Jessica had learned never to discount Kim Desinor's visions or suspicions, and never to read one of her visions literally. If she said Judge DeCampe was in some place of decay, this could have many interpretations, that there were many rivers to the ocean. Decay had many connotations and images attached to it, and the place where DeCampe was being held might simply be a “place of decay” such as a cemetery or burial plot or even a cold storage meat packing company. The fact that her abductor had “confined” her could point to a decay of movement as in wither, ebb, crumble, dwindle, fade, fall off. In the most hideous sense, however, it meant spoil, corrupt, perish, degenerate, decompose, deteriorate, disintegrate, putrefaction, and adulteration. Then again, adultery came out of adulteration, so the association could go on endlessly, and therein lay both the strength and the weakness of the psychic and psychic imagery. The psychic vision might not in and of itself be useful, but in the psychic's interpretation, a use might often come of psychic information. Kim had proven herself time after time as an able and capable interpreter of her own visions. If she said that Maureen DeCampe was “in a state of decay,” there was some truth to this, but it could well mean that she was in a state within the contiguous United States that was in a state of decay, such as a farm state in a nation that no longer valued the private farm and its family of caregivers. Or it might be taken literally, that DeCampe might well be buried alive in a coffin this moment. Decay meant decline, decadence, failure-all adjectives perhaps better applied to DeCampe's abductor. Decay stood for collapse, for waste, breakdown, and breakup, dissolution, corruption, and mold, blight, and rot-perhaps the condition of a man gone mad. All these horrid images Kim had internalized, and the result was disease overtaking Kim's own body-a strange psychic malady somehow connected to DeCampe's circumstances. Psychosomatic illness taken to the tenth power, Jessica imagined.
Dr. Roy Shoate had contacted Jessica to tell her that he had never seen a healthier person exhibiting signs of Ebola virus. That's what it looked like to him. He had run no tests, but he said she was literally being eaten up, and it was ongoing unless they could find some way to arrest it.
“ She submitted to your examination without a fight?” Jessica had asked.
“ She has little strength left. She is dying, Jessica.”
Tears welled up in Jessica. “Do all you can to arrest it. Dr. Shoate.” Jessica did not confide in the doctor that Kim's condition was psychically induced. She knew that no doctor could completely stop it until Jessica brought an end to the DeCampe case, the case Kim had been so diligently working on when the strange malady overtook her.
“ This appears a public health issue to me, Dr. Coran. Will you be notifying Atlanta?” Jessica had no intention of alerting the CDC or anyone else about Kim's condition. “I'll take every step necessary, Doctor, and thank you,” she lied.
“ Meantime, we have her sedated and isolated. We will proceed under the assumption it is the Ebola but will administer no meds until we have isolated the virus itself, to be certain. That's the best we can do for now-hospital policy-now that we live in such a litigious society.”
“ How long will further tests take?”
'Twenty-four hours for initial tests, forty-eight to be certain.”
“ Thanks for all you've done, Dr. Shoate.”
“ Absolutely. I know you have your hands full. I've been reading the papers.”
Jessica hung up, her friend's life very much on her mind. She paced the office and stared out the window, weighing the news from Dr. Shoate. The ante had been significantly raised now, with Kim's life in the bargain.
J. T. stepped in, shouting, “The parking attendant has been found dead in Detroit, Michigan, as far as he got.”
“ How?”
“ Killed in a flophouse.”
“ Christ help us. We'll never know the extent of his in-volvement.”
“ What's up with Kim Desinor, Jess? I couldn't help but overhear. Is she ill?”
“ She's somehow contracted some sort of bad case of… not sure what it is, but she believes it came directly from her psychic journey into Judge DeCampe's mind. She's… she's not good.” Jessica began to cry. “But J. T., keep this information between us, please.”
J. T. fidgeted. He had rarely seen Jessica break down, certainly not in a public place. He awkwardly went to her and held her. He promised what he could not possibly deliver. “Kim's going to be all right; don't you worry. She's a fighter.”
“ I've got her under the best care in Quantico. Still, I wish I could do more. If we could locate Maureen DeCampe, put some closure on this case, maybe… it might have a beneficial effect on Kim, but as of now… Kim is slowly dying of wounds she feels are empathetic in nature. They're like the open sores of a leper, J. T. In all my career, I've never seen anything like this before, except-”
“ Except where?”
“ Except on an autopsy slab.”
“ What are you talking about?”
“ I drove down to Quantico to see her, and I tell you, she's exhibiting leprosy-like spots, like we see on decaying corpses. She even smelled of decay. Her whole apartment did.”
J. T. could find no words of comfort now. Instead, he offered her a shoulder and continued to hold his friend. “I got Roy Shoate to see her, and he admitted her to Washington Memorial. He's the best in his field.”
“ He's a rare disease man, isn't he?”
“ Yeah…'fraid so.”
J. T. said no more.
Maureen DeCampe, judge of the First Appellate Court of Washington, D.C., believed her mind had always had a perverse liking for frightening her; it played games all the time. So why should a moment in a darkened underground parking lot be any different?
Her logical left side of the brain told her right side how foolish it was being, and that she was not about to pay heed to the false instinct to flee from the stranger in the parking garage. Such an act would make her appear foolish; in the end, it would amount to twaddle, what her career Navy father called bilge-rot, malarky, drivel, and she would, in the end, senselessly appear nonsensical.
She hated to be embarrassed or made the butt of a joke.
Still, a distinct odor of fright-a thought of horror winging shadowlike out to her car-or was the shadow him? Shadowing in her shadow?
Shadow… such a positively lovely word when properly sounded out; it played melodic over the concave surface of the mind… shadowlike in a shadowed land that smelled of ancient, earthy, red dirt and rotting ears of com and of hay and of more odors than she could enumerate, all commingling here in this place of her captivity.
Something brought her around to a startling realization, an epiphany: What at first had felt like a dishonest emotion was in fact a righteous paranoia, after all. Despite her self- assuredness, her directed and fast gait from stairwell to waiting car, and the fact she was armed and capable of bringing down a tundra yak with her Remington. 45, a sense of vulnerability cast itself over her like a Maine fog. She felt the touch of this blanketing vulnerability; felt it the way an animal at a watering hole knows it is being stalked. Death, the ultimate stalker… She felt the fear of an animal about to be devoured whole and with pleasure.
She'd felt it then, and she felt and feared it even more now. Now that she sensed him close by, observing as before, watching her terror, enjoying her slow spiral into insanity and despair and fainting and recovering and what must come soon-her final death. She'd given little thought to life or the possibility of some savior crashing in to free her.
She willed herself to no longer contemplate long on her family, what they must be suffering. She willed herself to think only of mercy and prayer.
There in the underground lot, she had wheeled and brought her weapon into the stalker's face, but the man's sheer fright lessened her resolve. It was a passing homeless fellow looking for a warm comer to sleep it off in. She scolded him. Told him to get himself together as she pushed a five dollar bill into his hands, turned, and continued to her car, while the tall homeless man ambled off. Then someone tapped on her shoulder, and she reacted, bringing the firearm up to eye level on the white-haired man with the gray-stubbled chin.