Dawn's Light

by Terri Blackstock

  “Please don’t pull up my plants and don’t step on them. That’s our food!”

  Mark wished she’d go check on the baby. He looked at the dirt that looked a little darker than the rest. No, this couldn’t be it. There was crabgrass here, and it was mature. He got up and walked on.

  Near the back of the yard stood a portable shed. Wheaton was already at the door, shining his flashlight around inside. It was possible that Tharpe might have stored the bodies there temporarily, but he wouldn’t have left it there. It had stopped raining the afternoon of the murders. He would have been able to dig a grave that night if he’d wanted to.

  Mark walked behind the shed. The dirt did look freshly turned there, even though some vegetables had been planted. Something was wrong, though. These plants weren’t as neatly planted as the rest of the vegetables. He stooped and examined the young plants. They were cucumber plants — he had them in his own yard. But they needed full sun, and between this shed and the fence, these plants would be in the shade for most of the day.

  If there was a grave here, this could be the place. Mark stood up and looked around. If he had been the killer, he would have dug the grave behind the shed. It would have kept Analee from seeing what he was doing. He could have hidden the bodies in the shed until the rain stopped and the ground had time to dry a little, then dug behind here to bury them. Analee would have thought he was simply working in the garden.

  “Sheriff, over here,” Mark said. The sheriff came out of the shed and London joined him behind it. In a low voice, he said, “These are cucumbers. They need sun. Either he’s ignorant about plants, which doesn’t seem to be the case, or he planted them here just to cover something else. They look freshly planted. Look at the soil.”

  The sheriff agreed. “London, get me my shovel.”

  London crossed the yard and got the shovel leaning against the house.

  “What are you doing?” Analee asked, following him. “You’re not going to dig up my plants, are you?”

  “Just a few of them,” Wheaton said. “Ma’am, I need you to go back in.”

  “No! I have a right to see what you’re doing to my property!”

  Wheaton looked up at her. “Do you want to prove your husband’s innocence? If he didn’t do anything, then you have nothing to fear.”

  “But my plants!”

  “If we don’t find anything, you have my word we’ll put them back.”

  Grudgingly, she headed back in. But Mark was sure she was watching through the window.

  Wheaton took the shovel and stabbed the blade into the ground, tossed aside the dirt. Summer sun beat down on Mark’s neck and sweat dripped from his chin. His heart raced as Wheaton dug the blade in again and again.

  The dirt was soft, easily giving way. Mark and London stood still, watching as Wheaton’s hole got bigger, deeper. He was digging too slowly, so Mark stepped up. “Here, let me.”

  Wheaton surrendered the shovel and wiped his face.

  Mark thought of Beth’s note, the two men she’d seen murdered. The image of her lying swollen and dying on that hospital bed drove him to dig faster. They were there — the certainty made the hairs on his neck rise.

  He rammed the shovel into the dirt and felt his blade hit something. “There’s something there.” He dropped the shovel and went down on his knees, digging gingerly with his hands, trying not to disturb any evidence he found. He felt the object, dusted the dirt away.

  It was a shoe. He looked up. “Here we go.”

  Wheaton knelt next to him. “Let’s see what else is there.” They both dug with their hands around the shoe. Some denim cloth emerged.

  When they reached the man’s twisted body, Mark sat back. Some inexplicable grief broadsided him, and he fought back tears. Beth was right.

  As Wheaton uncovered the second body, Mark covered his face with his dirty hands, and thanked God that justice would be done.

  ANALEE FELL APART WHEN THEY BROUGHT HER OUT TO SEE THE dead men her husband had buried. “Why would he do that?” she cried. “I don’t understand. He told me that he gambled our money away before the Pulses, and when the banks opened he was going to be found out. So he had to rob somebody. He didn’t tell me he’d killed anyone. I never would have left town with him if I’d known that.”

  Mark believed her, but it didn’t calm his anger. “Did he tell you that a thirteen-year-old girl witnessed the murders, and that he tried to kill her?”

  She put her hands over her ears. “No, I can’t believe he could do something like that.”

  “You want to come to the hospital and see?”

  Wheaton held up a hand warning Mark to calm down. “Analee, now that you’ve seen what your husband is capable of, we need you to come to the department and make a statement.”

  She was trembling and unsteady, sobbing hard. “Okay,” she said finally. “I’ll tell you whatever you need to know.”

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  KAY’S HANDS ACHED FROM MASSAGING BETH’S LEGS. HER daughter still lay there like a rag doll. Was she already gone? Had her soul departed at the park that day? Was her brain still working?

  She rubbed her tired eyes and picked up the Bible from the table. They’d been reading it aloud, hoping to banish the spirits of darkness and death that hovered over the place. They had started at Genesis and had read straight through, a segment at a time. Doug had left it open to Psalm 55. “ ‘My heart is in anguish within me,’ ” she read aloud, “ ‘and the terrors of death have fallen upon me. Fear and trembling come upon me, and horror has overwhelmed me.’ ”

  She stopped and swallowed, then forced herself to go on. “ ‘I said, “Oh, that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest. Behold, I would wander far away, I would lodge in the wilderness. Selah. I would hasten to my place of refuge from the stormy wind and tempest.” ’ ”

  Oh, if she could run away. If she could only shrug off this heavy mantle of despair and fly away to a time beyond now. A time when there was no pain.

  “Mom?”

  She turned her weary face. Jeff stood tentatively just inside the room. “Dad said for me to relieve you. Mark is here with some news about Beth’s attacker.”

  Her attacker? The only good news would be that he was dead.

  She straightened Beth’s covers, stroked her hair, kissed her cheek. “Okay, I’m coming. Read to her, sweetie.”

  As Jeff took her place, she walked through the valley of death — what the intensive care unit had become to her — and took off her scrubs. Her muscles ached with fatigue as she scuffed out of the place and went to the waiting room.

  Mark sat with Deni and Doug, a black bruise across his forehead. He looked even more battered than she felt. “Did you find the man who did this?” she asked.

  “We did,” Mark said. “We have him in custody.”

  Custody. It sounded so benign, like a child in the presence of loving parents. He may be behind bars, but he was healthy and safe . . . in one piece. Not broken like Beth. “What’s his name?” Her voice sounded raspy and hoarse.

  “Clay Tharpe.”

  Kay sat down and looked at her hands. She folded them into a church and steeple, all the people shivering and hunkering inside. “Has he confessed?”

  “No,” Mark said. “But we found the two bodies where he buried them.”

  She looked at Doug, saw the anguish on his face. As if to hide it, he rubbed his jaw. She feared he would rub off the skin.

  “Did he come without a fight?” Doug asked.

  Mark’s hand came up to his forehead. “No, he didn’t. I had to break his nose to subdue him.”

  Somehow, it helped to know the man had an injury of his own. She hoped he’d go through the rest of his life disfigured.

  KAY SAT FROZEN FOR A WHILE IN HER SEAT IN THE WAITING room, staring at the wall and wondering what this man — this Clay Tharpe — looked like. Was he a hulk or a skinny coward? Could you look at him and see evil, or did he have a face people trusted?

&nbs
p; She fought the compulsion — the desperation — to see him face-to-face.

  The Israelites had it right, when they assigned a blood avenger to take the life of their relatives’ murderer. She imagined herself being the one who turned his evil back on him.

  When Deni touched her hand, she jumped. “Mom, are you all right?”

  “Yes. Fine.”

  “I thought you’d be more relieved that they found him. Aren’t you glad?”

  Glad? No, glad wasn’t the word she would have used. “Yes, I’m glad,” she said anyway.

  “I thought . . . well, I expected you to react a little . . . differently. You haven’t said much.”

  Kay forced herself to focus. “Did you? What did you expect me to do? Cry? Scream? Put my fist through the wall? Laugh? Dance? What?”

  Deni shrank back, clearly hurt at her mother’s tone. “I thought you’d be glad,” she said in a weak voice. “That’s all.”

  “I told you I am.” She got up, unable to sit here any longer. “I’m going out to the bathroom.”

  She left them in the waiting room and headed outside where Porta-Johns sat lined up in a row. But something compelled her to walk past them. She needed exercise to burn off the vengeance in her head, to sweat away the poison of hatred. She walked past the post office and the boarded up trophy shop, past the Dunkin’ Donuts that hadn’t cooked a donut in a year, past the high school that had no kids. She walked without calculating the number of blocks . . . though her mind had decided on her route.

  She turned up Fremont Street and crossed its intersection with Monroe Boulevard. The sheriff’s department sat at the end of the road, blocks separating it from other buildings. Somewhere within those walls sat the barbaric animal who’d hurt Beth.

  She knew what she had to do.

  Long, purposeful strides moved her along the street, up the steps to the front door, through the glass doors. There was no one in the front room. She heard voices in the sheriff’s office, but whoever it was hadn’t heard her come in.

  Perfect.

  Her heart whipped against her chest wall as she crossed the room to the steel door separating the offices from the jail cells. Quickly she opened it and slipped into the dark, muggy room. It was ten degrees hotter than it was outdoors, and the place smelled of urine and body odor.

  She caught the door so it wouldn’t slam with that crashing metallic sound meant to frighten first-timers. There were fewer than ten men scattered throughout the five cells. She searched the dimly lit room for someone with a broken nose.

  Several of the men made catcalls and lewd suggestions as she walked from one cell to the next, searching for that misshapen nose. Finally, she saw a man with two black eyes and a crooked, swollen nose. He looked more like a victim than a criminal. He could have been the guy down the street.

  But she knew better. “Are you Clay Tharpe?” she demanded through her teeth.

  He got off his bunk and came to the bars. “Yeah, why? Are you my public defender?”

  Her hands clenched into fists. Her lips were tight, thin. “No, I’m Beth Branning’s mother. You know her. She’s the child you tried to kill.”

  A muscle on his face twitched. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The denial turned her fire up a notch. “I’ll see to it that you never hurt anyone ever again. If they let you out, I’ll kill you myself.”

  He stepped back from the bars, holding out his hands as though she could come through them. “Look, they’ve got me all wrong. I didn’t do what they say. I was set up.”

  The jail door screeched opened, and she heard Wheaton’s booming voice. “Kay, how’d you get in here?”

  “She’s threatening me!” Tharpe shouted, his voice echoing over the concrete room. “These guys heard her.”

  “You hurt a kid, man?” one of his cell mates yelled.

  Wheaton stormed through the room. “Kay, you come out of there, right now.”

  Kay wouldn’t budge. She took hold of the bars. “You’ll be repaid,” she shouted. “ ‘They band themselves together against the life of the righteous, and condemn the innocent to death.’ ” Wheaton grabbed her from behind as she went on quoting the passage she’d memorized from Psalm 94, her volume rising. “ ‘But the Lord has been my stronghold, and my God the rock of my refuge. He has brought back their wickedness upon them and will destroy them in their evil!’ ”

  Wheaton dragged her from the bars, but she wouldn’t stop.

  “The Lord our God will destroy you, Clay Tharpe! And if he doesn’t, I will!”

  Wheaton forced her past the other cells as the inmates began to yell.

  Then she realized how she could accomplish it. She could turn his cell mates against him. Didn’t they say that prisoners turned on those who abused children? “You men — how can you stand to be in the same cell with him?” she shouted to his cell mates. “He slammed my daughter’s head against a tree trunk, and strangled her! Are you going to let him get away with it?”

  She heard some of them yelling across the cell, curses rising up to echo off the walls. Clay Tharpe screamed out as the two others in his cell came at him. Wheaton got her to the door and pushed it open. The door slammed behind her, its power quaking through her.

  “You shouldn’t have done that, Kay.”

  Her chest rose and fell as she tried to steady her breath.

  “You’re making my job harder,” he said.

  Her face twisted as grief flooded over her, pulling her under its deadly power.

  Wheaton’s voice grew gentler as he put his arm around her and pointed her to the front door. “London, go check on the prisoners. I’m giving Kay a ride back to the hospital.”

  SIXTY-NINE

  THE POSITIVE IDENTIFICATION OF ONE OF THE DEAD men — Blake Tomlin — gave Mark a sense of completion. The other body had no identification — just a backpack with items that appeared to be scavenged from the garbage. Did he have family anywhere? Was there a mother somewhere praying for her son? Friends who would mourn him if they knew he was dead?

  The man must have a story. A reason that he dug through garbage and had no one to report him as missing. Even the homeless had mothers . . . siblings.

  They might never find the homeless man’s family, but they could notify Melissa Tomlin and hopefully give her some kind of closure. Mark and Sheriff Wheaton took the time to change clothes, then went to the Tomlin house in full uniform — not the usual T-shirts that said “Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department.” The dread was obvious on her face as she invited them in.

  She introduced Blake’s parents, whose faces were anxious . . . but hopeful. If only they had better news.

  Melissa’s parents were there, too. They introduced themselves as Scott and Katherine Anthony. Her father had an expression of sad anticipation. Her mother busied herself with their toddler.

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?” Melissa asked.

  “No, he can’t be.” Blake’s father sat stiffly on the couch.

  Wheaton sat on the edge of his chair, staring down at his calloused hands. “I’m afraid you’re right, Mrs. Tomlin. We found his body today.”

  His mother let out a long wail and collapsed against her husband. They reminded Mark of Doug and Kay, weeping for their broken child. He looked away, wishing he could give them privacy in their mourning.

  Melissa’s father rushed to her side to hold his daughter, but the young woman didn’t respond. She didn’t move a muscle. Not a twitch changed her expression. It reminded him of the moments before a tornado hit. “Where?” she asked. “Where did you find him?”

  “In the backyard of a man named Clay Tharpe. We have reason to believe he murdered your husband on the day the banks opened.”

  “The day he went missing.” Now he saw a breach in her wall, a tiny crack before the spillway broke. Her eyes closed. “I thought he just left with the money. That he didn’t love me.”

  Mark admired the stoicism on her delicate features as she held the tears
back. He had expected her to fall apart. This must be agonizing. Which would be worse? Feeling abandoned by her husband, or knowing he hadn’t come home because he was dead? Beth must have wondered the same thing.

  Blake’s mother was inconsolable. Melissa’s parents looked more concerned with her.

  “Is this man in jail?” Melissa’s father asked.

  “Yes, we arrested him today.”

  Melissa cleared her throat. “My husband . . . where is he now?”

  “We took him to the . . .” Wheaton paused, took a deep breath. “To the morgue. We need you to come and identify the body.”

  She looked at her father, shook her head. “I can’t. I can’t do it. Daddy, tell them.” Then it came. The break in the dam. She fell into her father’s arms. He held her face pressed against his chest, stroking her hair.

  “I’ll do it.” Blake’s father’s chin trembled. “He’s my son.”

  Yes, that was better. If they could spare her that pain . . .

  Wheaton stood up. “Mrs. Tomlin, I’m so sorry. But I need to ask — did you or your husband know a man named Clay Tharpe?”

  She looked back at them. “No, I . . . I don’t think so.”

  He told them about Beth and her note, but the details didn’t help.

  Mark cleared his throat when Wheaton finished. “Do you have a pastor for the funeral?”

  Melissa didn’t answer, but her mother-in-law spoke up. “Yes, we’ll use ours.”

  He nodded, wondering why he’d asked. It wasn’t as though he could get Doug to leave his child’s bedside and conduct the funeral of the man whose murder she’d seen. Maybe they were Christians and wouldn’t have to grieve as those who had no hope.

  Wheaton promised them justice and got up. As Mark followed him to the door, he said, “I’ll pray for you, that God will show you his presence and comfort you.”

  Even in her mourning, Blake’s mother seemed to appreciate his words. Melissa didn’t seem to hear.

  “Thank you for coming.” Blake’s mother had come to her feet. She was a small woman with curly hair and glasses, and she looked gaunt and pale and grief-stricken. He’d seen that look many times before . . . sometimes in his own mirror.