Dawn's Light (22 page)

“You mentioned you have some cash now. Did you get it out of the bank the day they opened?”

“Clay did. He didn't want me there with the baby.”

“Did your husband work that day?”

The baby started to kick and grunt. She went to her diaper bag on the table and dug through for something. “No, he had the day off so he could go stand in line.”

“Which bank was his account with?”

She pulled out a pacifier. “There it is. I'm sorry, what did you ask?”

“His bank.”

“BankPlus. We used to be at Alabama Bank and Trust a couple of years ago, but they had this rude teller—”

“And he came home with the money?” Wheaton cut in.

She put the pacifier in the baby's mouth. “That's right. And you know the first thing I bought?”

Mark almost chuckled at the look of dread on Wheaton's face. “What?”

“A car seat for the baby. Now, I know I'm not going to have anything to put it in for a while, but I believe in positive thinking, you know? My neighbor was selling the seat at the swap meet, and I snapped it up. Little Star and I will be able to travel again, and I can take her to see her grandparents, can't I, Star?” She leaned over the child. “Isn't that right, precious? We decided to name her Star since she was born during the Pulses. She's going to have a big impact on the world, aren't you, sweetie?”

Mark jumped in. “Mrs. Tharpe, do you have a picture of your husband that we could have? It has to do with an investigation.”

She frowned. “What kind of investigation?”

“We can't really discuss it right now. But it would help us a lot if we could have his picture.”

She glanced at the picture. It seemed a lightbulb had come on, and she had begun to realize that Clay could be in serious trouble. “I … I only have that one. I don't want to give it to you. It's my favorite.”

“We could bring it back. If we could just have it for a couple of hours—”

The doors seemed to shut. “No, I don't think so.” She crossed her arms and the luster in her eyes disappeared. “Is Clay in some kind of trouble?”

“We just need to talk to him, Mrs. Tharpe,” Wheaton said.

“He is in trouble, isn't he?”

Mark looked at the floor as Wheaton spoke up. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Tharpe. If you change your mind about the picture, we'd appreciate your bringing it by the sheriff's department.”

They started to the door, and Analee followed them out. “Do you want me to give him a message?”

Wheaton turned back. “Ask him to come by and see us. We'd just like to chat with him for a few minutes.”

As they got back in the van, Wheaton glanced at Mark. “Well, there's one thing for sure. That woman has nothing to hide.”

“I don't know,” Mark said. “She got uncooperative there at the end. Sure would have liked having that picture.” He slipped behind the wheel. “Going to the conversion plant?”

“That's right. Let's hit Alabaster Road.”

As he drove, Mark yearned to be with Deni and her family. He should be holding her, comforting her, praying with her.

But since he'd first heard about Beth, Mark had been on a vengeful hunt for the man who'd attacked her. He wouldn't rest until he found him. Only then would he allow himself to succumb to his own grief.

T
HE
A
LABASTER
R
OAD
C
ONVERSION
P
LANT WAS RUN BY
N
ED
Emory, who lived in Oak Hollow. He was the father of Zach Emory, who had been shot a few months ago, and Mark had been blamed. Though Mark had been found innocent and the real killers had been caught, Emory still seemed to dislike him.

For that reason, he decided to let Wheaton do most of the talking as they went in to find Clay Tharpe. The garage bays of the plant were open, letting a light breeze drift through. The sound of a hundred revving motors reverberated through the place, and men who'd been drafted for this purpose worked tirelessly over each one.

They stopped at the closest group of men. “Where can we find Clay Tharpe?” Wheaton yelled over the noise. One of the men pointed upstairs.

At the top of the stairs, Mark saw another group of men, heads together over something they were putting together. Mark searched the faces for a grey goatee. And then he saw Ned Emory. The plant manager came toward them, a look of dread on his face.

“What are you two doing here?” he asked.

Wheaton shook his hand. “Ned, I'm sorry to disturb you at work, but we're looking for one of your employees—Clay Tharpe.”

“Tharpe? What for?”

“We want to ask him some questions.”

Ned seemed to recognize the evasion. He looked down over the rail to the first floor, scanning the heads. “Well, I don't see him anywhere.” He hollered downstairs. “Jessup, you seen Tharpe?”

Jessup looked up at him and yelled back, “He left early.”

Mark looked at Wheaton. So much for Clay having work as an alibi.

They started down the stairs.

“You can talk to Jessup, his supervisor. He's not in some kind of trouble, is he?” Ned called down.

Wheaton and Mark ignored him as they headed toward the supervisor. “Mr. Jessup,” Wheaton called.

The chubby man looked up at them. “Yeah?”

“You said Tharpe left early. What time would you say that was?”

“I guess around eleven o'clock,” he said. “Told me he had a migraine headache that was killing him. I told him this was the last time I was letting him off.”

“The last time?” Mark asked. “Has he been taking off a lot?”

“Yeah, he's been leaving early every day, coming back late from lunch. I'll put him on a task, and when I turn around, he's gone.”

“Has he always been like that?”

“No. Just the last couple of weeks. Why? Has he done something?”

“We just want to question him about a situation that he might know something about.”

“Well, I don't expect to see him again today. He'll milk this migraine for all it's worth. You might catch him at home, if he's really sick.”

“We were just there. His wife thought he was here.”

“Well, there you go. Now you see what I'm dealing with.”

fifty-three

C
RAIG HAD NEVER FELT MORE OUT OF PLACE
. H
E STOOD
just inside the fence at the substation on Tambridge Road, observing the work being done to get the station back online, so that power could be restored to the Crockett area. He'd gotten word this morning through a telegram that one of the utilities that supplied electricity was back online, generating electricity again.

Craig thought it was a joke. After driving from one substation to the other, he'd finally found his transmission engineer, Butch Morris, whom he'd only known for a couple of weeks. He relayed the message. “Is this even possible this soon?”

“Sure, it's possible.”

“But how could they have all their control circuitry repaired that quickly? I expected it to take weeks, if not months.”

Butch took off his hard hat and finger-brushed his comb-over. “They had the parts already in place in some of the hardened warehouses, just waiting for the Pulses to be over. They probably started transporting 'em the day the Pulses ended. Wouldn't take many days to replace 'em and get 'em them generating again.”

“So what does that mean to us?”

“It means that as soon as we can get our substations repaired, we can connect them to the transmission lines and get our areas back up. Problem is manpower. We don't have enough workers. We need more linemen. You're not hiring 'em fast enough.”

“Trust me,” Craig said. “If someone puts
lineman
or
technician
on their application, I put them right to work.”

He let Butch go back to work and stood back, running through the crash course he'd taken about turbines and insulators and transmission towers. There was a time—before the outage—when he would have driven past a substation and complained that it was an eyesore to the community. He might have suggested that Senator Crawford write a bill about camouflaging them so they'd be more attractive. It would have been born of pure ignorance, since he'd had no idea that these were the stations that brought lights and heat and air conditioning, and powered the companies that pumped sewage or provided running water.

Now he saw those metal towers with all those unsightly transmission lines and all the machinery inside the fence with the words “Keep Out—High Voltage” on it as miraculous. And the workers milling around inside, with knowledge he didn't have, seemed like heroes.

They didn't return the admiration, however. He felt in their way, even though he paid their salaries.

As he got back into his car, hope and pride welled up inside him. Hope that it might not take as long as he thought to get the power restored. Pride that he'd had something to do with it.

He drove back through town, honking at pedestrians and bike riders in his way, wishing they'd get a clue that cars were back on the road. He longed for an air conditioner, but most of these old cars didn't have them, and even if he'd had one, he didn't have enough gas to use it. So he kept his windows down, hoping the warm wind would somehow stop the sweat from drenching his dress clothes.

A
S THEY CAME OUT OF THE CONVERSION PLANT
, M
ARK SAW
Craig's car pulling into the recovery team's parking lot. He hadn't been there when Deni had taken off, so he probably hadn't got word yet about Beth's attack.

He glanced at Wheaton. “Looks like Craig Martin's over there. I should go tell him about Beth.”

Wheaton nodded. “We can take a minute to do that.”

They pulled up behind Craig as he was getting out of his car. It did Mark's heart good to see Craig's dress shirt marked with huge sweat rings.

Craig got out and shot him a look. “You guys come to apply for a job?” he asked in that smug voice of his. “We pay better than the county does.”

Mark bristled. “Everybody pays better than the county does.”

He reached to shake Craig's hand. His nemesis took it grudgingly.

“I thought you might not have heard about Beth.”

Craig reached into his car and got a towel, began blotting his face. “What about her?”

“She was attacked earlier today. Deni's with her at the hospital.”

“Attacked? By whom?”

“By some guy in a park. We're trying to find him now. She has a severe head injury. She was in surgery when I left the hospital.”

The full force of the news finally registered on Craig's face. “Which hospital?”

“Crockett Medical Center.”

“How is Deni?”

Mark's jaw popped. Was he giving secrets to the enemy? “She's pretty upset.”

“I'll get right over there. Thanks for telling me.”

Mark had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach as he walked back to the van. Craig would be there comforting Deni while Mark was out trying to find the killer. But it couldn't be helped. Clay Tharpe had to be caught. He just prayed that Craig didn't make any headway while Deni was especially vulnerable.

fifty-four

T
HE SURGERY HAD BEEN GOING ON FOR FOUR HOURS, AND
Kay was going to jump out of her skin if she didn't hear something soon. Two hours ago, Judith had come to tell her that Beth was still alive and stable, but that was all she knew.

Finally, Kay heard their names called.

“Branning family? Is there a Branning family in here?”

“Here we are!” she shouted, and almost tripped over someone's feet as she tried to get to the door. The family was on her heels.

“Your daughter's out of surgery, Mrs. Branning. Dr. Overton would like to see you in the conference room.”

“Is she still alive?” Kay choked.

“Yes, she is.”

“What's her condition?” Doug asked.

“Dr. Overton would prefer to explain that to you.”

Kay covered her mouth and sobbed into her hand. It was bad. If it weren't, the nurse would have been smiling, and she would have said that everything went well and that Beth would be waking up soon.

That's what they'd said when Deni had her tonsils out at age seven and when Jeff had tubes in his ears as a baby.

Doug put his arm around her. She felt him shaking, and she realized the same thoughts were going through his mind. Deni, Jeff, and Logan were quiet as they followed them down the hallway and back into the conference room where they'd prayed earlier. They filed in and sat around the table, stiff and silent.

Dr. Overton came in wearing a white coat over his green scrubs. He gave them a halfhearted smile, then closed the door.

“How is Beth?” Doug demanded before he'd even sat down.

Dr. Overton sighed as he sat down and opened her chart. “We did all we could to stop the bleeding,” he said. “Her skull has multiple fractures from some sort of blunt-force trauma. From the shape of the posterior part of her skull, I think she was slammed against something.” He looked across the table at Doug. “Do you know what that could have been?”

The rims of Doug's eyes reddened. “There was blood on a tree near where we found her.”

Kay hadn't even seen it. She'd been so focused on Beth on the ground.

“Yes, that would be consistent with what we found. The fractures may be serving her well at this point. It's giving her brain some room to swell, reducing the pressure.”

“Oh, dear God,” Kay whispered. She'd never believed that a fractured skull would be a blessing. She couldn't believe it now.

“She was also strangled. She has bruising and swelling on her neck, which is making it difficult for her to breathe. There was no arterial damage, but her airways were compromised. We have her on a ventilator for now, with a tube that will help keep her airways open.”

“Strangled!” Though Doug had used the word
strangulation
earlier, Kay couldn't get her mind around the cruelty that entailed. She covered her face now and sucked in a sob. “Who would do this to a child?”

The doctor looked down, and Kay wondered if he'd spent time asking the same questions. After a moment, he went on. “We do have generator power for certain important areas of the hospital, but we're limited in the things we can plug in. We will use generator-powered electricity for the ventilator, but we can't use it for other things, like the compression stockings that we would normally put on her to keep blood clots from forming because of inactivity. We will give her some graduated compression socks to help with that, but it would be a good idea to massage her legs and feet when you think about it to keep the blood circulating.”