An Open Heart (34 page)

36

Lisa Sprague smelled a story. It had all the elements. A famous person, now dead. Mysterious autopsy findings. An accident. Or something more sinister?

A local surgeon, a family man, suspected of betrayal. A rich doctor turned hero? Or a surgeon running from the truth?

Lisa started at the scene of the accident, downtown Richmond at the intersection of Lombardy and Broad, where a drunk driver in a Ford pickup had T-boned Jace’s Lexus. Lisa had reconstructed the scene from the police report.

Anita Franks had been a passenger on the side opposite the impact. She’d made the 911 call, reporting that the driver was unconscious. She’d opened his door, and Jace had tumbled onto the road. As she knelt over him, she was struck and killed by a third vehicle, driven by a VCU student.

The VCU student had not been drinking. No charges were filed in the pedestrian accident.

The driver of the pickup was charged with DUI, his second offense, and was now wearing an orange jumpsuit in a city jail.

Lisa turned right off Broad Street and made a mental note to obtain a copy of the 911 call.

She parked two blocks from the Jefferson Hotel. On the sidewalk, she purchased a copy of the
Richmond Times Dispatch
.

The headlines splashed the latest in a story being rooted out by one of her colleagues. “Tobacco for Tea: A Conflict of Interest for Governor Franks?”

She scanned the article that pointed to family ties to tobacco money for Ryan Meadows, architect of the trade deal and Franks’s chief of staff. Ryan’s maternal uncle, longtime CEO of Landtower Tobacco Company, stood to gain a half-billion dollars for his company in the next decade, the price of selling carcinogens in a continent years behind on tobacco injury liability.

Good job, Rebecca. Looks like you’re really onto something here.
Lisa smiled. Rebecca Smythe and Lisa had started at the
Richmond Times Dispatch
within a few months of each other three years earlier and had cut their teeth reporting on local Richmond politics.

Lisa walked toward the hotel, wondering how she could win the manager’s confidence. If he had been loyal to Mrs. Franks, he might not speak.

She looked around the expansive lobby, a testimony to extravagance in architecture of an era gone by. She stepped up to the concierge’s desk and spoke to a bottle brunette with gray roots. “May I speak to Mr. Baker?”

“Is he expecting you?”

“No.”

A man in a three-piece gray suit and white shirt with a striped blue-and-red tie approached, evidently pleased that a young lady would be asking for him. “I’m Mr. Baker.”

Lisa smiled and extended her hand. “Lisa Sprague,” she said. She kept her voice low. “I have a few questions of a sensitive nature. Could we find a private place to talk?”

He shrugged. “Sure,” he said, “the bar is quiet.”

She followed him to TJ’s, the hotel’s namesake restaurant on the second level. He gestured toward a corner booth. “How’s this?”

“Fine,” she said. They sat.

He looked thirty-five, fighting an extra pound for each year, but mostly hidden beneath the expensive suit. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m looking for information about someone who stayed in your establishment.”

He smiled. “We serve many famous people. Who are you interested in?”

“Anita Franks.”

He squinted behind gold wire-rim glasses. “Are you a reporter?”

“Yes.” She hesitated. “But I’m not writing a story. At least not yet.”

He folded his arms across his chest. “But whatever I say will be quoted.”

“Why don’t we just keep everything off the record? I’m not interested in damaging her reputation.”

“So why ask questions?”

“I’m trying to find out information for a friend.”

He stayed quiet.

“Look, Heather Rawlings, the surgeon’s wife, is a friend of mine. She doesn’t know what to believe. She’s read the media speculation, saw the pictures of her husband out with Anita Franks around town. What she doesn’t know is what to believe. Was Anita Franks having an affair with Jace Rawlings?”

“Why would I know this?”

“I was told you made arrangements for a suite for Mrs. Franks.”

“Sure, but the Frankses kept a suite here, mainly for guests, political figures, and others who preferred to stay out of the public eye. Many people have stayed in the suite rented by Mrs. Franks.”

“Many?”

He pointed to the front-page story. “Even these Kenyan visitors.”

“Did Mrs. Franks stay there too?”

“Occasionally. Mr. Meadows always called ahead to make arrangements.”

“Mr. Meadows?”

“The governor’s chief of staff.”

“And what about the night she died? Was she staying here then?”

He seemed to hesitate. “Yes.”

“What can you tell me? Help me out here. Did Jace Rawlings spend time with her here?”

“I can speculate, that’s all. Nothing can be quoted.”

“Okay.”

“Mrs. Franks liked to drink. But she didn’t like drinking in public, so she’d have our bartender mix her favorites and I’d take them to her.”

“Was she drinking that night?”

He nodded. “She’d talk when the alcohol started. I’d sit and listen. She said she’d made mistakes, but was going to take care of them that night. She told me she loved her husband and didn’t want to hurt him.”

“What do you think she meant?”

“I took her to mean that she had regrets.” He shrugged again. “An affair, perhaps. But she was going to set things right that night.”

“She was going to break off an affair?”

“A guess, that’s all.”

“Did Jace Rawlings visit her room that night?”

“She asked me to show him to her room, which I did.”

“What time was that?”

“Just before they left. After eleven.”

Lisa checked her notes. “I was told it was ten.”

He shook his head. “No.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Certain things stick in your mind after a tragic death.”

“Did you make notes?”

“Of course not.”

Lisa gazed at him across the table, trying to read him.
Ryan Meadows claimed that the manager of the hotel made notes in case the police asked any questions.
He also claimed that you let Dr. Rawlings into the room at ten p.m.

“Could it be that Mrs. Franks was trying to end an affair with the doctor?”

“I wasn’t privy to their conversation. They certainly didn’t stay long.”

“Perhaps there was no reason to after that.”

“Again, I’d only be speculating.”

“Yet she left with him?”

He nodded.

“Pretty odd that she’d choose to leave with him if she’d just ended an affair.”

“Again,” he said, shifting in his seat. “I’d only be speculating.”

She nodded. “Thanks for your time.”

Jace knelt over his sister’s grave, whispering to a God who for most of his life had remained outside. Someone else’s Father. When he lifted his head, there were no waves of peace, no glory filling his soul. The terror that he’d experienced in the night was gone, but beyond that, his soul felt wooden. Untouched by the greatness that always seemed to overwhelm his sister.

Why couldn’t he sense the Spirit the way his old friends at RVA claimed?

Guilt.

The mountain that had sat immovable on his chest since a fateful day just before high school graduation. For years, he’d pushed ahead, ignoring its whispers, accepting that life was like that. Everyone had baggage. Everyone had
issues.
But a dullness settled on his soul that seemed to keep events from having a sharp edge.

He trudged home, aware that for a brief moment that night, he’d felt a hint of relief. It had been in the seconds after calling out the Savior’s name. Jace shook his head. Maybe the sensation of the lifting of the weight was only an illusion, a realization that he could finally breathe. Whatever or whoever had been stealing his breath had been swatted aside.

Had he imagined it? In the absence of any glorious change in his feelings, he began to doubt. Perhaps it had simply been a recurrence of some childhood asthma compounded with the high altitude of Kijabe.

No. He’d felt something.
A presence.

Evil.

He’d felt heart-pounding, choking terror. As clearly as anything he’d ever known, he’d sensed that he wasn’t alone. And whatever had been with him had wanted him dead.

He walked on, carefully keeping to the rocky path in the dark. He knew little of the warfare that Chaplain Otieno had spoken of. But he did understand that whatever power had faced him had slithered away in response to the whispered name “Jesus.”

His inner scientist argued. It had been asthma. Perhaps stimulated by a little extra smoke in his small house from a faulty chimney. Of course he’d felt evil. It’s evil not being able to get a breath.

As he passed the morgue, a small block building at the back of the hospital, he thought about the boy who’d died after falling from a tree. He’d died because there wasn’t any blood, and there wasn’t any blood because Jace had interrupted normal donations with his scheme to get enough blood for open-heart surgery. Jace looked back at the cemetery and thought about Timmy O’Reilly. He remembered listening to his father explaining to Timmy’s parents.
The antivenom goes bad too quickly. It was too expensive to keep on hand.

In Jace’s memory, Timmy’s parents and Jace’s father stood in the dingy back hallway of the hospital, their forms silhouetted by the sun coming through a doorway beyond them. He could not see their faces, but the sound of the parents’ pain had seared its way into his memory.
“No! No! Nooooo!”
Mrs. O’Reilly cried with her rhythmic sobs muffled into her husband’s chest.

Jace’s father’s decision had condemned a little boy to death.

And Jace’s actions had resulted in the death of another.

He thought about his reaction to Timmy’s death, how he had blamed his father. Now, with the shoe on the other foot, he’d begun to understand. Perhaps he’d been too quick to judge. He was beginning to understand that nothing about hospital care in Kenya was straightforward.

And that meant that more money didn’t necessarily solve the problems.

Once at home, he slipped past the still-sleeping guard, sat at the kitchen table, opened his laptop, and accessed his email account. He found a new message from Heather.

Jace, I’m sure by now that Gabby has told you about Anita Franks’s autopsy report. I can’t figure out why someone would want to send this to me, but the document is accurate (I had a detective at Richmond PD confirm), and it certainly raises more questions than answers. Jace, I need to know what you know. It doesn’t work for you to just retreat and say you don’t remember. The medical examiner’s office says they released the autopsy information to only two sources: the next of kin and your office. Why would you be requesting this? And if you requested the autopsy report, was it because you were seeking answers yourself? Did you send it to me? (The Richmond detective seems to think so, and feels you are “confessing” to me in this way.) A blood test could clear things up, Jace. Why don’t you send a sample home with Gabby so we can compare the DNA with fluid collected from Anita Franks’s autopsy?

How is your work going? If I know you, you’ve probably changed the name of the hospital. By now, it’s probably Kijabe Heart Institute.

Keep safe. I’m praying for you. I confess, praying wasn’t my first response when we first faced all of this mess. But maybe I’m understanding my role a little better. I have a feeling that things between us will never be resolved until you resolve things between you and God.

Heather

Jace sighed, closed his laptop, and tromped back toward his bed, shedding his clothes onto the floor as he went.

Heather hadn’t said all was well.

But she did say she was praying.
Hmm. Like the Heather I knew in college.

And for now, that was enough.

37

In spite of the cool Kijabe night, Jace tossed in a restless slumber punctuated by sweat and a return of his earlier terror. It wasn’t so bad this time, but enough to interrupt his rest with troubling dreams.

Sometime in the early hours of morning, Jace dreamed of the doctor he’d met when he first came to Kijabe. The face of Simeon Okayo seemed to float just above his bed, hovering out of reach. At first, he appeared in a suit, looking like a modern professional. Then, as fear slowly tightened around Jace’s chest, the doctor’s face morphed into something tribal. His teeth were pointed and his face striped with red paint.
Blood?

The floating face seemed to delight in the knowledge that he was scaring Jace. He curled back generous lips to reveal teeth, white and sharp. The picture expanded, giving Jace a full view of the man. He wore little more than a loincloth, flapping below his waist. Around his neck was a necklace of bones, irregular and worn.

Then the necklace began to change, blackening and lengthening, turning into a stethoscope, much like the one Jace used. The tubing began to smoke, then melt, dripping hot plastic onto Jace’s skin. Suddenly, the stethoscope burst into flames, becoming a necklace of fire around Okayo’s neck, but the doctor didn’t scream. He only laughed, watching in delight as the stethoscope dripped its melted contents onto Jace.