One of several huge buses painted with a rainbow of colors and letters proclaiming it a VisionQuest bus suddenly lurched at Jessica as she walked across the parking lot toward the blackened rooms where the fire had gotten out of control this time. Jessica was suddenly pulled from the path of the bus by an alert J. T.
'Damn bus driver,' cursed J. T. for her.
Other buses began to follow suit, leaving the lodge to maintain schedules, but Ropers had held his group up in an effort to help out in any way he could with Christy's sudden problem, him having had ' 'experience'' now with just this sort of emergency. He intended walking Christy, a well-acquainted friend, through the reams of paperwork and reports that would have to be filed. Now she had a dead-murdered-passenger to report, and Ronny deftly held her hand through it all.
'What the hell's this world coming to?' Ropers asked Jessica, who began questioning the tearful Christy, who could tell them nothing useful.
J. T. and Jessica flashed their badges and were ushered through the yellow police tape. Ruby Inn looked like an enormous ranch turned bus stop, fields and corrals and lakes stretching out away from it at the rear. Jessica caught glimpses of horses running freely about the corrals. A part of her wanted to run screaming and free with the horses, to get as far from this case and the Phantom as humanly possible.
Out front of Ruby's, the place sported a huge welcoming sign for all the bus tour traffic, a large restaurant, rooms for rent, laundry facilities, telephones, and a gift shop.
''Another body, another message, another autopsy to tell us what we already know,' complained Karl Repasi, who met them at the door.
Surprised, Jessica asked, 'Karl! How did you get here so quickly?''
'I have friends in high places, remember?' he replied glumly, adding, 'God, this is getting too hard, Jess, too damned hard. One smoldering body after another. Listen, please, please let me apologize for my outburst of the other day. I didn't mean half of what I said. I'm on my feet for too long and my brain stops functioning.'
Jessica walked past him without another word.
'How did you get here, Repasi?' asked J. T., who had thought only he and Jessica, with the exception of the Vegas FBI, knew of the Ruby Inn murder scene. 'Who tipped you off to this one?'
'I've been listening in on police calls since I was a child.'
'Karl, you're beginning to get on my nerves as well as Jessica's,' he replied.
Karl merely frowned, turned, and joined Jessica to stand amid the charred remains of the room, the dead woman's still-smoking body on the bed, the killer's now familiar scrawl on the mirror. ''You need all the help you can get on this one, Jessica. Don't fight me. Let me help you. Just tell me how I can assist in bringing this madman to heel.'
'How, Karl? How're you going to help me?'
'Obviously, this Charon fellow wants to tie you up with autopsy upon autopsy while he is free to go on to his next killing,' Karl replied, his hands flying about. 'I can give you freedom to move faster if you turn over all the autopsy work-hours of time, which the killer is using against you-to me.'
'Why, Karl?' asked J. T. 'So you can get your name in the papers?'
'I won't lie to you. I'm writing a book right now on my most intriguing cases for Pentium Publishing. I have a contract. A chapter detailing how I worked closely with the great Dr. Jessica Coran won't hurt the book.'
'Now it begins to make sense,' suggested J. T. with a cynical grin. 'I thought so!'
'In fact,' continued Repasi, 'I was hoping you'd consent to doing an introduction for the book, Jessica. If not, perhaps you, Dr. Thorpe.'
Ignoring his request, feeling him ingenuous, she replied, 'I'll consider your suggestion, Karl, but at the moment, I'm busy, Doctor.' She stepped up to the message on the sooty and this time cracked mirror, the surface of which looked like a roadmap with its spiderweb of crisscrossing cracks. This message, also written on greasy, fatty liquids, actually bulged outward, with sections of glass ready to peel apart and fall away. The message on the cracked mirror read:
#4 is #6-Heretics
'Pick up sticks,' she muttered to herself.
'The fourth victim is a heretic?' asked Repasi, shaking his head. 'Is this why she is burned far greater than those before? No, not exactly,' he continued. 'The room was entirely engulfed, according to the fire investigator. It went to backlash.'
'Backflash, you mean?' corrected Jessica.
'Yes, backflash, flashover, creating of the room an oven of gases, which exploded inward. From there the fire spread.'
'Something of a miracle the mirror only cracked and didn't explode,' she said, staring into the webbed lines that streaked across the lettering to make a mosaic of her reflection. 'I'm surprised the whole place didn't go up in smoke.'
'Fire has a mind of its own, they say. No two fires being exactly alike, like people, they say,' J. T. philosophized.
Repasi added, 'The units saved came as a result of speedy work on the fire department's part, after everyone was alerted by the explosion, and the fact one of the local trucks was at Ruby's for an all-night country jamboree and barbecue at the time.'
'Anyone in adjoining rooms hurt?' she asked.
He shook his head. 'Just scared witless.'
'I suppose they've been interviewed? Saw no one, heard nothing until the explosion?''
'All of 'em have already departed this morning, but they left statements with the local authorities. They add nothing useful.'
Jessica stepped to within inches of the bed where the Whitaker woman's black-scourged body lay in the familiar crumpled, fetal position. The superheated fire had reduced her body to near dwarf size, it seemed. Maybe the bastard burned himself badly on this one, she silently prayed. 'Too bad his body's not amid the rubble,' she said aloud.
'Will you allow me to help, Dr. Coran?' asked Repasi.
'You'll see to it that copies of your protocols follow me?'
'I will indeed.'
'Then it's a deal.'
'Jess!' complained J. T.
'Karl's right, John. We need the freedom to move quickly. I can't be tied up in another autopsy, which is going to tell me nothing I don't already know, so… so let's get out of here.'
'But Jess…'
Ignoring J. T.'s whining, Jessica stepped out of the crime scene and rushed to the nearby restaurant, where she plopped into a booth. J. T. chased after her and found her nursing black coffee. 'You going to drink that whole pot alone?'
'Help yourself.'
'You okay, Jess?' he asked, sliding into the booth.
'Stop asking that.'
'Sure, sure… whatever you say.' He poured himself a cup of black coffee, lifted the cup, chinked it against hers, and said, 'Cheers.'
'I'm sorry,' she apologized. 'This case is driving me mad.'
J. T. looked up at the pretty waitress whose shadow fell across the table. 'Well, hello,' he said.
'May I get your breakfast order?' she asked.
'Nothing else for me,' Jessica replied.
J. T. ordered two eggs over easy, hash browns, and bacon.
'You ever going to get that cholesterol down, J. T.?' Jessica said as the waitress hurried off.
Pouring himself more coffee, he asked, 'What's our next move, Jess? We can't simply just wait for him to dump another body at our footsteps,'
'That's exactly what he's doing, isn't it?' she asked, her eyes displaying a revelation. 'He's wanting us to trail him, so he leaves a trail of bodies, but where do they ultimately lead? If we knew that, then maybe we could get a step ahead of him. Do you still have that area map you've been carrying around?'
