She still had an IV bearing fluids into her body, but she was sitting up. Her hair had been brushed and smoothed from her face. She was, however, wearing a look of tremendous anxiety.
Griffin didn’t ask before he took the lead. “I’m Griffin Pryce, miss. I’m with the FBI. My friend, Rocky—Craig Rockwell—is also with the FBI. And this gentleman here is Detective David Barnes. He’s with the Boston Police Department.”
“What did I do?” she asked him, her face crinkling with fear and worry.
“You don’t remember?” he asked her.
She shook her head, looking as if she was about to cry. “I don’t remember. I don’t even know...well, they said that this was Boston. That I’m in Boston.”
“Yes, you’re in Boston,” Griffin told her. “Do you know your name?”
Again, her face crumpled, and she looked terrified, and as if she was about to burst into tears.
He took her hand and squeezed it. “It’s okay,” he said quietly. “It may take you some time. Do you remember anything, anything at all? You don’t know your name, and you were surprised to be in Boston.”
She shook her head. “I remember...a park. There were guys playing music. I was listening to songs, and I heard it again, right before...before—oh, Lord! Right before I threw the blood. The same music.”
“Do you think you were taken by someone—kidnapped?”
“I don’t remember that... I’m not a bad person!” she whispered.
“It’s okay—we believe you.”
“I just remember the park... I went to the park. I think I met a man and then...then I don’t remember. But I think...in the park, and then later, I kept hearing songs. Hearing music. I love music. I mean, I think I love music.”
“Then you do love music,” Griffin told her gently. He glanced up. The doctor had come into the room.
Naturally, he was watching out for his patient. The law was important, but his first priority was her physical well-being.
Griffin smiled at him, trying to assure him that they would go slowly. “Think about the music you love. A lot of songs have been written for young women, you know. Using names. Of course, that’s true of men’s names, too, but it does seem to me that more have been written for women. Let’s see, there’s Roxanne, Susie, Angie, Rhiannon—Rhiannon was written about a woman, but I actually think that it was the name of a Welsh prince first. There’s Lola, of course, written for a drag queen.”
He drew a smile from their Jane Doe at that. She was, he thought, very young. Not even twenty, if he was any judge. She was young and scared.
So how the hell had she come to have a cupful of a missing woman’s blood—and go on a mission to throw it all over Vickie?
“And, of course, there’s ‘A Boy Named Sue’!” she reminded him.
“Exactly. ‘Adia,’ ‘Along Comes Mary,’ ‘Peggy Sue,’” Griffin said.
“Eleanor—Eleanor Rigby, the Beatles!” she told him. And then, her smile and enthusiasm faded. “‘Gloria,’ Laura Branigan,” she said. She looked at him. “That’s it. That’s my name. Gloria.”
“There you go,” Griffin said, smiling. “Do you know your last name?”
She shook her head. Her eyes suddenly seemed sunken and her entire posture seemed to deflate.
“Thank you,” Griffin said. “Thank you. Rest. It will come back to you.”
She nodded and her voice was ragged and husky when she said, “I’m...afraid. It’s going to be bad. I don’t think—God! I didn’t think that I was a bad person, but... I’m afraid of my own memories.”
Griffin squeezed her hand again. “I don’t believe you are bad. I think we just need to find out who you are and what happened, and we can get you going in the right direction. We’ll be back,” he told her.
He, Rocky and David Barnes left the room. Barnes was shaking his head. “This just about beats everything. She seems like the sweetest little angel who ever drew breath. What the hell?”
“I don’t think she’s faking it in any way,” Rocky said.
“I don’t think so, either,” Griffin agreed.
The doctor stepped out into the hallway. “Detective, agents—thank you for stopping when you did. The patient is truly distressed. You can’t fake blood pressure and pulse and physical reactions to stress.”
“Of course, stress can be caused by fear—a righteous fear of the law,” Barnes said.
“Detective,” the doctor protested. “It’s a miracle that young woman is alive. Just how much brain damage she might have suffered is still to be seen.”
“Yes, of course, Doctor,” Rocky said. “But—”
“What they’re trying to say is that it is convenient that memory loss is the evident damage she’s suffering at the moment—when she attacked a woman with a vial of blood from another woman who may well be dead,” Griffin explained, lifting a hand quickly when it appeared the doctor would protest. “And, of course, she could be in seriously strained condition. We don’t want to cause her further stress. I’d like to let her get some rest. But then I’d like to bring in Victoria Preston—the woman our Jane Doe attacked. Would you be against her seeing Vickie?”
The doctor stared at him a moment. “I realize that we’re dealing with a serious situation here. And yes, seeing the young woman she attacked might be a trigger. However, right now, our Jane Doe is fragile. If she does show signs of distress, you will have to get Miss Preston out. At least until she’s been stable for several days and is completely on the road to recovery.”
The doctor looked hard at the three of them.
“When you wish to speak with my patient and bring in a new catalyst, please let me know.”
“Of course,” Griffin told him.
The doctor didn’t appear to trust them in the hallway, but since they weren’t moving, he finally strode away himself.
“Barnes, we were going to head out to Barre, but I really think that we have to bring Vickie in here first,” Griffin said.
“Definitely,” Rocky put in.
“Agreed,” David Barnes said.
“I’ll have her and Devin come in. They can meet us down in the cafeteria. Jane Doe will have a half hour or so to rest,” Griffin said, and he pulled out his phone as the other two nodded.
*
Dylan had managed to access an on-demand program on the television that was considered to be an excellent documentary on the birth of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Age of Enlightenment and the growth of the city of Boston in particular.
Devin was at her computer.
Vickie was at her computer, as well.
She was flying from reference to reference on the possible whereabouts of Jehovah, since every scholar from the past seemed to place it a little bit differently. She researched the flooding of the Swift River Valley in order to create the Quabbin. At the very least, she thought, she was finding where Jehovah definitely hadn’t been. The problem in such research now was that the natural landscape had been changed so drastically. In order to see what had been, she had to keep finding pictures, maps and images of the area before the Quabbin had been created.
What had once been hills and mountains were now tiny islands.
Her phone rang as she was working. She didn’t recognize the number, but it had a Boston area code and she answered.
“Vickie?” asked an unfamiliar voice.
“Yes?”
“It’s Professor Hanson. Milton Hanson.”
She was definitely startled.
And wary.
“Hello, Professor. How are you?”
“As worried as you are, I imagine. No sign of Alex yet, right?”
“No sign of Alex,” she agreed.
“Well, I probably can’t help, but I’m trying all kinds of things from my end. But I needed to ask you for a favor.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, I wanted to borrow one of your father’s books,” he said.
“My father is in Europe, working,” she said.
“Yes, and I know after that he and your mom are taking a bit of vacation—though, to be honest, I’ve never seen your dad do anything that was really just vacation. I tried to reach him—seems he’s out in the field on something today. There’s something I’d like to look up rather urgently.”