Dawn's Light (36 page)

Mark stopped at the bars to Anthony's cell. “Mr. Anthony, we need to see you in the interview room. Step up to the bars and I'll put your shackles on.”

Anthony looked humiliated at the prospect. But it was county policy for those charged with violent crimes. He came to the bars. Mark stooped and locked the chains around the man's feet, then got up and unlocked the door. Anthony shuffled through. “Is something wrong? Is my family all right?”

“They're fine. We just want to ask you a few questions.”

He was silent as Mark walked him through the squad room back into the kitchen area where Doug waited, standing with his hands in his pockets. He looked at Scott Anthony as he rattled in. “Have a seat, Mr. Anthony.”

He kept standing for a moment. “Should I have my lawyer present?”

“It's up to you.” Doug set both hands on the table, leaning over. “Do you know who I am?”

Anthony studied him for a moment. “I saw you in the courtroom.”

“Beth Branning is my daughter.”

Anthony swallowed and pulled out a chair. “The girl Clay Tharpe injured?”

“That's right.”

Emotion dragged at his face. “I'm very sorry about your daughter. How is she?”

“Still in a coma,” Doug said. “Please sit down.”

The man who looked like he could have been a neighbor in Oak Hollow lowered to a chair.

Doug kept his voice soft. “The reason we want to talk to you, Mr. Anthony, is that we believe your daughter may have been having an affair with Clay Tharpe.”

Mark didn't react to Doug's bluff. Instead he watched Anthony's face, expecting him to look shocked and deny it completely. But Anthony didn't. “I've already signed a confession. There were dozens of witnesses who saw me kill Clay Tharpe. Considering what he did to your daughter, you should be giving me a trophy.”

Doug frowned. “That's what you have to say about your daughter's affair with her husband's killer? I'm sorry, but that wasn't quite the reaction I expected.”

Anthony looked scared. “I don't know what you want from me.”

“Did you know about the affair?”

Anthony looked pained. Finally, he hunched over and raked his hand through his gray hair. “You have to understand.”

Mark uncrossed his arms and leaned forward. “Understand what?”

“You don't know what kind of man Blake was. He treated her horribly. She had broken bones, black eyes, bloody lips.”

Doug sat straighter. “Are you justifying what you did … or what
she
did?”

Anthony's face hardened. “My daughter did not kill her husband, and she had nothing to do with your daughter. She was a victim.”

Mark decided to show another card. “Mr. Anthony, what if I told you that Clay Tharpe told us there was someone else who wanted Tomlin dead?”

He looked distraught, as if he'd been found out. “He meant that I hired him.”

Doug stood up. “So you're changing your story about it being a crime of passion? That you just lost your head in the courtroom?”

“No … yes. I don't know. I need my lawyer.”

“We can send for him,” Doug said. “He'll probably tell you to shut up, and you can. You can keep the truth to yourself. We'll build a case against your daughter anyway.”

Anthony rubbed his face, clearly confused about what to do. “I'm stuck here. I committed murder in a courtroom. They're not going to let me out no matter what you think you've found.”

“So you figure you can take a little more heat to protect your daughter?”

“I'm not protecting her! I did it. You
saw
me.”

Doug leaned on the table again, his face inches from Anthony's. “Of all people to hire, why would you hire your daughter's lover to kill her husband?”

“Because I knew he'd do it!”

There it was. Confirmation that there was an affair.

“Why would you know that?” Doug asked. “Clay Tharpe had never been arrested before. There's no reason to believe he would kill.”

“But he had problems. He was a gambling addict. He had a lot to hide. He took the job for the money,” Anthony said. “Don't you see? There was nothing in it for her. She needed that money, but she didn't get any of it.”

“I don't believe that,” Mark said. “Tharpe only got home with five hundred dollars.”

He got tears in his eyes, and couldn't meet Mark's gaze. “I don't care what you believe.”

“Want to know what I think?” Doug asked through curling lips. “I think Melissa told you she did it, didn't she, Mr. Anthony? She told you about her affair and about how she planned this murder out with Clay Tharpe to get rid of the man who had abused her, and you realized she wasn't going to get away with it, that Clay wouldn't go down alone, that he was going to spill his guts, and your daughter was going to wind up spending the rest of her life in prison.”

Anthony's face told them Doug had hit the mark. Doug lowered himself into his chair and softened his voice.

“You couldn't let that happen, could you, Scott? You'd do anything to save your daughter, so you killed Tharpe in front of the judge and a room full of witnesses, to keep Tharpe from implicating your daughter in her husband's murder.”

Mark saw the twitch on Anthony's face, the stark truth he couldn't hide in his eyes. The man rubbed his stubbled jaw and brought his pained eyes to Mark's.

“I'm not proud of my daughter's affairs.”

There, Mark thought. He'd admitted it. It was just what they needed.

“But she's not the one you need to be looking at.”

“Then who do you think we should look at?” Doug asked.

“Ned Emory,” he said. “That's all I have to say.”

eighty-five

S
COTT
A
NTHONY'S BOMBSHELL ABOUT
N
ED EMORY LEFT
Doug reeling. Ned was his neighbor, and the father of his son's best friend. He'd been put in charge of the Alabaster Road Conversion Plant and had done a good job. While Doug sometimes questioned his judgment in raising kids, Doug couldn't imagine Ned being involved in murder. Especially not when it involved an attack on Beth.

Ned knew Beth. He'd come to her plays, laughed and clapped in all the right places, given her pats on the back.

Was Scott saying that Ned was having an affair with Melissa? What did that mean? That Ned was the one who'd hired Tharpe? That he'd tipped off the killer about Beth being at the park?

But that didn't square up. Scott Anthony wouldn't have killed Tharpe to protect Ned. And as Deni had suggested a couple of days ago, Anthony had premeditated Tharpe's murder when he smuggled a gun into the courtroom, so it clearly wasn't the crime of passion he wanted them to believe.

They summoned the sheriff, who was working that day in his Birmingham office. When he got to Crockett, the rest of the on-duty deputies showed up for the briefing.

“It's too far-fetched to believe,” Doug said. “I just can't see it. Ned has too much to lose.”

“People do strange things for love all the time,” Wheaton said.

Doug thought back to his visit to the conversion plant. “You know, when I was at the plant, Ned did seem real interested in what I was asking Tharpe's coworkers. And when I asked about Melissa Tomlin …” He tried to play the scene back through his mind. “The guys said she came up there a lot, but not to see Clay. When I asked who she came to see, they all clammed up and looked at Ned. I knew something wasn't right, but I didn't think for a minute that they were covering for
him
.”

“Those guys probably fear for their jobs,” Wheaton said. “If the boss wants them to be quiet about an affair, they will.”

“It's not like they can get fired,” Mark said. “They were drafted by the government.”

“Yeah, but they could get transferred somewhere else and have to leave their families. Besides, they probably don't realize that the affair could possibly implicate Ned in the murders.”

“Wait a minute,” London piped up. “Why are we believing what Scott Anthony says?”

“Because he's the guy next door,” Wheaton said. “He doesn't fit the typical profile of a murderer.”

“Neither does Melissa Tomlin, and we know she lied. She could just come from a long line of liars.”

“It really doesn't matter if they're all lying,” Doug said. “I want everyone who had any part in my daughter's attack to pay the consequences.”

“So what do we do next?” Mark asked.

Wheaton thought that over for a moment. “We get Tharpe's coworkers in one at a time and interview them again. Find someone who can confirm that Ned and Melissa had a thing going. Interview the Tomlins' neighbors again and see if they ever saw Ned Emory coming or going. Eventually we'll get to the bottom of it.”

eighty-six

T
HE INSTALLATION OF VACUUM-TUBE RADIOS IN
C
RAIG'S
building caused a celebration among his employees. In his work, communication was almost as important as electricity. Before the end of the day, he hoped the emergency personnel in the area would have their own radios. Soon all the government buildings would be in communication with each other. After that, it was just a matter of time before they could restore telephone service.

Because they wouldn't need Morse code anymore, he moved Horace Hancock to the radio. The other World War II veterans were moved to jobs that fit their experience. Though they were in their eighties, he chose not to let them go. They needed the money, and he suspected their wisdom and skills might prove to be useful in the coming days. They knew more than he did about how to do things without technology.

Not long after they'd gotten the radio up and running, Horace yelled across the room. “Craig, Senator Crawford's on the line!”

Craig's heartbeat tripped. He cut across the room and almost slid to a stop on the polished linoleum. He grabbed the headphones and put them on. “Senator, how are you?”

“I'm better now that we can communicate!”

Craig laughed at the faint sound of his boss's voice. “We're all better, sir. Have you been able to find out about the things I asked for?”

The line was cluttered with static. “I've been checking around, Craig. It's going to be some time before the scanners you asked about are rebuilt. Not even the president has access to those. But I have my contact from Hope Drug Manufacturing here with me now. I'm putting Janice Goodwin on the radio.”

This was too good to be true. Craig waited, breath held, as the woman took the radio. “Hi, Craig. What can I do for you?”

He swallowed the dryness in his throat. “I'm trying to help save the life of my fiancée's little sister.” That wasn't quite true, but it was the simplest explanation. “We need Decadron or a generic version as soon as we can get it.” He named the other drugs that Dr. Overton had listed for him.

“I do have those drugs available in generic form,” she said. “I could send them by train if you could pay for it.”

Craig tried to calculate how long it would take him to get them by train. It would be at least two days, maybe longer, with all the stops they made. They might not have that much time. He glanced at his watch. “I could come get them.”

“Really? All the way from Alabama?”

“Yes. I could leave now.”

“But isn't that about twelve hours each way?”

“Not if I drive eighty miles an hour.” He checked his watch. It was ten a.m. now. “I could be there in eight and a half hours, maybe less, if I can get enough gas. Could you meet me at the Senate Building at seven tonight?”

“I'll be there,” she said, chuckling. “But I'm betting you won't be. Oh, and don't forget the prescription.”

C
RAIG HOPED THE STATE DIRECTOR DIDN'T FIND OUT THAT HE'D
ditched his job at such a critical time, nor about using the company car on personal business. He calculated that he would need eight tanks of gas to get there and back. His car held sixteen gallons. He went to the conversion plant next door and filled the car up, then filled thirteen ten-gallon containers. The plant employees assumed he needed it for government business, so no one objected. He lined the containers full of gas up on the floor of his backseat and in his trunk, knowing that if he had an accident his car would probably explode. He managed to store enough to get to Washington. Once he was there, he could fill them all up again to get back.

He ran by the hospital on his way out of town. “I'm on my way to get the drugs from Hope Manufacturing in Washington,” he told Deni. “I'll be back by morning.”

Deni just stared at him. “Craig, can you really do that?”

“Watch me.” He took her shoulders and smacked a kiss on her lips. “Pray for me, babe.”

Then he hurried out, intent on his mission, praying that God would clear the way to get Beth the help she needed.

eighty-seven

T
HAT NIGHT
, D
ENI STAYED AT THE HOSPITAL WITH BETH
so her parents could get some rest, since they didn't expect Craig back with the drugs until morning. She wished Mark could stay with her, but he'd been asked to work the night shift at the sheriff's department to fill in for her father.

She sat in the stiff chair next to Beth's bed, listening to the rhythmic rise and fall of her breath. It was a sweet sound. The room was hot; there were no windows in the ICU, and the building had gotten up to about ninety degrees. Summer was in full swing and there was no relief in sight.

She wet a washcloth and wiped Beth's face and neck, hoping she could keep her sister cool. The lights still flickered and dimmed, brightened and faded. But the electricity had enabled them to put Beth on a heart monitor and to put compression stockings on her legs. Every few seconds the machine hummed, inflating the stockings, to keep her from getting blood clots.

Since she no longer needed to massage Beth's legs, she found herself with little to do. It was going to be a long night.

Her friend Chris stopped in around midnight. “How are we doing in here?”

Deni hugged her. “I don't know. Check her chart and let me know.”

“I already did. Dr. Overton left orders for her nurse to administer the drugs as soon as they arrive. Where are they coming from?”

She smiled. “Craig is driving to Washington to get them.”