Shame

James and Janet were banned from going into the living room, which meant she didn’t have to clear a path.
    As they both took seats, Anna spoke. “You said that Cal gave you a message for us?”
    “In a way,” Elizabeth said. She didn’t want to be enigmatic, but she wasn’t sure how to approach what she needed to say. Elizabeth hadn’t even been sure she would get this opportunity. She knew that at least two detectives were monitoring the house, and she had half-expected them to try to intercept her. “Earlier this evening,” she said, “I promised your husband that I would help you and your children.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Do you know anything about your husband’s family?” asked Elizabeth.
    Anna registered surprise at the question, her thick eyebrows beetling together into one. “I know he doesn’t have a family,” she said. “His parents are dead, and he doesn’t have any brothers or sisters.”
    “That’s true,” Elizabeth said. “But did he ever tell you anything about his parents?”
    Anna shook her head. “Very little. I only know that his mother divorced his father when Caleb was a boy, and that she worked as a waitress to support him.”
    When Anna and Caleb had started going out, Anna had thought his orphan status had made him that much more irresistible. She had married him when he was twenty-five, and she had been certain she could be his family, could be everything to him. Caleb’s not having any living relations had been a positive thing as far as she was concerned. He had her. It had all seemed so very romantic.
    “Did he tell you how his parents died?”
    “His mother passed away when he was twenty or so. She had a bad liver...”
    Cirrhosis of the liver, Elizabeth thought.
    “...and his father died after he was struck by lightning. But since Cal didn’t even really know him, his death didn’t affect him much.”
    Clever lies combined with wishful thinking, thought Elizabeth. Caleb had probably wanted to tell his wife a biographyas close to the truth as possible, or as close to the truth as he dared make it.
    “What Caleb told you was mostly true,” Elizabeth said.
    “Mostly?”
    “His father didn’t die by lightning—though that’s a phrase that inmates often use. They call it “riding the lightning.” It’s a euphemistic phrase for electrocution.”
    “What are you saying?”
    “Caleb’s father, Gray Parker, died in the electric chair. He was known as Shame.”
    The color left Anna’s face. “No.”
    Elizabeth forged ahead. She knew it was only the beginning of her bad news.
    “Your husband spent most of today at the Sheriff’s Department. He was being interviewed by homicide detectives. In the past month, several women in the San Diego area have been murdered. The police think Caleb killed them. The women were strangled, and then the word
shame
was written across their thighs and pubic areas. It’s the same way Caleb’s father killed and marked his victims.”
    Anna kept shaking her head, each shake more adamant than the last. She was a nurse, used to dealing with crises, but this wasn’t a situation she was trained to handle.
    “No,” she said.
    “I am not making any judgments,” Elizabeth said. “I am just telling you what information I have. I had conversations with your husband both last night and today, and in all of our talks he expressed his innocence.”
    “Where is he?”
    “I don’t know. We only talked briefly tonight after he was released from questioning. He told me he was on his way home, but he must have changed his mind, or something changed it for him. That doesn’t matter; his not being here doesn’t change my promise to him. I said that I would help you.”
    “Help me with what?”
    “With all that’s about to occur. Your husband knows the trauma you’re about to face because he went through it. And he knows I’m familiar with what happens in this kind of a situation. I can be useful to you and your children.”
    “Who are you?”
    “My name is Elizabeth Line. I’m a writer. Many years ago I wrote a book about your husband’s father, and since that time I’ve written a number of other crime books.”
    Anna stopped shaking her head. The woman had looked familiar to her. Anna vaguely remembered having seen her interviewed on television.
    “If time weren’t of the essence,” Elizabeth said, “I wouldn’t have come barging in here uninvited. But in a matter of minutes detectives will be knocking