narrowed their search to buses going to, through, or toward Salt Lake City, Utah, in the past twenty-four hours.
The search proved frustrating, however. The bus dispatchers they talked to were, to a person, reluctant to release information over the phone without proof of Bishop's or J. T.'s credentials. The tour guides had far better luck, their voices and tour package numbers familiar to those within a given company.
Further vexing Bishop and J. T., some of the bus company records seemed in disarray, despite their systems' computerized promises.
At one point J. T. found himself disappointed to the point of considering murder.
Finally, after two and a half hours of nonsense, someone at the other end of the line said, 'Yes, yes, sir… I do have a Chris Dunlap registered on our bus tour number thirteen fourteen, which is due into Salt Lake… ahhh, an hour and a half ago!'
J. T. had to check which bus company he was now speaking to, he'd been on the phone with so many today. It was the VisionQuest bus line. One of their buses had almost run over Jessica that morning.
'Thirteen fourteen? That's the number to identify the bus?' he asked.
'No, no… that's the tour group number. Bus number is sixtyyyyy… seven.'
'License number?'
'Bus travels through sixteen states. Which license number do you want, sir? Arizona, Nevada plates?''
'Utah… Utah plates'll do.'
The voice at the other end slowly enumerated each number.
'Where is the bus now? What lodge or hotel is it at?'
'Salt Lake Hilton, downtown Salt Lake City, sir.'
'Thank you, God, thank you.'
'Sir, our safety record to date has been-'
'Yes, yes, sterling, I'm sure. Thanks.' J. T. finally hung up on a call that had netted them useful information. He felt elated and grabbed the receiver back up to call Jessica, when he realized he had no way of reaching her. She'd managed to do exactly as she'd promised not to do: She was in the snake pit with this guy. She'd promised to contact J. T. here at the Ruby Inn, but so far she hadn't, and it was nearing dusk.
He turned to Bishop, who'd been on another line close to him, but found Warren had disappeared. He went in search of Bishop to find him conferring in a shadowed vestibule between the hotel and the laundry room with Dr. Karl Repasi. J. T. at first assumed that Bishop was getting Repasi's take on the Eloise Whitaker murder when suddenly he saw Bishop erupt in passion, shoving Repasi so hard the other man's weight sent him through the laundry room door, where he toppled to the floor and stayed there while Bishop pointed a daggarlike, accusatory finger and swore at Repasi some unintelligible words.
J. T. was pleased to see someone literally take Repasi to the cleaners. 'All right!' J. T. said with a wide grin, feeling it served Repasi right.
Not wanting Bishop to think him a snoop, J. T. stepped back from sight and waited to catch Bishop on his return to the manager's office. When Bishop did so, there was a slight pinkish-redness about his cheeks, giving his Bill Clinton look-alike features an even more Clinton-like look, but the square-shouldered Bishop remained otherwise unruffled. J. T. brought a smile to Bishop's face when he quickly unloaded his good news, saying, 'Warren, I've got the whereabouts of the impostor Chris Dunlap.'
Bishop's eyes widened like those of a predator. 'Let me see that.' He grabbed J. T.'s notes from his hand and stared hard at the data. 'I'm on the chopper to Salt Lake.'
'I'm with you,' J. T. replied.
'No, you've got to man a phone here and find out where Jessica is. Tell her to meet us at the Hilton, should she get in touch.'
J. T. frowned and complained of being left back.
'She'll need to hear this from you,' Bishop said, his large index finger on the notepad J. T. had been using.
The frown remained on J. T.'s face as he watched Bishop disappear for the waiting helicopter where Bishop got on the radio, calling out the cavalry, J. T. assumed. In a moment, Bishop was lifting off into the sun-dappled sky and blood-red-and-orange rock formations of Bryce Canyon, the helicopter speeding toward Salt Lake.
Checking with the various bus companies all this time had been annoying and frustrating, but having to sit here while Bishop raced off to become Jessica's hero was equally repulsive.
FIFTEEN
Whomever is abandoned by hope, has also been abandoned by fear; this is the meaning of the word 'desperate.'
Jessica had taken a room at the Little America Hotel and Towers at 500 South Main, in the heart of the hotel district in Salt Lake City. Little America, she was told, was one of the places on the tourist visit list, and many a bus tour stopped here. Maybe she'd get lucky, she hoped. The city's oldest landmark hotels populated this area as well, and all of the touring buses coming into the city found their way to the hotel district.
Once settled into her room, Jessica made calls to local authorities and the FBI to alert them to the fact she was chasing a fugitive serial murderer on a kill spree, whom she believed to be in the area. The reaction from local authorities and the FBI was instantaneous. Undercover operatives were set up in all the major hotels, and police were placed on alert to back up the government men. This took time, but once this network had been established, Jessica got on the phone in search of J. T. and Warren Bishop. Unable to locate them immediately, she took the opportunity to contact Eriq Santiva, to bring him up to date on the case.
After she enumerated all developments and lamented the lack of progress until now, she assured Eriq that they were closer to a resolution than ever before, explaining that J. T. was researching the bus lines. 'And as soon as we have the bus line he's using, we'll know where the Phantom is staying tonight,' she assured Santiva. 'Then we move in on the bastard.'
'Take all precautions, Jess. He sees you, he'll likely do anything to kill you. Wear a vest, hang back. Let the others do their work.'
'I'll be happy to do just that.'
Santiva replied, 'Here, we've taken everything you've given us and put it into the hands of every medical expert and academician in the country who might have a clue, Jess.'
'We've got a bit more of the puzzle pieces since the last time J. T. forwarded information, Eriq.'
'Want to share?'
She thought again of the killer's messages, and how they'd looked on paper, and she remembered J. T.'s having added that #5 would be #5. She thought it a peculiar numeric anomaly for the numbers to crisscross in such a fashion. She pictured the list in her mind, trying again to make some sense of it.
'Well?' asked Santiva, becoming impatient.
'Take this down,' she said, and fed the list to him, jotting it down again for herself on the hotel's stationery. It read:
#1 is #9-Traitors
#2 is #8-Malicious Frauds
#3 is #7-Violents
#4 is #6-Heretics
#5 is #5-?
'Someone out there's got to know where this guy's coming from-or going to with all this,' she finished.
''You think?'' Eriq replied.
'He said something about, I don't know, Satan's pit, dragging himself up from the pit and dragging me down
