After spilling her guts, she must’ve felt the need to appear strong, remind me she was still in control. So I let her. Wrestling my face into a more demure expression, I said, “Yes, ma’am.”
November 6th, 1962
Yesterday we were thrown out of a home. We had been visiting for days with a dying child but, when he finally passed, Dymeka lost his temper. We quarreled in the dead boy’s room.
“This was all for naught!” Dymeka cursed at the ceiling.
I too felt unbelievable rage. After a whole year of sitting at deathbeds, we were no closer to finding answers than we were a year ago.
“What are we doing, Ashki?” he demanded.
“Trying to find her!” I yelled back.
“To what end?”
“Any end!”
We were interrupted by the parents of the dead child. They were furious because their child had died under our care and we were yelling at each other instead of telling the family. They shoved us out of the house and threw our medical bags at us. As the man of the house shut the door in our faces, his eyes were welling up with tears. I heard the mother’s wails of anguish through the wall.
I recognized their cry. I had cried it many times myself. I looked at my Dymeka and he too had tears in his eyes.
“Any end?” he asked in a small voice.
“Any end,” I repeated.
He picked up our bags and slung them on his back. He reached out, offering his hand to me. “Then let us find an end that suits us. If you still wish to join me?”
I took his hand.
“Always.” I held no resentment for our argument. I only felt the desire to stop the wails of agony in the house we left behind.
Perhaps we will never find our answers. Perhaps we will never meet our Lady Death. Perhaps it is time to focus on errands we can complete, like preventing those sobs that will likely haunt us for days.
“Where do you think we will find good medical teachers?” Dymeka wondered aloud.
I remembered the medicine men in China and India, how their methods were ancient but quite effective, especially with surgeries.
“Asia,” I said with confidence.
Chapter 27
Jasmine
Victor walked into the interrogation room much like he always did, with a friendly but guarded demeanor. He shook hands with Mr. and Mrs. Smith before taking the empty seat across from them. “Good evening, folks. My name is Detective Campbell. Sorry to bring you in like this but I’m conducting an investigation and I desperately need your help.”
“Of course,” the woman, Angela, said. “Whatever you need, Detective.”
“Thank you.” Uncle Vic opened up his notebook and clicked his pen. “First off, how would you define your relationship with David and Tiffany Ward?”
His voice came through the speakers sitting on the table in front of us. The camera recording the interrogation was aimed at the Smiths.
“Nonexistent.” Angela waved a hand to indicate herself and her husband. “We were friends once but we haven’t spoken in many years.”
“Why?”
“We had a falling out.”
Uncle Victor wrote something down. “Can I ask what it was about?”
A corner of the woman’s full lips tilted up in a sad, regretful smile. “You could say we had a difference in lifestyle preference.”
I cocked my head to the side as I studied her face on the computer screen.
Everything about this couple was contradictory. They appeared to be in their early thirties but there was something old about their expressions. As if the soul of a kindly grandmother lurked behind the woman’s smile and the soul of a suspicious grandfather was behind the man’s flat look.
Their ethnicity was hard to pin down; with their oval-shaped faces, round-tipped noses and slightly slanted eyes, they could’ve been first generation immigrants from Israel or India. But their English was flawless. Well, the woman’s was anyway. She spoke with an eloquence that betrayed higher education. Her husband hadn’t spoken a word.
Despite their well-worn clothes and the fact that they’d been roughing it in an RV when they’d been found, their golden-brown skin was smooth and their dark hair was clean.
I wasn’t paying much attention to Uncle Vic’s interrogation because I was too busy noticing all the oddities about this couple. And trying to figure out how they could be connected to Death. Because they had to be connected somehow. There was no other explanation for this feeling of familiarity tying us together like the thick rope around the anchor of a freighter ship.
“Angela and Jerald Smith,” I murmured. “What is your secret?”
Charlie stood with his left arm across his abdomen; his right elbow was propped against his left wrist, and his right fist was pressed against his mouth. It was a stance often adopted by thinkers. In my brother’s case, it just meant he was anxious.
“Where were you on August eighteenth at approximately two-fifteen in the afternoon?” our uncle asked.
It was the date and time of the second murder in the Ward case, the torture and eventual strangulation of Ms. Ida Mavity.
“Driving,” Angela replied without needing to think about it too much. “We came here after hiking through the Rockies in Colorado. It was a lengthy trip.”
“Can anyone corroborate your whereabouts?”
“No, but we purchased gas before crossing state lines.” She and her husband shared a look. “I believe we kept the receipt. You’ll find it in our vehicle. It will prove we only just arrived last week.”
Uncle Victor jotted something else down in his notebook.
“Are we being accused of a crime, Detective Campbell?” Angela asked, her thick eyebrows knit.
“You’re suspects in several crimes, actually.” Uncle Vic opened the file folder that had been resting in his lap this whole time. He proceeded to lay out crime scene pictures from all of the murders related to the Ward case.
Angela looked grieved by the images but she didn’t avert her gaze.
Jerald gathered the pictures together with angry swipes of
