Dawn's Light (33 page)

She breathed a mirthless laugh. “Well, why not go there? An affair can't be worse than murder, can it?” She wiped her eyes and paced across the room. “The truth is, he might have been. There were a lot of nights that he said he worked late, and a few times I went by the plant just to tell him something, and he wasn't there. And then he'd come home in the wee hours and swear he'd been there all along.”

“Did you know that your husband and Melissa Tomlin were friends in high school?”

She stared at them for a moment. “Yes.”

“Do you think there's any possibility that they could have been seeing each other?”

She frowned. “
Seeing
each other? What are you saying? Do you think my husband killed her husband out of jealousy?”

“We're just trying to put a few puzzle pieces together,” Mark said.

Deni wished they could stop pressing her. But they had to know.

“They were still friends. I knew that. He talked to her from time to time. But I really thought that was all it was.”

“After we identified the bodies, and you heard it was Blake, didn't you wonder?”

Her eyes squeezed shut. “I haven't had time to wonder anything except why my husband killed two people and attacked a thirteen-year-old girl. Anyway, why would she want her husband dead? If she didn't like him, she could have left him.”

Deni spoke up. “Analee, do you know what happened to the money that your husband got in the robbery?”

She hesitated. “It's here in the house. Please don't take it. I need it. It's all I have.”

“And how much was it?”

“Five hundred dollars,” she said.

Mark shifted in his seat. “The sheriff's department has learned that Blake Tomlin withdrew one thousand dollars from the bank that day. What do you think happened to the other five hundred dollars?”

“I have no idea. Maybe Clay wanted to keep it for himself.”

But Deni wasn't buying that. No, Clay Tharpe had split it with Melissa. His half was the price for killing Blake.

Somehow they had to prove it.

D
ENI WENT HOME BEFORE GOING BACK TO THE HOSPITAL, TO
make something for her family to eat. The hospital provided food for their patients, but the visitors were on their own. She fried up some quick tortillas, sliced some stale bread, and stuffed it all into a paper bag that had been recycled a few too many times.

She heard the key in the lock and went to see who was coming in.

Craig stood on the threshold, his white shirt covered in something brown, and his face streaked with what looked like mud. “Thank goodness you're home,” he said. “I have to change, but I don't want to track this oil through the house.”

“Oil? How'd you get covered with oil?”

“An oil-filled breaker at the substation exploded when we tried to get online.”

She brought her hand to her chest. “Exploded? Are you all right?”

She could see that he was shaken. “I caught a piece of metal.” He gestured toward the torn place on his shirt, and she saw the blood. “But I'm fine. I just need to wash and change. I'll go scrub down in the backyard if you have any water.”

“We have a little. I'll get it and meet you back there.”

She ran into the bathroom and got a bowl of water that had been sitting there for days. Grabbing a bar of soap and some towels, she carried them to where Craig stood on the back patio. He had taken off his shirt, but he still had oil sludge smeared across his chest and arms. “Guess I'll never wear that shirt again.”

The cut on his arm was bigger than he'd implied. “You wash, and I'll get something for your arm.”

She ran back in for some alcohol they'd managed to preserve through the outage and some antibiotic ointment. He had managed to scrub off most of the sludge by the time she got back out. “Here, let me clean that cut.”

He held his arm out for her. She suppressed a grin when she realized he was flexing. “You could have been seriously injured, you know.”

“Yeah, well, I didn't see it coming. The station was supposed to connect seamlessly to the transmission lines, electricity was supposed to flow through the grid, and you were supposed to have lights tonight. The best laid plans of mice and men …”

She looked up at him. “So does that set us back another few months?”

“No, not necessarily. They're telling me they can replace the breaker and clean up the mess. They'll have to find the short, and then they can try it again. Next time I'm going to be standing farther back. Tomorrow we're going to try one of the other substations in Crockett. Maybe we'll have better luck with that one.”

She frowned as she cleaned the cut, straining to see in the dusk. “You need stitches. It's a deep cut.”

His chest seemed to puff up. “Yeah, well, in the infamous words of Clint Eastwood, ‘I don't have time to bleed.’ ”

She started to laugh. “Tough guy.”

He gazed down at her with a smile in his eyes, and for a moment, she remembered the way she used to feel about him. Adoring and admiring. She had been attracted to power, and he'd had more than any of the guys her friends dated. They'd all moaned about how good looking he was, how much money he made, and what a great future he had before him.

He was still that person. But she wasn't.

She stepped back and handed him the washcloth she was using. “You might still have a little oil in that cut. I'd wash it real well if I were you. I have to go back in now and finish fixing my family some food.”

“If you wait, I'll give you a ride to the hospital on my way back to work.”

She thought she'd better not, but the offer was tempting. What would it hurt to accept a ride from him? Mark would understand.

“Okay,” she said. “I'll clean up here while you get changed.”

eighty

F
OUR OF THE IMPROMPTU ELDERS IN THEIR LITTLE LAWN
chair church assembled at the hospital as evening fell. Kay got special permission from Dr. Overton, who was a believer, to let the men into the ICU to pray over Beth. The men suited up, then came in and gathered around Beth's bed, laying hands on her body. Kay stood back, focusing her prayers on faith, as one of the men put a thumbprint of oil on Beth's forehead and led the men in prayer for her healing.

Kay's faith took her forward, to that moment when Beth would wake up. When Kay would take her daughter's hand and help her slip off the bed. She pictured Beth complaining about the catheter and the IV, fussing about the worsened condition of her hair, asking about the progress of the play the children had been rehearsing without her.

As the prayers continued, she expected for Beth to open her eyes. It would be like when the disciples were praying for Peter's release from prison, and he showed up at the door. Beth would open her eyes and see them all with their eyes closed, and she would have to tap on someone to get their attention.

Delight at what God was going to do filtered through her. She was ready to take Beth home.

She opened her eyes, watching her daughter as they prayed. Beth still lay there unmoving. Doubt crept in, but Kay chased it back. There was no room for doubt. Only faith. She had enough to move this mountain.

When the men had left, Kay sat beside Beth with that expectation that she knew was pleasing to God.
Go ahead and work, Father
, she thought.
We
're ready for your miracle.

As the hours went by, and there was still no change, Kay tried to imagine God reknitting the tissues in Beth's brain. These things took time, she told herself. God would heal her when he saw fit.

She just had to be patient.

B
UT TWO DAYS LATER, JUST WHEN
K
AY THOUGHT THINGS COULDN'T
get worse, seizures began to rack Beth's body. Her legs and arms stiffened as her back arched and convulsed.

The nurse called the doctor, who sent the family out of the room. They circled in the waiting room and prayed that God would intervene and undo the damage.

When the doctor sent for them to meet him in the conference room, Kay's stomach tightened. She was sure he had bad news. She braced herself for it.

She had expected so much after the elders prayed. Now she wondered if the elders were
elder
enough. Maybe it hadn't worked because they weren't ordained deacons. Maybe they should borrow some elders from some other church. Or maybe that wasn't it at all. Maybe it was all
her
fault. Maybe her faith wasn't strong enough for her daughter's healing.

Kay tried to keep that picture in her mind of Beth getting up, whole and refreshed. But all those imaginary pictures kept morphing into the memory of Beth's body convulsing.

The conference room was still mostly dark, except for the light coming in the window. Though it was stiflingly hot, Kay shivered as she walked in.

The plush chairs were like executive office chairs—they swiveled and rocked. She was sure they were meant to lend a sense of comfort to families whose lives were shattering. She found no comfort in them as she sank into one.

Doug's chair squeaked as he sat down next to her, and she thought how someone had dropped the ball on the WD—40. Somehow, the sound calmed the terror screaming through her mind. One little squeak could so easily be fixed. Maybe Beth's problems could be broken down into tiny squeaks and WD—40.

She felt like one of the losers who used to sit in the boardroom on
The Apprentice
as Dr. Overton walked in silently and sat across from them. Derek Morton, their neighbor who'd been their primary care physician for the last year, came in with him.

“Doug, Kay.” He shook both of their hands, his expression grave. “I hope you guys don't mind if I sit in for this.”

Kay's throat clenched. “Not at all, Derek.” Her voice sounded distant and hollow, like it came from someone else.

Doug bypassed the greetings. “Doctor, let's cut to the chase. What's going on with Beth? What was the seizure about?”

Dr. Overton opened Beth's file and let out a long sigh. “I had really hoped Beth would wake up by now, but the truth is, her vital signs are not very stable. Her blood pressure is extremely low and her kidney function is a concern to me. Her breathing is labored and shallow, and blood tests are showing that she's not getting enough oxygen into her blood.” He looked up at them. “In normal times, I would change her medication to deal with those seizures, but we don't have the ideal drugs we need.”

Could this get any worse?

“Her intracranial pressure is way too high. I recommend that we do a ventriculostomy as soon as possible.”

“What is
that
?” Doug asked.

Derek spoke up. “It's a procedure that drains her cerebrospinal fluid, to take some of the pressure off her brain.”

“It sounds dangerous,” Kay whispered.

“No more dangerous than what might happen if we don't do it. Meanwhile, we're going to try our best to get some of the steroids and antiseizure meds in here that we need.”

“Craig Martin is working on getting them,” Kay blurted.

Overton nodded. “I know he is. He talked to me about them. Maybe he'll get them soon. But in the meantime, we have some decisions to make.”

“What decisions?” Kay whispered.

“Well, we can do the procedure to drain the fluid today. After that, if we don't get the drugs and the pressure comes back, we could try a very radical procedure that sometimes does save brain tissue.”

Doug took Kay's hand. “What procedure?”

“It's called a decompressive craniectomy. We remove part of the skull so there won't be so much pressure. That way the brain can expand without squeezing tissue, and cerebral blood flow can normalize.”

“You remove it? Do you mean her head would be open? Her brains exposed?”

“Yes, until the pressure goes down.”

Kay's mouth came open, and she stared, incredulous. “You can't be serious.”

Derek cleared his throat. “It sounds awful, I know. But we actually have very good results with it. In wars, when soldiers have head injuries, the doctors do this as a first course of action. It lessens the probability of damage to the brain tissue.”

“Then why didn't you do that first?” Doug asked.

The question was accusatory, but Dr. Overton took it well. “It's not
our
first course of action. Besides, Beth's skull fractures provided some of the same effects. But it's not enough. First we tried the medications we do have, and we monitored the pressure. But now we need to drain the cerebrospinal fluid. If it doesn't help, then we'll make the decision about the craniectomy.”

Kay's hands and feet were ice cold. She slid her chair back and got up. She couldn't sit here and listen to a matter-of-fact discussion about opening her child's skull. How would Beth survive it?

“What about infection?” Doug asked. “If her head is open—”

“The benefits outweigh the risks,” Overton said. “We have been able to get the antibiotics we need, so we would be able to fight infection.”

Doug seemed so calm, so engaged in this cruel conversation.

“What would you do with the bone you remove? Of the skull, I mean? Would you ever be able to put it back?”

“We implant it in the abdominal wall until we can replace it where it belongs.”

The room seemed to be closing in on her. Kay staggered, backing up against the wall. Reality pressed down on her with smothering heat. Her hands still felt like ice cubes. Doug got up and steadied her.

“I'm afraid Beth's brain isn't her only problem,” Dr. Overton said. “Her kidney function is diminishing.”

“We're going to put her on dialysis,” Derek said. “Doug, Kay, these are all problems with solutions.”

“Solutions?” Kay managed to say. “These don't sound like solutions. This is a nightmare.”

“I know it seems that way,” Dr. Overton said.

Kay pushed off from the wall. “Is she suffering?”

“I don't think so. From all we can tell, she isn't aware of anything.”

But they weren't sure, Kay thought. For all they knew Beth was screaming in agony. Would she be strong enough for anesthesia, or would they just saw away without it?

Doug put his arm around her, pulling her morbid, racing thoughts to a halt. She pressed her face into his chest.