pretended to be that actress.
'Are you in the lodge?'
No answer, just the gasping noise of the poor sacrifice at the other end.
Jessica shouted, 'At least tell me where the hell you are! You coward!'
Taking the phone off the victim, the raspy-voiced killer replied, 'I am climbing from the depths of Hell, which takes courage. I am no coward.'
'We can help you out of the pit,' she assured him.
'You can help me? Really?' he asked, his voice rising maniacally.
'Yes, we can get you the best doctors in the country to-'
His laugh drowned her out. 'You are going down into the pit as I rise from it, Doctor. Don't you see that? Don't you feel it? You can help no one. Not even yourself.'
'Where are you?'
'You must know by now. You must see.'
'No, I don't see a thing. Make it clear for me.'
'You're a smart woman. You can figure it out. Isn't that how you normally play out your petty games, Doctor?
I just want you to know that we are both cut of the same cloth, Dr. Coran…'
'Really? How so?' Damn this bastard, damn his soul and his body, she thought.
'We are both concerned with the same… fears, phobias, you and me.'
'What the hell fears are you talking about? And what's your name?' she challenged, hoping to keep him on the line for as long as possible, to somehow reason with him, to somehow save the poor victim he held hostage somewhere in the lodge, or somewhere beyond.
'Call me… call me Nessus.'
'Ness? Ness-suss? How do you spell that?'
'Spell it how you wish.'
'Is that your name?'
'It is the name my god calls me. I am his messenger and your guide.'
'I see, Nessus. So you're not responsible for your actions, your having killed three people? You're just an instrument of some power you cannot control. Is that it, Mr. ahhhhhh…?' It isn't working, she realized. He's not giving out any names or reasons that make sense.
'Perhaps if you'd crack a book once in a blue moon, you'd know what the fuck's happening here!' The sound of the torch and the screams of his latest victim suddenly filled Jessica's ears, along with the back-scatter noise of a clicking camera, followed by the deafening stillness after he, the man of the moment, the godhead in control, slammed down the receiver.
'Where are you, you cowardly freak bastard?!' Jessica shouted into the dead receiver. 'Cowardly bastard!' Tears of frustration filled her eyes.
Jessica was left alone with the sound of the victim's screams filling her ears and her silent room. The phone was untapped. No one knew that the monster had again somehow reached out and touched her. She felt angry, confused, outraged all at once. She wanted to lash out at the creature causing her such pain. But how? How did she fight what she could not see?
Jessica immediately called J. T. to inform him of the latest communique from the killer and her certainty that another victim had already been sacrificed in the Phantom's unholy game. When Thorpe arrived, half dressed, at her door, his hair wildly disheveled, he was still zipping his fly while asking if she were all right. She pulled him through the doorway, clinging to him, telling him verbatim what the killer had said, ending with the fact he no longer called himself Charon but Nessus.
'The names must mean something important, at least to him,' suggested J. T., who now watched Jessica pace tigress fashion about the small room.
''More likely to his developing, his metamorphosis, perhaps. Maybe he thinks he's going to turn into some sort of superhuman being or winged creature or god by killing nine victims and sacrificing them to his fucking demons.'
'Easy, Jess.'
She continued, not hearing him. 'I don't know, but whatever we can learn from these bits and pieces he's offering, we've got to take full advantage of-now, J. T., before there's a number five, you understand?'
J. T., seeing she teetered on the edge, pleaded, 'Calm down, Jess.'
'Calm down? I don't fucking want to calm down.'
'You're on your way to a burnout, Jess, if you keep this up,' he warned.
'Burnout-just the right image, as always, with you, John.'
He knew that she seldom called him John, and when she did, it meant she was either displaying real affection for him or that she'd become annoyed. 'You're going to stay in my room tonight.' He instantly waved his hands to any disagreement she might have, adding, 'You'll take my bed, and I'll sleep here, in your room. And I'll take any calls that come in for you. Okay? Understood?'
'No way. If that creep comes looking for me here in this room, finds you, and kills you, I'd never forgive you, John.'
'All right, then, we'll compromise.'
'Compromise? How?'
'We'll both stay in my room with you on the sofa, then. Happy?'
The following morning they learned of a fire that had gutted several rooms at Ruby's Inn the night before. Ruby's, they learned, referred to a well-known stopping-off point for people going into Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah, west of Glen Canyon.
'We've got to get out there,' Jessica told J. T.
'But Bishop's arriving here this morning. Don't you want to wait for him?''
'I left word in Vegas about what happened last night,' she explained. 'Talked with Harry Furth. Bishop'll figure it out; he'll catch up with us at Bryce Canyon.'
They arranged for a shuttle run to the airport. Along the way, J. T. asked, ' 'Suppose we can get a helicopter pilot who doesn't think he's Buck Rogers?'
Once at the Page airport, they located a helicopter and flew toward Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon. Jessica had once traveled to the area, and she told J. T. that his eyes were in for a number of breathtaking sights; and the country, as they flew over in the whirlybird, did not disappoint either of them.
In Bryce, Utah, at the Ruby Inn, they touched down at a commercial helicopter pad just across the street from the inn, a mammoth, made-over ranch, it appeared. There a crowd of onlookers had gathered in the way of police and fire officials just winding down their investigations. Jessica and J. T. feared they would find exactly what they knew they would, a fourth body-another woman, by Jessica's reckoning and what little her ear had picked up of the victim this time around.
The murdered woman's name was Eloise Whitaker, an elderly window, and she was, like Martin before her, enjoying a vacation as a member of a bus tour group, using Colorado Bus Travel, and traveling solo. J. T. and Jessica had already discussed the fact that two of the victims now had been passengers on vacation buses that toured the national parks, a third victim had worked in one of the parks, and that this seemed the only tenuous thread connecting the various victims.
Jessica knew that large tour groups went back and forth through the national parks every day, following exacting schedules. A death like Martin's and now this one slowed that progress considerably, and so when they ran into the bus tour guide named Ronny Ropers and his group again at Ruby Inn, Jessica was not completely surprised.
But Ropers's face lit up in a wide, theatrical surprise. 'You again? And another fire?' he asked Jessica. 'Do you bring them about?'
Jessica gritted her teeth and asked, ' 'Is the deceased one of your charges, Mr. Ropers?'
'No, thank God. This one belonged to Christy Apple-gate, with Sunshine Tours. That's her over there, the one who can't control her crying.'
