"You're taking a course?"
"Helps pass time. I miss you. God, I do."
"Don't beg! I miss you, too."
"And I'm worried about you. More so now than before. Please be careful there, darling."
"I'm all right. I knew this guy was killing in the name of the king of Hell, Satan, but it's all right now… now we know his game. Dante's Inferno, of course. He'd called himself at one time Charon, Nessus at another…"
"Yes, the boatman who takes Dante across the River Styx to the Land of the Dead, and Nessus takes them across the river of boiling blood, guarded by the Centaurs. In fact, Nessus is one of the Centaurs."
She recalled having said to J. T. that the killer likely thought he'd be rewarded by his demons by becoming a godlike creature himself, perhaps sprouting a pair of devilish wings. She said to Jim, "Centaur, huh? This kook thinks he's a goddamned Centaur?"
"Why're you, of all people, sounding so surprised?" he asked, following with a light laugh.
"It's been a long time since I've read Dante. So this guy thinks he's a Centaur now, half man, half bull?"
"No, half man, half horse. Minotaur is the bull man."
"Got it."
"Read Inferno again. It could give you some insights into this creep."
"Exactly. At least now I will know something about what he's talking about. He's anxious for me to learn."
"What's that?"
"I think in all this madness, he's trying to… instruct me."
''So you have a monster for a teacher? Sounds like par for your course, Jess. You can beat this creep-bastard. You and I both know it."
"Thanks for the pep talk and the information. Before now, I had no point of reference when he'd make references to Hellsmouth, call himself different names."
"Don't be so hard on yourself. The guy freaked you out. Who wouldn't be?"
"Yes, Charon was the name of the guide who pointed the way for Dante and Virgil in their mythical tour of Hades," she thoughtfully replied. "Maybe we can use it against him."
"Don't take any unnecessary chances, Jess. Promise me."
She paused before saying, "Not to worry. I've got Bishop and the Salt Lake City field agents behind me. I'm surrounded by big, muscular types."
"And that's supposed to ease my mind?" His laughter washed over her.
She loved to hear him laugh, and she imagined his warm, lovely smile, and she thought of how much they had laughed together in Greece and Rome. She took a moment to tell him how much their trip had meant to her before saying, "Good-bye, James, and thanks for the help."
"Good-bye, and be careful, Jess. I love you."
"I love you, too, beyond your imagining."
She hung up, dressed, and tried again to get J. T. back at Bryce Canyon but without luck. Still the phone lines were tied up and all she could get was a busy signal. She thought of getting an operator on the line and having her break into the line, but instead she decided to locate the nearest library. With the help of the doorman, she learned it was too late for the library, that it would be closed. "Salt Lake rolls up the sidewalks at dusk, pretty much, ma'am," he apologized for his city.
"What about a bookstore?"
"Oh, yeah, there's one a half block on the southeastern corner, thataway," he said, pointing. "They may be open."
Jessica made the short walk and found the storefront shop window filled with books. Inside, she found a musty place filled with used books on wood and crate shelves. A huge orange cat lay asleep on the cash register. She finally found a dog-eared, paperback copy of Dante's Inferno. She paid two dollars and twenty-five cents for the copy and began revisiting Hades in the lobby of the hotel, and later in her room to be near the phone so she could keep trying to raise J. T., to let him know her whereabouts in the city.
Jessica hadn't seen or thought of Dante's strange panorama of Hades since her school days, when it was required reading in her AP class. She read it anew with the fanatical killer in mind, imagining his imaginings now. Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, in its entirety, was enormous, but it had been his depiction of Hades that captured the imagination of generations since its publication in 1321, and apparently their killer had been no exception.
Rivers of boiling blood, that was what the killer had turned his victims' bodies into. The Wood of Suicides, where the naked forms of men, women, and children dangled from thorny prongs of dead trees like so much litter and parchment; vile creatures such as the flying Geryon, Minotaurs, Centaurs guarding vestibules and black corridors, monsters at every turn, and those souls damned to living out putrid lives in the land of Dis or Satan, inside the body of the beast.
She read on and recalled the Furies, Medusa, and the Harpies, all of whom peopled Satan's world, an enormous inverted, three-dimensional mountain created when Satan and all his followers fell to the earth. She skimmed, recalling far more than she now read. Some said the Grand Canyon was created by Satan's fall to Earth.
Her eyes grew weary over the words, and for a time she felt alone with the mad Phantom, alone with the Devil. And she lay on the covered bed in her room here at the Little America Hotel in Salt Lake City, and here she nodded off with Dante's elaborate, allegorical window into Hell on her lap.
It was six twenty-five now, a light pattering rain having begun at the windows when the nightmare result of her cramming metamorphosed into a garish dream that carried her along a spiraling red river of blood without any chance of refusing. It was a river filled with muck and putrid odors so horrid they could not be swallowed. She felt herself going down into the deepest recesses of the human psyche where the demons dwelled, although some of the shadows in the room with her seemed corporeal enough to shake her from slumber. In the dark underworld, she saw herself staring back at her.
On waking, she shuddered, clawed her way to a sitting position on the made bed, and picked up the phone's receiver. She again dialed for J. T. at Ruby Inn in Bryce to inform him of the breakthrough, that the killer was working with the Dante mythos.
This time she got through. Obviously John had gotten a room at the inn, for they patched her through to his room.
"Jess, thank God, I've been worried sick about you," he almost shouted. "Where are you?"
Jessica thought she heard a voice in the background. "Are you alone?"
"Not entirely, no."
"Well, good for you. The breakfast waitress?"
"How'd you guess?"
She told him her whereabouts and updated him on the search for the killer, and as J. T. calmed, she informed him of the Dante connection. "That's wonderful news," he told her, adding, "and I have some good news, too. We located the bus he's been traveling on all this time."
She saw the noose tightening for Charon and Nessus. "Miraculous! How'd you do it?"
''Blood, sweat, tears, and a search under the registration of a Chris Dunlap. Bishop's idea."
"Bishop's there with you-good. Now tell me what you've got."
"No, Warren's probably in Salt Lake by now, Jess. You've got to get over to the Hilton. That's where Bishop will be, flushing this creep out. He's got his number now. He knows the tour number, the bus plate, and by now the creep's room number. It's just a matter of time now."
"Give me the details, J. T.!" She was shouting in excitement now. "What've you got?"
"The bus tour Chris Lorentian booked, she booked as Chris Dunlap, and it was on the VisionQuest bus line. The tour number is thirteen fourteen and the number of the bus is sixty-seven." He added the Utah plate numbers. "Got that?"
She jotted down the information on the hotel stationery beside the bed. "Excellent work, J. T. And you say Bishop's here in the city?"
"Yeah, he left here by helicopter some time ago."