The woman in the wheelchair was up early again, the pain making a full night’s sleep an almost impossible dream. She sat in front of her computer screen and played the recording of the early news from Memphis. The girl who’d set herself on fire at the Civil Rights Museum was the top item, with pictures of ambulances, police cars and a fire truck in front of the building. The cops weren’t naming the girl yet, but the woman knew who she must be. Three more and the list would be complete, and her revenge finalised. Then she could give up the struggle, and die contented.
It was a shame that Nightingale was not in custody, and an even bigger shame that he had not been shot dead in Beale Street the previous morning. That had been her wish, but even under control, Julia Smith had not been experienced in handling a gun, and bullets had flown in every direction. Nightingale had been lucky, some others not.
Still, Nightingale was just a minion, and would be taken care of in due course. The main focus of her hatred was the other, and it seemed that he had been flushed out from hiding. She would richly enjoy seeing him lose everything he held dear.
She thought back bitterly to a time when it had been her who made great plans, gave orders and pulled strings. Now she was reduced to watching, while others moved the chessmen around the board. Some of the plan had been explained to her, and it had been promised that the man who had orchestrated her destruction would himself be brought down, and she would live long enough to see his death, and Nightingale’s. But she had not been told why or how the other children had to die, or what was bringing about the deaths. The one she had made her pact with had promised her what she had asked for, but did not welcome questions.
The Memphis news channel was now bringing updates on a new, breaking story. Police had been called to a house near the Galilee Baptist Church, where reports were coming out of two people dead in what might be a domestic murder-suicide incident. Again, no names were being released yet.
The woman in the wheelchair forced her mouth into a smile of triumph, then she pressed the bell for her nurse.
She needed to be changed.