"He made his escape from Vegas on a tour bus?" Bishop's shake of the head spoke volumes. "We had men watching the buses for anyone looking suspicious."
J. T. frowned, knowing it sounded somewhat ridiculous, but he replied, ''What better way to blend in than to join a gaggle of tourists? And we never found Chris's credit cards or her purse. Besides, as the FBI profile says, this guy is so unremarkable as to be virtually invisible."
"And using a unisex name like Chris, I suppose the tour guide would have little reason to question his sex when he went to use that ticket." Bishop sent his balled fist down on a table, the noise startling everyone in the restaurant area.
"Right," agreed J. T.
"So, supposing they were both-killer and victim- touring with the same or similar bus tour companies," suggested Bishop, warming now to the game of supposition they were playing, "they strike up a conversation, maybe have dinner together, and he slips his victim something in a drink…"
"Just enough drugs to incapacitate. Then he goes up to the victim's room, concerned about the victim's pallor, which the bastard remarks upon at dinner," added J. T.
"And the rest, as they say, is smoke and history…" Bishop's hard-set jaw began to quiver. "Cold, methodical bastard. Quite sure of what he wants, but I'll be damned if I know. Tell me what you know of this untapped phone call Jessica had from the creep at Wahweap Lodge."
J. T. wondered for a moment how Bishop knew the call had been untapped, but he mentally shrugged it off. There'd been no time for Jessica to place a tap on the phone. Bishop must have assumed as much.
J. T. now launched into as detailed a description of the killer's last communiquй as he could muster. He told Bishop all that Jessica had revealed to him about the phone call, and he ended with the killer's professed reason for doing people: "In order to climb from Hell himself, or so he said."
"Nifty and the freshest excuse for murder I ever heard," Bishop sarcastically replied.
J. T. nodded. "The devil made me do it."
"In your search with the bus companies…" began Bishop.
"Yeah?"
"Did you ask after the name she'd registered under at the Hilton?"
"My God. I'd forgotten. Chris Dunlap."
"Let's get back on the horn then."
They rushed back to the phone J. T. had left in the manager's office.
J. T. and Bishop double-teamed the effort, and they tied up the phone lines out of Ruby Inn with the help of the cache of tour guides they'd rounded up, making phone calls to all the various bus companies working the national parks routes in Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Colorado, and Wyoming. They'd thought themselves clever by limiting themselves to the national parks tour packages in this area, since the trail of the killer appeared to be that of a tourist interested in the Grand Canyon, Glen Canyon Dam, Bryce Canyon, and the Zion area. They then narrowed their search to buses going to, through, or toward Salt Lake City, Utah, in the past twenty-four hours.
The search proved frustrating, however. The bus dispatchers they talked to were, to a person, reluctant to release information over the phone without proof of Bishop's or J. T.'s credentials. The tour guides had far better luck, their voices and tour package numbers familiar to those within a given company.
Further vexing Bishop and J. T., some of the bus company records seemed in disarray, despite their systems' computerized promises.
At one point J. T. found himself disappointed to the point of considering murder.
Finally, after two and a half hours of nonsense, someone at the other end of the line said, "Yes, yes, sir… I do have a Chris Dunlap registered on our bus tour number thirteen fourteen, which is due into Salt Lake… ahhh, an hour and a half ago!"
J. T. had to check which bus company he was now speaking to, he'd been on the phone with so many today. It was the VisionQuest bus line. One of their buses had almost run over Jessica that morning.
"Thirteen fourteen? That's the number to identify the bus?" he asked.
"No, no… that's the tour group number. Bus number is sixtyyyyy… seven."
"License number?"
"Bus travels through sixteen states. Which license number do you want, sir? Arizona, Nevada plates?''
"Utah… Utah plates'll do."
The voice at the other end slowly enumerated each number.
"Where is the bus now? What lodge or hotel is it at?"
"Salt Lake Hilton, downtown Salt Lake City, sir."
"Thank you, God, thank you."
"Sir, our safety record to date has been-"
"Yes, yes, sterling, I'm sure. Thanks." J. T. finally hung up on a call that had netted them useful information. He felt elated and grabbed the receiver back up to call Jessica, when he realized he had no way of reaching her. She'd managed to do exactly as she'd promised not to do: She was in the snake pit with this guy. She'd promised to contact J. T. here at the Ruby Inn, but so far she hadn't, and it was nearing dusk.
He turned to Bishop, who'd been on another line close to him, but found Warren had disappeared. He went in search of Bishop to find him conferring in a shadowed vestibule between the hotel and the laundry room with Dr. Karl Repasi. J. T. at first assumed that Bishop was getting Repasi's take on the Eloise Whitaker murder when suddenly he saw Bishop erupt in passion, shoving Repasi so hard the other man's weight sent him through the laundry room door, where he toppled to the floor and stayed there while Bishop pointed a daggarlike, accusatory finger and swore at Repasi some unintelligible words.
J. T. was pleased to see someone literally take Repasi to the cleaners. "All right!" J. T. said with a wide grin, feeling it served Repasi right.
Not wanting Bishop to think him a snoop, J. T. stepped back from sight and waited to catch Bishop on his return to the manager's office. When Bishop did so, there was a slight pinkish-redness about his cheeks, giving his Bill Clinton look-alike features an even more Clinton-like look, but the square-shouldered Bishop remained otherwise unruffled. J. T. brought a smile to Bishop's face when he quickly unloaded his good news, saying, "Warren, I've got the whereabouts of the impostor Chris Dunlap."
Bishop's eyes widened like those of a predator. "Let me see that." He grabbed J. T.'s notes from his hand and stared hard at the data. "I'm on the chopper to Salt Lake."
"I'm with you," J. T. replied.
"No, you've got to man a phone here and find out where Jessica is. Tell her to meet us at the Hilton, should she get in touch."
J. T. frowned and complained of being left back.
"She'll need to hear this from you," Bishop said, his large index finger on the notepad J. T. had been using.
The frown remained on J. T.'s face as he watched Bishop disappear for the waiting helicopter where Bishop got on the radio, calling out the cavalry, J. T. assumed. In a moment, Bishop was lifting off into the sun-dappled sky and blood-red-and-orange rock formations of Bryce Canyon, the helicopter speeding toward Salt Lake.
Checking with the various bus companies all this time had been annoying and frustrating, but having to sit here while Bishop raced off to become Jessica's hero was equally repulsive.
FIFTEEN
Whomever is abandoned by hope, has also been abandoned by fear; this is the meaning of the word "desperate."