Maureen only half heard Nancy's nonstop words now. “When in doubt, check him out, all that, but he paid cash up front, and he seemed harmless enough, all that spouting off with Bible quotes, you know. Still, some last instinct told me he couldn't be all there, wanting this place, the last hole on the planet, and I was right all along, that nagging little voice inside my head. Still, I never… not all the way out here did I ever… never suspect such an awful result.”
Nancy continued cutting strips of rawhide as she spoke, now freeing Maureen's second ankle from the dead man's, allowing Maureen complete detachment. “Who else has he killed? How many? Some kind of serial mass murderer, isn't he?”
When Maureen pulled completely away, she realized how weak and stiff she felt. But this was masked by a sense of freedom that filled her with hope.
Finally, Nancy stared in the half light at Maureen, gaping at the other woman's wounds. Maureen, shivering in the cold bam, looked the part of a leper, and now Maureen reached up to touch the cheek that had been pressed to the dead man's, and she, too, became more aware of the sores on her body. Nancy removed her thigh-length jacket and placed it around the nude woman, asking her what her name was. “Maureen… Maureen DeCampe,” she managed. “Oh my god! You're the… you're the… you're the… that woman in the news that's gone missing? That lady judge stolen from the parking lot? I saw it on America's Most Wanted.”
“ Dial 911 now, please!”
Nancy shakily dialed 911.
Nothing. Dead air.
She redialed 911 several times.
Still nothing.
Maureen flashed on her body tied to Jimmy Lee's again. She desperately feared the old man might come through the bam doors any second and reclaim her.
Nancy said, “I don't fucking believe this. Damn, I knew I should've recharged this thing, and now way out here in the middle of nowhere. Shit. We'll have to get to my car; I can recharge it there on the way to a safe place. My daughter's house is only ten miles east. We can call authorities from there if we can't get the signal.”
She tucked the phone back into her bag, and with both hands, she tugged at Maureen, trying to get her to stand. “We've got to get to the road, my car, now!” Maureen allowed herself to believe they might have a chance at escape.
But Maureen hesitated at standing, fearful she would simply topple over. Her legs felt like wood.
Nancy Willis didn't skip a beat. “Why didn't I pay heed to my little voice? No, I went straight ahead with the rental, took his money without so much as a… and now this. I shoulda known. He gave me the creeps from the get-go. Something told me I had to come out here and see what he was up to.”
“ Thank God you did,” muttered Maureen, fearing to look at the itchy patches of skin at her wrists and ankles, her stomach and breasts, where she had lain so long against the decaying man. A part of her wanted to stop Nancy for a mirror from that purse of hers; a part of her wanted to assess the damage done to her face. But another part of her screamed for her to get up and get out of here.
Nancy hadn't stopped talking. “… now this. Honey, we gotta get ourselves outta here before he wakes up. Come on. On your feet. I know it's difficult.”
Maureen stumbled and broke a rickety old stall when she fell against it, sending her back to a sitting position. “O'dear- o'dear-o'dear!” Nancy's flashlight beam now bathed Maureen's features, and Nancy gasped on seeing the lesions on Maureen's face clearly now. Nancy was momentarily silenced, and she stood over Maureen frozen, her hands hesitating now to touch the other woman. The flash had caught the extent of the blue green tint to much of Maureen's skin. “What has that madman done to you?”
“ Slow poisoning… with decay of his… dead son. I… I sent his son to the electric chair.”
“ And that old bastard is wreaking as cruel a vengeance on you as he can imagine.”
“ Something out of his Bible. He's completely insane, and he will kill you, too, if he finds you here.”
“ Don't worry about me. I'm Chicago bred. I can take care of myself.”
“ Chicago? Are we near Chicago?”
“ Heavens no!”
“ Shhh… Turn off that light.”
Nancy did as ordered.
“ I think I heard something. He may be moving around.” Maureen froze, petrified of his getting his hands on her again and trussing her up to Jimmy Lee. In the darkness, she thought she saw a glint in the dead man's eye and a rictus smile shone like an Elvis sneer. “Give me the knife,” she whispered to Nancy.
“ What for?”
“ I'll kill myself before I'll let him tie me back to his son.
Nancy took a deep breath and handed the closed knife to Maureen, who latched onto it as if it were a religious icon, clutching it to her breasts.
From his bed at the farmstead-the bed he had decided to die in-Isaiah Purdy wandered again in a meander of memory, searching for his lost identity: the lost self, the lost man who had been taken over by his dead son and God. One small comer of his mind held a doubt about God in particular. Jimmy Lee was Jimmy Lee, but this here God he traveled with… Isaiah began to wonder about. Maybe this so-called God was something Jimmy Lee had conjured up, and maybe it had to do with the black arts, and maybe it was one of Satan's minions posing as God. But how to tell, how to ferret it all out, what was he to do? Either way, justice was justice, and Jimmy Lee had some modicum of justice coming.
Isaiah snapped out of the ugly thought. Where is my head at? he silently queried. Lately, he'd been asking himself this question a lot. He had no idea of the answer, not when he could question whether or not he'd been in the presence of God or not, in the presence of Satan or not. Perhaps it'd been neither. Perhaps it'd been an angel. An angel, yes. That would put things into a clearer perspective, be a lot easier to deal with. Without this sure knowledge, how could he have wreaked the vengeance he had helped Jimmy Lee to find?
He searched for the man who he had been before Jimmy Lee had gotten hold of his head. Instead, he found only an empty space staring back, a shapeless thing in coveralls, faceless and without distinct form.
He rolled over in bed. The old box springs screamed in reaction, further disturbing his sleep. A birdlike thought flew through his brain, in and out, that perhaps he ought to end it all tonight, put the bedeviled woman in the bam out of her misery. His former self would have done as much for any ailing animal on the farm. A part of him wanted to leap from the bed and just go do it, the way he might destroy a dog with incurable mange. How much more suffering could he handle? It wasn't easy being Jimmy Lee's eyes and ears.
He questioned who he was… why he was even here on this planet if not to end his life this way, to fulfill a dying son's wish: Jimmy Lee's mother had said neither yes nor no to the idea before she passed, but his son's voice in his head told him that Mother wanted what he wanted. It'd been left on Isaiah's shoulders to make the decision, as with all major decisions involving the family-at least in this life.
“ We're dealing with no less than a miracle,” Eunice had managed to mutter when he'd asked her point-blank what she thought they ought to do about Jimmy Lee's request.
After she succumbed to death, Jimmy Lee would not be denied, and he'd given Isaiah strict orders, and very specific details, down to where he could find the judge, but Jimmy Lee had been wrong about that much. When he'd left Huntsville prison in search of Judge DeCampe, he had first looked into a rental property where he could kill the judge right handy there, instead of worrying himself with carting her across the country and back home. As much as he wanted to bury Jimmy Lee at the Iowa farmstead, that was no longer feasible. Meantime, Isaiah had learned the hard way that the judge no longer resided in Houston, Texas. He'd had to investigate where she had gone, and when he found out, he almost quit the entire lunatic plan, but again Jimmy Lee- even more so in death than before-insisted the old man would not live one moment in peace if he did not carry through. Although she had not put it in words, Isaiah had to believe that Eunice had been entirely and wholly for her son's plan.