TIME relentlessly reminded them with each passing hour that Judge DeCampe's life hung in the balance. Only Jessica, J. T., and Richard knew that Kim's life, too, hung in the balance. The situation gave Jessica pause, and she wondered if Kim's eerie malady might not simply disappear with Judge DeCampe's demise. If the judge were dead, then why wouldn't the psychic leprosy simply end? It made Jessica hopeful on the one hand that DeCampe might yet be found alive, but it also twisted a dark key in Jessica's mind as well. If the logic proved true, that with the Judge's death Kim might be released from her pain and suffering, Jessica could not help but choose Kim's life over that of the judge's.
She confided these thoughts to no one save Richard, who had held her firmly to him when she finished speaking. They had found a moment in her office.
Meanwhile, the hunt for the appeals court judge continued. No one was idle. Every lead was followed. The team narrowed the search after gaining new insight into the case, thanks to information coming from different sources, which all began to converge. Aside from what they'd gathered from the hobo thief, that a man old enough to have been the victim's father accosted DeCampe, a sketch-artist likeness had now been put together from Marsden's befuddled brain. The likeness, which Jessica prayed was likeness enough, now circulated to everyone in law enforcement nationwide. A call to John Walsh's producer at America's Most Wanted had gotten instant results. The story was run on an emergency basis, and now the media everywhere had both the story and pictures of Judge DeCampe and her suspected abductor, as well as a description of the suspect vehicle. But even Walsh called up to complain that the man in the composite looked like everybody's grandpa. In fact, the likeness drawn of the man they were so desperately seeking closely resembled George Burns. Add a cigar and a baseball cap as when Burns portrayed the role of God in the film Oh God, and it proved a perfect likeness. Some law enforcement people openly laughed at the depiction. It certainly didn't look like a desperate criminal; in fact, it looked cartoonish.
Jessica and Richard returned to the operations room.
“ Get me Detective Lucas Stonecoat in Houston, Texas,” Jessica ordered the civilian secretary who had been turned over to the task force.
“ It's only seven A.M. in Houston, Dr. Coran.”
“ I don't give a damn what time it is. Get me Stonecoat.”
“ Yes ma'am. Will see what I can do.”
Jessica reached for the bottle of Tylenol someone had brought her earlier, and she downed three tablets with a swill of Coca-Cola.
In a moment, the secretary tossed back her hair, saying, “Stonecoat is cm one. They patched us through to his home.”
“ Did you get the likeness we sent of the suspect?” Jessica said into the phone. “We laser-faxed it an hour ago.”
“ Got it, yeah. Some old geezer, I'm told. How sure is your information?”
“ We're certain of it. We think he's out for some kind of revenge motive. You guys turn up anything since last we talked?”
“ We're planning a ride out to Huntsville, see what went on there with respect to Jimmy Lee Purdy's execution and body. With the sketch, we'll have something for show and tell. Been my experience that most cons respond to pictures a lot sooner than words.”
“ Keep us posted. The clock's ticking.”
“ Yeah, understood.”
Jessica feared the Huntsville, Texas, execution and this guy Goddard, awaiting execution, would be just another blind alley.
NINE
Startling, like the first handful of mould cast on the coffined dead.
Texas State Penitentiary, Huntsville, Texas
Lucas Stonecoat feared that a visit to the state penitentiary would likely uncover little or nothing. Most convicts had little reason to cooperate with law enforcement, and few did so without inducements of one sort or another. Lucas had come to the fortress of stone and barbed wire with no authorization to barter with or OK any promises he might make to an inmate on death row. Along with Lucas, police psychiatrist Meredyth Sanger had come, but so far, only rumor filtered to their ears, something about a dead man reaching out from the grave-a story of how Jimmy Lee Purdy meant to get vengeance at whatever cost after his execution. Purdy certainly appeared the most fixated inmate bent on DeCampe's being punished. Warden Jerold Gwinn characterized Jimmy as he led them toward Purdy's only friend inside prison walls.
“ Purdy was a Bible-thumping so-called born again,” began Gwinn. “Jimmy Lee condemned any use of the Lord's name being taken in vain, but he called up unholy hellfire to rain over his enemies, and no one cursed more or longer than Purdy. Still, the idea that Purdy-executed on the Sunday before Judge DeCampe's disappearance-could have had any hand in the judge's disappearance…7'
“ We don't know for certain that he had anything to do with it, Warden Gwinn, but we're trying to keep an open mind,” explained Meredyth.
“ Inmate Goddard!” shouted Gwinn, rousing the shackled prisoner as they stormed into the interrogation room where Goddard had fallen asleep while waiting for them.
Goddard laughed at the warden.
“ You show these people respect and answer their questions as best you can, Inmate Goddard, and you'll get two merit points, two demerits if I learn otherwise.”
Lucas wondered what kind of a kindergarten Gwinn was running here.
“ You reap what you sow,” replied Goddard, and this biblical injunction seemed to appease Gwinn, who turned to Stonecoat and Sanger and said, “He's all yours. Good luck.”
“ Inmate Goddard is ecstatic about DeCampe's suffering, if that's what you want to know,” said Goddard before they had time to sit. “But I don't know jack-shit about what happened to the bitch or who's behind it. I had nothing whatever to do with it. So, are we done here?”
“ The warden apprise you of what we're here for?”
“ Got it through the prison grapevine.”
“ Ever hear Jimmy Lee Purdy threaten the judge?” Goddard laughed uncontrollably. “Do rats shit? But hell, I don't have to talk to you, and I ain't about to rat out my only friend in here.”
“ He's no longer in here,” countered Lucas. “You can't seriously believe that you can rat out a dead man, do you?”
“ The hell he ain't, and hell yes, I don't rat out nobody, not even the dead. Besides, like I said, Jimmy Lee's still here in the cellblock. Talked to him just last night. He's a haint now, haunts the place. I hear him talking in my ears when the lights go off. He tells me what hell's like. Fact is, it don't sound so bad after all.” Goddard, a hairy chest peeking from his prison shirt, grinned throughout his little speech.
Meredyth raised a hand and said, “Cooperate with us, Mr. Goddard, and-”
“ And what? What can you do for a walking dead, sweetie?”
“ What're your chances you'll ever kiss another woman before you die?”
He laughed. He snorted. He stared into her eyes. Then he slowly formulated a reply. “They say I can't have no contact in here with my visitors. Any contact, and I'm in the hole.”
“ You willing to chance that for a moment's pleasure?” she asked.
“ What about a touch. One touch, here,” he bartered, standing and holding his crotch.
“ Only if my partner can stay and watch over me.”
He glared at Lucas now. “Shit. All right.”
