but Dorphmann had kept going, ducking behind the wall. She didn't have a shot.
'Are you nuts?!' she shouted at Rideout. 'You might've hit me!'
'Not a chance,' countered Rideout.
She momentarily wondered if she shouldn't worry about Rideout, if he could possibly be, like others before him, currently in the employ of one Frank Lorentian.
'Just be careful with that damned elephant gun, will you? Stay here and direct traffic to the fire!'
Rideout frowned and replied, 'I'm not letting you go off after that maniac on your own.'
'It's my job, not yours!'
She made off for the shadow man. It had to be Dorphmann. Two fires in one night. It would end his kill spree now to conclude with her, number nine, as was his intention from the start, from the very first phone call he'd made in Vegas to show her how easily he could kill Chris Lorentian, to his now eighth victim in this latest fire:
#8 if #2-Lustful.
Jessica made it to the vestibule. Behind her, she heard Rideout calling out to her to wait. She shushed him, her Browning automatic at her cheek as she turned to stare down the vestibule. In the distance, disappearing into the billowing clouds of geyser smoke ahead of her, ran the fire Phantom. Behind her, Jessica could hear the sirens and the firemen going into action, and she saw Rideout's silhouetted figure directing them, the big rifle held over his head. Confused firemen rushed now to a second and distinct fire site here this night, once again waking all the guests.
She knew what the firemen would find in the east wing; she didn't need to see it, not to know that inside the charred room, they would find the fire-blackened corpse of the Phantom's eighth victim and the message #8 is #2- Lustful.
So now Feydor had filled his quota, all save #9 is #1, all save his delivering Jessica to his god.
Ahead of her, his shoes clicked on the boardwalk that led deeper and deeper into the Upper Geyser Basin and toward Hellsmouth. It had become painfully obvious what this fiend wanted of her; for her, by her. He wanted her to be swallowed by the waters of Hell, licked to death by Satan's tongue, to enter Dante's Vestibule. He would have placed one human soul on each level of Dante's Inferno. He was ready to come full circle to #9 as #1, as all his victims shared not only the same fate but also parts of one another, shared in the traits and human frailties that had brought them to this end. That, at least, was the thinking of the madman, the force driving him. He killed only those who deserved to die, those who deserved to die by fire for the savior, Feydor Dorphmann-Moses and messenger to Satan.
And Feydor was so anxious to see an end to it, even as anxious as she was to see an end to it.
He expected great rewards, she realized.
Behind her, the second fire raged out of control. In front of her, Feydor awaited her, Hell awaited her, Satan awaited her. Somehow, Feydor Dorphmann had gotten it into his head that Satan required Jessica Coran's soul as a crowning achievement in a string of murders.
It still all added up to dementia.
TWENTY-ONE
He maketh the deep to boil like a pot.
John Thorpe had wasted no time in contacting Eriq Santiva at Jackson Hole to inform him that Agent Jessica Coran had deciphered the final mystery of Feydor Dorphmann's strange and bizarre odyssey. Santiva and Gallagher were far closer to Yellowstone than Thorpe was. They could intervene far more effectively and speedily. They had an army of FBI agents under their command.
Santiva and Gallagher now raced toward Old Faithful Lodge, knowing that it was Jessica Coran's new destination and that she was close on the heels of the madman Dorphmann. When their helicopter approached the lodge, they could see the evidence of a new blaze below them, the activity of firefighters, confirming J. T.'s suspicion. Nearby Jackson Hole had been quiet, a decoy jumping-off point for Dorphmann's kill spree. The near capture in Salt Lake City had spooked him and he had changed his plans, or so it appeared.
On the ground at Old Faithful Lodge, the evidence of Dorphmann's presence could hardly be denied: two fires, one under control, one being battled as they landed. And somewhere in all the confusion was Jessica Coran.
Behind them, in radio contact, Dr. John Thorpe followed in another helicopter. Over the radio, he was told the situation.
He blared out to Santiva, 'We've gotta find her! Help her!'
'We're doing everything possible,' replied Santiva. 'Over and out.'
Gallagher and Santiva leaped from the helicopter even before it touched earth, the powerful wind from the rotor blades dispersing the smoke, steam, and haze surrounding them, blinding them. They'd been in radio contact with Sam Fronval's people and had gotten word of Fronval's having been attacked, that he was rushed off to a nearby hospital, and word had it that Agent Coran had disappeared out into the Upper Geyser Basin springs along the visitor boardwalk that snaked inward for several miles along a honeycomb of hot springs.
Daylight had yet to break. Taking a helicopter over the basin might prove futile, but Eriq hailed J. T., who was still up in the air, to do so. They watched as the Salt Lake City police chopper carrying Thorpe turned up its powerful searchlights. Nose down, it zeroed in on the Upper Geyser Basin to begin visual pursuit. Santiva and Gallagher then raced for the boardwalk, which went in two directions where it forked in a huge circle around Old Faithful. 'You take that way, I'll go north,' Santiva told Gallagher. Both directions were obscured by ground clouds that swelled up from the hot springs here.
''Leave it to Jessica Coran to get into this kind of quicksand,' bitched Eriq Santiva.
Before Jessica Coran stretched a lunar and Mars mix of landscape that must appeal to Dante or any aficionado of his Inferno, for here in the vast region of the Upper Geyser Basin of Yellowstone, encircling the wondering gaze of the frail human form, were Hell's venting ports, the life-blood of Hades itself, touching God's morning breeze to singe His breath and turn it to sulfuric clouds. These clouds joined as they rose, moving across the land like the mightiest of ghosts heavenward, while still trailing an attachment for the dark underworld from which they came in the form of silicified rock.
As Jessica raced after the killer, her nostrils and eyes assaulted by the sulfuric acid, the stifling air all around her, she panted with running and swallowing the horrid stench that now enveloped her. The thermal clouds, at once beautiful, fantastic, alluring, captivating, and dangerous, now hid a killer who had enticed her this way, leading her to this time and place all the way from Las Vegas, Nevada, that first night when she heard the dying pleas of Chris Lorentian.
The killer had gotten off the footpath, or else he had stopped stone still somewhere in the sulfuric mist ahead of her. She felt dangerously close to the hot springs, which could be as hot as 180 to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. All around her she heard the gurgle and burp, the sputter and swallow of the superheated minerals here, as if they called out a chorus to the aeons-old danse macabre between good and evil here. She could no longer hear Dorphmann's corporeal steps on the boardwalk. Where the hell was he?
Jessica cautiously continued her pursuit. 'I'm here, Feydor!' she shouted, her anger rising. 'For the first time you have to face a lucid victim, someone with her senses intact. You cowardly bastard!' She hoped insults might instigate a mistake on his part. She listened for any sound.
Nothing.
'Feydor! Feydor Dorphmann! It ends here!' she shouted.
'Yes! Agreed!' he shouted back and her gun went instinctively to the direction from which his voice came. She fired twice into the mist, his form hidden in the steam clouds ahead of her.
'You stand before the Vestibule, the mouth of Satan and the River Acheron,' he shouted, and again her gun went up and fired at the sound, this time in another direction.
