“ All right, all right… I have a letter purporting to be from the creep that abducted Judge DeCampe postmarked Nokesville, Virginia.” She dared not breathe; she felt stunned, as if slapped. “You what?”
“ You heard me. And I came directly to you with it.”
“ What's it say? No, never mind. I want to see it; it's got to be authenticated.”
“ I think it's authentic, all right.”
“ How can you tell? Does the letter make demands?”
“ Some, yeah, but not a single reference to money.”
“ What kind of demands does he make?”
“ He wants us to retract some of the things we've said about him based on your FBI profile of him.”
“ I didn't give you a profile, O'Brien. I gave you a handful of words. Words that anyone who's read your paper could repeat verbatim. So don't waste my time. Time is a commodity I don't have much of right now.” She thought of how time was running out for Kim Desinor and DeCampe.
“ Jessica, it's him. I know it.”
“ How? How do you know it?”
“ I don't know. You'll just have to take my word for it until you see it yourself. Something… just so right-on chilling about it.”
“ Where is it now?”
“ Under glass in my editor's office. We've made some blowup shots, and we've called in a graphologist to tell us what she can about the handwriting.”
“ What're you guys up to? Trying to do our job for us?”
“ Do you want to see it or not?”
“ We're on our way. Be right there.”
Jessica sent two agents to Nokesville, Virginia, to investigate. Then a wave of fear for Kim washed over her.
Jessica wished she could confer with the psychic FBI detective, realizing that Kim might well get some images from the document if she handled it. Psychometric reading was her specialty. However, in Kim's current condition, she was hardly going to be doing any readings, especially in a public place like a newspaper office.
The others on the team had begun to ask about Kim, and Jessica was running out of excuses. Kim had not been seen by any of them for over twenty-four hours, and there was some notion circulating that she was not well.
“ Is everything all right?” asked Keyes, who had just returned. She stared at Jessica, as if studying her breaking point.
“ It's Dr. Desinor… Kim. She's… she needs me. I'm going to see her before going to see O'Brien.”
“ Sounds to me like you may want someone along,” suggested Keyes. Jessica considered this. “All right, if it suits you.”
“ You told O'Brien that you'd be right over,” J. T. told Jessica.
“ I know what I told O'Brien, but I need to touch base with Kim, and maybe, just maybe,” she said, turning to Keyes, “you can be of help.” She called over to Richard, who was busy following up leads on a telephone, asking, “Will you call O'Brien and tell him we'll be delayed but that we're on our way?”
He replied, “Of course, and I'll meet you there when I get free.”
Outside they found the car that had been assigned to Jessica for her personal use for as long as she remained in D.C. on the case. They climbed in, and Jessica tore off and out of the underground lot, tires barking as if to speak her agitation.
“ What's up?” asked Keyes.
“ The Washington Post claims they have an authentic letter from DeCampe's abductor. However, he makes no ransom demands.”
“ Shit… if only it were about money,” said Shannon. “But I actually meant what's up with Dr. Desinor?”
Jessica had not confided all the details of Kim Desinor's illness to Santiva or anyone other than Richard Sharpe and J. T. Now a twinge of doubt invaded her mind as to Keyes's interest, her motives. Jessica knew that being tired clouded one's judgment, and earlier she had had no such thoughts about Keyes, but now she did. She was unsure why. Some nagging little voice told her to not completely trust Keyes to keep a confidence, so she avoided the question. “Sounds like from what O'Brien said that Purdy wants to know how we dare call him a sex pervert. Meanwhile, we're tracing the letter from its postmark.”
“ Are you intentionally avoiding the question about your friend because I'm a shrink? Trust me, I am only interested in helping, Jessica.”
Jessica asked Keyes point-blank, 'Tell me, Dr. Keyes, did Santiva put you on this case to watchdog me and to report back my team's every move?”
“ That's not entirely true, no, but he did ask me for a special report. You have good instincts, Dr. Coran.”
“ I thought so.”
“ But I'm not spying on you.”
“ Fair enough. Thanks for the honesty.”
“ So how can I help your friend Desinor?” Jessica took in a deep breath of air. “I'm not so sure you can. Not sure any of us can.”
The lights of Washington Memorial Hospital shone in the night sky ahead of them. A siren wail sounded. “Kim's something of an empath, and it takes a terrible toll on her when she does a psychometric reading.”
“ I can only imagine the depth of her feeling.”
“ This case in particular has had a dire effect on her sense of well-being.”
Keyes nodded repeatedly. “Some places in the human psyche no one should go, not even by proxy.”
“ She once told me about the suffering she'd had to endure in Houston, Texas, when she worked the Snatcher case there; the victim was a young boy, who somehow sent out messages-psychic images-of what he was enduring. She received every detail, and it still haunts her to this day. After that, she worked a case with me in Philadelphia, and it took an additional toll on her.”
Keyes sighed heavily and fidgeted in the passenger seat. “And now this.”
“ Now this. I think she may very well be getting images of what's happening to Maureen DeCampe-delayed images.”
“ Or subconsciously blocked images from her earlier reading of the crime scene,” suggested Keyes. “Must be truly difficult for her, indeed.”
“ Difficult isn't the word for it; it's abhorrent to the tenth power. A lesser person, I suspect, it could kill over time.”
“ I suspect you're right.”
Outside the cocoon of the car, the lights of Washington, D.C., gave way to the gloomy darkness of a spiritless gray sky, the blackness seeming to press down around the car they shared. Jessica parked and they hurried toward the doors.
Inside the hospital, Dr. Shoate told Jessica that Kim Desinor was conscious only for short periods of time, and when conscious, she insisted on no visitors other than her fiancee. “She simply wants to die at this point. She doesn't want anything else.”
“ You stay here,” Jessica told Keyes. “If she'll talk to anyone, it'll be me.”
Keyes nodded, frowned, and clasped her hands together. “I'm sure the last thing she needs is an introduction to a stranger who happens to be a psychiatrist.”
“ She's a shrink herself, along with being psychic, so she has a healthy respect for what a good therapist can do, believe me. Once I get to the bottom of this, maybe we can talk introductions, and who knows, maybe she could benefit from seeing you-professionally.”
“ Shrink, heal thyself, you mean?”
“ Something like that.”
“ It's not uncommon that a psychiatrist needs psychiatric care. We're only human, after all.” Jessica left Keyes standing in the hallway outside Kim's door at Intensive Care. Coming out was Detective Alex Sincebaugh of the Baltimore police, Kim's lover and fianc6, who spent every weekend with her when he drove in from Baltimore, where he worked homicide. They'd met in New Orleans, where Sincebaugh had combined on the Heartthrob Murders in the French Quarter. Kim and Jessica had teamed with Sincebaugh to bring an end to the killer's career there.
Sincebaugh had fallen in love with Kim, and he had moved across the country to be close to her. He stared Jessica in the eyes now and said, “I knew you people would kill her one day.”
“ Alex, I'm sorry for what's happening to her
as much as you. No one could have foreseen this.”
“ She's literally dying of no apparent cause, but we both know what the cause is, don't we? What the fuck're you people doing about locating and putting an end to this case involving Judge DeCampe?”
She put out a hand to him, but he brushed past, saying, “I've got to call in. Tell them I'm taking time off. I'm going to be with her night and day.” He then rushed away, shaken to the core.
Jessica stepped into the darkened ICU, and seeing the usually vibrant, strong woman reduced to a shell of herself gave Jessica a chill. She went to Kim, whose lesions were covered in bandages, Dr. Shoate using his best elixirs on the continuing decay spots. Shoate whispered now in Jessica's ear that the problem seemed to be arrested at one point, but on further monitoring, this proved false. Nothing seemed to be working.
Kim looked up at Jessica, her eyes blinking. Jessica tearfully said hello.
No answer, only an attempt at a crooked smile.
Jessica wanted to break something. “Kim, we've got to talk. You're scaring me with this bullshit. You've gotta help me here. What the hell am I missing? You've got to pull yourself out of this.”
“ Now that you've seen me again,” Kim croaked out each word separately, “please leave, Jessica. I don't feel up to seeing anyone.”
“ Kim, you're too strong for this, to let this happen. This is ridiculous. Fight back… fight back.”
“ Please, Jess… just go.”
Jessica held firmly to Kim's bandaged hand now. “I wanted to come and reassure you, Kim. We are so close to finding and putting an end to Judge DeCampe's abduction. You are going to be all right, Kim. I'm going to make sure you're all right.”
“ I thank you, Jess, for caring so much.” Her eyes fluttered, and she looked as if she might go back into a sleep. Dr. Shoate checked her vital signs.
“ You're wasting time here,” said Alex Sincebaugh now, in Jessica's ear. “Every minute wasted is a minute that Kim can't afford to lose. Now, go, Dr. Coran, and do your job. Plug into those FBI resources at your beck and call.”
Jessica silently cursed and thought how the considerable resources of the FBI had been put to work, but how little had come of it all. She wanted to pound her fist through a wall. “I've become DeCampe, Jessica,” muttered Kim. “Whatever is going on, wherever she is, she's alive, but she's starving to death and she's decaying.”
More than ever now, Jessica hated the news that had come out of Iowa. Had they found DeCampe's body, it would have been at least closure, and then Kim would be out of this horrid danger as well.
Jessica's cellular phone went off, and she rushed from the room, leaving Alex Sincebaugh, Kim, and Dr. Shoate behind. The call was from Richard, who said, “They really do have something useful over here at the Post, Jessica. You really ought to be here.”
Jessica looked up to see Keyes staring at her as an idea formed in her mind. “What about the power of suggestion? If Kim is told we've located DeCampe alive and we have her in protective custody now, will that help her condition?'
“ It's possible,” replied Keyes.
“ Are you saying that the deception is worth a shot?”
“ Yes, it is.”
“ Anything at this point.”
“ It would appear so, Jessica.”
Jessica returned to Kim's bedside and told her, “That call, Kim… we've located her,” Jessica lied. “Iowa authorities have found a grave site on the old man's property and have recovered her body. It's over.”
Kim took in a deep breath of air. “I want to go home then. Sit out on my porch in my rocker… stare at the stars. Thank God… thank God… now maybe I can heal. No one knows how to treat empathic stigmata like occurrences like this, Jess.”
“ I know.”
“ Dr. Shoate has done all he can. Bless him.”
“ I had hoped he could arrest the physical problem while you dealt with the mental issues. I've called in a psychiatrist, too, Kim, a Dr. Shannon Keyes, to help you with the recuperation process. I won't let you be alone with this.”
Kim somehow managed a weak laugh and said, “You mean friends don't let friends drive themselves to decay? We could call that a new high in friendship.”
Shannon Keyes cautiously joined them as Jessica had asked her to do, and Jessica explained the psychosomatic syndrome that her best friend was suffering under. “Fortressing yourself up and being alone,” Keyes said, “is not going to be as helpful as drawing on others like your friend here for help, Dr. Desinor. Let us help.”
“ Do you two think you can help?”
“ Yes, we do,” Keyes firmly replied. “You'll need a lot of support now that this is over.” As Dr. Shoate was changing the bandage, Shannon Keyes now saw the disfigurement to the right cheek. The sight made Keyes swallow hard; she bit her lower lip to keep from gasping.
Kim had similar bruises and discoloration at each wrist, the abdomen area, the right breast, the ankles, and the knees.
“ How did you locate DeCampe? What was her condition? How alive is she?” asked Kim.
“ DeCampe suffered horribly, just as you. She was de-hydrated, starving, and decaying… decaying-”
“ Alive, decaying alive,” said Kim. “As I said all along. Her killer wanted to watch her decay alive. He somehow managed to cause decay in her where he kept her.”
“ Alive… yeah… alive, and she's going to get well, Kim. Early reports confirm this.”
“ Great… great news.”
“ Now you can put your mind to stopping this thing in you.”
She nodded. “My mind just has to put a stop to this. I have always feared this-that my mind would one day become my worst enemy, that it would in the end destroy me.”
Jessica again saw that her friend was weak, terribly weak. “Now maybe you can keep something down?”
“ Some liquids… nothing solid.”
“ Hell,” joked Jessica, “you've got that on IV.” She pointed to the IV glucose drip.
Kim managed a smile at this. “Maybe some chicken soup.”
“ We've got to go now, Kim, but we'll be back, soon.”
Outside, Jessica began to cry, seeing what a skeleton Kim had become in this short time since the parking garage reading. “She looks so emaciated.”
“ But she was boosted by our story. This could be a turning point for her.”
“ Yeah, until she turns on a TV and learns the truth.”
On the ride to the Washington Post offices, Jessica and Shannon were made aware of just how far along Kim Desinor' s “psychic” wounds were, as the smell of decay filled the automobile. It had attached itself to them, to their clothes, and they simultaneously began wiping their noses, when Jessica said, “My God, what if Desinor is right about what's going on with DeCampe? That she is literally being killed via decay?”
“ I can't begin to imagine such a horrid death.”
FOURTEEN
Perfect order is the forerunner of perfect horror.
— Carlos Fuentes
Twenty minutes down the Beltway, and Jessica turned into the office of the Washington Post. With Keyes, they walked into the Washington Post newsroom, calling out for Tim O'Brien. He shouted back from the rear, now angry with Jessica.
“ Where the hell've you been?”
Jessica told him in no uncertain terms that their delay had been over a life-and-death situation.
“ I'd like to hear about it some time,” he replied.
“ Not from me, you won't.”
They stepped into a private conference room, where Richard Sharpe stood and pulled out a seat for Jessica and then for Shannon.
O'Brien introduced himself and his city editor, a man named AL Cirillo, and he then proceeded to introduce them all to Carolyn Nagby, who might have looked comfortable behind a desk at any library. She was O'Brien's expert handwriting analysis person, a graphologist. Using a magnifying glass, she was scanning the letter still under glass. “No one's been allowed to touch the lette
r, not since the moment I realized what I had,” O'Brien told them.
On viewing the letter, both the one under glass and its blowup counterpart thrown against a wall by an overhead projector, Jessica learned the author wanted to say a good deal more than how dare they. Keyes wryly said, “Says here, Jessica, that you're a harlot, a jezebel, the daughter of Cain, a coward who wouldn't dare call him a sex pervert to his face.” The letter threatened that Jessica Coran would be his next victim for slandering him, for making him out to be a sexual deviant.
In the letter, the writer revealed a great deal of himself, Nagby told the others. Then the expert in graphology added, “He makes a number of biblical references before getting down to his immediate message: an eye for an eye, and a notation on Romans 7:24-5.”
“ Romans 7:24-5. Somebody get me a Bible, now!” said Jessica.
“ We've already run it down,” said O'Brien. “Having been raised on the Bible, I thought I recognized it. Let me tell you, it's scary to contemplate what this woman must be going through with this guy as her keeper.” He lifted a large Bible and pushed it down the length of the table to Jessica. “I keep it at the office for just such occasions.”
Jessica and Shannon saw that it was opened to Romans, and each found the passage, and O'Brien said in his most booming voice, sounding like a minister, “This is from the epistles of Paul, written to the saints in Rome around a. D. 57.”
“ I know the passage,” said Shannon Keyes. She then read it aloud: “ 'Oh unhappy and pitiable and wretched man that I am! Who will release and deliver me from this body of death that is my shackle? Oh, thank God! Whose will is won through Jesus Christ, the Anointed, our Lord! So then indeed I, of myself with the mind and heart, serve the Law of God, but with the flesh, the law of sin.' “
“ What the hell does that mean?” asked Jessica. “Serve the law of sin?”
Keyes explained its significance and meaning. 'It seems benign enough,” she began, “but it has had conflicting interpretations.”
“ I'll say,” added O'Brien.
“ Most interpretations sugarcoat it,” agreed Shannon.
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