The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, but swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly and foul contagion spread…
“ Isaiah Purdy! Federal agents!” shouted Jessica over the I noise they'd created. “Step outside! You are surrounded!” Jessica's order to Isaiah Purdy brought everyone's gun up and ready. “Come out with your hands held high.”
No response.
“ We know you are inside, Purdy!” shouted Keyes.
“ And we know you have the judge,” added Jessica.
“ She has suffered long enough. It's over.”
No response.
Jessica ordered the men beside her with the battering ram to take down the door. They charged it but were repelled, not by bullet fire or resistance, but by give and take. The door was loosely fastened, making a ramming effort nearly impossible.
“ We've wasted too much precious time,” Jessica told Keyes.
“ What're you going to do?” She could see in Jessica's eyes that she meant to do something now.
“ The door is lashed together with some sort of pliable binding. I'm going up and over,” she said, pointing to the window loft overhead. One of the SWAT leaders, seeing what she wanted, without a word sent a grappling hook overhead, and it secured itself to the wood around the loft window, biting into it. “I'll go first,” he said.
Jessica agreed, following up the rope behind the man whose nameplate had read Luther Pratt. Three-fourths of the way up the rope, Jessica felt the vibration of the explosive that sent Luther hurling into her and almost knocking her off the rope. Luther fell to the ground in agony, his face splintered by the homemade device that meant to keep them out. The device seemed to have touched off a fire as well, for now the cracks all about the doorway and the walls were alight with a blazing interior.
Jessica pulled herself up and up. Keyes cried out to her, “Be careful! There's a fire inside!”
Jessica only half saw an explosion at the house, where the second team, led by Santiva, stormed the home. The house had been booby-trapped, and the men had rushed in too quickly, the result a blazing inferno. Wherever Isaiah Purdy was at this moment, it looked as if the old man meant to go out in a blaze of glory, to die in a fire of his own making, taking Jimmy Lee's and Maureen DeCampe's and possibly Nancy Willis's remains with him.
From Jessica's vantage point at the window loft now, she saw someone being carried out of the flaming house and across the yard. Keyes looked to where Jessica's eyes had gone, and now she, too, took in what Jessica had witnessed. It appeared someone in the second team had been as hurt as Luther, if not more so. Below her, Jesssica saw that Luther appeared stunned, the wind knocked from him, bums on hands and face, but the man was fending off any help-a good sign.
Keyes shouted, “The old monster's not going down without a battle.”
Jessica clawed her way through the window loft, and for a moment, feeling the growing heat inside, she felt paralyzed on hearing a scream that made her blood solidify. The scream wafted across from the house, the sound shattering Jessica's nerve as it sounded like Richard Sharpe's voice-a second injury at the house. Jessica hoped she was wrong.
“ Damn… booby traps everywhere,” Shannon cursed. Keyes now stared up at the frozen Jessica, and she paced in a little circle, unsure what to say, how to begin to urge her friend and colleague on, fearful Jessica might be hurt next.
When Jessica disappeared from the window, making her way into the interior of the loft, Shannon Keyes racked her brain for how to keep the maniac in the bam distracted, to hopefully help Jessica out. Other SWAT team members took Luther Pratt's place, climbing up after Jessica.
There were no guarantees, but for now, Jessica needed all the help she could get. Maybe some noise at this point would help greatly, so Keyes loudly said, “We know you're in there, Mr. Purdy! And it's time you gave it up. I'm a doctor with the authorities, and we know you are in need of help. Now, I'm not discounting how brilliant, how ingenious you must be, to execute the abduction and this plan of vengeance. Fact is, I admire your cunning, your superior intelligence, but I know it all started when your wife died.” She paused for an answer, but none came.
“ We know how you so lovingly buried Eunice with a biblical passage, Mr. Purdy… Mr. Purdy…” She worked to play on the old man's last, perhaps final concern in this life. “We know you want to do right by your son, Jimmy Lee, sir.”
Keyes feared she was getting nowhere, and that time was running out along with her delaying strategies. 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 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.