“ I'm not waiting a second longer,” said Jessica to her team, her hand over the receiver. “Fuck it. Lew, send a fax to Iowa now.” 'Telling them what?”
“ That the federal writ for Purdy's apprehension has been ordered by the U.S. Marshal's Office. Do it! Do it now.” Clemmens hesitated only a moment before sending the message. Iowa dispatch, poised and ready, instantly contacted men at the scene just outside a dark little farmstead in the middle of nowhere, outside Iowa City, Iowa. “Go!” shouted Jessica into the phone. “It's a go, Chief!”
Sirens responded as the Iowa State Patrol stormed the stark, bleak countryside farm home of Isaiah and Eunice Purdy.
Maureen, her ankles wobbly, her limbs weak, unsteadily climbed to her feet and stumbled into Nancy. They clumsily clung to one another, the stench and the horror of this place overwhelming. “You going to be able to walk, honey?”
“ I… I think so.”
“ Might even have to run. Think you maybe can run with my help?” asked Nancy.
“ I will if it comes to that, yes.”
“ Good girl… good girl.”
Unsteadily at first, like a baby, Maureen began to regain use of her legs and feet. She dared not wonder at the gangrenous portions of her body. But she felt faint, weak, and she realized only now that she'd been slowly starving and dehydrating as well as enduring the torture.
Nancy held on, guiding her. “Come on, dear. Let's get out of this awful place.” They made their way to the large bam doors, when suddenly one of them slammed into Maureen and Nancy, knocking Maureen off her feet and stunning Nancy. In the next instant, Maureen heard Nancy's startled scream and the thud like a fallen tree, a dirt cloud kicking into Maureen's eyes. Clearing her sight, Maureen saw the awful cause of the dirt cloud. The force of Purdy's pitchfork had sent the other woman's body to the dirt to be pinned there, twitching and alive.
Maureen now stared at the RE/MAX button on Nancy's bloodied blouse, just over her heart. One of the three prongs of the pitchfork had bitten into and through her badge and breast, while the center prong went through her center, and the third through her left breast. Nancy's head slumped melonlike to one side, her now dead eyes staring into Maureen's. Neither words nor sound issued from her now, only a froth of blood and body fluids.
“ Kill me! Kill me, you son of a bitch!” Maureen shouted at Purdy even as she struggled to stand, pulling herself up by the handle of the pitchfork, rocking Nancy's lifeless body in the effort. She tore at the pitchfork, attempting to free it and use it on Purdy. But she couldn't find the strength to pull the thing free before Purdy's hands also grabbed hold of the deadly tool.
In the darkness, she fought for possession of the pitchfork, but his grasp and tug easily overcame his weakened victim. He toppled her with a slap to the face, and now she backed farther into the bam, backed over Jimmy Lee's decayed corpse, where she fell. Screaming and scrambling from the filthy floor and into a stall, she found a large square of blackness in which to hide. “Can't tell you how much I'm enjoying this little turn of events.”
The judge's whimpers in the dark were her only response. Just enough for him to home in on her. In the distance, he heard-and she heard-the sound of a siren, and they both wondered if the dead realtor had called anyone before she had arrived. Maureen thought not, but in her confused mental state, perhaps she was wrong; perhaps help was indeed on the way. And fearing this, perhaps the old man would kill her here and now to end this thing before the authorities could.
It was a thing she could never have ever wished for in her past, but now she wished for death to take her, and yet there remained a residual of hatred and anger for Purdy that made her want to kill him first. But how?
An army of black-and-white cars with sirens blaring descended like locusts on the Purdy farmstead, one running down a RE/MAX For Sale sign as they converged on the house and bam. Two teams moved with precision training, each knowing its objective: one to control the house, the other to control the bam. They easily poured into the house, the doors unlocked and one swinging on its hinges. There, Sheriff Chester Dunkirk immediately felt the utter loneliness of the place, the emptiness of the old farmstead, as if the walls shouted its desertion. Still, he called out for Purdy and Mrs. Purdy to show themselves. “No one's going to harm you. It's Chester Dunkirk and Deputy Bailey Dobbins. The State Patrol's got some questions for you, Isaiah, Eunice.”
Deputy Dobbins added, “Come on, now. You know me. I come only to help you out whenever you got problems over this way. Just come on out of hiding now and answer the sheriff's questions. Just step out now.”
There was no response, save the pounding of men charging up the stairwell to Purdy's second story. Everyone knew the fierce regard many of the area farmers held about anyone, lawman or not, coming uninvited onto their property and especially into their houses. Every man here understood he could be shot at any moment should old Isaiah come through a door blasting two shotgun barrels full of buckshot at the officers, and given the allegations against the old man…
One patrolman now stuck his head over the rail and shouted down, “All clear up here, Sheriff! Nobody at all.”
Others poured into the basement. Again the report came back: no one, not a sign of life and no sign of the abducted judge. “Nobody walking.”
Sheriff Dunkirk repeated the words in a mutter of frustration. “Nobody walking. Hope Gorman's team's done better out at the bam.”
Meanwhile, team two had a problem getting into the bam. It appeared locked from inside.
“ Careful, you men! Purdy may be armed and dangerous!” shouted Chief Virgil Gorman, in charge of the second strike force. “Place could be booby-trapped as well,” came another shout. Men poured through the back door now and some had scaled through windows they'd broken out, and one had scaled a rope and was into the loft overhead. They brought flashlights to bear on the expansive bam, searching every comer and inch for any sign of anyone or anything untoward or out of place, or any sign of disturbed earth. Nothing save the pantheon of instruments found in any bam: rusty rat traps, harnesses, ropes, cans filled with nails, stalls standing empty, and a floor of mildewed hay.
No coffins.
No one tied to a post.
No blood or bodies dangling from rafters.
A few scurrying mice.
A lieutenant, who had deferred to the town sheriff's rule at the house, had rushed out to Gorman, shouting, “Nothing up at the house. Beds are made; place is neat as a pin, like it hasn't been lived in for some time.”
“ Son of a bitch!” shouted Virgil Gorman, a sixth- generation Iowan policeman, who purely hated it when an Iowa man broke the laws of man or God. He had never met Purdy, but he knew the area around Iowa City and the Falls; the area harbored Purdys up and down the roads. He'd have to have his men fan out and talk to every goddamn one of them about this man Isaiah Purdy, see who knew what, and if anyone might be harboring him. He tried to imagine anyone cruel enough to conceal and shelter Purdy while the man buried this poor woman alive.
“ Fan out with the dogs! By daybreak, I want every inch of this property scoured for anything smacking of freshly dug earth! You got that!”
A chorus of yes sirs responded. Like a well-trained machine, the men broke into teams.
Gorman shouted at the Iowa City sheriff, Chester Dunkirk, saying, “Chester, you sure we got the right farm here?”
“ This is Isaiah's place, all right. Don't rightly know where his wife's got off to. I expected to at least find her up at the house, but she's nowhere to be found. The house is strange, like someone's lived there just yesterday but no longer. Cups, saucers, food scraps, but no people, and no feeling of people.”