“Which book is it?” Vickie asked.
“I can’t remember the title exactly. It’s on the arrival of the first Puritans in the colony, up to the birth of Benjamin Franklin and how he, and others of his ilk, brought a repressed people into the Age of Enlightenment. It’s by Nathaniel Alden, I believe.”
“I can look for it for you, Professor Hanson,” she said. “But I may not find it. My dad isn’t the most organized man in the world. My mom tries to keep his books in some kind of order, but—”
“Maybe you could let me into their place and help me find it,” he said.
“I’m leaving town today,” she said.
“I’d just need five minutes. If you let me know when you’re on your way out, I can meet you,” he said hopefully.
Vickie glanced up to find that Devin was watching her; she also had her phone in her hand and was looking as if it was important that they speak.
“Excuse me a moment, please,” Vickie said. She muted the call.
“Professor Hanson. He wants one of my dad’s books,” she said, pointing at the phone.
In turn, Devin pointed at her phone and said, “Griffin—he couldn’t reach you so he called my number. They want us at the hospital. Jane Doe is awake and talking. But she doesn’t remember anything. Griffin thinks that she should see you.”
“Okay. Okay, so...what do I tell Professor Hanson? Devin, the man is kind of creepy. He was at the coffee shop when Roxanne and I were there the other night—waiting for Alex.”
“We can meet him together, then. Just tell him that you’ll call him and let him know what kind of timing will work.”
“Okay.”
Vickie did just as Devin had suggested. Devin was already up, reaching for her bag.
“Let’s go. Maybe you can get some answers. There should be an officer waiting outside for us by now.”
Once they were sitting together in the back of the cruiser, Vickie turned to Devin. “Amnesia. She doesn’t remember anything, huh?”
“Some things, but not about the immediate past—or where she came from actually. She knows her first name—Gloria—but not her last.”
“Do you think it’s true? Or do you think it’s some kind of a fake?” Vickie asked.
“You mean, do I think she’s faking amnesia?” Devin asked.
“Yeah, it just seems convenient. Bizarre. I feel as if we’re being blocked all the time. I could be crazy, too,” Vickie said. “The thing is, we were about to head out to Barre, but it’s almost as if we’re being stopped from getting out to where things are really taking place. And, of course, we’ve been talking about Jehovah since this all began. Jehovah was out there somewhere between Barre and the Quabbin, or maybe half in what is the Quabbin now.”
“I just don’t think this girl could have known that we were heading to Barre today. And she just came to—so she doesn’t know that we were in Fall River yesterday. Could she be a fraud? Sure. But we go through a lot of training. If she was playing us, I think that Griffin or Rocky would know, or Barnes would have a sense of it. You don’t get to his position in a city like Boston without having a unique talent for reading people.”
“Do you really think that her seeing me will help snap her out of it?”
“You never know,” Devin said. “You just never know.”
They arrived at the hospital and met up with Barnes, Rocky and Griffin in the cafeteria. The three men told them about their initial encounter with “Jane Doe.”
“She’s very young,” Griffin said.
“You can be very young—and be an excellent performer,” Devin pointed out.
“Don’t forget, the person pulling all the strings during the Fall River Satanic murders in the late 1970s was a seventeen-year-old girl,” Vickie pointed out.
“True,” Griffin agreed.
Barnes cleared his throat. “Do you feel bitter about this girl because she targeted you? I don’t blame you, but it might make it hard for you to go see her. She, of course, should be grateful to you. You and Devin saved her life.”
“I’m not bitter. I guess I just wanted to get out west to Barre and get closer to finding Alex,” Vickie said.
“We’ll get out there,” Griffin assured her. “And I’m not easily taken in. But I don’t want to say anything else. I don’t want to color what will happen, or what your feelings will be.”
“And don’t worry about heading west later than you had planned,” Barnes said. “This in an interagency situation. State police have already been at the Quabbin. We’ve kept divers searching just in case...” He broke off with a shrug.
“In case Alex is dead, and weighted down somewhere in the Quabbin?” Vickie asked.
“We all know it’s a possibility that he’s dead, but I can’t help but believe that he’s been taken for his mind—his ability to search out the past,” Griffin said. “Which, actually, should be something that we focus on now, too. I keep thinking that there is some person behind this—maybe the same guy who killed Sheena Petrie thirty-plus years ago—and that he’s convinced that he needs to be in the same place Ezekiel Martin was during the 1600s. I don’t think that’s so farfetched. So, Vickie, that throws it into your corner. You’re going to have to figure out exactly where Jehovah might have been.”
“That is something we were both interested in since the night he was attacked,” Vickie said. “I mean, I’ve been trying, but people have been searching for the exact location for well over three hundred years.”
Griffin leaned toward her, smiling. “Those people haven’t been you—desperate to find a friend,” he told her. He reached for her hand and squeezed it.
“Let’s go talk to this young lady,” Vickie said. “With any luck, she’ll solve the whole thing for us!”
No one responded to that.
No one was expecting that much luck.
Upstairs, they waited while Griffin found the young redhead’s doctor.
When he was present, they went into the room. The girl had been lying on her side, just staring at the wall. Her television was on; Griffin turned it off.
“Miss,” he said quietly. She turned to look at him. And then she studied Devin and Vickie, and she began to frown, as if something stirred in her memory.
Huge tears suddenly filled her eyes.
“It was wrong. I’m so sorry. It was wrong!” she said.
Vickie perched on the side of her bed, looking into her troubled eyes.
“What was wrong?” she asked.
“I threw the blood on you! I condemned you!”
“You threw a cupful of blood at me,” Vickie said softly. “But I’m fine.”
“You’re...you’re trying to ruin us. You don’t understand,” the girl said.
Vickie was startled. “I’m trying to ruin you?” she asked. “But I don’t even know who you are.”
The girl was perplexed. “It was blood, yes. I know that it was blood. And you’re...you’re supposed to leave us alone. I wasn’t going to hurt you. You just had to know that you’re supposed to leave us alone. Your place is yet to be revealed. There will be no walking the line in the new world order. You are with us or against us. But he knows about you. He knows, and he is watching and deciding what your fate will be.”
Despite herself, Vickie felt a tremor of fear. “Okay,” she said flatly. “First off, who is ‘us’? And who the hell is ‘he’?”
The girl’s face seemed to be twisted into an anguished pucker. She was fighting hard within her own mind, trying to draw out some sense.
“He is all powerful,” she said. But she said it strangely, as if it was a learned mantra, and not even something she really grasped herself.
“Satan? Who the hell, indeed!” Vickie murmured, looking at Griffin.
“Gloria, you’re alive because of these two women,” Griffin told her quietly. “You’re glad to be alive, right?”
She nodded. “I am... I know that the award for obedience is eternal pleasure, but...the punishment for disobedience is eternal flame. I didn’t obey. And... I failed. I’m supposed to be dead.”
“Please keep trying,” Vickie said. “Who am I going to ruin, and why are you supposed to be dead?”
The girl thought.
And thought.