From Jessica's vantage point at the window loft now, she saw someone being carried out of the flaming house and across the yard. Keyes looked to where Jessica's eyes had gone, and now she, too, took in what Jessica had witnessed. It appeared someone in the second team had been as hurt as Luther, if not more so. Below her, Jesssica saw that Luther appeared stunned, the wind knocked from him, bums on hands and face, but the man was fending off any help-a good sign.
Keyes shouted, “The old monster's not going down without a battle.”
Jessica clawed her way through the window loft, and for a moment, feeling the growing heat inside, she felt paralyzed on hearing a scream that made her blood solidify. The scream wafted across from the house, the sound shattering Jessica's nerve as it sounded like Richard Sharpe's voice-a second injury at the house. Jessica hoped she was wrong.
“ Damn… booby traps everywhere,” Shannon cursed. Keyes now stared up at the frozen Jessica, and she paced in a little circle, unsure what to say, how to begin to urge her friend and colleague on, fearful Jessica might be hurt next.
When Jessica disappeared from the window, making her way into the interior of the loft, Shannon Keyes racked her brain for how to keep the maniac in the bam distracted, to hopefully help Jessica out. Other SWAT team members took Luther Pratt's place, climbing up after Jessica.
There were no guarantees, but for now, Jessica needed all the help she could get. Maybe some noise at this point would help greatly, so Keyes loudly said, “We know you're in there, Mr. Purdy! And it's time you gave it up. I'm a doctor with the authorities, and we know you are in need of help. Now, I'm not discounting how brilliant, how ingenious you must be, to execute the abduction and this plan of vengeance. Fact is, I admire your cunning, your superior intelligence, but I know it all started when your wife died.” She paused for an answer, but none came.
“ We know how you so lovingly buried Eunice with a biblical passage, Mr. Purdy… Mr. Purdy…” She worked to play on the old man's last, perhaps final concern in this life. “We know you want to do right by your son, Jimmy Lee, sir.”
Keyes feared she was getting nowhere, and that time was running out along with her delaying strategies. Words came more haltingly as her nerves increased. Still, she somehow kept speaking extemporaneously through the stout wooden doors, continuing to engage the old man's attention, to direct it at her and away from Jessica.
“ I mean, you have devised the perfect punishment for Judge DeCampe-let her rot! Great idea, Mr. Purdy. I'd love to talk to you about where you got the idea of strapping your victim to your son's rotting corpse.”
Finally, a response came back in a gruff male voice from the other side of the door. “You people know about how Mother died? She pined away for years. Died a broken woman, died over what they done to Jimmy Lee, her only child.”
Keyes took in a deep breath of air, realizing she had struck a nerve. “We know everything, Mr. Purdy. It's our job. But we don't know why you chose such a… this method of punishment for Judge DeCampe. Tell me, was it your idea, or was it Jimmy Lee's?”
“ You said you knowed everything, ha! Whataya really know?”
“ I know the passage in the Bible that told you what to do. Did Jimmy Lee stumble on it while he was in prison? Please, it's personal with me now. I gotta know, Mr. Purdy… I just have to know.”
“ You the one wrote them awful things about me in the newspapers?”
“ No, no, that was a colleague of mine, and she was taken off the case. Now, tell me, Mr. Purdy… was it Jimmy Lee who told you to do all this? Did he come up with the idea after he-you know-got religion, right?”
“ He come across't it, yes… but was guided to it, actually. Guided by God's own hand, he was.”
Figures, she thought, but she said, “God… really? Can you tell me, sir, exactly how God contacted Jimmy Lee?” How did He find him in a Texas prison? she wondered.
The old man began to elucidate loudly and sternly, sounding like an Iowa preacher now. She had gotten the desired effect, hoping he would be distracted from the movement of the SWAT team and Jessica now in the loft overhead.
Jessica had by this time cautiously moved across the loft overhead. She could clearly hear the old man spouting off about God's will be done… thankful that Keyes had engaged Purdy so thoroughly. Still, she could not see the old man from her vantage point. She cautiously moved forward, now coming into a line of vision that clearly informed her as to exactly what had happened to the realtor, Nancy Willis. The dead woman lay like wood in the middle of the bam with a three-pronged pitchfork nailing her to the ground; a purplish pool of blood discolored the hay-littered ground around her. Neither movement nor sound came from her, but a sickening, animal keening began to rise in crescendo, coming from somewhere out of Jessica's sight, no doubt
Maureen DeCampe realizing help had found her. Jessica inched along, attempting to locate both Purdy and DeCampe.
Maureen DeCampe, having heard Dr. Shannon Keyes's banter with Isaiah Purdy, was now attempting to make some outcry, but either she was gagged or did not have the strength to speak, or possibly both.
Jessica's next step revealed the most horrid act she'd ever witnessed that any human had ever taken against another, and she felt an emotional body blow. Her every sense assaulted, she stared, mouth agape, at the sight of the judge lashed to the dead man, face-to-face, hand-to-hand, torso- to-torso.
Smoke and flame continued to grow all around the hellish scene below Jessica. It was like looking into the bowels of Hades, like an awful scene out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting, wherein devils tortured the living souls of the damned.
Jessica felt nausea welling up in her as the stench she had been breathing now hit her full force, as if Jimmy Lee's fetid spirit had personally assailed her here in the loft. At the same instant, she heard a sudden, jarring noise, and she felt the noose snatch her ankle, and it efficiently lifted her out of the loft, her head dangling upside down as she swayed out over the bam, ten or eleven feet off the ground.
Cursing, she realized that she'd been snatched by one leg, and a pulley had sent her over the edge of the loft, sending her forehead against a rough board in the bargain. Caught in a rope snare set by the old man, she cursed herself for not being more vigilant. Still, she tenaciously held onto her. 38 Smith amp; Wesson, even as she hurtled into the wall and smashed into its splintered wood surface. Jessica absorbed the full force of the blow against the wall, gasping as a result. Upside down and dazed, she heard Shannon Keyes's voice shouting, “Jessica! Jess!”
Even as she heard others coming in through the loft overhead, she again saw the realtor's body, minus the pitchfork. Where was Purdy? Where was the pitchfork? She half saw the shadow with the three-pronged fork in its hands as it came directly at her. But it wasn't Purdy, only his shadow dancing amid the flames. She forced her body to twist and twirl 180 degrees to make the shot at the real Purdy.
She opened fire just as the pitchfork was raised overhead- three rounds to Purdy's face, sending the old man into hell. His body slammed against a stall, breaking through it and disappearing into the blackness of one comer. The dark swallowed him up as if claiming one of its own.
The others finally broke through the door, the action setting off a kerosene fire that splashed flame over their clothing. Many of the rescuers had now to be rescued from the flames eating away at their clothes and threatening to engulf them entirely.
The old sly fox knew how to strike back, even in death- like father, like son. Or was this a case of like son, like father?
The dry old bam went up in flames, and Jessica, still dangling by one foot, felt helpless as the flames licked all around her. Keyes, and two of the SWAT team members who weren't hit by the kerosene that'd been propped over the doorway made their way to Jessica.