Caruso.'
She was lying. She didn't like his hair any more than she liked his rash or his crude comments, but that was okay. She would remember him, and he wanted her to remember the 'fireman' and his red hair and his red rash, because he wanted to be noticed.
He meant to sprinkle seeds of bait for Coran to come to him, just as he'd read about in her famous case involving Mad Matthew Matisak in his failed quest to kill her. Satan had a real liking for this Dr. Coran.
The red rash was real, but Feydor's true hair color was actually a mahogany brown.
'I'll call a bellhop for your bags, then, sir,' the desk clerk had said.
'No, not necessary,' he said, putting up a hand to her, and with the other hand he displayed his only bag, a briefcase, Samsonite with large clasps on either side. 'Wife's bags are still in the car, and I can pick them up later,' he had quickly added.
The clerk again smiled, but she seemed a bit perplexed with him by this point.
Later, he'd gone out to the car in the lot, hustled the girl named Lorentian, alias Dunlap, from the trunk of her car, and ushered her through a back entryway he'd located. Anyone seeing them might think her drunk but otherwise okay. The drug had kept her still and silent, and the oven-like conditions in the trunk had done the rest, wilting her and her hair. She had perspired so badly in the trunk that she now smelled like a pig.
Satan had said to him, 'How she smells matters little, not where she's going.' Then the thunderous roar of his insane laughter filled Feydor's brain like an inky black splotch.
After securing her to the bed, Feydor had returned for her baggage. In the backseat of the car he had rifled through her carry-on and found a bus ticket made out to Chris Dunlap. Nothing else of consequence or use was found in the carry-on, so he decided to leave it and simply hold on to the big suitcase. There might be some other treasures in these he could use later.
Satan had called Feydor to the desert, away from home in San Francisco, called him here to Vegas and had told him to wait here until he should be called on to do the Devil's bidding. Satan told him that eventually he would end the game at the Devil's Well, that he would see both Feydor and Dr. Jessica Coran at the Devil's Well, but that he must be patient to get to this place, which Feydor had seen once as a child. And so he had waited with intermittent visits from Satan's army of familiars, ranging in age and form and ability to deliver pain, all coming just to tell him to wait longer.
It had been nearly three months now, living out of Dumpsters, panhandling for coffee and bread until finally the time had come. He knew it a few days before when he'd picked up the Vegas paper that carried the story of the gathering of the Forensic Science Association of America and the Medical Examiners Association meeting at the Flamingo Hilton. It carried only a line or two about Dr. Jessica Coran, singling her out due to her reputation earned through a series of daring FBI cases she had cracked. He, of course, remembered her from previous newspapers, TV interviews, and nationwide manhunts, and this sudden revelation filled his brain to overflowing. The image of her on the spoiled page he'd held up that day was enough! It clearly told Feydor who it was that Satan had left him sitting around here and starving here and waiting here for.
Only after having stripped Chris where she lay on the bed, hands and feet tied, her eyes fixed and dilated, a gag in her mouth, her clothes stuffed in around her there on the bed, his privates aroused, did he telephone down to the front desk and politely ask after Jessica Coran.
'I'm calling about a colleague, a Dr. Jessica Coran. Has she checked in yet?'
'One moment, sir, and I'll see if I can verify that for you..'
Even the brief wait was damnably long after so long a delay getting this close to a closure for Feydor, and the Lorentian woman was moaning like a drugged Siamese cat now, a bit loudly. Someone walking by might hear her. He checked the gag, tugged on her bindings at hands and feet, to be prudent. He'd tied her with a cheap belt and tie he'd brought for the purpose. He wore surgical gloves, not wishing to leave any prints.
'Sorry, sir…' muttered the clerk into the phone. 'I'm afraid that Dr. Coran has not yet arrived, but our records show that she has made reservations and is expected.'
'Expected when?'
'We can't precisely say, sir, but her room has been guaranteed for late arrival.'
A glance at the clock radio on the bedside table told Feydor it was nearing six thirty-five. Again, the woman on the bed painfully, mournfully moaned, her legs kicking out as if a bad dream were chasing her.
The clerk, hearing the moan, asked, 'Is everything else all right, sir?'
'Yes, yes… thank you,' he told the clerk and hung up.
He removed the handkerchief gag from the woman's mouth to allow her to breathe easily. The gag no doubt had his prints on it from earlier touching, but this mattered not. The fire would obliterate any hint of it.
He had earlier laid open the Samsonite bag he'd carried to the room, and he began preparations, laying out all the tools he'd brought in his case. Lifting a Polaroid Instamatic camera, he took a before shot and mumbled, 'The right tool for the right job.'
The sight through the camera lens gave him a slight rise in the heat of his body, the red returning, a volcanic, liquid fire below the epidermis. His penis hardened but little, semen stirring slightly, sluggishly with his blood, but that part must await the burning flesh as promised by Satan, his reward.
It was a feeling he had not had in many, many years, not since childhood. He knew now that the Antichrist had likely spawned him, fed a fiery liquid mush to him as a child, coddled and nurtured him. That it had been Satan in his head all those times he'd burned things both inanimate and animate. A bit of fear along with anticipation and remorse rose in him along with his sexual organ.
After having been caught and punished many times, young Feydor had simply stopped burning things when he became older. The consequences were too great, the suffering at the hand of his earthly father too much. He'd become interested in psychology and psychiatry largely to understand himself. In college and graduate school, he'd excelled and had come out a practicing psychiatrist, believing he now could control the fire that raged within. He'd practiced medicine for only three years when the voices inside him began. It was the voices of the phantoms behind the irises of his eyes. Next came the years of hospitalization and treatments, all amounting to nothing. No one could help him. Not even Wetherbine.
No one until now…
Satan would be angry with him if Coran was a no-show.
He tried to shake off the fear that Satan would punish him, but a sense of dread overwhelmed as he pictured the spread of the red rash to all parts of his body and brain.
It wouldn't matter to Satan that it wasn't his fault that Coran hadn't arrived. Wouldn't matter if she canceled and was a no-show. The punishment would be the same. It didn't matter that it wasn't his fault.
He busied himself with the materials he'd brought for the occasion. Wasting no more time, he dug around for the screwdriver, located it, and laid it on the dresser alongside the pint-sized can of petroleum he'd brought, and beside this, the small canister of butane with its praying mantis-like wand. The torch would set off the fire instantly and quickly, and it would be over, and Feydor would once again feel some relief from his demons, and he'd be a step closer on the journey, saving his soul from the everlasting tortures already assaulting him.
As for the girl… he truly didn't want to think about the girl, but Satan had selected her, not him; and he had said she was a traitor, and so punishment must be meted out. And if not her, it would be Feydor branded as a traitor and someone would come after him with petrol and butane and a plan that would return him to the Devil's Well…
The hotel was jam-packed with not only forensics experts but also two other conventions going on simultaneously. The hallways were littered with men in hats and name tags. On the elevator going up, Jessica gave a thought to the Forensic Science Association of America, the FSAA. She'd been a member for nearly twenty years and had never actively participated as a board member, nor did she wish to now. She wondered how people as busy as she could possibly find the time to be treasurer or secretary or to steer such a cumbersome organization down a direct path to such a thing as a successful convention. She believed there was no more cursed a thing on earth than the possibility that someone would ask her to direct a committee of forensic people to organize such an extravaganza. Obviously, now, she had gotten what she deserved. Some committee of her peers had decided that Vegas, of all places, would make for a great place to hold their annual convention. Like complaining over an election when she hadn't voted, she had no right; she had gotten precisely what she and the other hands-off members deserved, because she had not gotten involved.
