toying with your head, Jesus, I mean how?'
'How?' she asked.
'How did this… this fiend behind the pyromurder of Chris Lorentian know where you would be staying?'
'Easy enough. Convention's been in the papers here and it's centered at the Hilton.'
'Still, how'd he so effortlessly orchestrate this foul scheme-much less think it up?'
She sensed that Eriq's fear barometer, along with his concern, was also on the rise. And Eriq, as long-winded as he was, managed to ask all these questions in quick, fluid, Latin-accented succession. It made her think of their work together in Miami, where together they tracked the trackless Night Crawler all the way to the Cayman Islands. 'You should be getting a request for a nationwide fingerprint search through the Vegas branch office, and my friend Chief Warren Bishop.'
'We'll give it first priority to be sure. God'-he stopped to gasp-'I mean, it's truly sick, and the notion that this detestable monster's in a suite not three floors below yours when he contacted you, allowing the smoke and fire of his flaming victim to mask his movements. It's sheer horror.'
'It gets worse.'
'How so?'
'The fingerprints.' She explained to him how they had obtained prints in only one place, and how the killer had written his code using the burned flesh of his victim as ink.
Eriq fell silent at the other end for some moments.
''Did you get all the photos and notes I sent you on the crime scene?' She finally broke the silence, staving off any further fits of hysteria from him.
This got him talking again. 'Well, yes, I did.'
'So, have you had time to analyze the handwriting?'
Eriq's forte remained handwriting analysis and documents. Being chief of a division now afforded him little time to do actual investigatory work, but he loved the work, and he liked keeping his hand in. 'The fact he chooses to write out his message across a mirror rather than a wall may say something about him, but that's just conjecture at this point.'
'Oh, I think he likes watching himself at work, that's for sure. Give me something I can use,' she protested.
Eriq replied, 'We blew up the shots immediately, and I put a team on it. Not much of a message; very few letters to deal with, you know. We didn't know that the words and letters actually consisted of
… the victim's own creosote residue. I'll clue everyone in on that little factor. We're still studying each photo, including the crime scene photos. I have a profiling team at work on a victim and a killer profile. Have these to you, hopefully, by end of business day.'
'FedEx 'em as soon as possible,' she pleaded. 'Going to need all the help I can get on this one. Talk to Dr. Desinor. See if she'd be willing to do the scene photos for us, okay? I have J. T. with me, and don't worry about my safety.'
'Oh, sure, J. T.'s a deterrent to any maniac,' he said, chuckling.
'He's been a big support; don't pick on him.'
'I've taken some time to study the lettering myself,' he finally confessed, 'and…' Eriq was known for his ability at handwriting analysis. 'Yes, well, it's quite revealing.'
''Revealing of what, precisely?'' she prompted.
'It's my educated guess that we are dealing with some sort of schizoid fanatic type, almost… well, like a terrorist mentality.'
'A split personality, you mean? Like someone listening to voices in his head, telling him what to do? What do you mean, 'like a terrorist mentality'?'
'A fanatic, possibly a religious fanatic. Could be that he hallucinates, yes, or follows the dictates of a second, stronger personality. Or worse yet…'
'What worse yet?'
'Like I said, a religious fanatic, with the zeal of a righteous religious nut, maybe.'
'Religion, you mean like burning at the stake in the name of the Inquisition, all that?''
'In the name of the Holy or unholy.'
'What makes you think so?'
'The guy's scrawl is large, no center line to speak of, stiff and erect on the lines but erratic. Again, there's too little here to go on, but that's my best estimate.'
'I would've liked to have forwarded the original, but it weighed eighty pounds and measured six by four feet, and FedEx isn't good with mirrors.'
'Do you want me out there with you, Jess?' he again asked in a tone making it clear that he was prepared to take a jet the moment he got off the phone, if she so much as hinted her wish for him to do so.
'No, Eriq. I know you've got your hands quite full enough as it is with that awful child molester/killer where you are.'
'Yes, well, that's true enough. He's causing havoc, all right, in the shadow of the White House. Where do you think our energies and resources and priorities ought to be spent, Jess? All the same, Jess, if you need me or anyone on the team, give a shout.'
Jessica, like everyone in the country now, knew of the brutal, sadistic killer calling himself the Capital Punisher. This monster took precedence, for it had a penchant for child victims, and it was wreaking havoc in D.C., the nation's capital, and while Jessica had worked on some of the forensics and the profiling of the killer there, she
