She had started to shake; Vickie quickly changed the subject.
“What about your puppy?” Vickie asked. She smiled at Gloria. “We’re trying to get you a puppy now—or, I should say, Detective Barnes is trying to find a puppy. You can’t keep it at the hospital, and I’m not sure how we’re going to get you situated once you’re out, but my parents are friends with a really great vet, and he’ll keep him until you’re ready.”
“I’m not going to be charged with...with something horrible?” Gloria asked her.
“I don’t believe so. Not unless you remember you did something?” Vickie asked her.
“We had our calling. We were sent out for our calling,” Gloria said. She seemed excited again. “I had other names, but I could swear... Martin. Gloria Martin!”
“We’ll tell Detective Barnes. He can try to find you in the system now that we have a name that may be the right one,” Vickie told her.
Barnes had great timing; he chose that moment to come in with a puppy.
He was something of a miracle worker, Griffin thought, because he had, in less than twenty minutes, come up with the cutest little ball of yellow fluff imaginable.
Gloria cried out with delight; Barnes put the puppy into her arms. It began to lick her face, its little tail going a million miles an hour.
“Just like Wolfen! He can be Wolfen II!” Gloria said. “He’s beautiful, he’s... But really? How do I keep him? I don’t have a home, I...”
“You do have help,” Vickie told her.
Of course, within a matter of minutes, someone on the hospital staff had called out the administrators; the dog had to go. It wasn’t a service dog of any kind.
“We’ll watch out for him, I promise,” Vickie told her.
Gloria was staring at the puppy. “Martin. I wasn’t born with that name. But it is my legal name now. My mother married him.” She looked at the three of them, one by one. “My friend gave me the dog. It was okay for a long time. But he drank. He started to beat my mother. Then he started to beat me. And then they took me away, and they took the dog away. I think that I was about ten.”
Vickie looked over at Griffin. He saw the expression on her face. She felt so much for kids who had it hard.
Gloria had been easy prey.
They left the hospital, assuring Gloria that things would be figured out soon enough, and the puppy would be fine, waiting for her, when she was ready.
“You two are something!” Barnes said. “How did you know I didn’t borrow that dog? He could be a prize pooch, worth thousands.”
Griffin laughed. “He’s not. You sent someone to the local animal shelter.”
“All right, I did. So what are you going to do now?”
“Exactly what I said. Thankfully, between them, my parents have friends everywhere!” Vickie told him.
“So we’ll stop by the vet. And you’ll try to find out where our girl, Gloria, came from?” Griffin asked.
“I’m on it,” Barnes assured them. “No sign of Milton Hanson as of yet. And he isn’t answering his cell phone, work phone or home phone.”
“Gloria mentioned the couple again—the sister-and-brother act who sang at the coffee shop. I think we need to find them. They said they were going to be in Worcester.”
“I’ll call Wendell on that—get the state police looking for them. And if you can, use all the federal help we can get on the two, as well,” Barnes said.
“I’ll call my office,” Griffin said. “They’ll check New England, and keep going if they need to.”
“Living in plain sight,” Vickie said. She shook her head. “If they’re part of it...well, it has to be on their own terms. They’re working...they were staying in Boston. But still, Gloria definitely described a band that sounded tremendously like them, playing when she met the high priest. And they lied about coming from Athol.”
“And who the hell lies about coming from Athol?” Barnes said. “We’ll be on it. She didn’t happen to have a good recollection of what the high priest looked like, did she?”
“His face was like a red sheet—that’s what she said. She couldn’t think of anything else,” Vickie told him. “It worried her. I’m sure he played one of his memory mind games on her—with the right combination of drugs once he gathered her into his fold.”
“We’ll be back out in Barre,” Griffin told him.
They parted ways, Vickie holding the little Lab puppy.
“I’m praying that you really do know this great vet!” Griffin said. “I don’t think that Mrs. McFall allows pets at the bed-and-breakfast.”
She laughed. “Yep. You can turn right, next corner. He’s just a few blocks away. And after that, we need to stop by my parents’ place.”
“Oh?”
“I hid that book from Milton Hanson. Now, I have to find it and read it myself.”
*
Vickie read for the two-hour trip back to Barre.
They arrived just as the sun was setting over the array of hills and mountain peaks that could be seen in the distance, and it was beautiful. She remembered that the creation of the Quabbin had taken mountains and turned them into islands, but she still couldn’t find a reference to a place where there was a hill or mountain with a great granite slab.
But she had found really interesting information as regarded Ezekiel Martin.
“You looked perplexed,” Griffin told Vickie as they drove into the driveway at Mrs. McFall’s.
“It is perplexing. Okay, Ezekiel Martin was born in England. He came to the New World with his family when he was still fairly young. While his parents had been hard-line Puritans—lovers of all things Cromwell and far beyond—they weren’t that far from a more prosperous form of life.”
“You lost me,” Griffin told her.
She smiled. “His family had been wealthy in England. Remember, Puritans didn’t believe in any of the trappings of the traditional church. Gold chalices and all that. Anyway, Ezekiel’s father was a fanatic, but his grandfather had been a lord. Supposedly, the Martin family of his village—in England—had been ridiculously wealthy. They’d been responsible for tearing down a number of churches. All kinds of gold and jewel-encrusted implements that had once belonged to the church supposedly disappeared—among the Martin family.”
“So, our devil-rouser—Ezekiel Martin—wound up pissed off at everybody,” Griffin said. “The Church of England, the Puritan church, his family—and everyone else.”
“He was a bitter man, certainly. I still don’t get it—I just don’t understand how people can play others in such a way. I mean, convince them of ridiculous things.”
Griffin was thoughtful for a moment, and then he shrugged and turned to her with a self-deprecating grin. “Ridiculous is different to different people. Remember, it was ridiculous to think that the earth was round. Many people find the entire Judeo-Christian concept of God—with or without Christ being the son of God—as ridiculous. I happen to have my faith, and you have yours. But that’s what faith is. Easy to think back about how people in the Middle Ages fell victim to their beliefs—especially here, in Massachusetts!—when they first came over. Imagine! The world was dark and frightening. The indigenous people weren’t always friendly. Sicknesses raged—it was probably easy for Ezekiel Martin to convince others that God had totally forgotten them, but raising Satan could provide them with lives that were good and rich and safe.”
“I understand how we’re all willing to believe what we want to believe, but it’s disturbing that young people can be talked into something so dark.”
“Hey. Children and teenagers are talked into becoming suicide bombers. What’s in our minds is usually far more important than what is truth.”