Words came more haltingly as her nerves increased. Still, she somehow kept speaking extemporaneously through the stout wooden doors, continuing to engage the old man's attention, to direct it at her and away from Jessica.
“ I mean, you have devised the perfect punishment for Judge DeCampe-let her rot! Great idea, Mr. Purdy. I'd love to talk to you about where you got the idea of strapping your victim to your son's rotting corpse.”
Finally, a response came back in a gruff male voice from the other side of the door. “You people know about how Mother died? She pined away for years. Died a broken woman, died over what they done to Jimmy Lee, her only child.”
Keyes took in a deep breath of air, realizing she had struck a nerve. “We know everything, Mr. Purdy. It's our job. But we don't know why you chose such a… this method of punishment for Judge DeCampe. Tell me, was it your idea, or was it Jimmy Lee's?”
“ You said you knowed everything, ha! Whataya really know?”
“ I know the passage in the Bible that told you what to do. Did Jimmy Lee stumble on it while he was in prison? Please, it's personal with me now. I gotta know, Mr. Purdy… I just have to know.”
“ You the one wrote them awful things about me in the newspapers?”
“ No, no, that was a colleague of mine, and she was taken off the case. Now, tell me, Mr. Purdy… was it Jimmy Lee who told you to do all this? Did he come up with the idea after he-you know-got religion, right?”
“ He come across't it, yes… but was guided to it, actually. Guided by God's own hand, he was.”
Figures, she thought, but she said, “God… really? Can you tell me, sir, exactly how God contacted Jimmy Lee?” How did He find him in a Texas prison? she wondered.
The old man began to elucidate loudly and sternly, sounding like an Iowa preacher now. She had gotten the desired effect, hoping he would be distracted from the movement of the SWAT team and Jessica now in the loft overhead.
Jessica had by this time cautiously moved across the loft overhead. She could clearly hear the old man spouting off about God's will be done… thankful that Keyes had engaged Purdy so thoroughly. Still, she could not see the old man from her vantage point. She cautiously moved forward, now coming into a line of vision that clearly informed her as to exactly what had happened to the realtor, Nancy Willis. The dead woman lay like wood in the middle of the bam with a three-pronged pitchfork nailing her to the ground; a purplish pool of blood discolored the hay-littered ground around her. Neither movement nor sound came from her, but a sickening, animal keening began to rise in crescendo, coming from somewhere out of Jessica's sight, no doubt
Maureen DeCampe realizing help had found her. Jessica inched along, attempting to locate both Purdy and DeCampe.
Maureen DeCampe, having heard Dr. Shannon Keyes's banter with Isaiah Purdy, was now attempting to make some outcry, but either she was gagged or did not have the strength to speak, or possibly both.
Jessica's next step revealed the most horrid act she'd ever witnessed that any human had ever taken against another, and she felt an emotional body blow. Her every sense assaulted, she stared, mouth agape, at the sight of the judge lashed to the dead man, face-to-face, hand-to-hand, torso- to-torso.
Smoke and flame continued to grow all around the hellish scene below Jessica. It was like looking into the bowels of Hades, like an awful scene out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting, wherein devils tortured the living souls of the damned.
Jessica felt nausea welling up in her as the stench she had been breathing now hit her full force, as if Jimmy Lee's fetid spirit had personally assailed her here in the loft. At the same instant, she heard a sudden, jarring noise, and she felt the noose snatch her ankle, and it efficiently lifted her out of the loft, her head dangling upside down as she swayed out over the bam, ten or eleven feet off the ground.
Cursing, she realized that she'd been snatched by one leg, and a pulley had sent her over the edge of the loft, sending her forehead against a rough board in the bargain. Caught in a rope snare set by the old man, she cursed herself for not being more vigilant. Still, she tenaciously held onto her. 38 Smith amp; Wesson, even as she hurtled into the wall and smashed into its splintered wood surface. Jessica absorbed the full force of the blow against the wall, gasping as a result. Upside down and dazed, she heard Shannon Keyes's voice shouting, “Jessica! Jess!”
Even as she heard others coming in through the loft overhead, she again saw the realtor's body, minus the pitchfork. Where was Purdy? Where was the pitchfork? She half saw the shadow with the three-pronged fork in its hands as it came directly at her. But it wasn't Purdy, only his shadow dancing amid the flames. She forced her body to twist and twirl 180 degrees to make the shot at the real Purdy.
She opened fire just as the pitchfork was raised overhead- three rounds to Purdy's face, sending the old man into hell. His body slammed against a stall, breaking through it and disappearing into the blackness of one comer. The dark swallowed him up as if claiming one of its own.
The others finally broke through the door, the action setting off a kerosene fire that splashed flame over their clothing. Many of the rescuers had now to be rescued from the flames eating away at their clothes and threatening to engulf them entirely.
The old sly fox knew how to strike back, even in death- like father, like son. Or was this a case of like son, like father?
The dry old bam went up in flames, and Jessica, still dangling by one foot, felt helpless as the flames licked all around her. Keyes, and two of the SWAT team members who weren't hit by the kerosene that'd been propped over the doorway made their way to Jessica.
Jessica fought to get control of her swaying body, and someone overhead at the loft was halted in any attempt to cut her down, choking now on the rising fumes. “Forget about me! Help the judge out, now!” she shouted. “Get that fucking decaying thing off her!”
Jessica, still holding firmly to her weapon, hoisted herself up, then holstered her weapon in her shoulder holster. She then located the scalpel her father had given her-which she kept on her at all times-and she pulled herself up to a position where she could cut the rope around her ankle. At the angle she was at, this proved difficult at best. In addition, on pulling herself up, she'd had to breathe in the smoke that had risen above, hugging the ceiling and loft. SWAT team members there had been suddenly forced back, one helping the other out of the strangling smoke. Had she been tied by two legs, the process would have been far easier. Two other SWAT team members were below her, and they caught her fall when the scalpel made its final cut. She fell from her rope prison into smoke and choking gases that had had time to accumulate throughout the bam. Helped to her feet, she coughed and shouted, “Help Keyes! I'm all right! Get Judge DeCampe free of here!”
But everyone was succumbing to the smoke and finding it impossible to breathe, much less see how to help another. Using the scalpel, Jessica ripped her blouse and covered her mouth and nose with the makeshift cotton mask. She next helped Keyes to slice through the remaining bonds, which Purdy had placed on the terrorized woman, but this was taking too much time.
Together, they worked furiously to extricate Maureen DeCampe from the horrid prison, while flames rose higher and closer, like angry demons all around them.
DeCampe, too, was now choking on the smoke. Jessica shouted, “Get her out of here! Now!” even as she worked with the scalpel. Keyes had hold of a clean, white woolen blanket brought for just this moment, and she readied it to cover the victim.
For a moment, Jessica feared they would have to drag out the entire four-legged, two-backed creature in order to save DeCampe from dying of smoke inhalation.
Areas of gangrene and decay showed all about her body, all needing immediate attention, all needing to be covered with a clean cloth. Finally, Jessica's last cut freed DeCampe's nude form from the monstrous creature that Jimmy Lee had become, an electrocuted, decayed corpse. Jessica and Shannon grabbed DeCampe by each arm, disallowing the injured woman any opportunity to place any weight against her own frame. They gently, carefully began to guide her out of the fire, but by now it was too hot, too blistering, the flames searing Jessica's eyebrows and snatching at the trailing blanket. Twice flames tried to claim the blanket, and a fleeting flash of thought bolted through Jessica's mind: Wouldn't she be better off burned to death at this point? How much reconstructive surgery and additional pain will she face, should she survive this night?
Jessica had seen that Maureen DeCampe's hands, feet, and right cheek were discolored from the first stages of decay. If she lived through this, Jessica knew she'd need a great deal of psychiatric support, family support, and plastic surgery. In the meantime, Purdy's swan song of fire, which basically and graphically said that they could all
