“ But you took no money for it?” repeated the warden.
“ Not a cent, sir. Honest.”
The warden waved him down.
Lucas wanted the warden to leave the room, but he knew making such a request would only anger the man. “Did you notice anything unusual about the license plate?”
“ Wasn't one of ours. Out of state. Indiana, I think.”
“ All right. Officer Pascal. You can go now,” said the warden, seeing that Lucas and Sanger were finished with the guard.
“ I'm sorry, Warden Gwinn, sir.”
“ I'll deal with you later, Pascal. Some tough guy you turned out to be. You allowed yourself to be hoodwinked by an old Iowa farmer.”
The phone rang; a call for Lucas from Randy Oglesby, his computer support. Randy had unearthed some fascinating facts, if belated. “Get this, Lucas-old man Purdy had made two previous trips to Houston, the first time was almost ten years before, when Judge Maureen DeCampe, a newly appointed judge, saw his son to the death chamber in a ruling she alone made-no jury trial. Jimmy Purdy was found guilty of sex crimes that had turned to sex-lust- murder. He had opted for a no-jury trial, and his case had fallen into DeCampe's lap.”
“ Good work.”
'That's not all. The old man returned recently when Jimmy's appeal was being heard before Judge Raymond Parker, but not before it first fell into DeCampe's hands. DeCampe hand delivered it to Parker. She recused herself from hearing the appeal since she was, to say the least, extremely prejudiced where Jimmy Lee Purdy was concerned. It was a direct conflict of interest, a no-brainer,” said Randy. “However, the senior Purdy made an appointment and saw her before the appeal trial began. What was said during that meeting remained between them. Judge DeCampe shared it with no one.”
“ And the old man's third trip here,” said Lucas, “was to retrieve his son's body.” He thanked Randy and hung up. Lucas then conveyed this information to the warden and Sanger. They next stood and said their good-byes.
On leaving the prison and locating the car, Sanger said, “Lucas, as I see it, we have one more stop, and then we call out the armed forces in Iowa to locate one Isaiah Purdy.”
“ Warrant across state lines can take time,” replied Lucas. Darkness was already descending over Texas when they made their way out to the parking lot. “Not if the judge is sympathetic to our cause,” countered
Sanger, “and being highborn as I am, I have a few friends in high places around here, and so did DeCampe. If Judge DeCampe is suffocating somewhere in a pine box between here and Iowa or back at this guy's property and six feet under, we… well, we have to act fast, and even then it may be too late.”
“ I've got to call this medical examiner with the FBI, tell her what we've got. Maybe she can get a federal warrant to search the guy's property faster than the State of Texas can talk to the State of Iowa.”
“ I know Judge Parker, and he'll be extremely sympathetic, and-”
“ I see. Play on the old saw: There but for the grace of God could a went Judge Parker, right?”
“ With these men, father and son, fixated on DeCampe, I suspect Parker was never in the running. But of course, I'll work every angle on him, Lucas. Meanwhile, you get the feds to jump-start the state patrol in Iowa. Have them at the ready to move in at a moment's notice. One or the other of us, Texas or the Feds, whoever gets a warrant first, we use.”
Lucas placed his strobe light over the top of the car and turned on the siren. They raced for the courthouse.
TEN
I advance to attack, I climb to assault, like a choir of young worms at a corpse in a vault.
A subdued light filtered into Maureen DeCampe's consciousness, as if she were awakening from this night-mare, a little glimmer of hope that she could willingly, easily step into the light of consciousness, and that within that consciousness none of what had occurred had occurred except in her head, inside the nightmare, and all this horrid time would have been spent in her dream state and all such terror as Purdy represented would be mercifully over. She tried to rouse herself from the nightmare, urging herself into consciousness, and it was working. The light grew nearer and brighter and more real. She just needed to allow herself to move into it. Then the nightmare would end.
The bam odors were gone, too, and even the odor of the decaying had ceased. Thank God for the light. And what was that sound? Footsteps coming out of the darkness, soft footfalls, careful, inching their way toward her along with the light. A door hinge creaked; some small vermin skittered away. The sound of someone gasping for breath directly behind her.
The subdued light became a burning torch in her eyes. It's a flashlight, she thought. It was directed on her and the corpse to which she remained tied. She then heard the distinct high pitch of a woman's voice say, “Oh my freakin' dear God-in merciful heaven-have mercy-on-us-all! I knew that old SOB was up to no good out here, but I didn't know couldn't know this. My God, my dear God-a-mighty!”
Maureen next saw the blade and handle of a red Swiss Army knife begin sawing at the rawhide strips around her wrist, and she wondered if it could be Mrs. Purdy. With one wrist now freed, she felt the tug at the larger bands about her back. Her savior didn't know where to begin, but with a frantic gasping that threatened to send the woman into hyperventilation, reacting to the sight and the stench before her, and in nervous fits and starts, the brave woman tore at each binding strip. One by one, the little knife struggled through each band until Maureen DeCampe cried tears of hope and joy. The feeling of recapturing her own self in the pulling apart from the ugly unit she had become with the dead, that alone created in her a sense of unadulterated joy.
Was it Mrs. Purdy, another relative? Whoever her savior might be, the woman seemed young, strong, vibrant. She's no old matron of the farm, thought Maureen. But who could she be?
“ I'm Nancy Willis. I count myself an ass for not checking out that old man in more detail. He told me he was a widower. Told me he was lonely and sad. He struck me as an odd duck, but I didn't think he was a psycho-lunatic!”
Nancy now pulled and cut away at the ties that held Maureen by forehead and neck to the corpse's head and neck, and once this was done, Maureen's savior tugged at and cut away the tape about Maureen's mouth. Whoever this woman was, she was not squeamish about Purdy's desiccated body, which gave her fingers a liberal decay bath. “I got my cell phone in the bag. I'll call 911. We'll have this old wicked son of a-monster's ass in prison before dawn, you can bet. Poor child, poor thing. How utterly awful what that son of a- bastard's put you through.”
Her mouth finally free, Maureen gasped and thought. Call 911 first, but her body and her brain screamed to be free of Jimmy Lee's body now. She pleaded, “Just first… first get me free… of this rotting son of a bitch corpse.”
“ Yes, of course, first things first.”
Nancy Willis continued cutting rawhide with the four- inch blade. It took time, as each strip was thick, and the old man had wound the rawhide several times around his son and his victim. At one point, Nancy's knife nicked Maureen's side, but Maureen dared not cry out. Nancy talked as she worked like a cartoon dwarf out of Snow White, Maureen thought. Then a grim idea began to form in Maureen's head, making her wonder if this woman hadn't been sent in by the old man just to give Maureen false hope. Anything might happen in this horrid storybook she found herself in, an abyss darker than anything in Alice in Wonderland.
Nancy had worked her way down with the knife, going from wrists to back and then waist. When she finished the waist ties, even though still attached by her feet, Maureen twisted and rolled off and inched her upper torso as far from Purdy's body as possible. Nancy next began work on the ankles.