It's never fucking enough with you, Feydor thought but said, "Each victim has been sacrificed to you, each has become a prize for you, my demon god, and soon you will have your final prize: Jessica Coran. What more can I do? It can't be rushed."
We're traveling by bus, for God's sake, Feydor recklessly thought.
"I heard that," Satan replied with a hint of mirth, leaving Feydor to wonder if he had heard all of his recent thoughts.
"Buses are slow. The killing will take time."
''Don't question providence.''
"I wouldn't think of it." Satan liked calling his wisdom and his kingdom providence so as to mock God.
"You already have questioned my wisdom."
And Feydor had. His demon director had chosen an unusual mode of transportation, and it was on Chris Lorentian's ticket. The demon god, quite taken with serendipitous fate, had said, "What better way than this to lure Coran across state lines and the country, away from the safety of large cities and toward the gateway into Hell itself?"
"Where is this place?" he'd asked.
"You have stood at this destination before, and you once almost succumbed to the alluring beauty of a death in the place where you are now leading Coran in pursuit of you.
Feydor vaguely recalled Satan's semen, a bubbling white mud pissing upward from out of the earth in some place he'd been as a child, some sort of tar pit of superheated, bubbling mud spurting up from the ground. This strange place must be one of the many destinations on the national parks tour. Feydor grabbed for the itinerary given him on the bus the day he and Satan had together left Vegas. He scanned each destination until his eyes fell on Yellowstone National Park. He had been there once, years and years before, a lifetime before, as a child. He'd stood before the steaming geysers, hundreds of them it seemed, with their steam and sulfur clouds creating huge, ghostly veils, like the astral wanderings of the dead, over the land. He'd become mesmerized, paralyzed even by the sight of the cauldrons of boiling, superheated water belching up from the center of the earth. He'd seen the bubbling, scalding mud pots that created lavalike sculptures. He had taken steps toward the 280-degree water, preparing to leap into Satan's saucepan when his father had suddenly grabbed him and pulled him away, scolding him and saving him from the scalding waters while loudly detesting his stupidity and idiotic expression.
A day later, while again in the park where death met life, he'd found a substitute for himself, and he had watched while his victim, the one he'd pushed into the scalding water of a geyser, literally boiled to death. It had been exquisite to watch, but he'd put the image from his mind now for years. Guilt and remorse had been so constant afterward that he finally erased all memory of the moment until now. Little wonder Satan had found him again.
"I promise you your freedom from me and all the demons that have ever controlled you in this life, if you comply now with my wishes," Satan sharply again reminded Feydor.
But Dr. Wetherbine's image pushed its way into his brain, and he heard Wetherbine's complaint, also loud and clear: "Don't go there, Feydor. It's a trick, all a trick. Satan cannot be trusted. He never could be trusted. Listen to me, son!"
"Shut up!" cried Satan, his voice filling the motel room, making passersby start, turn, and stare at Feydor's door, but now Feydor came awake, silencing the voices in his head.
Feydor now fully and clearly recalled every detail of the dying little girl he'd killed when he was himself a child. He wanted now, more than ever, to go in search of number four, to push on to numbers five, six, seven, and eight, and to finally kill number nine. He wanted to end his horrid suffering to become like other human beings, to be human, and to be free to conduct his life as he saw fit, rather than as Satan or God or Wetherbine or any-fucking-anybody-or-anything-else-in-the-fucking-universe saw fit..
The Evil One, in a torrent of raging and unfeeling words, shouted down Feydor's concerns, his own dark concerns flooding over Feydor with his insistent scream: "SO WHERE'S NUMBER FOUR-FOUR-FOUR-FOUR COMING FROM FEYDOR?"
In the lounge at Wahweap Lodge, overlooking the green and cerulean blue waters of Lake Powell, boat lights winking up at them, J. T. bought himself and Jessica a round of drinks. Jessica's limit these days was one whiskey sour. She sipped slowly at it, stretching out her pleasure and relaxation, giving thought to Athens and the Parthenon, where she and James Parry had enjoyed the previous summer. In her head, she could hear the traditional Greek music and see the folk dancing at the taverna where she and James had dined one evening. They had taken day trips to Corinth and Mycenae, where they saw the Lion's Gate, the tombs of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra.
Later they'd traveled by boat to Crete, where they found King Minos's palace at Knossos and Heraklion, now a modern city but once the center of Minoan civilization, which at one time "ruled"-as youngsters of today put it-the cultural world. It had all been so wonderful, magical, and now she felt a million light-years away from the emotions she'd felt on that day. She questioned why she was here in Page, Arizona's Glen Canyon, chasing a madman. She questioned her own steps, the path that had separated her from Jim so many months before. She doubted that her life would ever be one of a settled nature, the hub of which would be home, family, children, husband, and wife. She doubted that she'd ever be truly happy, that happiness was a commodity meant for others, that this elusive thing called joy, graceful happiness, would always elude her grasp, due in great part to the decisions she'd made early in life, due to the forces that molded her, and due primarily to her decision to become a death investigator. Like her father before her, she had chosen a career that offered little opportunity for anything else, and the fact she was a woman only added to the dilemma. Her father's life and career were held together by invisible supports and unheralded glue in the person of Jessica's patient, caring mother, a woman who could wake him with lovemaking, create a breakfast, and have the dishes put away before he left the house for work. She would never have such support, not from Jim Parry… not from any man.
Jessica finished her drink on this somber thought. J. T. meanwhile kept one eye on a blond bartender and another on a notepad and pencil he fiddled with. He was still playing with the killer's words over and over, jotting them on the notepad he'd snatched from his coat pocket.
"What're you doing, J. T.?" she asked, curious about his doodling. ''You know an expert graphologist can tell a lot from your doodles." She sipped again at her drink.
"Look at this." His forehead scrunched in consternation, Thorpe displayed the two recovered messages from the killer thus far as they appeared one atop the other. They read:
#1 is #9-Traitors
#3 is #7-Violents
"It's still meaningless gibberish," Jessica complained, tossing her hair back. "God, it's been a long day. My back is killing-''
"Look closer, Jess."
She wanted to recall more of Greece, less of the present. "I'm really not in any mood for the killer's games, J. T. Truth be told, I'm no more in the mood for your puzzles at the moment, either."
"I tell you, the killer's trying to tell us something."
"Of that I have no doubt, but-"
"Don't you see? Suppose there are two numbers missing," he suggested.
"Two missing numbers?"
"If there's a message missing from this list, what would those numbers be?"
Jessica frowned, gave up on her memories of a faraway land, and stared again at the puzzle of words and numbers.
J. T. unnecessarily filled in the blanks, saying, ''The number two and the number eight, if we follow the syllogistic wisdom-logic, if you will-"
"Okay, so two and eight," she replied, shrugging. "It still doesn't help us in the least."
J. T. jotted down the missing numbers between the two lines left by the killer. Then he pushed the notepad back under her gaze, a smug look coming across his face, his eyes darting again to the cute waitress who paraded by. Finally he said, ' 'This makes the configuration of numbers all the more.. complete."