Dawn's Light (32 page)

“But we haven't done everything,” she said. “In the book of James, it says to call the elders. Why haven't we done that?”

“Our little church doesn't have elders.” Doug paused and looked at Beth. “But maybe I could get some of the more spiritually mature men to come and pray.”

Kay wondered if God would honor that. They had to try. “We could send Jeff to ask them to come this afternoon. How many do we need?”

“I would think just a few devout men who believe in the power of prayer.”

“What kind of oil do they need?”

“Olive oil would do, if anyone has any.”

“Are you sure? We have to do it right.”

Doug looked helpless. “If there's some other kind of holy oil, I don't know what it is. The oil's not magic, Kay. It's God who does the healing, not the oil.”

They had no time to waste. Hope rose in her heart as she headed for the door. “I'm going to find Jeff and put him on it right away.”

Maybe prayer from those men would be what they needed to unlock God's healing power.

seventy-seven

T
HE
T
HARPES' NEIGHBORS WERE EAGER TO TALK TO
D
ENI
and Mark, and all of them expressed shock at what had been found in their backyard.

But they hit pay dirt with a neighbor six houses down from Clay and Analee.

“We were in the Crockett High School Class of '95,” Amanda Sellick said as she invited them in. “I have the yearbook if you'd like to see it.”

Deni didn't know what good it would do, but she took it anyway. As Mark asked Amanda questions about the Tharpes' friends and enemies, Deni flipped through the pages. She had graduated from the same school several years behind them and recognized teachers and classmates. She found Tharpe's senior portrait and slowly scanned the faces of the others in his class. She didn't recognize any of the names or faces. Then she turned the page.

One face with a frame of big, frizzy hair jumped out at her. She caught her breath.

Melissa Anthony, who later became Melissa Tomlin.

“Mark, look.”

Mark stopped midsentence and looked at the picture. His face changed as he took it in. “So Amanda, did you know Melissa Tomlin?”

“No, I don't think so.”

“Melissa Anthony,” Deni corrected, showing her the picture.

“Oh, yeah,” Amanda said. “
That
Melissa. I forgot her married name.”

Deni looked at Mark. “Didn't Melissa tell you she didn't know Clay Tharpe?”

“That wouldn't be true at all,” the woman said. “Melissa and Clay were really good friends in high school. They even dated for a while.”

Deni's heart started pounding, and the puzzle pieces began to align themselves in her mind. Could Melissa have been involved with Clay?

Mark stared at the coffee table, the wheels clearly turning in his mind. “You're sure? She told me she didn't know him.”

“I'm sure,” Amanda said. “You don't forget your best friends from school. Especially when you live in the same town with them.”

Why would Melissa lie? Wouldn't it have been natural and normal to tell them that she knew him? Express shock that he was the one? The fact that she'd denied it—when there was proof right here, on paper—made Deni suspicious.

Deni began to wonder if that innocent-seeming, distraught woman she'd talked to earlier had been in cahoots with her husband's murderer to kill him. Could she have been the accomplice? Was it even possible that
she
was the one who had told Tharpe where to find Beth?

She felt the heat of indignation flushing her cheeks, almost making her dizzy. She had sat in Melissa's living room, had felt sorry for her. Prayed for her.

She kept quiet as Mark finished questioning Amanda, but her pulse pounded in her temples. Her lungs grew tight, her breathing shallow. She got to her feet. “I'm sorry. I need some air.”

She heard Mark asking if they could take the yearbook. Amanda agreed. Deni stumbled outside and propped herself against the brick wall.

The door closed as Mark came out. “Baby, are you all right?”

“No,” she said. “Mark, could Melissa Tomlin be the accomplice?”

His lips were tight. “Possible. Maybe she confessed to her dad, and he decided to do what he could to keep Clay from exposing her.”

“That's why he would shoot him in front of a judge. To keep the heat off his daughter. He decided to shut Tharpe up, and no one would ever figure it out. So he goes to prison for first-degree murder, while his murdering daughter gets off scot-free.”

“But how do you prove it?” Mark asked. “All we have is some hearsay and anecdotal evidence. Just because Clay and Melissa knew each other in high school—”

“Dated,” Deni cut in. “And it's not anecdotal. We have the yearbook to prove it.”

“It proves they knew each other, not that they dated,” Mark said. “But even if they did, it doesn't prove they were in this together. Maybe they were having an affair, and she lied about knowing him to keep it secret. It doesn't mean she's a killer. We need more. We need to find out if they had contact recently.”

They got their bikes and headed out. “Think,” Deni said as they rode. “Why would Clay do something like this for her?”

“For money,” Mark said.

“Yeah, but don't you think she'd want the money, too? I mean, we were all so desperate for cash. I can't imagine she would set things up so that she didn't get any of her own money.”

“Maybe Tharpe split it with her.”

Deni nodded. “She might have thought losing some of the money was a small price to pay for getting her abusive husband out of the picture.”

“If they had a relationship, maybe they planned to pool their resources.”

Now they were getting somewhere. Deni felt her strength coming back. “If they were having an affair, somebody knows about it. We've got to find that somebody.”

seventy-eight

I
T WAS GETTING DARK AS
C
RAIG AND TWO OF HIS EMPLOY
ees—an electrical engineer and the PR person filling in for Deni until she got back—drove to the substation that would provide electricity to the eastern side of Crockett, the side that powered the hospital and Oak Hollow subdivision. The transmission engineer who was working to get the substation online had sent word that they would try it this afternoon.

“So could we feasibly have electricity today?” Warren Ames, the PR guy, asked. “Air conditioning? Refrigerators?”

“Maybe,” Jim Sevrino said. “It won't be perfect. The lights will probably flicker. And air conditioning will draw too big a load.”

Craig hoped the residents would heed the warnings they'd posted all over town, to keep their air conditioners off and their appliances unplugged.

“Why will the lights flicker?” Warren asked.

Craig didn't know much about electricity—only what he'd learned in the last few months. But he was able to answer that. “Because all of our semiconductors are fried from the Pulses. They regulate voltage. So where you might have been supposed to get 110 volts, without good regulation you'll get less.”

“Right,” Jim said. “Power without control. Electric clocks might not keep accurate time. Semiconductors make sure the frequency is 60 Hertz and not 58. But without them, that's not controllable. We won't be able to control that until we get all that fixed, and it's going to take time. But for now, I think people will be satisfied with flickering lights rather than no lights at all.”

“Will people have to get the meters on their houses working before they can get power?”

Craig deferred to Jim on that one.

“Some meters will work—the mechanical ones with the disk that spins around. The solid state meters won't work, but that won't stop electricity from flowing into their homes. The meters are only for billing. If they don't work, we can't measure usage, so we can't charge users for it.”

Craig glanced at Jim in his rearview mirror. “The government is keeping the power companies afloat until they can start measuring usage and get people paying for their electricity again. The reconstruction can't go forward until we have electricity.”

As Jim continued explaining the situation to Warren, Craig's mind drifted to Deni. She should be the one asking these questions. She should be sitting beside him, taking all the technical details and putting them into user-friendly terms that could go out to the press. Her mind was able to grasp the million intricate details that had to be fed to the public. But until Beth woke up and was on the road to recovery, he knew Deni wouldn't come back to work.

He reached the substation and turned into the driveway. A sign on the tall chain-link fence said “High Voltage. Keep Out.” There must be three dozen power company employees working there tonight, all intent on getting the local power grid up.

Craig got out of his car and stepped toward the gate. Lee Cowan, the transmission engineer, came toward him. “You men stay clear,” Cowan said. “It could be dangerous.”

Craig got the hardhats out of his trunk and handed them to the other two. Then they backed up, watching the activity inside the fence. “How dangerous?”

Cowan looked back at the intricate webbing of circuit breakers and transformers. “The distribution network hasn't been used in a year, so we're not sure of its condition.” He pointed to the lines connected to the tall metal towers. “If there's a short anywhere in the line, it could cause problems.”

He didn't elaborate further, just went back inside the fence, leaving Craig there to wonder what would cause a short. He didn't like sitting like this, watching all the activity and not being able to control it. But he had no choice.

Hours passed as the animated power employees bootstrapped the different generators, cheering when each one powered up.

Men came out of the fenced area and watched, rapt, as a handful began to engage the breaker that would connect the substation to the transmission lines.

As the power began flowing into the substation, a cheer went up again. Now the substation could distribute power over its grid. Craig pictured houses and businesses—Beth's hospital, even—getting the power they needed. It was like watching a miracle in the making.

He heard a boom as something flashed, and heat blasted his face as he ducked to the ground. Something sliced into his arm, and sludge hit him in the face as he ducked to the ground. The men began to yell as they rushed into action.

Quickly, they disconnected the station. Curses flew as men covered with oil began to go back in.

Lee, who'd hit the ground with Craig, got to his feet. He, too, was covered with sludge. “Anybody hurt?”

Craig checked his arm. A shard of metal had lodged in his biceps. He pulled it out, and blood soaked into his shirt, mingling with the oil. He wiped the oil off his face. “What in the blazes just happened?”

Jim's head was bleeding. “What we've got here, my friend, is an oil-filled circuit breaker that exploded. There must have been a short in one of the lines. If you ask me, there's going to be a lot more of that happening before we get everything back online.”

“Are you all right? Do you need to get to a hospital?”

Jim laughed. “Are you kidding? I wouldn't miss this for the world.”

Craig turned back to the rest of the men. No one seemed to be injured beyond a few cuts. His own injury wasn't deep. It probably needed stitches, but he didn't want to be the only one rushing for first aid when everyone else was shaking it off. He looked at the mess the barrel's explosion had caused. Dirty oil contaminated with carbon drenched the machinery around it. “What do we do now?” he asked.

Jim grinned. “We get out of here and let them get to work cleaning up the mess. They'll have to replace the breaker, clear the fault, then give it another go.”

“So we're not going to have power tonight?”

“Not tonight.”

seventy-nine

B
ECAUSE THE SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT HAD NOT BEEN ABLE
to establish a solid link between Clay Tharpe and Melissa Tomlin—at least not one more recent than high school—Deni and Mark decided to pay a visit to Analee Tharpe late that afternoon. Her parents had come to visit and comfort her through the funeral, but Analee looked as if she'd been grieving hard since before the death of her husband.

She met them at the door with a look of suspicion. “What are you doing here?”

Telling herself it was for Beth's sake, Deni spoke first. “Analee, we're so sorry about what happened to Clay.”

“No, you're not! You're glad he's dead.”

Deni knew better than to deny that. “Analee, my sister is still in a coma, and we want to talk to you about something really important.”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“Please,” Mark said. “We have reason to believe that your husband wasn't acting alone. If you could just answer a few questions.”

Analee moved away from the doorway, and Deni realized she was letting them in. She and Mark stepped over the threshold. Star, the baby, sat in a high chair in front of a woman who Deni assumed was Analee's mother. She was feeding her, feigning smiles and talking to her softly.

Analee waved her hand toward the couch in an exaggerated gesture of acquiescence. “All right, say what you came to say. What new surprises do you have for me? More bodies in my yard?”

Deni's heart ached for her. She sat down on the couch, but Mark kept standing. “Analee, we're trying to figure out if there was a second person who wanted Blake Tomlin dead, and the fact that Melissa Tomlin's father is the one who silenced Clay makes us think there might have been a connection to Melissa.”

“Brilliant assumption,” Analee said. “Where do they train you guys? Idiot camp?”

Her mother came and put her arm around her. “Honey, calm down.”

“I don't want to calm down,” Analee said. “My whole life has fallen apart, and I don't even know why. I don't understand any of this. We're talking about my husband. Who was he? I didn't even know him! And out of the blue someone shoots him down before he even has the chance to explain why he would do such a thing!”

“I know this is difficult for you,” Mark said, “but it's important. Did you ever have any reason to believe that your husband might be having an affair?”