Vanessa clicked through the previously viewed pages while the cicadas crawled over the top of the monitor, the keyboard, and the desktop. All of the sites her husband had visited prior to his death related to palliative, end- of-life, and hospice care for patients in the terminal stages of cancer, specifically for children with osteosarcoma. He appeared to have been working on placing one of his patients at the Children's Cancer Center at the MD Anderson Cancer Center of the University of Texas. But why? Wasn't that the responsibility of the patient's parents? As a physician, it was his job to follow through on a referral, not go to such lengths on his personal time to do it for them. Why had he taken it upon himself rather than coaching the child's family through the process? The problem was that Warren believed so strongly in a separation of his personal and professional lives that he very seldom talked to her about it, and on those rare occasions when he did, his sour mood had haunted him for days before she had finally been able to pry his frustrations out of him.
And most importantly, on which patient's behalf had he been doing the research?
As one of two general practitioners in Jefferson, he treated roughly half of the population. That was more than a thousand patients right there, and surely more than a quarter of them were children.
Vanessa couldn't see the immediate connection between her daughter and another child dying of cancer, but she couldn't shake the feeling that she had been led here, to this computer and these websites, for a specific reason.
She brushed several of the large insects off of the cordless phone and lifted the handset of the separate line he used to handle his work affairs from home. The service had been terminated years ago, but as she had never found the courage to even attempt to clear out Warren's belongings, the phone itself had never been unplugged. She scrolled through the memory of the Caller ID. The most recent numbers all had the same area code and prefix. She wrote them down on a dusty sticky-note and compared them to the sites he had viewed. They matched the MD Anderson Cancer Center.
She contemplated calling the numbers to find out if they remembered her husband's calls or the name of the proposed patient, but even on the off-chance that they were able to recall the details from more than two years ago, the rules of confidentiality prohibited them from sharing.
So what was the significance? Why had she been guided to this information?
She closed her eyes and leaned back in the chair. The emotional upheaval had taken a physical toll. She was beyond exhausted. Her head ached. Her body ached. Her brain ached. Maybe if she just managed to slip in a few hours of sleep, things would make more sense. Maybe---
The cicada song grew louder.
Her eyes snapped open. All of the insects were clinging to the computer screen and producing as much sound as they possibly could. But they alone couldn't account for the sheer volume, which felt like needles driven through her tympanic membranes. She turned toward the window that afforded a view of the front lawn and the street beyond. At first, she thought a storm must have rolled in, that a thick bank of clouds blocked out the moon and the stars. But no clouds could smother the light from the streetlamp.
And then she noticed movement. The darkness outside shifted like a black sea viewed from underwater.
She rose from the chair and crept hesitantly toward the window. As she neared, her eyes drew contrast. Cicadas covered the window from the outside, pressed so tightly together that not a single ray of moonlight penetrated their ranks. She raised her hand and touched the glass. It vibrated with the ferocity of their song.
Vanessa recoiled and hurried out of the room. The cicadas that had been in her husband's office followed her, swirling around her head, tapping her cheeks. She ran down the hallway, descended the stairs, crossed the living room, and threw open the front door.
The sound that accosted her was like leaning the side of her head against a jet engine. Her vision trembled.
She stepped out onto the porch and turned in a circle.
The entire front of the house, the hedges lining the front facade, the pecan tree beside the walk, the dogwoods at the edge of the driveway...everything was covered with cicadas. The air was alive with swarming insects.
And then as one they took to the air and the song ceased, replaced by a furious buzzing sound. They swirled around her like a tornado before exploding upward and outward.
The entire swarm hung over the street for a long minute, then funneled down the lane to the east.
After a moment's hesitation, Vanessa started off after them.
Trey needed answers, but he didn't know exactly where to start. The first priority was to figure out whose body had been buried in the swamp and why someone had gone to so much trouble to conceal its identity. He prayed that Emma was still alive out there, somewhere, and not just waiting to be discovered in another shallow grave. Worse was the alternative. He imagined his niece being forced to kneel on the mildewed earthen floor of some dank cellar beneath the copper glare of a lone exposed light bulb, connected to the exposed joists overhead by swaying cobwebs, one faceless shadow yanking out clumps of her hair by the roots while another punched her repeatedly in the face to knock out her teeth. The image was more than he could bear. When he found whoever was responsible---and he
He hoped that Warren had left boxes of files or access to some computer database that he would be able to search in hopes of finding the child with the osteosarcoma diagnosis. Maybe Warren hadn't treated her personally. If that was the case, then his partner, Dr. Gerald Montgomery, must have. Of course, that assumption was predicated on the belief that the dead child had been treated locally. Trey had to believe as much for now. Otherwise, that child could have come from anywhere in the country, and with four hundred new diagnoses every year, the odds of pinning down one were poor. With any luck, Vanessa would be able to help him access the records and it would be easy enough to find the right child. If not, then he had no problem banging on Montgomery's door and dragging him out of bed and down to his office.
Something was wrong.
He recognized it the moment he pulled to the curb in front of his sister's house. The front door stood wide open, the light from the foyer stretching across the porch and onto the lawn. The second-story window of Warren's office was illuminated and he knew his sister barely ever opened the door, let alone went inside. He threw the Jeep into park, bounded out onto the asphalt, and ran toward the front door.
'Vanessa!' he called as he passed through the entryway and into the living room.
He glanced into the kitchen. Light on. Empty. The living room, dining room, and main floor bathroom were vacant as well. No one in the family room.
'Vanessa!'
He charged up the stairs into the hallway. The light was on in Emma's old room. Same with the bathroom across the hall. The next doorway on the right was open. Light flooded into the hallway from a room in which he hadn't set foot since Warren's passing.
'Vanessa?'
Still no response.
He ducked his head into her bedroom to confirm that she hadn't passed out in bed, so overcome by grief that she didn't realize she had left the front door open, then returned his attention to the study. Vanessa wasn't in there either. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket, dialed his sister's mobile, and listened to it ring as he stepped into the room. A pall of stirred dust hung in the air. A screensaver scrolled across the computer monitor on the desk. The mouse rested slightly askew from the pattern of dust that had accumulated on the mousepad around it.
Vanessa's voice answered on the fourth ring, but it was only a recording asking him to leave a message.
Nothing else in the room appeared to have been disturbed.
He leaned over the desk and tapped the mouse to kill the screensaver. The screen flashed black, and then a web page opened.
'Jesus,' he whispered. How the hell had she found out?
There was no way Vanessa could have known that the child they exhumed had osteosarcoma. He had barely heard the news himself maybe fifteen minutes ago. No one from the CSRS would have called her directly. He was certain of that. So how had she figured it out?
He paused and stood stock-still with the dust settling on his shoulders and hair.
