least long enough to hate this man Purdy strongly enough to want to live to wreak vengeance on him.
Why was the old man turning up the wick on that damned kerosene light of his? At first, she thought he simply wanted a better look at the progress of his gruesome art. However, in the next instant, the light shone on the two white pine boxes with cheap chrome handles: coffins. One had held his son's electrocuted body, and now she recalled the horror of having awakened inside her coffin. He'd lifted the lid, smiled down at her in grotesque, toothless fashion, and then he'd shoved a cloth filled with chloroform over her face, and when she next awoke, she was lashed to his son's decaying corpse.
And my brain is beginning to accept this shit? she inwardly screamed.
How long? How long had they journeyed from D.C. to this godforsaken place? Had she been lying unconscious for the duration of a trip that had taken her near lifeless body from Washington to Iowa, where the old man resided? Had she been out that long? Had he managed to bring her back to his private property-to the safety of his homestead amid the nothing void of rural Iowa, where the only other soul to set foot in his bam might be the occasional postman, or Jimmy Lee's mother, the old man's wife? Did he have a wife? Did she condone what was going on out in her bam? Had she masterminded the entire abduction from her front porch rocker? Was it a ma and pa operation? Or was ma out of the loop? It felt unseasonably warm for an Iowa fall; even the nights had felt somewhat warm. The warmer the weather, the faster the decay, she knew. What was the cause for the warmth? Was it part of that large thing they called global warming, Indian summer come early? Or was it simply the heat of her own decay?
She wondered these things and why the old man was hovering with the light over her, studying her again. She wondered all these things before passing out again.
SEVEN
I will ransom them from the power of the grave: I will redeem them from death…
Isaiah Purdy had gone to his son's execution with no expectations save to see the thing through and to follow through on Jimmy Lee's requests-appeals made in his psychic visits.
After the execution, which had been handled with an eerie and perfunctory precision, Isaiah made his way down an institutional green and yellow corridor that felt like a tunnel out of The Wizard of Oz, at the end of which, he could view the body. It was a cold and stony Jimmy, his boy, whose head had been shaved, and whose temples were bubbled- marks of the boiling brain that had been scrambled by the electrocution. He didn't want to know the number of volts they'd fired into the boy's head. Poor Jimmy. Poor boy… Last of his lineage… end of the line…
After this, they told Isaiah to drive his van around the back to a sign indicating the prison wood shop, where he could take possession of the body. Once at the wood shop, he requested the extra coffin, telling them he'd pay for it, and telling them that it was meant for himself. The shop foreman readily obliged, saying he couldn't take any money from any father of Jimmy Lee's. This made Isaiah proud to know that his son had still managed to make friends here, even as a death row inmate.
They had carried Jimmy Lee down on a stretcher to the wood shop, just like as if he were a side of beef, and they lifted him from the gurney and into the pine wood box that'd been awaiting him, throwing his arms and legs in last. The men in the shop loaded Jimmy's coffin into the van, and then they loaded the one meant for his bride, the judge who'd sent him to the electric chair so many years before. Jimmy Lee meant to travel into eternity with his chief accuser.
Once the two coffins and his boy's body were loaded, the old man solemnly thanked all involved and waved a good Iowa wave to the incarcerated men, wishing them all good luck. Moments later, the wood shop's loading platform door ratcheted down and came to a metallic, screeching halt, leaving Isaiah once again alone. But he was hardly alone. Jimmy Lee's body might be in the coffin inside the black van, alongside the pine box awaiting the judge, but in point of fact, Jimmy Lee himself was inside Isaiah now.
'Taking you home, boy,” muttered Isaiah as he stepped from the loading dock and down the stairs. “Home to your Lord and Maker, son.”
Isaiah snatched open the van door and climbed behind the steering wheel. He turned the engine over and switched on the radio, which was playing a Gordon Lightfoot song. The words wafted through the cab of the van: “If you could read my mind, love… what a tale my thoughts would tell.”
It was Isaiah's favorite song of all time, but now, with Jimmy Lee actually crawling around in his head, the song made more sense for Isaiah Purdy than ever it did before.
Her interrogations for twelve hours had netted little save heartburn and mental heat stroke. No one knew anything, and Jessica's team's usual sources on the street, from paid snitches to prostitutes, had nothing to barter. It was as if Judge DeCampe had literally vanished from the planet, like one of those weird alien abductions that Whitley Streiber had been writing about for two decades.
Poof, and she was gone.
“ We're not getting anywhere this direction,” Jessica confided to J. T., who had stood around making time with Dr. Shannon Keyes, an FBI psychiatrist on standby should they need any psyche evaluations done or any psychiatric advice on a given individual as they processed suspects called in for questioning. Only Jessica and Santiva knew the complete truth of the situation, that Keyes was Kim Desinor's replacement, at least for now.
“ I fear whoever has her, he's an amateur at this and just lucked out, leaving us nothing,” Jessica told J. T. and Keyes.
A cop's worst fear was the crime scene that left not a single trace of victim or assailant-exactly what faced them now. Either the perpetrator had planned his every move, rehearsed his every line, or it was a crime of opportunity, a random violence. Hard to tell at this point which. While they leaned toward the judge's having been a victim of a carefully crafted stalking attack, they had zero suspects who posed an immediate threat to the judge before the abduction. Court records were being pored over, some by Lew Clemmens and his supercomputer, some by other members of the team, including Richard Sharpe.
In the meantime, Jessica had put out a general call to locate anyone who had ever made the remotest threat against Judge Maureen DeCampe, and anyone capable of acting on such a threat, and anyone available to act on his or her threats.
“ It's just remotely possible that some guy she put away arranged for all this,” suggested Keyes. “Being incarcerated nowadays doesn't stop a person from being violent on the outside, not if he's got contacts.”
Jessica looked across at Keyes, a beautiful ash blonde with an hourglass figure and penetrating gray eyes. Keyes had come up through FBI ranks via the Chicago field office, and by all accounts, she had seen a great deal in her capacity as a profiler there. She had been instrumental in capturing the infamous serial killer who called himself Doctor O, when she was just a fledgling police officer with the Chicago Police Department.
“ Then we need to scrutinize everyone she ever put away who's still alive,” offered J. T., looking mesmerized by Dr. Keyes, who normally worked with the Washington Field Bureau of the FBI these days.
“ And perhaps interview a few people around them,” added Jessica. “And that's going to take a great deal of time, and time, I fear, is the scarcest commodity we have right now.”
“ Certainly likely that time is the scarcest thing DeCampe has,” added J. T. “What other choice have we?” asked Keyes. J. T. agreed with Keyes next, saying, “Yeah, guess we don't have any other choice, Jess.
“ Jessica tried to ignore J. T., going to Keyes and saying, “You're the expert on the way the mind works, Dr. Keyes. What do you think the abductor wants? You've had time to review what we have. Any conclusions?”
“ She's only just arrived, Jess.” J. T. gave Jessica a fleeting grimace. “Cut her some slack.”
“ You think the killer's going to cut DeCampe slack, J. T.?”
“ Why're you assuming the abductor is going to kill her?” asked Keyes.
“ Are you kidding? We believe he has her buried alive somewhere.”
“ I see…”
