Have them at the ready to move in at a moment's notice. One or the other of us, Texas or the Feds, whoever gets a warrant first, we use.”
Lucas placed his strobe light over the top of the car and turned on the siren. They raced for the courthouse.
TEN
I advance to attack, I climb to assault, like a choir of young worms at a corpse in a vault.
A subdued light filtered into Maureen DeCampe's consciousness, as if she were awakening from this night- mare, a little glimmer of hope that she could willingly, easily step into the light of consciousness, and that within that consciousness none of what had occurred had occurred except in her head, inside the nightmare, and all this horrid time would have been spent in her dream state and all such terror as Purdy represented would be mercifully over. She tried to rouse herself from the nightmare, urging herself into consciousness, and it was working. The light grew nearer and brighter and more real. She just needed to allow herself to move into it. Then the nightmare would end.
The bam odors were gone, too, and even the odor of the decaying had ceased. Thank God for the light. And what was that sound? Footsteps coming out of the darkness, soft footfalls, careful, inching their way toward her along with the light. A door hinge creaked; some small vermin skittered away. The sound of someone gasping for breath directly behind her.
The subdued light became a burning torch in her eyes. It's a flashlight, she thought. It was directed on her and the corpse to which she remained tied. She then heard the distinct high pitch of a woman's voice say, “Oh my freakin' dear God-in merciful heaven-have mercy-on-us-all! I knew that old SOB was up to no good out here, but I didn't know couldn't know this. My God, my dear God-a-mighty!”
Maureen next saw the blade and handle of a red Swiss Army knife begin sawing at the rawhide strips around her wrist, and she wondered if it could be Mrs. Purdy. With one wrist now freed, she felt the tug at the larger bands about her back. Her savior didn't know where to begin, but with a frantic gasping that threatened to send the woman into hyperventilation, reacting to the sight and the stench before her, and in nervous fits and starts, the brave woman tore at each binding strip. One by one, the little knife struggled through each band until Maureen DeCampe cried tears of hope and joy. The feeling of recapturing her own self in the pulling apart from the ugly unit she had become with the dead, that alone created in her a sense of unadulterated joy.
Was it Mrs. Purdy, another relative? Whoever her savior might be, the woman seemed young, strong, vibrant. She's no old matron of the farm, thought Maureen. But who could she be?
“ I'm Nancy Willis. I count myself an ass for not checking out that old man in more detail. He told me he was a widower. Told me he was lonely and sad. He struck me as an odd duck, but I didn't think he was a psycho- lunatic!”
Nancy now pulled and cut away at the ties that held Maureen by forehead and neck to the corpse's head and neck, and once this was done, Maureen's savior tugged at and cut away the tape about Maureen's mouth. Whoever this woman was, she was not squeamish about Purdy's desiccated body, which gave her fingers a liberal decay bath. “I got my cell phone in the bag. I'll call 911. We'll have this old wicked son of a-monster's ass in prison before dawn, you can bet. Poor child, poor thing. How utterly awful what that son of a- bastard's put you through.”
Her mouth finally free, Maureen gasped and thought. Call 911 first, but her body and her brain screamed to be free of Jimmy Lee's body now. She pleaded, “Just first… first get me free… of this rotting son of a bitch corpse.”
“ Yes, of course, first things first.”
Nancy Willis continued cutting rawhide with the four- inch blade. It took time, as each strip was thick, and the old man had wound the rawhide several times around his son and his victim. At one point, Nancy's knife nicked Maureen's side, but Maureen dared not cry out. Nancy talked as she worked like a cartoon dwarf out of Snow White, Maureen thought. Then a grim idea began to form in Maureen's head, making her wonder if this woman hadn't been sent in by the old man just to give Maureen false hope. Anything might happen in this horrid storybook she found herself in, an abyss darker than anything in Alice in Wonderland.
Nancy had worked her way down with the knife, going from wrists to back and then waist. When she finished the waist ties, even though still attached by her feet, Maureen twisted and rolled off and inched her upper torso as far from Purdy's body as possible. Nancy next began work on the ankles.
Maureen only half heard Nancy's nonstop words now. “When in doubt, check him out, all that, but he paid cash up front, and he seemed harmless enough, all that spouting off with Bible quotes, you know. Still, some last instinct told me he couldn't be all there, wanting this place, the last hole on the planet, and I was right all along, that nagging little voice inside my head. Still, I never… not all the way out here did I ever… never suspect such an awful result.”
Nancy continued cutting strips of rawhide as she spoke, now freeing Maureen's second ankle from the dead man's, allowing Maureen complete detachment. “Who else has he killed? How many? Some kind of serial mass murderer, isn't he?”
When Maureen pulled completely away, she realized how weak and stiff she felt. But this was masked by a sense of freedom that filled her with hope.
Finally, Nancy stared in the half light at Maureen, gaping at the other woman's wounds. Maureen, shivering in the cold bam, looked the part of a leper, and now Maureen reached up to touch the cheek that had been pressed to the dead man's, and she, too, became more aware of the sores on her body. Nancy removed her thigh-length jacket and placed it around the nude woman, asking her what her name was. “Maureen… Maureen DeCampe,” she managed. “Oh my god! You're the… you're the… you're the… that woman in the news that's gone missing? That lady judge stolen from the parking lot? I saw it on America's Most Wanted.”
“ Dial 911 now, please!”
Nancy shakily dialed 911.
Nothing. Dead air.
She redialed 911 several times.
Still nothing.
Maureen flashed on her body tied to Jimmy Lee's again. She desperately feared the old man might come through the bam doors any second and reclaim her.
Nancy said, “I don't fucking believe this. Damn, I knew I should've recharged this thing, and now way out here in the middle of nowhere. Shit. We'll have to get to my car; I can recharge it there on the way to a safe place. My daughter's house is only ten miles east. We can call authorities from there if we can't get the signal.”
She tucked the phone back into her bag, and with both hands, she tugged at Maureen, trying to get her to stand. “We've got to get to the road, my car, now!” Maureen allowed herself to believe they might have a chance at escape.
But Maureen hesitated at standing, fearful she would simply topple over. Her legs felt like wood.
Nancy Willis didn't skip a beat. “Why didn't I pay heed to my little voice? No, I went straight ahead with the rental, took his money without so much as a… and now this. I shoulda known. He gave me the creeps from the get-go. Something told me I had to come out here and see what he was up to.”
“ Thank God you did,” muttered Maureen, fearing to look at the itchy patches of skin at her wrists and ankles, her stomach and breasts, where she had lain so long against the decaying man. A part of her wanted to stop Nancy for a mirror from that purse of hers; a part of her wanted to assess the damage done to her face. But another part of her screamed for her to get up and get out of here.
Nancy hadn't stopped talking. “… now this. Honey, we gotta get ourselves outta here before he wakes up. Come on. On your feet. I know it's difficult.”
