Feydor, of course, like many Americans, knew of Dr. Coran. He'd read widely the accounts in newspapers across the country of her battles with such notorious serial killers as Mad Matthew Matisak and that freak on a boat in Florida they'd called the Night Crawler. He knew of how she'd dispatched a ruthless killer in Hawaii and another in New Orleans. Who didn't know the name of Dr. Jessica Coran, the FBI's most valued forensic detective? It just never in a million years would have occurred to him that one day he would be directed by the potentate of Hades to pursue and destroy this woman.
Feydor also knew that men whom society termed ''monsters" were in fact extensions of Satan on earth, that Jessica Coran prided herself on hunting down and destroying such monsters, and that now he himself was the next such extension, but that he was being given a special opportunity, unlike all those who came before him, to free himself of Satan's terrible grip, the inviolable hold over his mind and body.
"If I cooperate," he said again and again in a mantra to himself, ''if I cooperate with Lucifer, then later… later, after Satan satisfies himself over Coran, then Feydor Dorphmann-after all these years of being afflicted by Satan- can go back to being an ordinary man to lead an ordinary, healthy life and find redemption in Christ and the church."
It made sense. It made perfectly sound sense.
The young woman tied to the bed squirmed on hearing the mad rantings of her abductor. He saw her discomfort and shook his head wildly, trying to explain, saying, "It's true. It's the deal we struck… the deal I struck with the Evil One."
He could hardly afford the hotel room, but the girl was different. Her purse was stuffed full with hundred-dollar bills and credit cards. She had already covered the cost of the Hilton. Oddly, however, according to papers she had folded and pushed into her purse, she had registered under an assumed name, or at least one that read differently from her credit card. While her credit card name was Chris Lorentian, she was traveling under an alias, Chris Dunlap, a fact that caused some mild curiosity in him but not so much as to dissuade his actions. And with previous arrangements made at the hotel using the name Chris Dunlap, he'd had no problem getting the room card key.
After tying the woman's hands and feet, he'd gone down to the desk to be seen and recognized, although the makeup and wig he wore would keep the game interesting. He told the desk clerk that Chris Dunlap was his wife, and that she was already at the slot machines, unable to control her gambling fever, so he needed a second key. The desk clerk, seeing that he already had one card key to 1713, didn't question him but simply handed over a second key. He had smiled and laughed with the cute little clerk behind the counter over the fact his wife had discovered that she had gambling fever. Meanwhile, Feydor gave the clerk ample time to eyeball his rash, a bad one having cropped up on his neck and chest.
"She also likes her sex rough and tumble," he said with a boyish grin, a proud little shrug of the shoulders.
The clerk remarked on how interesting that all was, when in fact she felt nothing but revulsion. The clerk stared at his hair and remarked, "It's the brightest red I've ever seen except maybe for the actor David Caruso."
She was lying. She didn't like his hair any more than she liked his rash or his crude comments, but that was okay. She would remember him, and he wanted her to remember the "fireman" and his red hair and his red rash, because he wanted to be noticed.
He meant to sprinkle seeds of bait for Coran to come to him, just as he'd read about in her famous case involving Mad Matthew Matisak in his failed quest to kill her. Satan had a real liking for this Dr. Coran.
The red rash was real, but Feydor's true hair color was actually a mahogany brown.
"I'll call a bellhop for your bags, then, sir," the desk clerk had said.
"No, not necessary," he said, putting up a hand to her, and with the other hand he displayed his only bag, a briefcase, Samsonite with large clasps on either side. "Wife's bags are still in the car, and I can pick them up later," he had quickly added.
The clerk again smiled, but she seemed a bit perplexed with him by this point.
Later, he'd gone out to the car in the lot, hustled the girl named Lorentian, alias Dunlap, from the trunk of her car, and ushered her through a back entryway he'd located. Anyone seeing them might think her drunk but otherwise okay. The drug had kept her still and silent, and the oven-like conditions in the trunk had done the rest, wilting her and her hair. She had perspired so badly in the trunk that she now smelled like a pig.
Satan had said to him, "How she smells matters little, not where she's going." Then the thunderous roar of his insane laughter filled Feydor's brain like an inky black splotch.
After securing her to the bed, Feydor had returned for her baggage. In the backseat of the car he had rifled through her carry-on and found a bus ticket made out to Chris Dunlap. Nothing else of consequence or use was found in the carry-on, so he decided to leave it and simply hold on to the big suitcase. There might be some other treasures in these he could use later.
Satan had called Feydor to the desert, away from home in San Francisco, called him here to Vegas and had told him to wait here until he should be called on to do the Devil's bidding. Satan told him that eventually he would end the game at the Devil's Well, that he would see both Feydor and Dr. Jessica Coran at the Devil's Well, but that he must be patient to get to this place, which Feydor had seen once as a child. And so he had waited with intermittent visits from Satan's army of familiars, ranging in age and form and ability to deliver pain, all coming just to tell him to wait longer.
It had been nearly three months now, living out of Dumpsters, panhandling for coffee and bread until finally the time had come. He knew it a few days before when he'd picked up the Vegas paper that carried the story of the gathering of the Forensic Science Association of America and the Medical Examiners Association meeting at the Flamingo Hilton. It carried only a line or two about Dr. Jessica Coran, singling her out due to her reputation earned through a series of daring FBI cases she had cracked. He, of course, remembered her from previous newspapers, TV interviews, and nationwide manhunts, and this sudden revelation filled his brain to overflowing. The image of her on the spoiled page he'd held up that day was enough! It clearly told Feydor who it was that Satan had left him sitting around here and starving here and waiting here for.
Only after having stripped Chris where she lay on the bed, hands and feet tied, her eyes fixed and dilated, a gag in her mouth, her clothes stuffed in around her there on the bed, his privates aroused, did he telephone down to the front desk and politely ask after Jessica Coran.
"I'm calling about a colleague, a Dr. Jessica Coran. Has she checked in yet?"
"One moment, sir, and I'll see if I can verify that for you.."
Even the brief wait was damnably long after so long a delay getting this close to a closure for Feydor, and the Lorentian woman was moaning like a drugged Siamese cat now, a bit loudly. Someone walking by might hear her. He checked the gag, tugged on her bindings at hands and feet, to be prudent. He'd tied her with a cheap belt and tie he'd brought for the purpose. He wore surgical gloves, not wishing to leave any prints.
"Sorry, sir…" muttered the clerk into the phone. "I'm afraid that Dr. Coran has not yet arrived, but our records show that she has made reservations and is expected."