Unnatural Instinct (Instinct thriller series)

by Robert W. Walker

  Bored by now, she said a sleepy, “Yes?”

  Judge Raymond Parker recounted how DeCampe turned over the Purdy case to him, telling him that all she wanted was to see Purdy die in the chair. While she had to recuse herself from his appeal as a matter of course, since she'd tried him originally, she made it clear that in her opinion, there was no room for appeal of the death sentence in Purdy's case.

  “She was clear on that?”

  “Expressly. She said that all his Bible-thumping, born- again crap was just that: crap.”

  “Anything you can tell me about the old man?”

  “I'd've sworn the old geezer to be, you know, harmless, but who knows these days anymore? He carried a Bible into the courtroom every day; read passages from it. Lips moved as he read. Used his fingers to help him read. Never a peep.”

  Another line rang. “I'm afraid I have to go, Judge Parker. Another line, and I'm hoping it will be Iowa with some good news.”

  “Yes, I do hope you can salvage something out of this.”

  “Yeah, me, too,” she said to herself, after she had hung up the phone.

  “What's that?” asked Clemmens who had remained seated across from her.

  “Gotta get this other call, Lew. Could be important.”

  Lew Clemmens nodded, raised his hands, and indicated he would leave her in peace. He made his way to the door and back down the hall.

  Jessica took a deep breath and prayed for good news from Iowa, that her patience would be rewarded. She could hardly stand working like this, feeling as if her hands were tied. She'd rather be in a lab or in the field. Working out of a task-force operations room was killing on the nerves.

  “It's Iowa,” said her secretary.

  “Give me half a second to get into the ops room, and put it through there. I want this on the speakerphone for the task force to hear.”

  “Not a problem.” Jessica saw that Lew had disappeared, likely with a sense of feeling like the proverbial third wheel. She didn't want him or anyone else to feel that way, not on account of how she worked or failed to work. She raced after Lew, grabbed his arm, and said, “Come on, Iowa's back.”

  “Virgil, you mean?”

  “Yeah, think so. I've got it on speaker in ops.”

  “Let's hear what Virgil has to say.”

  She nodded, and when they stepped into the ops room, she shouted for everyone's attention. “Iowa's on line one.” She pressed the button, and everyone fell silent, anxious to hear if Virgil and his small army of men had come up with anything at all remotely worthwhile down on the farm.

  THIRTEEN

  Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence.

  —JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH

  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 d
o.”

  “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.

  “I'll be damned.” A wide smile replaced her glum features.

  “He did leave some serious bills and confused people in his wake, but he's not wanted for murder or anything like that, thank God.”

  They all had a light laugh over the Marsden story.

  “But Jess, there's something else you need to know.” .

  She stared at J. T. “Lay it on me. What is it?”

  “It's about the Claude Lightfoot case.”

  “Go on.”

  “Hosea Crooms, our guy in the field asking all the ques-tions, phoned in.”

  “OK... and what'd Hosea say?” Jessica pictured the enormous black agent.

  “Seems our snitch, the guy who's been feeding us information about the Lightfoot case, is dead... apparent overdose of J&B Scotch and quaaludes.”

  “Malcolm McArthur, dead?”

  “One and the same.”

  “Only one who was talking in the whole damned county.”

  “ 'Less I miss my guess, someone decided he'd already talked to Hosea long enough.”

  “Murdered?”

  “Yeah, Hosea suspects murder. The scene was a foul mess. It could've been he tore up the place in a drunken stupor like the M.E. wants to believe, but he spilled an awful lot of the J&B.”

  “How many bottles?”

  “M.E. said he consumed three 1.5-liter bottles of the stuff along with enough quaaludes to choke an elephant.”

  “Sons a bitches silenced him.”

  “That'd be my guess.”

  The phone rang, and Keyes caught it. “Jessica, it's Iowa calling back.”

  “Put it on the con,” she replied. In a moment, she asked, “Chief Gorman, what news have you?”

  “We got a new wrinkle here, Dr. Coran.”

  “Shoot.” 'Two things, actually. A note left with the wife with a biblical injunction we're all familiar with: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. “We'll want it sent here for analysis, Chief.”

  “Got it.”

  “And the other thing?”

  Gorman breathed deeply before speaking.

  “One of my cruisers was sitting atop a For Sale sign, doctor.

  A RE/MAX sign. They didn't discover it until they backed off it. Sorry, but that means Purdy unloaded the place before he left.”

  “How long?”

  “The Purdy farm has been sold for a little over a month, according to our local realtor.”

  “He sold the place? Over a month ago?”

  “ 'Bout how long the wife has been under the ground, according to our M.E.”

  “Think I'm getting the picture.”

  “You can rest assured we'll check every possible lead here locally. Let you know anything else we uncover as we get it. My guess is the wife's death pulled out some sort of linchpin in the man's head, probably about the time his son was to be executed. Losing both of them at once like that...but then I'll leave that sort of guesswork to the shrinks. Still, I imagine he lit out for Huntsville just after burying his wife and selling the old place.”

  “So he'd been planning this for at least a month, the abduction, all of it.”

  “Appears so, yes.”

  “He must've been disappointed to learn that Judge DeCampe was no longer in Houston,” she replied. “He went there to pick up two pine boxes and one body. He meant to find her and abduct her in Houston.”

  “But he had to detour and delay, come back entirely across the country to D.C. to find her and attack her there.”

  Keyes, listening in, said, “The man's a walking textbook definition of obsessive-compulsive behavior.”

  “Stalking with a capital S, yes,” agreed Sharpe, “but it's not for sexual motives.”

  Gorman cleared his throat. “Well... seeing as how he sold the place, he never intended using it again, so he will have had to hole up somewhere else. We're going to be on any relatives in the area, you can be certain.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jessica said, a flash of light illuminating the darkness. “We all agree that it stands to reason—given his selling his property—that he planned to abduct DeCampe in Houston, right? And if he had abducted her there, she'd be close to where he picked up his son's remains.”

  Richard picked up on her thread. “Which stands to reason he'd then do it here, in or around D.C.”

  “Sounds logical,” said Gorman from Iowa. “Following that logic,” said Keyes, “hell... yes, if he means to bury her with his son, an eye for an eye, then it damn well may be in our own neck of the woods, Jessica. Somewhere in the vicinity of where he abducted her—in the D.C. area.”

  “And all this time we've been digging in the wrong place....” muttered Gorman, sounding disgrunded.

  “Literally diggin' in the wrong place,” added J. T. with a shake of his chopsticks. “What do you do when you need a place to stay, but you don't know the area?” asked Jessica. 'Talk to the locals,” replied Gorman.

  “Yeah... like the local realtors.

  You said he sold it through RE/MAX?”

  “Yeah, right, RE/MAX.”

  “Make the max of your real estate with RE/MAX.” She thanked Vigil Gorman and hung up.

  J. T. stared at her, knowing her mind was racing. “Whata- ya thi
nk, Jess?”

  “I think if you're satisfied with a service provided in Iowa, you're likely to look for the same service provider in the District of Columbia.”

  “RE/MAX?”

  “RE/MAX!”

  J. T, picked up another ringing line and after a moment said, “Hey Jess, it's your reporter friend O'Brien on the line.”

  “Not now!”

  “Says he has something pertains to the case.”

  Jessica reluctantly took the call. She had to bite her lip to keep from cursing O'Brien out. Reporter O'Brien's story, in which Jessica had been quoted as calling the killer a sexual pervert, had by now made several of the wire services, and it had also traveled the continent and back again via television newscasts.

  “You asshole, O'Brien,” she burst out. “Do you have any idea the light your asinine story has put me in with my superiors?”

  “If you'll stop barking long enough, I have a bone to throw your way, Agent Coran.”

  Jessica closed her luminous eyes and willed her anger down. She again bit her lip and fumed a moment in silence, saying nothing in return for now, knowing that if she did, she would explode.

  “Aren't you going to ask what I have?” O'Brien teased, and she pictured his smug, leprechaun grin. All he needed was a green hat and vest.

  “O'Brien, I've been ordered to not speak with the press whatsoever during the duration of the DeCampe Missing Persons case. Do you understand that?”

  “Your boss put a gag order on you?”

  “Do not characterize this as a gag order, and nothing I say to you from now on is for public record unless I say so, O'Brien. Is that clear?”

  “Perhaps not clear but... but it is interesting.” If she could reach through the line, she'd strangle him. She never knew when he was kidding and when he was serious. She wondered if it were an Irish trait. “All right, damnit, what's this bone you're so generously sharing?”

  “It's a doozy-do, believe me! You sitting down?”

  “Spill it or get off the line, O'Brien! I'm working here.”

  “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?”