Jessica immediately called J. T. to inform him of the latest communique from the killer and her certainty that another victim had already been sacrificed in the Phantom's unholy game. When Thorpe arrived, half dressed, at her door, his hair wildly disheveled, he was still zipping his fly while asking if she were all right. She pulled him through the doorway, clinging to him, telling him verbatim what the killer had said, ending with the fact he no longer called himself Charon but Nessus.
"The names must mean something important, at least to him," suggested J. T., who now watched Jessica pace tigress fashion about the small room.
''More likely to his developing, his metamorphosis, perhaps. Maybe he thinks he's going to turn into some sort of superhuman being or winged creature or god by killing nine victims and sacrificing them to his fucking demons."
"Easy, Jess."
She continued, not hearing him. "I don't know, but whatever we can learn from these bits and pieces he's offering, we've got to take full advantage of-now, J. T., before there's a number five, you understand?"
J. T., seeing she teetered on the edge, pleaded, "Calm down, Jess."
"Calm down? I don't fucking want to calm down."
"You're on your way to a burnout, Jess, if you keep this up," he warned.
"Burnout-just the right image, as always, with you, John."
He knew that she seldom called him John, and when she did, it meant she was either displaying real affection for him or that she'd become annoyed. "You're going to stay in my room tonight." He instantly waved his hands to any disagreement she might have, adding, "You'll take my bed, and I'll sleep here, in your room. And I'll take any calls that come in for you. Okay? Understood?"
"No way. If that creep comes looking for me here in this room, finds you, and kills you, I'd never forgive you, John."
"All right, then, we'll compromise."
"Compromise? How?"
"We'll both stay in my room with you on the sofa, then. Happy?"
The following morning they learned of a fire that had gutted several rooms at Ruby's Inn the night before. Ruby's, they learned, referred to a well-known stopping-off point for people going into Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah, west of Glen Canyon.
"We've got to get out there," Jessica told J. T.
"But Bishop's arriving here this morning. Don't you want to wait for him?''
"I left word in Vegas about what happened last night," she explained. "Talked with Harry Furth. Bishop'll figure it out; he'll catch up with us at Bryce Canyon."
They arranged for a shuttle run to the airport. Along the way, J. T. asked, ' 'Suppose we can get a helicopter pilot who doesn't think he's Buck Rogers?"
Once at the Page airport, they located a helicopter and flew toward Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon. Jessica had once traveled to the area, and she told J. T. that his eyes were in for a number of breathtaking sights; and the country, as they flew over in the whirlybird, did not disappoint either of them.
In Bryce, Utah, at the Ruby Inn, they touched down at a commercial helicopter pad just across the street from the inn, a mammoth, made-over ranch, it appeared. There a crowd of onlookers had gathered in the way of police and fire officials just winding down their investigations. Jessica and J. T. feared they would find exactly what they knew they would, a fourth body-another woman, by Jessica's reckoning and what little her ear had picked up of the victim this time around.
The murdered woman's name was Eloise Whitaker, an elderly window, and she was, like Martin before her, enjoying a vacation as a member of a bus tour group, using Colorado Bus Travel, and traveling solo. J. T. and Jessica had already discussed the fact that two of the victims now had been passengers on vacation buses that toured the national parks, a third victim had worked in one of the parks, and that this seemed the only tenuous thread connecting the various victims.
Jessica knew that large tour groups went back and forth through the national parks every day, following exacting schedules. A death like Martin's and now this one slowed that progress considerably, and so when they ran into the bus tour guide named Ronny Ropers and his group again at Ruby Inn, Jessica was not completely surprised.
But Ropers's face lit up in a wide, theatrical surprise. "You again? And another fire?" he asked Jessica. "Do you bring them about?"
Jessica gritted her teeth and asked, ' 'Is the deceased one of your charges, Mr. Ropers?"
"No, thank God. This one belonged to Christy Apple-gate, with Sunshine Tours. That's her over there, the one who can't control her crying."
One of several huge buses painted with a rainbow of colors and letters proclaiming it a VisionQuest bus suddenly lurched at Jessica as she walked across the parking lot toward the blackened rooms where the fire had gotten out of control this time. Jessica was suddenly pulled from the path of the bus by an alert J. T.
"Damn bus driver," cursed J. T. for her.
Other buses began to follow suit, leaving the lodge to maintain schedules, but Ropers had held his group up in an effort to help out in any way he could with Christy's sudden problem, him having had ' 'experience'' now with just this sort of emergency. He intended walking Christy, a well-acquainted friend, through the reams of paperwork and reports that would have to be filed. Now she had a dead-murdered-passenger to report, and Ronny deftly held her hand through it all.
"What the hell's this world coming to?" Ropers asked Jessica, who began questioning the tearful Christy, who could tell them nothing useful.
J. T. and Jessica flashed their badges and were ushered through the yellow police tape. Ruby Inn looked like an enormous ranch turned bus stop, fields and corrals and lakes stretching out away from it at the rear. Jessica caught glimpses of horses running freely about the corrals. A part of her wanted to run screaming and free with the horses, to get as far from this case and the Phantom as humanly possible.
Out front of Ruby's, the place sported a huge welcoming sign for all the bus tour traffic, a large restaurant, rooms for rent, laundry facilities, telephones, and a gift shop.
''Another body, another message, another autopsy to tell us what we already know," complained Karl Repasi, who met them at the door.
Surprised, Jessica asked, "Karl! How did you get here so quickly?''
"I have friends in high places, remember?" he replied glumly, adding, "God, this is getting too hard, Jess, too damned hard. One smoldering body after another. Listen, please, please let me apologize for my outburst of the other day. I didn't mean half of what I said. I'm on my feet for too long and my brain stops functioning."
Jessica walked past him without another word.
"How did you get here, Repasi?" asked J. T., who had thought only he and Jessica, with the exception of the Vegas FBI, knew of the Ruby Inn murder scene. "Who tipped you off to this one?"
"I've been listening in on police calls since I was a child."
"Karl, you're beginning to get on my nerves as well as Jessica's," he replied.
Karl merely frowned, turned, and joined Jessica to stand amid the charred remains of the room, the dead woman's still-smoking body on the bed, the killer's now familiar scrawl on the mirror. ''You need all the help you can get on this one, Jessica. Don't fight me. Let me help you. Just tell me how I can assist in bringing this madman to heel."
"How, Karl? How're you going to help me?"
"Obviously, this Charon fellow wants to tie you up with autopsy upon autopsy while he is free to go on to his next killing," Karl replied, his hands flying about. "I can give you freedom to move faster if you turn over all the autopsy work-hours of time, which the killer is using against you-to me."