Her eyes fluttered open when I rubbed my fingers across her forehead. Caroline was lying on a gurney behind a flimsy curtain in a gray room that smelled of anesthetic and floor cleaner. A monitor loomed above her, its digital display reflecting her blood pressure, heart rate, and body temperature. A plastic tube carried antinausea medicine from a bag on a hook into a vein in her forearm. The skin on her face was dry and splotched with red, and when I leaned down to kiss her on the cheek, I noticed a bitter smell coming from her mouth.
“Hey, sugar,” I said. “How do you feel?”
She looked up at me, and her eyes lit with a glint of recognition.
“My mouth tastes like a thousand elephants took a dump in it,” she said.
“Smells like it, too.”
She covered her mouth with the back of her hand self-consciously.
“Just kidding, baby,” I said. “Your breath smells fine.”
“Liar. Would you get me some water?”
I poured some water from a pitcher that was sitting on a table near the bed into a plastic cup and helped her drink. Her lips were dry and scaly.
“I’m freezing,” she whispered.
“Be right back,” I said. I went and found a nurse, who directed me to a large cabinet just down the hall. I grabbed a couple of thin blankets and went back to Caroline’s cubicle. I laid the blankets over her and tucked the sides snugly beneath her.
“Is it that bad?” she said after I moved back to the head of the bed.
“What do you mean?”
“I can tell by the look on your face. And the kids aren’t in here. If the news was good, they’d be here, too.”
“I just wanted to be alone with you for a minute,” I said.
“So you could break the bad news to me?”
“It could be worse. I think you’re going to make it.”
She grimaced and adjusted herself on the gurney. “Was there cancer in the node?”
“Yeah, baby. I’m sorry.”
“Did it spread to the skin above the tumor?”
“Yeah.”
“Shit.”
I squeezed her hand gently.
“So I’m going to lose my breast?”
“I don’t think you have much choice.”
“What do I need a breast for, right? We’re not going to have any more kids.”
“They’ll make you another one if you want them to. They do it all the time now.”
“When do I have to start the chemotherapy?”
“A couple of weeks. They want you to heal up from this for a little while first.”
“Will you love me when I’m bald?”
Caroline wasn’t particularly vain, but she loved her hair, and so did I. It was a reflection of her personality, beautiful but occasionally a bit on the unruly side. It was auburn and thick and curly and fell to the middle of her back. It turned a few shades lighter in the summer when she spent more time in the sun. Losing it was the side effect of chemotherapy that she dreaded the most.
“I’ll shave my head if you want,” I said. “We can be bald together.”
Two hours later, after I’d rolled my wife out of the surgery center in a wheelchair, helped her into the car and taken her home, gotten her settled into bed, and made sure Lilly and Jack knew what to do in case something went wrong, I drove back up to the TBI headquarters in Johnson City. Fraley’s office was buzzing. People were running in and out while Fraley alternately barked commands like a general and talked into the telephone. As I sat down across from him, he hung up the phone. He got up from behind the desk and walked over and closed the door.
“How’s the wife?” he said as he returned to his seat.
“In bed. Resting.”
“She okay?”
“Yeah, she’s all right. What’s going on here?”
“I can appreciate what you’re going through,” Fraley said. “I lost my wife to breast cancer.”
The comment shocked me. It was the first time Fraley had given me any indication that he had a life outside of his job.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m truly sorry. What was her name?”
“Robin,” he said, unconsciously smiling at the thought of her. He reached to his left and picked up a small, framed photograph. “Beautiful woman. It was thirty years ago. The treatment has come a long way since then, but at the time, there wasn’t much they could do. It was too far along by the time it was diagnosed. Took her in a hurry. We’d only been married five years.”
“Can I see?” He handed me the photo. It was a studio portrait of a pretty young brunette, maybe twenty-five years old, sitting in front of a fireplace. She was holding an infant wrapped in a blanket, and beside her was a handsome young man smiling the smile of a proud husband and father. I looked back up at Fraley and could see that the young man in the photo was him many years, many heartaches, and many miles ago.
“That’s my daughter,” he said. “She was three months old that day.”
“Where is she now?”
“Nashville. Married to a banker. He’s a good guy. She has a couple of kids of her own.”
“You raise her by yourself?”
“Yeah. Did the best I could. I don’t think I fucked it up too bad.”
“Nice little family.” I handed the photo back to him.
“She’ll be okay,” he said. “Your wife. She’ll be okay.”
“Thanks,” I said. I briefly imagined Caroline lying in a casket covered in flowers, eyes closed, the serene look of the dead on her face. Fraley must have sensed what I was thinking.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to… I mean, I wasn’t trying to make you think about-”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I appreciate the concern.”
“So I guess you’re wondering what’s going on here.”
“You could say that.”
“Reasonable suspects,” Fraley said. “Boyer was thrown out of Brockwell’s school the same year he retired. The boy has a long juvie record, mostly drug related, a couple of assaults. His probation officer says he’s dyed his hair black recently, so he might be a Goth. The other one, Barnett, is still a juvenile. He’s only sixteen, but he’s already spent a year in detention. He’s got drug charges, a couple of thefts, three assaults, one of them aggravated. The aggravated assault is what got him shipped off. Hit a kid with a baseball bat and broke his leg. He’s only been out of detention three months. He’s still on probation, and his probation officer said the last time she saw him, which was two weeks ago, he’d dyed his hair jet-black. Looks promising.”
“She said something about a third,” I said. “I think she said ‘one who commands.’ Something about the daughter of Satan, so it must be a female.”
“Did you get a name?”
“No.”
Fraley raised his eyebrows.
“She was telling me all this stuff; it was weird. I think I was trying to figure out how she knew about the murders; then I got a phone call from my son and I had to leave. I thought she’d give the name to you. Sorry.”
“Don’t sweat it. If these two are the right ones, they’ll lead us to the third. Are you sure you got the girl’s name right?”
“Which girl?”
“The one in the park. Are you sure her name was Alisha Elizabeth Davis?”
“That’s what she said.”
“Alisha Elizabeth Davis was reported missing by her foster parents the day after the Brockwells were killed.”
