Darkness Before Dawn (6 page)

W
ITH THE SHOWER
’
S HOT WATER POURING DOWN HER FACE
, M
EG ONCE
again went through the
if
s she had considered for the past three days. What if she had told him to wait? What
if he hadn’t gotten his work done so quickly? What if? What if? What if? Then, as
she reached for her shampoo, another question surfaced, the same question that had
haunted her the night before. Who? Who was that drunk kid? Who killed Steve?

Putting the shampoo down without ever using it, Meg turned the water off, wrapped
herself in a towel, and still soaking wet, ran back to her landline phone. She punched
in a familiar number and waited as it rang—once, then twice, and finally three times.

“Come on, Heather, be home.”

On the fourth ring, a sleepy voice answered. “Hello?”

“Heather.”

The shock of hearing from her friend must have yanked Heather from deep sleep into
a complete and fully awake awareness. Somehow, as she framed a question, she also
managed to embrace a tone filled with compassion. “Meg, how are you?”

“Heather, do you know the name of the kid that was driving the other car?”

“What kid?” After an awkward pause, she added, “Oh, Steve’s wreck. I don’t know? Why?”

“You can tell me,” Meg was pleading. Her tone was almost frantic. “Surely you’ve heard.
I’ve got to know.”

“I really don’t know, Meg,” Heather answered sincerely. “If I did, I’d tell you. I
just haven’t heard anybody say. In all honesty, maybe I didn’t want to know.”

Meg swore.

In four years of working with her, Heather had never heard Meg utter even the mildest
obscenity, so the word likely contained the shock value of a 7.0 earthquake. Maybe
that was the reason she didn’t offer a response. For whatever reason, before Heather
could fully gather her wits and respond, Meg’s voice came back on the line.

“Okay, thanks, I’ll see you tomorrow at work.”

Repeating the process, Meg called over a dozen different friends and the seven she
actually reached all gave the same response. No one knew. She looked up at the living
room clock. It was 11:17. Still wrapped in a towel, her hair now damp not wet, she
got up and walked around the couch toward the kitchen, nearly tripping over the morning
paper.

That’s it, the paper. Okay, the accident happened on Thursday night, so the story
would be in Friday morning’s
Herald.
I didn’t read it, but Mom brought it in when she came over. Where did I put it? The
trash, I pitched it
.

Pulling out a large, white, plastic trashcan from the pantry, she dug through empty
cans and bottles until she found a newspaper. Yanking the plastic wrapper off, she
unrolled it. Reading the masthead, the words “Friday Edition” jumped out. Quickly
she scanned the front page, and then page two, and so on and so on. Sitting in the
middle of a week’s worth of
kitchen trash and a now dried Coke spill, surrounded by pieces of broken glass, she
desperately searched for some report, only to find nothing.

Come on, Steve was a pretty well-known guy. Where’s the story?
As her hunt bore no fruit, she grew angry. It just seemed the world was out to keep
her from getting the information she needed!

Shoving the pages to one side, she looked around the kitchen. Suddenly her eyes lit
up. Almost startling herself with her own voice, she all but yelled, “Of course, it
happened too late for Friday’s paper; it’s got to be in Saturday’s.”

Standing up, she once again tightened her towel and looked into the trash can, but
the paper wasn’t there. Wandering back into the living room, she frantically scanned
the area hoping that the paper would jump into sight. When it didn’t, she screamed,
“Where are you?”

Wanting to cry, she fell in a heap on the couch and tried to remember what she’d done
with it. There might have been no one to hear her words, but she put voice to her
thoughts. “Okay, I got up yesterday morning, got dressed, and drove to Mother’s. I
had to have walked by the paper, so I must have picked it up and done something with
it . . . but what? The car, that’s it, I tossed it in the back seat of my car.”

She was about to get up when it hit her—the information would likely be online. Firing
up her laptop, she did a search for the
Herald’s
website. A roadblock once more greeted her. The paper was now subscription only.
She didn’t have the patience to dig out a credit card and sign up, so she turned her
focus back to the paper she’d tossed in the Mustang.

Jumping up from the couch, she opened the apartment’s door, charged down the steps,
up the front walk, out to the curb, and threw open her yellow Mustang’s passenger
door. Not once did she notice the cold wind, the snow on her bare feet, or
the fact that she was dressed in only an oversized bath towel. Reaching over the front
passenger bucket seat, she tossed aside a pile of old clothes and a tennis racket
and grabbed the paper. Running back up the walk and the stairs, she raced through
her open apartment door and went directly into the kitchen. As soon as she had spread
the paper out on the counter top, a front-page headline leaped out at her.

L
OCAL
C
PA
D
IES
I
N
A
UTO
C
RASH

Her eyes focused on the words that followed.

Steven J. Richards, 28, was pronounced dead on arrival at Springfield Community Hospital
due to injuries that occurred when his 2005 Buick Century collided with a 2010 Ford
Explorer driven by a local teenager. A blood test indicated that the seventeen-year-old
youth was legally intoxicated at the time of the accident
.

Accident! What kind of word was that to describe what amounted to cold-blooded murder?
Why didn’t the writer report it the way it really happened? This was no accident.
Wiping away a tear, Meg continued reading.

The teen also received minor injuries. He was treated in Springfield Community Hospital’s
emergency room and released without being admitted
.

Due to the youth’s age, police did not release any further information on his identity
or the charges, if any, that would be filed against him. District Attorney Webb Jones
would only say, “We are studying the case and currently the boy has been turned over
to his parents.”

Richards, an employee of
. . .

Meg stopped reading and once again looked out the window, her eyes involuntarily filling
with tears. The paper had been no help. All she wanted to know was who had killed
her husband, and no one or nothing could or would tell her.
Charging back into the living room, she pulled a phone book from the end table drawer
and scanned its pages for a home number for the district attorney. It wasn’t there.
Calling information, she learned that the number was unlisted. She once more hit the
Internet, but Google gave her the same information as everything else.

Temporarily defeated, she headed back to the bathroom and finished her shower. Pulling
on some jeans and a sweater, she applied her makeup, fixed her shoulder-length, light
brown hair, and opened a can of tuna fish. She ate directly from the container. Like
everything else in her life, the meal left her unsatisfied.

F
OR TWO HOURS
, M
EG CLEANED UP HER KITCHEN, SIPPED ON A
C
OKE, AND
reread six stories about Steve’s death online. Finally, with no new information coming
to light and no one whom she could call in order to gain any more knowledge, she accepted
she’d have to wait until the next morning to get what she needed. At exactly nine
tomorrow she’d get in touch with the district attorney’s office and demand he tell
her who killed Steve.

Yet tomorrow seemed like forever and the way the minutes crept so slowly by echoed
that fact. After leafing through a half dozen magazines and searching in vain for
something to watch on television, Meg once again found herself overcome with loneliness.
Turning off the TV, she walked back over to her window.

Mr. Fudge had returned from church and swept his walk, and the Smith kids had ruined
the beauty of the apartment’s smooth, snow-covered yard by building a snowman. Up
in the elm tree, a gray and red female cardinal fluttered nervously from branch to
branch.

Until Meg spotted the bird, she had forgotten about the events of the morning. Then,
when she saw the Fudges’ fat yellow cat gracefully balancing on the old couple’s porch
railing,
the episode came back in vivid detail. Pulling on her coat, Meg walked out to her
balcony just in time to see the cardinal swoop down and discover the place where Meg
had pushed its mate that morning. Bouncing all the way around the now cold, scarlet
bird, the female tilted her head one way and then the other, waiting for the fallen
mate to rise up and fly home with her. Meg observed the scene for a few minutes then,
overwhelmed with a wave of sudden emotion, rushed down the steps and screamed at the
poor, confused cardinal.

“He’s dead! He’s dead!” she yelled. “And you can’t do anything to bring him back.”

Startled, the cardinal took flight, landing in one of the elm tree’s lower branches.
Standing directly below the bird’s perch, tears now streaming down her face, Meg glared
at the frightened bird and sobbed, “Do you want to know who did it? Do you? I’ll tell
you who, it was Tom, the cat. Yes, that yellow one across the street. He killed your
mate without mercy. And he did it just for the thrill of the kill.”

As her tears fell in the snow, Meg looked back at the confused bird and cried out,
“At least you know who is responsible. I’d give anything for just that much!”

As if taking a cue from the woman’s words, the bird flew from the limb and swooped
down at the unsuspecting, sleeping cat. Never getting close enough to the animal to
allow him to catch her, she swooped again and again. First running for the cover of
a bush and then under Mr. Fudge’s Oldsmobile, the cat, eyes now opened wide, realized
he was marked and any trip out into the open would bring an angry bird swooping down
and raining vengeance from the sky. Reconciled and seemingly unbothered by the hand
fate had dealt, Tom closed his eyes and ignored the female cardinal’s loud chirping.
Within moments, he had resumed his nap, this time safely tucked under the old car.

Meg suddenly saw the cat as the boy who had struck down her husband. She wasn’t going
to let him rest. Not for a moment. Shaking her head, she whispered a promise.

“Whoever you are, I’ll find you, and when I do, I’ll make you pay. I’ll make you pay!”

Bending over and molding a handful of snow into a ball, she threw it wildly in the
general direction of the cat. It hit the fat feline in the rump, sending him back
into the open, where the female cardinal resumed swooping down at the perplexed killer.
Meg smiled. Tom needed to pay for what he’d done. Everyone should pay and pay deeply
for taking a life. As soon as she found out who killed Steve, it would be her turn
to swoop unrelentingly down on an unsuspecting enemy.

W
E DIDN
’
T EXPECT YOU BACK SO SOON
!” E
XCLAIMED AN OBVIOUSLY
shocked John Willis as a fully uniformed Meg entered Springfield Community Hospital
through the emergency room door. The forty-three-year-old hospital administrator peered
through his black-rimmed glasses at the woman for a few seconds before adding, “Listen,
Nurse Richards, you can take as much time off as you want or need. We’ll work around
you until you’re fully ready to come back.”

“I’m fine,” Meg, her tone as flat as the plains in Kansas, informed Willis. “And I
want to be working.”

As Willis looked on, Meg signed in and began going through the checklist of things
that all nurses have to do before beginning their shifts. As she and Nurse Jan Greer
took inventory of drugs and instruments, word of Meg’s arrival quickly moved through
the two-hundred-bed hospital. Within minutes, Heather had rushed to her side.

“What are you doing here?” her coworker and best friend asked.

“The count,” Meg’s replied, not bothering to look up.

“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” Heather whispered, “I mean, it has only been
. . .”

“Heather, I know how long it’s been, and I know that I don’t want to be at home staring
at his pictures or folding his clothes. If I’m here, at least I’ll have something
else to think about. Now, I’m checking in and I’m going to my station. Thanks for
your concern, but save it for the patients.”

“But . . .”

Meg cut Heather off with a wave of her hand coupled with a stern look. “For the last
time, I’m fine, and I’ll see you later. Oh, and please don’t come checking on me every
five minutes. I don’t need another mother. I have one that’s already driving me crazy
with her ‘sage’ advice and deep concern.”

Meg had vowed to treat this as just another day. It had to be just like any other
Monday. Thus she had taken extra care to insure she looked her best, adding layers
of makeup to cover up the dark circles, though she couldn’t do much about the redness
in her eyes. With her game face on and her emotions under control, she appeared strong
and alert. In fact, she was sure she looked normal. But that normalcy was only skin-deep.
Beneath the calm exterior was a driven woman, a woman who couldn’t wait for her first
break in order to call the district attorney and finally discover the name of her
husband’s murderer. And that was the real reason for her coming to work. Waiting had
driven her crazy all through the night. Being at work gave her something to do to
pass the time until the district attorney’s office opened.

She’d memorized the number the night before. In fact, she had practiced dialing it
a few hundred times. Now, her fingers could fly over the keys in a pattern as familiar
as stepping from her apartment’s front door to her car. At nine, she slipped into
a storage room and put her practice into play. As the call went through, she jammed
the device to her ear. One ring, two, and the third! Finally, on the fourth ring a
matronly sounding woman answered, “District Attorney’s office.”