Now Waco and Ruby Ridge had convinced thousands of thousands in the land that they lived under the rule of a government capable of blowing up a busy office building in the middle of a thriving middle-American city, a building housing men, women and children, for the sole purpose of getting an upper hand on the National Rifle Association. That the Oklahoma bombing was a ''black ops'' move in order that the president and "God Government" might point a finger at some unfortunate and beleaguered militia groups, members of which were being crucified in federal "monkey" courts where the evidence meant nothing; where defendants were railroaded to the gas chamber, as if everyone in America now lived under a pre-World War II Japanese military regime. And why would the U.S. government have planned and carried out the bombing of Oklahoma City's federal building? According to many a teen-on-the-street interview, the simple answer was as a show of force and power over those who dared question the president, his agenda or cabinet members, Congress or the House of Representatives, the CIA, FBI, FDA, ATF, FAA, NASA, the Centers for Disease Control, the U.S. Postal Service, the governors of every state, the mayors, the courts, the cops, and meter maids.
If you wore a badge of government at any level, you were suspect nowadays. And while writers and producers of paranoia-laden story lines only perpetuated the idea that everyone in government was for sale or had malicious intentions, Repasi remained right about one thing: Half-truths were good enough for the average reader who invested in a tabloid at the grocery counter.
Unable to sleep, Jessica tried to put Repasi and his specific paranoia out of her mind, and to help do so, she found herself drawn to Bishop's Western Union and the information packet that had arrived from Santiva in Quantico. She ripped open the message from Bishop, knowing what it must be, and she read:
Phantom has left another body at El Tovar Hotel, Grand Canyon Village, Yavapai East. Killer made phone contact with your stand-in. Call was placed 6:09 a.m. this morning and was caught on tape. Urgent you contact me ASAP.
Chief Warren Bishop
The message was damnably brief, saying nothing of where the phone call from the killer had originated. One good thing, Jessica gratefully thought, at least the bastard still thinks I'm at the Hilton in Vegas.
She put Warren's message aside and next took up Santiva's larger packet, spilling out its contents across the little table below the light. Santiva and the Behavioral Science Unit were as thorough as they could be with what little they had to go on, resulting in a less than detailed report on the suspect's profile. The unit had determined that the killer operated under a psychotic delusion involving a lust need for fire, that he was on some bizarre high and on an unknown quest, having a religious source, like some mythical archetype journeying deep into the belly of the beast to slay his personal demons. The report said that he was a thin, unremarkable, and unimpressive character with little to recommend him save the fact he appeared nonthreatening.
"Tell me something I don't already know," Jessica moaned in response to her reading of the profile thus far.
He likely lives alone, the report went on to say, or with one or more of his parents, if not a wife who generally leaves him alone for hours at a time and seldom if ever questions his comings and goings. He is likely a native of the Vegas area, or has lived there long enough to know it intimately. He likely works at menial jobs he considers far below his abilities and talents. He has an IQ higher than the norm, but he has major psychological complexes and psychotic episodes. He is highly organized and controlled in his dealings with victims, whom he selects randomly or due to some similarity in their dress or manner.
"All standard and par for the course," she muttered, "but it doesn't fit this guy. He hasn't remained in Vegas. He's come here, to Arizona, and his victims have nothing in common."
She realized that the Quantico unit had to feel they were working blind with the woefully insufficient information sent them. They simply didn't know enough about the Page, Arizona, killing, and they knew nothing whatsoever of the Grand Canyon murder. All they had at the time was information relative to Chris Lorentian's murder.
As a result, for the moment, the BSU profile was as much guesswork as was psychic Dr. Kim Desinor's added remarks on the killer. In longhand, she appended a note to tell Jessica her vision or version of the killer.
Your killer is male, most certainly, and has fixated on you, Jessica, for some reason having to do with a twisted religious search on the order of a crusade. The voice or voices in his head are directing him, but he is also a willing accomplice, because he expects a great reward for what he has done, and on a primal level he is rewarded via the suffering he inflicts on his victims. On a primal plane, he enjoys both the fire and the burning flesh. He puts his hands into the fire to feel the burning flesh. His hands will be darkened and hairless when you find him. The killer is unremarkable in and of himself, but the voices directing him have made him dangerous. He feels he has the power of gods behind him. Outwardly, he appears harmless and infinitely forgettable, while inwardly, he means to make history on the magnitude of an
Oswald or a Manson.
All my best, Kim Desinor
Jessica knew she could not ignore Kim Desinor's psychic sense. No one at the BSU group-indeed, no one at Quantico-knew that the killer was using his finger as a pen and his victims' burned bodily fluids as his ink. Desinor's psychic sense had saved Jessica's life in the past. "Fire-blackened, hairless hands," she said to herself. "Too bad we didn't have that bit of information when questioning the bus passengers this morning." But there were other buses, literally hundreds coming and going along the national parks route. Could one of them be carrying a killer? she wondered.
As for the killer's teasing messages, to date, no one had a clue about what the killer's messages, left at the scene of each crime, might possibly mean. Cryptologists in the documents department continued in their attempts to decipher the code but offered no hope at this time as to what it referred to, or where it might have come from other than the rantings of a maniac mind.
"No hope at this time," Jessica repeated to herself.
She next turned off the light and stretched out on the bed. She feared the phone at her bedside, feared it might ring at any moment, feared the sound of another fire victim raging in her ear. But the last call made by the killer was to her at the Vegas Hilton. The killer had no way of knowing she was here at Lake Powell. Just the same, she reached over and unplugged the damn thing.
J. T. had been right. Why not? The peace of mind was worth it.
She dreamily gave over her thoughts now to James Parry and Greece and their time there together. Soon she dozed and soon she fell into a deep and soul-soothing slumber.
J. T. had made arrangements for the following morning, and now he and Jessica were flying back toward the South Rim of the Grand Canyon in a Cessna twin-engine along a route that took them zigzagging back from Page, following the course of the Colorado River until once again they were over the great chasm.
The beauty of the magnificent canyon and its majestic size filled Jessica with emotions she'd thought long since lost. Something magical about the Grand Canyon created in the eye and the mind a religious feeling, a sense of wonder and awe at the spectacle created by nature and by God.
"They say it'd be a great place to commit suicide," muttered the old pilot of the plane, his whiskers white and brittle. ''Say your family can get over your loss before you hit bottom, is what they say." He laughed at the old local joke.
During the flight, she and J. T. were treated to close inspection of the canyon walls when the seasoned pilot, learning who they were and what their mission was, took his light plane below the rim and deep into the canyon at Jessica's request. They now skimmed along the surface in the aged pilot's effort to please and impress Jessica with his agility and ability with the plane. Both pilot and crew knew that this sort of ride, along the river bottom, deep in the canyon, had long since been outlawed, and was against FAA regulations, but while J. T swallowed his teeth, Jessica loved every moment of the canyon up close and personal. She could almost feel the spray of the water, they were so close to the surface.