Gallagher said, "Damn. I guess I've been out to lunch on this one from the get-go. Sorry, Dr. Coran."
"Not your fault, Gallagher."
''I mean, I knew this guy was on a kill spree, but none of this," he said, indicating the list of messages left at the crime scenes. "I didn't know any of this. I knew about the calls, the connection between you and the killer. Read about it in the papers, but nobody's got this."
Gallagher appeared shaken to his core. To further disturb him, she told him how the killer wrote his messages in the byproduct of the burning body: grease. Gallagher's stony face began twitching when he looked anew at the message, now knowing that it had been written in the burning fat of the victim. But in the best machismo fashion, he held himself together while she added the latest words from the killer to the list she'd kept a running tally of. It now read:
#1 is #9-Traitors
#2 is #8-Malicious Frauds
#3 is #7-Violents
#4 is #6-Heretics
#5 is #5-Wrathful amp; Sullen
No longer did Jessica have to wonder what the numbers and words used by the monster meant, what drove his obsession and murderous rage; she knew now that he meant to fill the nine rungs of Hell in Dante's conception of Hades.
"I've got to get out of here. Got to be with Warren," she told Gallagher.
"Your services, your expertise, Doctor," countered Gallagher, "are needed here."
"Contact Dr. John Thorpe at Ruby Inn, Bryce, Utah. Get him up here for the autopsy. Failing that-''
"Failing that, call Dr. Karl Repasi," said Repasi, who now stood in the doorway.
"Goddamnit, Karl," she cursed. "You're starting to worry me. Are you and the Phantom the same man?''
Repasi laughed at the suggestion and said, "Of course not, although I can see why you might believe so, Jessica. No, Warren called me. Told me to be here as soon as I could get away from Bryce. Said you were on to something, and it appears he was right. Where is Warren?"
"Hospital, in a coma."
"My God! How?"
Gallagher replied, ''As Dr. Coran put it earlier, Bishop took a great risk and it bit him."
Jessica took Repasi aside. "I think you know more about why Warren Bishop was here with two strange men than you're saying, Karl. You and Warren had an argument, a fight earlier today. What were you arguing about?"
"He was upset with me over what I'd said to you the other day, nothing more."
"Nothing more? Nothing having to do with problems in Vegas? Nothing having to do with Frank Lorentian?"
Repasi's facial response gave him away. She had hit a nerve. She pressed her advantage. "Lorentian got to you, didn't he, Karl? And he got to Warren as well, didn't he?"
"He's a powerful man," admitted Repasi.
"Powerful enough to buy himself a medical examiner and an FBI field chief?"
Repasi dropped his gaze.
"Enough said," she bitterly replied, storming off.
Neil Gallagher caught up with her and offered her a ride to the hospital. He started in by asking questions about Warren Bishop, how well she knew him, for how long, what sort of man he was. She pleaded for him to give her a break. "Can we please talk about this later?" she asked, silencing him. During the long, lonely ride over to where Warren Bishop lay in a coma, Jessica pieced all the parts together. And she felt like a fool. J. T. had warned her to be wary of Frank Lorentian, not to turn a blind eye to his threats or the reach of his power, and what had she done? She'd put the billionaire thug out of her mind and he had in fact blindsided her; he had gotten to someone she loved, and he had ruined Warren Bishop's career in the bureau as a result, managed to get two of his own men maimed for life, no doubt, and they had managed to let the beast they were all after escape once more.
She wondered how charges could be brought and made to stick against Lorentian. She wondered if Warren and the other two men would cooperate once he and they recovered. But realistically speaking, she knew that Frank Lorentian was about as untouchable an outlaw as they came, for he was an outlaw with enough money to buy anyone or anything required to float just above the law, up there with the likes of many another wealthy American baron.
The wait at the hospital was long and drawn out. Finally, Neil Gallagher approached her to say, "I'm sorry about your friend, Bishop. I hope he fully recovers."
"Why? So you can hang him out to dry?"
"No one in the operating rooms up there is going to come out of this unscathed, Dr. Coran. We will get at the truth here. Friend or not, Bishop interfered in this investigation, short-circuited a very real possibility of capturing this madman you've all chased here to Salt Lake. I have my duty, too, Doctor."
"Do your duty, then, Gallagher."
"When this is all over, I'll want a statement from you, Doctor."
"I apparently didn't know Warren as well as I thought."
"Obviously." Gallagher began pacing before her. He'd been watching her write on a notepad.
"Shouldn't you be orchestrating the manhunt for the Phantom?" she asked.
"I have my best, most trusted people on it. Believe me. We'll have him. We'll have him soon. It would help greatly if one of those three upstairs could give us something on the man we're after. And what about you, Dr. Coran? Have you been thoroughly forthcoming about what you know of this maniac who likes to fry women into oblivion?''
"Men and women, it makes no difference with this guy so long as he has the log to burn," she replied snappishly. "I've told you all I know."
"What's that you've got there?" he asked, pointing to her notepad.
''He intends to kill a total of at least nine victims, according to our math."
"Nine? Why nine? Why not seven, like that film, or twenty or fifty or a hundred?''
"All I know is that he intends to fill up this… this ascending and descending"-hole, she wanted to say, but instead finished with-"scale."
"Scale? The scale you showed me earlier?"
"Which, if he's allowed to carry on, will soon look like this," she replied, handing him the hospital logo notepad she'd been working over.
Gallagher raised it to his eyes and read the newly developed listing for murder. It read:
#1 is #9-Traitors
#2 is #8-Malicious Frauds
#3 is #7-Violents
#4 is #6-Heretics
#5 is #5-Wrathful amp; Sullen
#6 is #4-?
#7 is #3-?
#8 is #2-?
#9 is #1-the last victim?
"We suspect this maniac has some fixation with themes found in Dante's Inferno," she confessed, for giving information to Gallagher, for some reason, always felt like a confession, she thought.
"Dante's Inferno?" he reacted, looked up from the new list, and now he stared through Jessica, asking, "What kind of madman is this guy?''
"Some might say he is on a quest of some sort, the meaning of which only he fully comprehends. None of this means anything to the rest of us; it's all concocted in his fevered brain, and I'm sure Dante Alighieri didn't in 1321 ever expect his lurid descriptions of Hell to ever fuel a twentieth-century madman's killing lust."
He complimented, ' 'Ingenious of you to figure out this much."
''Luck and happenstance have had much to do with getting this far, but the fact remains, he's at large. There're too many holes, unanswered questions."
"Logically, your numbers appear accurate; this is most probably accurate." Gallagher pressed a finger into the list. "The man intends to kill nine victims."
"Unless he rolls it over, goes back through the rungs to number one again after hitting nine," she suggested.