"An old buffalo who doesn't roam with the herd anymore, but hangs about the lodge. He's been there for years, but he's unpredictable. I don't want him charging my bird."
"Get me in as close as you can, then, without setting us down on a hot spring."
Rideout did so, and Jessica said, "Get back up in the air, and radio us if you see any other fire than the one we already know about."
"Will do, and good luck, Dr. Coran, or should I call you The Sanitizer?'' he joked.
"Thanks," she called back over the noise of the rotors. "Now get back up in the air."
Jessica was guided to the location of the fire by a ranger sent to the helicopter in order to take her directly to Samuel Fronval. Fronval stood in the hallway, smoke haloing him, as he tried in vain to disperse the crowd of curious onlookers who were in the way. Jessica pushed through the crowd, looking all about for any sign of Feydor Dorphmann, knowing full well that he'd been in similar crowds earlier, watching her every movement.
She saw a small man somewhat resembling Dorphmann, and she pointed the man out to Fronval, who immediately had his rangers grab the man in pajamas, whose shock soon translated into swear words.
Others in the crowd, seeing the detention of one of their own, and being asked by rangers in hats and carrying guns if they'd seen or heard anything unusual, began to disperse. Questioning a crowd, Jessica knew from experience, was the quickest way to break one up.
Jessica looked in on the fire room, saw the ugly message left by Dorphmann, saw the ugly remains on the bed. Firefighters were still squelching small eruptions in the room. She backed out, her face blackened from smoke. Exhausted, she leaned against the log wall, Fronval telling her he was sorry to have to see her under such conditions but welcoming her to Yellowstone just the same.
She looked into his clear, blue-ice eyes, and saw the same man in there, but outwardly he'd aged a great deal, his hair now a snowy white, his face a road map of wrinkles, every one of them no doubt earned.
"Yeah, it's good to see you again, too, Sam."
"I'm due to retire in a few months," he told her. "Damned ugly thing that's happened here on my watch."
"I'm sorry, Sam, truly I am."
"Read about what happened in Salt Lake."
She glanced down the long, narrow corridor to see a thin, emaciated man carrying a black case. The man seemed bent on following someone, his step in tune with a woman ahead of him.
"My God, it's him. It's Dorphmann, there," she said, pointing.
"Where?" asked Fronval, staring past the little man she pointed at.
"There!" She raised her gun and shouted for people to drop to the floor, and anyone remaining in the hall did so. But Dorphmann was gone. She raced, stepping over people as she did so, for the spot where he'd been.
"Are you sure of what you saw?" asked Fronval, catching up to her.
They stood at a juncture in the hallway where four separate wings spread out in four directions, any one of which Dorphmann could have stepped down. "Any doors, maids' closets along these corridors?" Jessica stared down each section of the maze.
"This way," Fronval suggested, going to a maids' closet, but it was locked.
"No way he could've ducked in here."
Out of the side of her left eye, Jessica saw a flitting shadow appear and disappear in the opposite corridor wing. "There he goes!" she shouted and gave chase, her gun raised.
Fronval stayed close behind. He knew the complicated labyrinth of the many-sided, many-added-on hotel, which had stood here since the early 1900s, a place where President Theodore Roosevelt had slept. "All the corridors eventually will lead back to the main hall," Fronval assured her from behind. "He's got to be making for an exit somewhere."
''The only other exits are where?''
"At the ends of each corridor, but there is one door midway."
"For all we know he's booked a room himself under an assumed name. He may simply have ducked into his room."
"We'll do a door-to-door search of this corridor on this floor," suggested Fronval. "It'll have to do."
A door between two sections of the hotel ahead of them creaked closed. "There!" Jessica shouted, racing after, leaving Fronval catching his breath.
Jessica, out ahead, spied a shadow racing off down the hallway on the other side of the door, still hustling with a black case in his grip. It had to be Feydor Dorphmann. She was so close that she might get a shot off if she gambled, but stopping to aim could cost her. She could again lose sight of him.
She took the gamble, stopped, and leveled the gun as the disappearing shadow turned a corner and was gone. "Damn! Damn!"
She found a stairwell, and exit sign, and a window at the end of this corridor. She heard the exit door below open and she rushed to the window to stare out into the night, hoping to see him come into view, running from the building. She prepared to blow a hole through his damned head when he did so, but no one appeared from the exit below. A noise filtered up to her. Someone pushing through yet another door, a gunshot, and silence.
She raced down the stairs and pushed through a door on yet another corridor leading to the center of the complex, and there, on the floor, lay Sam Fronval, a bullet hole seeping blood from his stomach, his walkie-talkie lying some feet away.
''Bastard run right up on me and fired. I didn't expect-"
"Save your breath, Sam!" she ordered and got on the two-way radio, calling for anyone listening, "Get those medics from room four twenty-two to… to… where the hell are we, Sam? Sam?"
"Main floor, corridor B, near center exit," the old ranger said, moaning now with the pain.
Jessica ripped the leather pouch from the radio and tore Fronval's belt from his pants with an effort. She wrapped the belt around the wound, shoved the leather pouch in tight against the bleeding, small-bore hole, and tightened the belt around wound and makeshift bandage as best she could, all to the complaints of Fronval, who kept saying, "I'm all right, Jessica! Get on after the bastard! Don't let him get away now! Go! Go!"
Jessica wouldn't leave until others arrived on the scene to care for Sam. She raced off in the direction the killer had taken, finding herself in the deserted, stone-silent main hall, off which stood the gift shop, the ranger information station that posted the time for the next eruption of Old Faithful, the massive dining room, a breakfast place, a lounge.
There were exits on all sides and through any number of other rooms. It was before hours, so no one was working here. Not a sound to be heard.
Jessica looked up at the mammoth heart of the old hotel, a living monument to the early interest in Yellowstone and the great white American hunter. This area was the original lodge, the workmanship magnificent, lost to the ages. And everything was on a grand, gaudy Gilded Era scale. She imagined the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, and the Morgans, all the powerful barons of the turn of the century meeting here, settling on prices of goods and services, enjoying themselves in a luxury not even dreamed of by others of their day. The main hall sported a wraparound second floor and elegant balcony, so huge a hundred modern-day tourists could stand upon it and watch Old Faithful blow its fifty-foot plume skyward from this observation point and never leave their seats.
Above the second-floor veranda there were rooms and more rooms and additional floors. All the walls were lined with stuffed animal heads, from bison to elk to bear, and beside these hung great, opulent oil paintings depicting scenes and events of a bygone era. Native American blankets and rugs hung everywhere.
All of it stood stark, silent. She hadn't a clue as to Fey-dor Dorphmann's immediate whereabouts.
Then she heard a noise, a pattering, metallic noise. It seemed to be coming from the dining area. She pushed through the closed double doors to stare in at the elegant, wood-motif dining hall, where a massive fireplace, large enough to house a small family for a portrait picture, stood at the center of the room.