Jessica had taken a room at the Little America Hotel and Towers at 500 South Main, in the heart of the hotel district in Salt Lake City. Little America, she was told, was one of the places on the tourist visit list, and many a bus tour stopped here. Maybe she'd get lucky, she hoped. The city's oldest landmark hotels populated this area as well, and all of the touring buses coming into the city found their way to the hotel district.
Once settled into her room, Jessica made calls to local authorities and the FBI to alert them to the fact she was chasing a fugitive serial murderer on a kill spree, whom she believed to be in the area. The reaction from local authorities and the FBI was instantaneous. Undercover operatives were set up in all the major hotels, and police were placed on alert to back up the government men. This took time, but once this network had been established, Jessica got on the phone in search of J. T. and Warren Bishop. Unable to locate them immediately, she took the opportunity to contact Eriq Santiva, to bring him up to date on the case.
After she enumerated all developments and lamented the lack of progress until now, she assured Eriq that they were closer to a resolution than ever before, explaining that J. T. was researching the bus lines. "And as soon as we have the bus line he's using, we'll know where the Phantom is staying tonight," she assured Santiva. "Then we move in on the bastard."
"Take all precautions, Jess. He sees you, he'll likely do anything to kill you. Wear a vest, hang back. Let the others do their work."
"I'll be happy to do just that."
Santiva replied, "Here, we've taken everything you've given us and put it into the hands of every medical expert and academician in the country who might have a clue, Jess."
"We've got a bit more of the puzzle pieces since the last time J. T. forwarded information, Eriq."
"Want to share?"
She thought again of the killer's messages, and how they'd looked on paper, and she remembered J. T.'s having added that #5 would be #5. She thought it a peculiar numeric anomaly for the numbers to crisscross in such a fashion. She pictured the list in her mind, trying again to make some sense of it.
"Well?" asked Santiva, becoming impatient.
"Take this down," she said, and fed the list to him, jotting it down again for herself on the hotel's stationery. It read:
#1 is #9-Traitors
#2 is #8-Malicious Frauds
#3 is #7-Violents
#4 is #6-Heretics
#5 is #5-?
"Someone out there's got to know where this guy's coming from-or going to with all this," she finished.
''You think?'' Eriq replied.
"He said something about, I don't know, Satan's pit, dragging himself up from the pit and dragging me down into it. Something about the Devil's well. I'm paraphrasing. I wasn't exactly in any mood to memorize his every line when he surprised me the other night with Eloise Whitaker's fire assassination."
"I can't imagine what you must be feeling about now, Jess. I'm coming out there to be with you. You need me there."
"No, no, Eriq. Bishop's close at hand, and I've got help here on all sides from our guys in Salt Lake. They're a little stiff, Mormons as well as FBI men, but they'll do."
"If you're sure, Jess."
"Anything on the handwriting, the prints, anything?"
"He's wearing a pair of cheap sneakers with a Sonics logo on them."
"Sonics logo on the bottom of the heel? Hair burned off the back of his hands and forearms. Thanks."
"At the toe-big toe, actually. You get those shoes, we've got positive ID on that print taken at Page."
"Anything else? What about the two aliases he's used, Charon and Nessus?"
"Sorry, but a check of VICAP files and several other listings brought up zip on the computers. Whoever he is, he's never been apprehended before as a violent offender."
"He's too methodical to not be a recidivist, Eriq," she complained. "He's killed with fire before Chris Lorentian. I just know it. I know it in my bones."
"If he has, he may've gone straight into the asylum, bypassing criminal conviction, in which case we have nothing on him. We're running the prints through state and local institutions for the insane now, but so far-"
"Nothing." Her exasperation trailed her breath. If the killer had never gone through the court system and been convicted as criminally insane, then he would not be in a facility for the criminally insane, either state or federal. "Call me when you have something."
"Will do. Are you sure you have plenty of backup there?" he asked.
"Salt Lake FBI branch has me on their radar. They're looking out for me; been good to me," she lied, not wishing to tell him that she had informed Salt Lake of the situation but that she had not bodily joined forces with them, preferring to remain an independent part of the coming equation. So far as Salt Lake was concerned, the fugitive was theirs if they could surround him and tie the noose.
Jessica feared nightfall, which was fast approaching. She feared he would strike again, close by, and she didn't know how to stop this shadow monster. She feared she'd be the first to know when he struck, that he would somehow know where to phone it in, like a cat with a prize to offer her, another dead body, #5 is #5.
She began to strip away her clothes, stepping into the bathroom, turning on the shower, and getting under its soothing spray. While relaxing, she thought of James Parry and a paradise thousands of miles off. After showering, she returned to the phone and dialed Jim's home. It would be midafternoon in Hawaii, and Jim might not be at home, but she needed to hear his voice, needed reassuring, needed to know that he still loved her.
"Jessica? It's you. I've been worried about you; haven't been able to get in touch. You're on a manhunt. I talked to Bishop in Vegas. He gave me a number to reach you, but you'd already left."
"Jim, I just called so you wouldn't worry, but it's nice to know you do."
"I've missed you terribly."
"Me, too…"
"Tell me exactly what's going on there, every detail," he asked. "I'm given to understand that this bastard you're after has threatened you over the phone?''
"It's a bit more complicated than threats," she replied before launching into a detail-by-detail update on what had occurred since that first night in Las Vegas.
Parry, stunned at the revelations and fearful for Jessica, remained silent for a long pause after she finished speaking. "Jessica, if I know my literature, that numbering of one through nine, and the words 'heretics' 'frauds,' 'traitors'-it all sounds a bit familiar, like the nine rungs of Hell in The Divine Comedy."
"The Divine Comedy. Are you sure?"
"That's what it recalls to mind, yes."
"Of course, The Divine Comedy, Dante's Inferno," she replied. "I haven't thought of that place since… since I was a junior in high school, where I had to read it for Mr. Blevins's World Literature class. Jim, you're a genius. I knew there was a reason I was supposed to call you!"
"Very flattering."
"The subconcious always knows best. I called because I wanted to hear your voice, to tell you I miss you, to tell you I love you, Jim, but somehow my inner self knew that you could also help out on this horrid case."
"That's more like it. Great to know I'm needed. Still, you knew I was a lit major in college, and ancient literature was my field before I got into law enforcement, or had you forgot?"
"Obviously not," she lied. "You're brilliant as well as handsome."
"Not quite brilliant. I recently read a recap of the reasons why Dante was considered so important in man's perception of Hades, good and evil, all that in a chapter of a book called the History of Hell, so it's been on my mind. So, naturally, when you told me about what kind of nutcase you're dealing with… well, it was hardly brilliance on my part."
"So, why're you reading about Hades?"
"Believe it or not, it's required reading in my course on comparative religion and the literature of evil along with People of the Lie."