Lucas Stonecoat feared that a visit to the state penitentiary would likely uncover little or nothing. Most convicts had little reason to cooperate with law enforcement, and few did so without inducements of one sort or another. Lucas had come to the fortress of stone and barbed wire with no authorization to barter with or OK any promises he might make to an inmate on death row. Along with Lucas, police psychiatrist Meredyth Sanger had come, but so far, only rumor filtered to their ears, something about a dead man reaching out from the grave-a story of how Jimmy Lee Purdy meant to get vengeance at whatever cost after his execution. Purdy certainly appeared the most fixated inmate bent on DeCampe's being punished. Warden Jerold Gwinn characterized Jimmy as he led them toward Purdy's only friend inside prison walls.
“ Purdy was a Bible-thumping so-called born again,” began Gwinn. “Jimmy Lee condemned any use of the Lord's name being taken in vain, but he called up unholy hellfire to rain over his enemies, and no one cursed more or longer than Purdy. Still, the idea that Purdy-executed on the Sunday before Judge DeCampe's disappearance-could have had any hand in the judge's disappearance…7'
“ We don't know for certain that he had anything to do with it, Warden Gwinn, but we're trying to keep an open mind,” explained Meredyth.
“ Inmate Goddard!” shouted Gwinn, rousing the shackled prisoner as they stormed into the interrogation room where Goddard had fallen asleep while waiting for them.
Goddard laughed at the warden.
“ You show these people respect and answer their questions as best you can, Inmate Goddard, and you'll get two merit points, two demerits if I learn otherwise.”
Lucas wondered what kind of a kindergarten Gwinn was running here.
“ You reap what you sow,” replied Goddard, and this biblical injunction seemed to appease Gwinn, who turned to Stonecoat and Sanger and said, “He's all yours. Good luck.”
“ Inmate Goddard is ecstatic about DeCampe's suffering, if that's what you want to know,” said Goddard before they had time to sit. “But I don't know jack-shit about what happened to the bitch or who's behind it. I had nothing whatever to do with it. So, are we done here?”
“ The warden apprise you of what we're here for?”
“ Got it through the prison grapevine.”
“ Ever hear Jimmy Lee Purdy threaten the judge?” Goddard laughed uncontrollably. “Do rats shit? But hell, I don't have to talk to you, and I ain't about to rat out my only friend in here.”
“ He's no longer in here,” countered Lucas. “You can't seriously believe that you can rat out a dead man, do you?”
“ The hell he ain't, and hell yes, I don't rat out nobody, not even the dead. Besides, like I said, Jimmy Lee's still here in the cellblock. Talked to him just last night. He's a haint now, haunts the place. I hear him talking in my ears when the lights go off. He tells me what hell's like. Fact is, it don't sound so bad after all.” Goddard, a hairy chest peeking from his prison shirt, grinned throughout his little speech.
Meredyth raised a hand and said, “Cooperate with us, Mr. Goddard, and-”
“ And what? What can you do for a walking dead, sweetie?”
“ What're your chances you'll ever kiss another woman before you die?”
He laughed. He snorted. He stared into her eyes. Then he slowly formulated a reply. “They say I can't have no contact in here with my visitors. Any contact, and I'm in the hole.”
“ You willing to chance that for a moment's pleasure?” she asked.
“ What about a touch. One touch, here,” he bartered, standing and holding his crotch.
“ Only if my partner can stay and watch over me.”
He glared at Lucas now. “Shit. All right.”
“ Then you'll tell us what you can about Purdy?”
“ All right… all right.”
Meredyth indicated to Lucas to watch out for the guard. Lucas started to protest, but she put a linger on his hps and said, “It's for a good cause.”
She then turned and seductively moved to within inches of Goddard, who stank of Old Spice shaving lotion and cigarette breath. She ignored the sickening odors and the man's ugly little gnome appearance and beehive-shaped head and alligator-gray skin. She passionately kissed him and allowed him to guide her hand to where he wanted to be touched. “Easy… easy,” she cautioned, feeling his grip tighten and his body shiver in one wave after another.
She broke it off, and Goddard stumbled to his seat, holding his privates and looking as if he'd been given the greatest gift of all time.
Lucas and Meredyth returned to the interrogation table, its oak surface again a barrier between the officials and the condemned man. “All right, you got what you wanted, now it's our turn,” instructed Meredyth. “Out with it. Anything and everything you know about Purdy and his hatred for Judge DeCampe.”
“ Yeah… a deal's a deal.” He was aglow now, his eyes riveted to hers. “You're some lay, Doc.”
“ Never mind that. Out with it.”
Goddard took a deep breath, still touching himself, as he spoke. “Hell, every other conversation we had, he was going to fuck her over, until he started getting really weird.”
“ What do you mean, really weird?”
“ Ahhhh, mouthing off how he'd like to be fucking her while she's straddling him on The Chair-Old Surefire we call it in here. Jimmy Lee got quite graphic about it. Want to hear more?” he asked, leering at Meredyth. “Said it'd be one hell of a fuck, you know, his penis frying up in her at the same moment they both are electrocuted together. Her pussy electrified along with his organ, and them fusing together like that.”
Lucas grabbed him by the arm, shouting, “That's enough bullshit, Goddard! Get to the point.”
Goddard snatched his arm away and growled, bear like.
“ Just get on with it,” Meredyth firmly said, her green eyes pinning him.
“ All right, and after that, Purdy started talking even more weird shit than that.”
“ Like what?” demanded Lucas.
“ Look, I got no reason to say no more against Jimmy. He was a stand-up guy. Cut two bastards bad who run up on me.”
“ What's the worst weird shit he told you in connection with the judge, Mr. Goddard?” pressed Meredyth.
“ Look, I'm no fool. I watch the TV news. I know what you people want, and it's going to cost you.”
“ We had a deal, Mr. Goddard,” said Meredyth.
“ I want my appeal heard.”
“ We don't have any juice there,” said Lucas.
“ But we'll do everything we can in that regard, Mr. Goddard,” Meredyth replied, holding a hand on Lucas's arm when he had come out of his seat toward Goddard.
“ All right, if you're sure you're going to go to bat for me, I'll tell you what I know.”
“ Please go ahead”
“ J. P.-I called him J. P.-he said shit like, 'When I'm dead, I will have her.' “
“ Her? The judge, you mean?” she asked.
“ Have her in what manner?” asked Lucas.
“ Said he would share his coffin with her. Said it was all arranged. Said God told him how to do it. Said his father in heaven had arranged it with his father here, on earth. Said it was ordained, foretold, all that shit. He even believed it was coded into his Bible that DeCampe would lie down with his dead body and follow him into the next world. Crap like that. I only listened and agreed with him and went along because he never done me no harm.”
“ So… what about you, Mr. Goddard?” asked Lucas. “Do you want to see Judge DeCampe dead?”
“ Jimmy wanted to ride her into eternity. Me, I just wanted her to die slow and suffer. I guess maybe he had more imagination.”
Lucas produced the faxed artist's sketch of the suspect, the aged man who had abducted DeCampe, according to FBI sources. 'Take a close look at this. Do you know the man in the picture?”
“ Ahhh… looks roughly like Jimmy Lee's old man, yeah.”
“ How would you know what he looked like?”
“ Old Isaiah? Hell, Jimmy Lee showed me his picture more'n once. Claimed he loved his mama and papa. Seen her picture more than the old man's, but yeah, that looks like his old man, all right.”