go to hell, screamed and roared around them. It was as if the fire fed on Jimmy Lee's and Isaiah's bodies, transforming them into a kind of pure evil within the confines of the fiery bam. At least, she hoped the two sons of bitches would go up in flame in the here and now, and throughout eternity. In the confusion, she also wondered about Nancy Willis's body, but for the moment, she must focus on the living.
Then Jessica saw a pair of SWAT team members attempt to drag the old man out. “He's dead! Fuck 'im!” shouted Jessica. “Leave him to go to hell with his son! Get the dead woman's body out of here if you can, but otherwise, save yourselves!”
An overhead beam came crashing down only feet from them. “Get out of here, all of you!”
Together, the two women hustled Judge DeCampe through the fire and out into the open air. Others poured in to take DeCampe to the waiting ambulance, while Shannon and Jessica dropped to the ground, coughing and trying to catch their breaths. At the same time, a thick black cloud billowed from the burning bam like a huge black bird of prey that had taken sudden flight. This black soot swallowed up and blotted out the night sky. Meanwhile, lights continued to shower down from the helicopters above.
“ Get those other medic teams in here, now!” shouted Eriq Santiva as he came close to the two women now on their knees, still gasping for air. “Now!” he repeated. He came to his knees and held Jessica, but when she smelled Richard Sharpe and not Eriq, she looked up into Richard's eyes. He held her so tightly that she again had to battle for breath. Beside them, Santiva was helping Keyes to the waiting ambulance.
“ John Thorpe's been injured,” Richard informed her.
Jessica instantly met his gaze. “How bad is it?”
“ Knife… could've been knives if he hadn't reacted as well and as fast as he did.”
“ How damned bad is it?”
“ Not sure.”
She got to her feet and battled her way to Santiva, coughing and bending over as she did so, still having trouble inhaling and exhaling. “Eriq? What's J. T.'s prognosis?”
“ One of the knives grazed his head, a glancing blow, but a second one caught him here, clipped his jugular. He bled a lot before the medics got to him. Turned white as a sheet.”
Richard again had his arms around her. He said in her ear, “Thorpe's lost consciousness. He's lost a lot of blood. In shock, they said. But his pulse is good, and he's been stabilized, dear. He's going to make it out of this trouble.”
She choked and coughed uncontrollably, and a medic placed an oxygen mask over her face. Again, Richard held her. She snatched away the oxygen mask and said, “I've got to be with J. T.” This brought on another coughing spasm, but she forced out the question, “What hospital?”
Richard firmly said, 'Take it easy. He's in shock, Jess.”
Coma due to blood loss, she feared.
“ He isn't going to miss you for a while, Jess. Slow down.”
She stumbled but pulled away from Richard. “I gotta be there for J. T.”
Keyes, also in bad shape from smoke inhalation, on her back in the nearby ambulance, pulled up to her elbows and shouted, “They're taking us to the same hospital, Jess. Don't worry.”
Richard gritted his teeth and said, “Don't be so stubborn, Jessica. You are into a case of the seriously ill leading the seriously ill.” He guided her to the second bed in the waiting ambulance, but Jessica failed to climb in, instead taking several steps toward Santiva as he approached. Meanwhile, another ambulance pulled up toward the open area fronting the bam, this one kicking up yet another cloud of sand and gravel. “Exactly what you need,” Richard said to her. “More bloody smoke filling your lungs.
Jessica noticed for the first time that Eriq Santiva was bleeding from the forehead and shoulder. Still, he somehow managed to be overseeing everything. Jessica saw him bend over the somewhat charred body of Nancy Willis, her RE/ MAX badge discolored with grimy soot, the puncture holes in her chest caked with dried blood. Her body would also leave here by ambulance.
Jessica met Eriq halfway, asking about his wounds.
“ Swinging ax almost took off my head,” he grumbled. “I was just ahead of J. T., and if he hadn't shoved me ahead… well, I would not be here talking to you… or anyone else, at least not in this life.”
Jessica's head bandaged now, she and Keyes having had plenty of oxygen by this time, both women concerned themselves with Eriq Santiva's obvious wounds. Both refused any further attention, instead wanting to not be treated as invalids. Both also wanted to know how DeCampe was doing.
Seasoned paramedics, who had seen almost every kind of wound imaginable, had difficulty dressing Maureen DeCampe's wrists, ankles, her cheek, and several abdominal areas where the skin had broken down, where the pericardial glue of the cells had dissolved and become part of the decay. They were busy pumping her with fluids and antibacterial and antibiotic medications. She'd been hooked up to an IV drip. Jessica believed her to be in good hands. Looking down at the still figure beneath the blanket, flanked by Eriq and Keyes, Richard Sharpe asked, “Is she… do you have any hope for… will she make it? How bad is… the decay?”
“ It's not good, and she's damn near out of her mind, and she'll need repeated surgeries to repair the damage done her skin, but for now, she needs to be stabilized,” replied Jessica. “And she's going to need a great deal of psychological help, believe me.”
The medics began working furiously on DeCampe's heart, as it suddenly began to falter. The medics roared into life and rallied, pleading with DeCampe to stay with them as they did what they were trained to do. The scene riveted Jessica's attention, and she thought how very sad if that monstrous Isaiah Purdy had won after all.
These thoughts began to filter in when suddenly, from out of the flaming bam, a screaming, clothes-smoking banshee with a giant red poker-a flaming pitchfork that was scorching the flesh of Isaiah Purdy's hands-lunged straight at the ambulance holding DeCampe. Afire yet determined, Purdy came straight for DeCampe, resolved to drive the pitchfork into her where she lay. Eriq was thrown off balance when Jessica turned at the disturbance, her shoulder smashing into Santiva as she wheeled and fired a single round. The single bullet bit into the man's brain, precisely between his eyes, sending him and his pitchfork down with a thud. The pitchfork still smoldered in the cool night air. Richard Sharpe, who had also reacted with gunfire, had sent a bullet through the old man's heart. “God damn it! We should throw his stinking carcass back into the flames,” shouted Jessica, raising a fist to the dead man. “No, no… better that we can ID him beyond a reasonable doubt,” Santiva countered, as he climbed to his feet, his gun in his hand, looking dizzy now from loss of blood and the recent excitement. Richard Sharpe now took charge, running on adrenaline, ordering one of the medics to look after Chief Santiva's wounds. He and Jessica both realized only now that Eriq had been in a state of walking trauma, and that the loss of blood he had sustained threatened to kill him.
“ How is he?” Jessica asked the medic attending Eriq now, and she thought what a mess the lot of them were. All brought to you by the Purdys of Iowa City.
“ Bleeding badly. An ax on a pulley severed an artery in his arm, and the blow to the head is causing internal bleeding. I gotta tend the arm first, then we need to get him to Holy Cross stat-do something about the head injury.”
“ Get yourselves attended to,” said the medic. “You still haven't gotten an all clear for that smoke inhalation.”
Richard guided Jessica and Shannon back to their own waiting ambulance.
EPILOGUE
Three Months Later
Judge Maureen DeCampe sat up in bed, receiving visitors for the first time since her hospitalization. She would see no one except her immediate family until now. She had sent word that she wanted to see Dr. Jessica Coran. And now Jessica was here, looking in at the door, and DeCampe was smiling and laughing with her daughter. She appeared to be doing well in her therapy. She looked strong, and she was coping both physically and psychologically.
At least on the surface. Jessica wondered what it was like inside DeCampe's mind at three A.M., when she
