'I'm Ronny Ropers. I'm a tour bus guide. Mr. Martin's one of my charges. Someone's going to have to notify the family, and since I'm captain of the ship, so to speak… Nothing like this has ever happened before, not on my watch. I mean, sure I've had some die on me; we book more over-the-hill passengers than any tour line going, but it's always been of natural causes. I heard talk of… of murder?''
'You have any idea who might have wanted Martin dead?'
'What're you talking about? We're all just touring the country, having a good time, all except Himmie.'
'Himmie?'
'Mr. Herndorf, Klaus Herndorf, dour guy, keeps entirely to himself at the back of the bus, doesn't participate, always a glum response, talks very little English, voted most likely to Uzi the bus.'
'Did you see Martin with Herndorf or anyone else last night?'
'I spoke to him myself last night before going into the village. He was fine.'
'Was he alone?'
'Yes, just going down to dinner.' Ropers was visibly shaken. 'He was just a sweet old man. Who'd want to murder him? I was just kidding about Himmie, of course.'
'We'll want to meet with and talk to everyone on your tour, Mr. Ropers.'
Suddenly he looked even more stricken than before. 'But that will delay us for hours.'
'I'm sorry, but it will be necessary.'
Jessica and J. T. followed Ropers outside to his bus, weaving in and out through a parking lot littered with tour buses. They had to be led to the bus that belonged to Martin's group. There she began the tedious questioning of other tourists who might shed some light on the Martin case. So far, all they had in the way of an identification of the mysterious man who had dined with Martin was the shaky description of a waitress who had very poor recall.
From the look of the crowd on the bus, Jessica held out little hope of learning much more than why older people on vacation were willing to make absolute fools of themselves in what they chose to wear, and certainly not any more than they already knew about the killing.
''Martin was a loner,'' said one of the elderly ladies near the front. 'He kept going off by himself. Didn't mingle well.'
'Poor social skills,' added the lady traveling with her.
'We tried to involve him more,' said another gray-blue-hair across from these two, her garish green sunglasses and bonnet bobbing with her speech.
Ropers reluctantly agreed. 'I found it difficult to involve him. Usually, I can get anyone involved in the time- passing games we play on the bus, but Martin was a real dour fellow, not unlike Mr. Herndorf in that regard, but at least Martin would crack a smile now and again, show he was listening in.'
'He was traveling alone, recently widowed, somewhat soured on life,' supplied another elderly lady.
The image made Jessica think of how lions in Africa picked out their prey from among the aged, dying, and weak who could not keep up with the herd. Had Martin died because he was lonely? Did he have absolutely no connection to Chris Lorentian? If so, then the victims were randomly selected by the killer, and the killer did not know his victims, save for what he might surmise from their body language, perhaps.
Did Chris Lorentian look like an easy target, like Mel Martin had looked like an easy target?
Jessica met with and spoke to Herndorf, who was every bit as sourpussed as Ropers had described him. He expressed in broken English his regret about Martin, but assured Jessica he had not seen or spoken to the man the night before and knew nothing of his accident, as he put it. Herndorf seethed throughout the interview, angry at the Gestapo-like treatment and the FBI's putting them off schedule.
Feydor Dorphmann felt an overwhelming need to catch up on his sleep as he boarded the large, comfortable, air-conditioned bus that had snaked its way through canyon passes, pulling out of Page, Arizona, at dawn along with thirty-six other passengers. He had seen the activity of fire trucks, a paramedic wagon, and local police milling about the scene of his last destruction.
He had located his usual seat at the rear and settled in, placing his hefty black briefcase in the overhead and grabbing a pillow for his head. He had loosened up with the other passengers now, saying good morning to each as he passed them, remembering some of the names, asking forgiveness from those he could not recall. He nestled into the cushions of one chair and put his feet up on the one beside him.
The other passengers had long before become curious about him. They had all become 'real chums' at the inaugural dinner the night he had burned Chris Lorentian to death. They had all exchanged information about themselves to one another, all at the coaxing of Doris, the tour director, a woman whose makeup-if not her face- might crack if she smiled once more. No one on the bus knew anything about Feydor, and he knew he must come up with some answers to some inevitable questions. He wondered if he ought not revert to his German, as bad as it was, and pretend to know very little English. It could save him a lot of trouble.
Contemplating this, he had happened to glance out the window. His heart almost stopped, and then it started up in quick-beat fashion when he saw Dr. Jessica Coran emerge from the building near where the fire had broken out in the early-morning hours, disturbing everyone in the east wing of the lodge.
As others now began boarding the bus, Feydor quickly realized that the fire and the fire death fueled the talk of the morning for the tourists, and word came back to Feydor that the poor fellow who expired in the fire was a traveler on another tour with another bus line heading toward Vegas and coming from destinations ahead on their schedule.
Jessica Coran and a man with her, flashing their FBI badges, suddenly boarded another bus, Martin's tour bus. Dr. Coran's small black valise dangled at her side, firm in her strong hand. Feydor watched with great interest, wondering if the FBI people might yet board his bus, fearful they could cut short his and Satan's scheme. But Doris wasn't about to be held up. She'd been involved in what appeared a continual rivalry with yet another bus following the same route as they.
'Crank her up and get us outta here, Dave!' she ordered the driver.
Doris appeared determined not only to stay on schedule but also to defeat her nemesis by gaining time and getting ahead of schedule. Doris had explained that the earlier they got out, the better and cleaner the facilities along the way were apt to be, and the better the service and the better the food.
When the bus had shuddered into life, Feydor felt safe again.
And now, even as the tour director listed their stops today, Feydor began to nod off, and soon the killer nodded off completely, a half smile on his lips. He'd done a good night's work, and a respite from his fevered mind and future plans felt reward enough for now.
I deserve a break today, his mind kept telling him. Along with some peaceful sleep in the air-conditioned comfort of the bus. This compensation felt right. But Doris, from the front of the bus, started up another of her blasted sing-alongs, show tunes.
Feydor placed on headsets built into the seat to listen to some Bach, Handel, and Wagner rather than participate in this morning's Andrew Lloyd Webber tunes with the tour guide, a frustrated showgirl, Feydor decided. Even from behind his closed eyelids, he could feel the woman's wrath. She'd be after him to participate more; there was little doubt of this fact. He occasionally opened his eyes and found her glare.
The tour guide had said they must all rotate seats on each successive day of the tour so that everybody got a chance to be up front, and it supposedly made for friendlier relations among the travelers. Feydor hadn't changed seats, preferring the serenity and relative safety of the backseat. Besides, the view from here held all other passengers under his scrutiny.
But it had been a rough night, so he leaned the back of his chair as far as it would go, feigning a headache. He allowed the classical music to flow over him. For the moment, he felt relatively safe in sleeping. He remained pleased that Jessica Coran, like a beckoned shadow, had followed him thus far. He was equally pleased to have left her yet another surprise that would complicate her pursuit. He thought of the well to which he intended taking Jessica Coran, the well of fire into which he intended throwing her. He recalled the area as it appeared to him as a child, recalled the first time he had ever taken a life; it had been another child's life and no one had ever known except for him and for Satan, who told him to do it.
He knew that Satan beckoned him back to the place where he'd killed that little girl, where he'd pushed her from the guardrail and into the Devil's lips. He had stood about with the rest of the crowd, watching the frantic parents as the little girl cooked to death in the superheated waters of Yellowstone National Park.
