THIRTEEN
Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence.
The call was indeed from Iowa State Patrol Chief Virgil
Gorman, who asked if he were speaking to Agent Jessica Coran.
“ Yes, this is Dr. Coran, Chief Gorman. Everyone in my command is listening in on speakerphone. Go ahead, please.”
“ You sound tired, Doctor. You may want to take this news sitting down.”
Jessica looked across at Richard, whose expression was meant to cheer her and encourage her. She was glad to have his support. “The better part of the team is in the room, Chief Gorman,” Jessica replied. “We've all been anxiously awaiting news, so what have you got for us?” She fully expected him to say that he had located DeCampe's lifeless body.
“ I've got some good news… some bad,” he came back.
“ Go on.”
People in the ops room looked about at one another. “We've hit a box… pine wood box, Dr. Coran.”
“ Inside the freshly dug grave, I presume?”
“ Yes, buried out back of the farmstead.”
“ Bastard…” Jessica muttered.
“ Prying it open now. He's nailed it but good. Don't imagine we're going to find anyone alive…”
“ Oh, Jesus,” groaned Jessica. Jessica saw the horror of the others in the conference room, each imagining the terror of being buried alive. Had that been the price exacted of Maureen DeCampe? Jessica tried to imagine the ordeal of such a fate. No one deserved to die in such a fashion. The entire team had been affected by the news that Gorman had brought them. With Gorman's voice gone silent, a wrenching metal sound reverberated all the way from Iowa though the wires and around the ops room: the sound of prying metal, the irritating noise of men struggling painstakingly, panting as they did battle with a coffin lid.
“ Thought you'd want to be in on the opening,” said Gorman. “That noise you hear is crowbars.”
Then everyone in D.C. heard a collective, “Ohhh, Jeeeez- uuus” float through the line. Jessica promptly asked, “What is it? She's dead, isn't she? That son of a bitch's succeeded.”
“ No, Dr. Coran… At least not yet, he hasn't.”
“ No? Is she-”
“ We have a body, and yes, it's a woman all right, but she's seventy if she's a day, and our collective thinking says it's Mrs. Purdy, Isaiah's wife. Apparently she died out here, and he buried her without any fanfare, and certainly without bothering authorities.”
“ One more charge to level at the old devil,” she replied. “We're taking the body in for an autopsy, just to be certain it's death from natural causes.”
“ It's what I'd do if I were there, I can assure you,” she replied.
“ Could be what set Purdy off,” suggested Richard Sharpe, now standing alongside Jessica. “You know, loss of a lifetime partner? Does strange things to people's heads,” finished Richard.
Jessica asked, “No sign whatsoever of another burial site? We had assumed he'd return to safe ground to bury his son and the judge on his farmstead.”
“ Maybe you're assuming too much. Or like one of my boys here said, maybe the suspect's still on his way. It's a long way for an old man to drive alone with two coffins in the rear of his van, all the way to Huntsville, then he's gotta detour to D.C. to abduct the judge. That's a g'damn marathon in itself, and this guy's no spring chicken.”
“ Which means he could still be on the road back to the farm. So you will keep an eye on the place, right?”
“ Course we're going to keep surveillance on the place for a few days. And we're going to cover every inch of ground out here and pry open anything remotely curious, and any one remotely connected with the old man before we're done.”
“ Again, my thanks, Chief… and thanks for all the effort. This old man is shrewd like a fox,” she said.
“ Well, Iowans are known for that.” She detected a note of sadness in his voice when he added, “Can't believe what this old fool's gone and done.”
“ He must have known we'd target his place sooner or later. He saw us coming.”
“ From the time line you gave me, I'd say your people have moved remarkably fast on this. Don't beat yourself up about it, Doctor, and in the meantime, I'll be in touch. Let you know if anything new develops at this end.”
“ And we'll keep you apprised. Chief. Again, thanks.”
“ Sure… don't mention it.”
Blind alley, Jessica thought, as she hung up the phone.
“ Lew,” Jessica called out, startling Clemmens. “I want to know what all was said at Jimmy Lee's trial.”
“ You mean his appeal?”
“ No, his trial, what? Nine, ten years ago?”
“ A transcript that old may be hard to come by.”
'Tap into our friend in Houston. You said he had some cyber inroads in the system there.”
“ Yeah, I can put him onto the relic stuff, which could be complicated. We can only pray Houston's up to date with scanning that stuff to disk and putting it into electronic files.”
“ Fact is, Houston's one of the leaders in putting old cases onto computer disk. But are you saying it could be inaccessible?”
“ Buried in a hard file or on microfiche someplace, yes. Meantime, I can track down the appeal transcript. It shouldn't be tough to get it electronically. It's a matter of public record. Besides, you'll want both for what you gotta do.”
“ I think it's time we learned a great deal more about Jimmy Lee Purdy,” suggested Sharpe. “Perhaps it will indicate our next move.”
“ Oh, and what's that?” Shannon Keyes joined them. “Are you actually proposing we do a profile on a dead man? Jimmy Lee Purdy?”
“ So far as we know from people around Judge DeCampe, there's no known public pronouncement out of the old man. He was never arrested for so much as disturbing the peace, and he never disrupted the court proceedings,” Sharpe countered. “Suppose the old man's driven by his dead son's motives now?”
Keyes shook her head. “Never a word out of the old man? He has no brain of his own? Whataya want to do, provide him with a defense? My dead son made me do it?”
“ From all we've learned, the elder Purdy never said word one during all the court appearances he made,” said Jessica. “Maybe Richard is onto something here. Stonecoat and Sanger both mentioned that Jimmy Lee was pulling strings from his prison cell.”
“ So… you're supposing that the old man is doing just what his son wanted, fulfilling Jimmy Lee's last wishes?” asked Keyes.
“ Parents are funny that way, yes,” replied Richard. “So perhaps if we understand Jimmy Lee better, then we'll better understand his father Isaiah and his plan and maybe his moves.”
Jessica jumped in, saying, “We've got to understand as much about Jimmy Lee's psyche as possible, then maybe… maybe we'll have some idea what the old man is thinking, and if we can determine what he is thinking then… maybe…”
“ Good strategy,” Keyes finally relented, agreeing. “Let me help you with it.”
“ We need to know about every and any contact whatsoever that either of the Purdys may have had in any way with Judge DeCampe,” said Jessica.
Keyes nodded, a finger playing with the dimple in her chin. “Yes, perhaps something there will give up an overlooked clue.”
“ The sins of the son shall the father inherit,” added Richard. “Kind of a twist on an old theme.”
“ More a reversal,” countered Jessica.
Keyes bit her pouting lower lip and added, “Perhaps you're right, Sharpe, perhaps the son's transgressions can tell us what this old fool is up to.”
“ And maybe where he is?” Richard volunteered. “First we need the transcripts. Lew? What're you stand-ing around for?” asked Jessica. Lew's eyebrows raised in consternation. “On it, Jess.”
J. T. found Jessica still working out of the ops room, looking tired and pale. He brought in fast food from a Chinese restaurant, and as he unpacked the little boxed dinners filled with moo goo gai pan, sweet and sour chicken, beef lo mein, spring rolls, and egg rolls, he informed Jessica that Mars- den's story about euthanizing his dog and flipping out as a result had checked out.