“It was originally published in three segments. Poe probably knew the real girl, but he was living in Philadelphia when she was killed. He thought the story would put him on the literary map. He was convinced that the girl’s first disappearance—she had disappeared for several days a few years before her murder, then reappeared—had something to do with her death. He had planned on making the murderer a Navy man, but then they discovered that she might have gone for an abortion, and that she might have died in a house in New Jersey, a small inn of sorts, owned by a woman named Loss who had three sons. They thought the sons might have tried to dispose of Mary’s body. No one ever went to trial and, according to this preface, no one ever discovered the truth of her death. Poe altered his story before the final segment was published so it would agree with the latest facts in the investigation.”
“When her body was first found,” Joe said, studying his monitor, “the coroner noted that she’d been strangled. That there were bruises around her throat, and a piece of her torn dress was so tightly tied around her neck that it was embedded in the flesh.”
He looked at Genevieve. “I don’t believe Mary Rogers died because of a botched abortion, though that might have been what sent her to New Jersey. I believe the coroner’s initial report was right and she was strangled. But what I believe isn’t important. What matters is that I think the murderer also believes that she was strangled. And that he acted on that.”
“Joe, we don’t even know for sure that Lori’s dead, much less how she died,” she said.
“Let’s take a ride over to New Jersey,” he suggested.
“We’re going to find her in New Jersey?” she asked doubtfully.
“Her body will turn up in New Jersey,” he said with complete certainty.
Just then his cell phone started to ring. He answered it with a brief, “Connolly.”
“Joe, it’s Raif.”
His friend sounded strange, Joe thought, and asked, “What is it? Have you found something?”
He could hear the deep breath Raif took before answering.
“Yes.”
“What?”
“We’ve found her body.”
Genevieve was staring at him, frowning intently.
“Lori Star?” Joe asked, though he didn’t really need to. He knew that it was her. And he could make an educated guess as to what condition they’d found her in, too.
“Yeah, or so it seems. It’s in pretty bad shape.”
“You found it in the river on the New Jersey side, right?” Joe said.
“How did you know?” Raif demanded.
“I’ve read ‘The Mystery of Marie Roget,’” Joe told him.
“What? Oh, hell, a Poe story, right? Shit. I’m going to have to brush up on my reading.”
“There was a real murder, too.”
“Great,” Raif said. “Just what we need.” Joe could see Raif in his mind’s eye, sitting in the passenger seat and talking on the phone while Tom drove.
To Jersey?
“So this murder winds up in the hands of the New Jersey police, huh?” Joe said.
“Yeah, but the lead detective isn’t a bad guy. I told him I had an interest, which he understood. I explained that we’re all looking at a connection between Lori Star and our other vics. Folks can be territorial in law enforcement, but not usually stupid, so we’re welcome to be in on it.”
Joe winced, running his fingers through his hair. “Can I tag along?” he asked.
“That’s why I called you,” Raif said. “We’re on our way over to Jersey now.”
Bingo, Joe thought. “Tell me where I’m going and I’ll meet you there,” he said.
INTERLUDE
It’s so damned hard, being a ghost. Trying to communicate.
It’s just human nature, I suppose. We so badly want to know what lies beyond the world in which we live and breathe, but we’re also terrified of that knowledge. It’s so much easier to opt for denial, to pretend that we’re immortal. That other people die, not us.
Even people with tremendous courage, the ones who will fight to the death for a cause, who will run into burning buildings to rescue others in danger, find something frightening about examining what lies beyond the veil.
What the living don’t know is that sometimes, when you’re very lucky, there is someone waiting there on the other side to help.
Matt says it’s wrong to bring anyone into Hastings House, where I’m at my best. And he keeps trying to help me leave. But the two of them came by, and I had to help. The thing is, both of them knew.
Well, at least I was able to help that girl. And that’s what it’s all about. Helping.
I’m worried about Genevieve, though. I don’t want to see her die, but I think someone else does.
We know what’s happening in the world, Matt and I. He’s figured out how to turn on the TV, and sometimes I can do it, too. A lot of the time we don’t need to make that effort—and trust me, it really is an effort—though. The docents have it on a lot during the day anyway, and they leave newspapers lying around all the time, so we keep up with what’s going on.
That’s why Matt decided we had to try to get out beyond Hastings House and try to touch others. To help them.
It was exhausting. I seem to be able to move easily enough through the subway tunnels. I can even connect to the PATH train and get over to New Jersey. But outside of the tunnels…
It had to be done, though. We followed the tunnel under the Hudson, and then we went outside and started looking for her. I kept feeling myself fading, but Matt held on to me, and somehow kept me going. Kept me, well, alive, for lack of a better word.
It wasn’t easy, but we did it. We found her.
We found Lori Star, and she was still so scared, so lost. And what she had to tell us…
Well, it helped. And then again…
It didn’t.
CHAPTER 11