“ Agreed. The abductor may think he has a relationship with the judge, that in his head, he does have a full-blown relationship with her. Get into that.”
“ You're right on about the media, Jess,” he replied, toying with a pen as he spoke. “They have a name for that sort of thing.”
“ It's called a media fixation,” she filled in. “Some Joe gets it in his head he has a special connection to a news anchor or other TV personality, movie star, or other public figure. Listen, Richard, get hold of any old tapes we have of the judge from media sources.”
“ What'll you be doing in the meantime?”
“ Praying.”
“ Praying?”
“ Praying we hear from the abductor or get a ransom demand.” Jessica now went for coffee only to find that Richard had emptied the pot, leaving it on to burn the bottom of the glass container. She returned to him and took what was left in his cup, drinking it down. “We've got the phones at every possible contact point bugged. We're just waiting to hear his demands.”
“ After all this time, Jess, I doubt he's interested in contacting the family.”
She sighed deeply. “Gotcha.”
“ I feel so damned helpless. What can we do to find her, Jess, and how do we know which path down the maze to take? How do we keep from wasting a minute?” He took the cup from her and studied its emptiness, a reflection of his gut feeling about the progression of the case thus far.
“ We work round the clock,” she replied. “We keep running down leads, as in any case.”
“ Meanwhile, we dodge the media and the brass?”
“ Nobody's asking you to dodge Santiva or anyone else, Richard. But… but…”
“ Yes, of course, I appreciate what you're not saying.”
“ Trust me. I have an ill feeling about Judge DeCampe's disappearance, and I fear it can only get worse, but if she has an iota of a chance, it can easily be lost if, say, Santiva or someone over his head decides to take the case out of our hands and changes horses in midstream or begins to dictate what direction our investigation ought to go in.”
“ What exactly do you mean, Jess, by an ill kind of feeling?”
Abandoning her chair, she again paced the operations room. “Gut feeling is all.”
Richard knew by now that her pacing actually signaled either a characteristic impatience at the lack of leads or her frustration with the four walls closing in on them, time being so short. 'Texas may have some input here, you know,” she now said. “Before the judge was an appellate judge here, she was a criminal judge in Houston, Texas. We've got friends in Texas; field office SAC is George O'Leary, right? And there's this Lucas Stonecoat with the Houston Police Department.”
“ Stonecoat?”
'Texas Cherokee… worked a case with Kim Desinor a couple of years back.”
“ Oh, yeah… the case that was shaping up as another Atlanta black boys murder thing. I recall reading about it and hearing about it on the telly.”
“ The case took a real toll on Kim, but nothing like this has… Who knows, maybe our friends in Texas could jump-start us on any cases Judge Maureen DeCampe tried in Houston.” Richard nodded, agreeing. He somehow sensed that this time Jessica's pacing meant more, that she was searching for any errant clues in her mind. Sharpe's eyes followed her movement; as always, she fascinated him, and as always, he resisted her fascination at the moment with cold caution. He thought of how quickly they had come to a full-blown, rich relationship that was more than that of simply lovers but that of friends. He'd be the first to admit that his sexual interest in her remained as high as ever, but his fascination for her keen scientific mind and what the two of them shared in this world was just as important to him. He understood that her work had always been her first love, that she was positively obsessive about the hunt, and so in a sense she was involved with another lover, but he accepted this as part of the person he loved, one of the major reasons he loved her. Aside from this, she was a Scorpio to boot.
She caught his eyes on her. She quickly asked, “What does your gut tell you?”
“ Doesn't tell me anything unless I've just swallowed a pepperoni pizza.”
She didn't laugh at the joke. “Me… I have a tick. An uneasy tick… like a ticking bomb in my head.”
“ So you think she is alive?”
Jessica turned to him and forced direct eye contact. “Yes, but I fear her time is limited, and maybe…” She hesitated to say more.
“ Maybe what?”
“ Perhaps she'd be better off if she were… dead.”
Richard's jaw quivered. “What makes you say that?”
“ Just a sense I get. Revenge motive, you said it yourself. If this guy knows her from her court dealings, he's going to hurt her, right? He's out to hurt her badly. That's what revenge is all about. In its way, it's as horrid as any hate crime because of the level of hatred involved.”
“ Well then, we'll just have to hope that her abductor instead fell in love with his victim, that it's that media- fixation thing at work, right?”
“ Yeah, maybe we can do a better job focusing on that scenario.”
“ But you don't think so.”
“ It's certainly a possibility.”
“ But if it's wrong?”
She nodded. “If it's wrong, it could cost her precious time. Fact is, any move we make down a wrong path will cost her precious time.”
FOUR
Tis man's perdition to be safe, When for the truth, he ought to die.
My goddamn hands are tied to the lifeless hands of some dead guy, lashed to them by-she could not think- rawhide strips; my legs and body're lashed similarly to the corpse. My face has been forced into the decaying face of death, right cheek to his left. A sick mockery of the dance posture, this horrid nightmare; a nightmare from which she had awakened only to find herself once again here, lashed to the dead man. His decaying process was slowly, torturously breaking down the bonding tissues of her own flesh.
Her mind had shut down on itself more than once since coming to the realization that her predicament was not a nightmare, but a nightmare reality. She had not-could not-awaken from the nightmare, because it proved to be no dream at all.
Someone had drugged her-no, stunned or traumatized her in some manner as to render her helpless; stunned first, drugged afterward. That had been the sequence. Maureen could not recall the particulars, but she had a vague notion of the small man behind this mad revenge on her.
All because she had excused herself from any further dealings in the old man's problem, his son, James Lee Purdy, who she had put on death row after his first trial. With his appeal filed, all the time that had passed, almost ten years, she had become an appeals court judge, and Jimmy Lee Purdy's appeal should never have come before her. She'd had to recuse herself and step away from the case; it only made sense. The judge who presided over the original trial, the judge who had condemned Jimmy Lee to death in the first place, could not be the same judge to hear his appeal.
Anyone who knew anything about the law understood the enormity of such prejudice and conflict of interest, but for some strange reason, Jimmy Lee and his father both had wanted her on the case. The old man had come to her office and pleaded, saying, “It'll be Jimmy Lee's last wish for you to stand in judgment on him a second time. And since he's what they call at the prison 'a dead man walking,' then you gotta give him his last wish. We'd do it in Iowa. What kind of people are you Texans?”
She had flatly refused, and then the wizened old man placed two clenched fists on her desk and sternly said, “It's not just Jimmy's wish. God told him it had to be you, Judge DeCampe. God, do ya' understand that? God's wish.”