“ It's possible,” replied Keyes.
“ Are you saying that the deception is worth a shot?”
“ Yes, it is.”
“ Anything at this point.”
“ It would appear so, Jessica.”
Jessica returned to Kim's bedside and told her, “That call, Kim… we've located her,” Jessica lied. “Iowa authorities have found a grave site on the old man's property and have recovered her body. It's over.”
Kim took in a deep breath of air. “I want to go home then. Sit out on my porch in my rocker… stare at the stars. Thank God… thank God… now maybe I can heal. No one knows how to treat empathic stigmata like occurrences like this, Jess.”
“ I know.”
“ Dr. Shoate has done all he can. Bless him.”
“ I had hoped he could arrest the physical problem while you dealt with the mental issues. I've called in a psychiatrist, too, Kim, a Dr. Shannon Keyes, to help you with the recuperation process. I won't let you be alone with this.”
Kim somehow managed a weak laugh and said, “You mean friends don't let friends drive themselves to decay? We could call that a new high in friendship.”
Shannon Keyes cautiously joined them as Jessica had asked her to do, and Jessica explained the psychosomatic syndrome that her best friend was suffering under. “Fortressing yourself up and being alone,” Keyes said, “is not going to be as helpful as drawing on others like your friend here for help, Dr. Desinor. Let us help.”
“ Do you two think you can help?”
“ Yes, we do,” Keyes firmly replied. “You'll need a lot of support now that this is over.” As Dr. Shoate was changing the bandage, Shannon Keyes now saw the disfigurement to the right cheek. The sight made Keyes swallow hard; she bit her lower lip to keep from gasping.
Kim had similar bruises and discoloration at each wrist, the abdomen area, the right breast, the ankles, and the knees.
“ How did you locate DeCampe? What was her condition? How alive is she?” asked Kim.
“ DeCampe suffered horribly, just as you. She was de-hydrated, starving, and decaying… decaying-”
“ Alive, decaying alive,” said Kim. “As I said all along. Her killer wanted to watch her decay alive. He somehow managed to cause decay in her where he kept her.”
“ Alive… yeah… alive, and she's going to get well, Kim. Early reports confirm this.”
“ Great… great news.”
“ Now you can put your mind to stopping this thing in you.”
She nodded. “My mind just has to put a stop to this. I have always feared this-that my mind would one day become my worst enemy, that it would in the end destroy me.”
Jessica again saw that her friend was weak, terribly weak. “Now maybe you can keep something down?”
“ Some liquids… nothing solid.”
“ Hell,” joked Jessica, “you've got that on IV.” She pointed to the IV glucose drip.
Kim managed a smile at this. “Maybe some chicken soup.”
“ We've got to go now, Kim, but we'll be back, soon.”
Outside, Jessica began to cry, seeing what a skeleton Kim had become in this short time since the parking garage reading. “She looks so emaciated.”
“ But she was boosted by our story. This could be a turning point for her.”
“ Yeah, until she turns on a TV and learns the truth.”
On the ride to the Washington Post offices, Jessica and Shannon were made aware of just how far along Kim Desinor' s “psychic” wounds were, as the smell of decay filled the automobile. It had attached itself to them, to their clothes, and they simultaneously began wiping their noses, when Jessica said, “My God, what if Desinor is right about what's going on with DeCampe? That she is literally being killed via decay?”
“ I can't begin to imagine such a horrid death.”
FOURTEEN
Perfect order is the forerunner of perfect horror.
Twenty minutes down the Beltway, and Jessica turned into the office of the Washington Post. With Keyes, they walked into the Washington Post newsroom, calling out for Tim O'Brien. He shouted back from the rear, now angry with Jessica.
“ Where the hell've you been?”
Jessica told him in no uncertain terms that their delay had been over a life-and-death situation.
“ I'd like to hear about it some time,” he replied.
“ Not from me, you won't.”
They stepped into a private conference room, where Richard Sharpe stood and pulled out a seat for Jessica and then for Shannon.
O'Brien introduced himself and his city editor, a man named AL Cirillo, and he then proceeded to introduce them all to Carolyn Nagby, who might have looked comfortable behind a desk at any library. She was O'Brien's expert handwriting analysis person, a graphologist. Using a magnifying glass, she was scanning the letter still under glass. “No one's been allowed to touch the letter, not since the moment I realized what I had,” O'Brien told them.
On viewing the letter, both the one under glass and its blowup counterpart thrown against a wall by an overhead projector, Jessica learned the author wanted to say a good deal more than how dare they. Keyes wryly said, “Says here, Jessica, that you're a harlot, a jezebel, the daughter of Cain, a coward who wouldn't dare call him a sex pervert to his face.” The letter threatened that Jessica Coran would be his next victim for slandering him, for making him out to be a sexual deviant.
In the letter, the writer revealed a great deal of himself, Nagby told the others. Then the expert in graphology added, “He makes a number of biblical references before getting down to his immediate message: an eye for an eye, and a notation on Romans 7:24-5.”
“ Romans 7:24-5. Somebody get me a Bible, now!” said Jessica.
“ We've already run it down,” said O'Brien. “Having been raised on the Bible, I thought I recognized it. Let me tell you, it's scary to contemplate what this woman must be going through with this guy as her keeper.” He lifted a large Bible and pushed it down the length of the table to Jessica. “I keep it at the office for just such occasions.”
Jessica and Shannon saw that it was opened to Romans, and each found the passage, and O'Brien said in his most booming voice, sounding like a minister, “This is from the epistles of Paul, written to the saints in Rome around a. D. 57.”
“ I know the passage,” said Shannon Keyes. She then read it aloud: “ 'Oh unhappy and pitiable and wretched man that I am! Who will release and deliver me from this body of death that is my shackle? Oh, thank God! Whose will is won through Jesus Christ, the Anointed, our Lord! So then indeed I, of myself with the mind and heart, serve the Law of God, but with the flesh, the law of sin.' “
“ What the hell does that mean?” asked Jessica. “Serve the law of sin?”
Keyes explained its significance and meaning. 'It seems benign enough,” she began, “but it has had conflicting interpretations.”
“ I'll say,” added O'Brien.
