Jimmy's voice inside Isaiah's head said over and over, “You've got to do just as Mother wanted.” Jimmy Lee never let it rest. Repeatedly, the words flowed like a river through his father's brain.
On the trip back from Houston, Jimmy Lee startled the hell out of his father when he spoke from within the casket, from within the mortal remains, the electrocuted corpse. “Ice, ice, damn you, old man!” Jimmy Lee ordered up, and his voice almost made Isaiah run through a fence, so startled was he to hear his dead son's voice from outside his head and from behind him. “Keep my body fresh until you can locate Maureen.” He always called the judge by her first name.
Jimmy Lee had always wanted to be in charge, and now he was. Mother had simply wanted her boy's remains returned to the farmstead to be buried alongside her, but of course, Jimmy had to complicate matters. He couldn't just go off into whatever eternity awaited him. No, he had to drag this judge lady there with him. It didn't look promising that Mother would ever lie alongside her boy in the grave, at least not without a third party involved. Jimmy Lee wanted far, far more than did Mother. And he had asked far, far more of his papa than anyone had a right to, but somehow, the boy knew that Isaiah would do his utmost to grant him a dying wish.
An alien noise penetrated through the fog of the old man's disturbed sleep. He sensed more than he heard it: some disturbance, a faint noise like the crack of a whip but muffled. At the same instant, he realized that anything large enough to make such a noise as to wake him from this distance-the noise coming from the direction of the bam- that it must be the result of a two-legged beast.
He pushed himself from bed, and in his flannel nightshirt, he crept across the floor. He next grabbed his shotgun but thought better of making such a noise here in the middle of the night. He instead grabbed his pitchfork and the unlit lantern. Not bothering to dress, Isaiah made his way to the bam down a worn path. He saw a moving light through the cracks inside.
Definitely, someone had paid Jimmy Lee and the judge a visit, but who?
Isaiah inched toward the door, kicking an errant bucket and frightening a cat as he did so; he then quietly cursed his clumsiness. Now he had alerted whoever it was to his presence. Inside, all remained silent and dark, the light having been doused. Befuddled and only half awake, the old man wondered if the light might not be Jimmy Lee's doing. The boy had a nasty play fullness for making mischief, something he seemed born with.
What he felt deep inside he had long held in check, and the voice of his son in his head made him put one step ahead of the other to move forward. Jimmy Lee continued to drive him, and now Jimmy, as dead as the boy was, had awakened him, telling him he was needed here, inside, to witness every moment of the judge's suffering. Isaiah thought of how damnably little sleep he'd had since tying the judge to Jimmy Lee. But the next sound he heard was by no means Jimmy Lee's voice in his head. He heard a woman's whisper. Tlie judge? Impossible. Some third party had indeed entered, and Isaiah wondered how long the intruder had been inside the bam with Jimmy Lee and the judge.
He carefully set aside the lantern, lifted the pitchfork's three deadly prongs to eye level, and he inched toward the door, prepared for battle.
Jessica Coran didn't know where she was; her only certainty proved a blue veil through which everything was filtered. She saw a pastoral setting, absolutely peaceful, and serenity poured forth with the waterfall in the distance. Flowers in the foreground, flowers that smelled of life and promise. But the waterfall, grass, and flowers were all tinted blue. The same was true for two figures walking through this land of birdsong and bright sunshine, but again all was gauzy, hazy, enveloped in the blue filter, even the burning sun, softened radiation in blue.
The two figures, a man and a woman, looking very much like her and Richard, walked with their hands entwined, their bodies wrapped in one another's. Nearing the curtain of blue, she saw a series of looping, binding ties between them, holding them together like so many horse reins. And now she saw that the hands were not naturally wrapped in one another but bound with rough rope.
Am I dreaming? If so, what does it mean? she searchingly wondered.
Jessica heard a roar and saw the waterfall turn into a gaping mouth. Then the blue veil and the land of dream shattered into black-and-white dots as on a dead TV screen. Someone's hand had reached into her dream, shaking her; someone's voice had infiltrated her brain and had set her eyelids fluttering.
At FBI headquarters, Richard Sharpe shook Jessica Coran, waking her from a nap on the sofa in her temporary office. “It's Houston, that Cherokee detective, on the line for you. Says he has something for us. Thought you'd want to hear it firsthand.”
“ What? Oh… yes, of course.”
Jessica listened on one line, Sharpe on a second one, as Detective Stonecoat said, “There's no time to explain, but we have sufficient grounds to issue a warrant for search and seizure at Jimmy Lee Purdy's father's farm home outside Iowa City, Iowa. But getting an Iowa judge and a Texas one agreeing with one another, well that could take some time. We suspect that a federal warrant may be easier and faster to obtain, although Dr. Sanger is at work on Judge Richard Parker as we speak.”
“ Then your visit to Huntsville turned up something about the case, about the old man?”
“ About the son, for certain. It may be that the old man is acting on Jimmy Lee's orders.”
“ Say that again?”
“ From the grave, so to speak. He… we believe Jimmy Lee left strict instructions for the old man to follow through on, and they involved sending Judge DeCampe over with Jimmy Lee to the other side.”
“ Just as we feared.”
“ What about a federal warrant?”
“ We'll get right on it. Send me a full report of your findings out at Huntsville. We'll need every shred of corroboration on this.”
“ Consider it done. I'll fax you a full report. Meanwhile, someone's got to get the Iowa authorities alerted and descend on that farmhouse, and since I'm in Houston and you're in D.C., I don't think we have the luxury of wasting a moment's more time. Fact is, we fear she may be buried already, fighting for her last breath, if she isn't already dead.”
“ Then I take it Goddard was forthcoming with what he knew?”
“ We convinced him it was in his best interest, yes.”
“ I'm saying good-bye now, detective, and thanks for the help. I'm off for that warrant.”
Stonecoat asked to be kept informed. “Judge DeCampe was well liked in these parts.”
“ Yeah… yeah, same here, detective.”
Jessica called in every favor she had outstanding, and she felt certain that a federal warrant for search and seizure of property at the Purdy farmstead outside Iowa City was just a matter of time. She immediately contacted the head of the Highway Patrol in the vicinity of Iowa City, and after a number of frustrating stops and starts, she finally found herself talking to the man in charge, someone who sounded normal.
“ This is Chief of Patrol Virgil Gorman. How can I help you, Dr. Coran, is it?”
“ I'm head of a task force in an abduction case, Chief Gorman, and it involves a Washington, D.C., judge who's become the victim of a vengeful relative. Our investigation has recently shifted toward-”
“ Wait a minute, you talking about the case I saw in the Police Gazette just the other night?”
She covered the phone with her hand and said to Sharpe, “God, he sounds like Andy of Mayberry.”