Devin and Rocky enjoyed the breakfast at the Lizzie Borden house along with the other overnight visitors who sat together in the dining room. Vickie just had a cup of coffee; she was seated in the corner of the room.
She’d spent a good twenty minutes on the phone with her parents. They had just gotten used to the fact that Vickie intended to move to Virginia with Griffin, and they were understandably upset that Vickie was again involved in everything going on.
She’d given Griffin a thumbs-up sign, however. She’d managed to say something to keep her parents in Europe.
Now, she was listening and engaging in the conversations that raged around the friendly crowd gathered in the dining room.
“Lizzie did do it!” a girl said.
“Don’t be silly, it was a conspiracy. Her uncle was in on it,” her boyfriend noted, nodding as if he’d completely solved the mystery.
Griffin grinned at Vickie and indicated that he was stepping outside.
“The phones have been ringing crazy off the hook here,” Detective David Barnes told Griffin over the phone. “I can’t tell you how many people called in with Audrey Benson sightings. I’d say at least a hundred of the coffee shop patrons have called in. They all saw her, naturally. The problem is that not a single call has led to anything. Not one caller knows where she lives or where she is now.”
“She’s run,” Griffin said. “She’s wherever they took Helena Matthews.”
“You think she’s still in Massachusetts?”
“I do. Where in Massachusetts, I don’t know. But I do think that it goes back to the Puritan days, to Ezekiel Martin, and the words he originally wrote in the earth. I believe it’s important that whatever is supposed to happen takes place in the original colony. Whether we have a crazy person or a manipulator, I think that all the history behind the ‘Satan is coming’ mantra of Ezekiel Martin is of tremendous importance,” Griffin said. “I have a hard time accepting the fact that someone may really think that a few enchantments will bring Satan to earth, but we’ve seen a lot of strange concepts that rule men’s minds. You have your copies of all the reports we acquired from Merton, Magruder and Oakley, right?”
“Came through clearly this morning, thank you. Oh, and we’ve had tech working around the clock on Alex Maple’s cell phone. At first, they lost the trail right where he was taken. The phone had been turned off. But the cell provider was on notice and they called through this morning. Apparently, Alex had some kind of an alarm system set to remind him when he had scheduled consultations with his students. The phone was set to go on, even if he’d powered it off. It didn’t last long, but they did get a ping.”
“It wasn’t over here, in this area, was it?” Griffin asked hopefully.
“No, sorry. Somewhere in western Massachusetts. I’ll have something more for you on that soon,” Barnes said.
“Jehovah,” Griffin said.
“Jehovah doesn’t exist anymore,” Barnes said.
“Not as it once did, no. But the land is still there.”
“The cell was probably tossed,” Barnes said. “But when I have an exact location, I’ll get it to you. Naturally, my guys are still working all the angles.”
“Yeah, thanks. What about the picture of Helena? Did the calls generate anything on Helena?”
“Some, yes, of course, just not as many. None of them helpful—and not many of them real, either. Not in the opinion of our people working the lines. You know, someone saw her in this club or that club, and most of the sightings occurred after the blood was thrown at Vickie.”
“What about our Jane Doe in the hospital?”
“Nothing yet. You know that I’ll call you the minute we have a lead, or the minute she wakes up.”
“Thanks,” Griffin said.
“We’re on it. We’ll keep pressing.”
They finished their conversation, and Griffin put a call through to Jackson at headquarters; there was nothing new learned on that end.
“Pursue it until you find the truth,” Jackson told him.
“Will do,” Griffin said quietly.
He headed back inside. Conversations about Lizzie Borden’s guilt or innocence were still going on, but breakfast was over.
They weren’t going to stay another night; Griffin was pretty sure that they’d gotten what they could from Fall River. But they had an appointment with Charlie Oakley to go out to the site where Sheena Petrie’s body had been found. They had records; they’d had their conversations with the people involved. And if Alex Maple’s phone had been found in the west of the state, it was time to return to Boston and check out what leads had been generated by the pictures in the media, and then to head out to Jehovah—or, as best as had ever been fathomed, where Jehovah had been.
* * *
By ten o’clock, they were checking out and ready to head out, and they were due to pick up Charlie Oakley at eleven.
“We found out in conversation this morning that Sheena Petrie is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery. She’s not far from the Borden graves. I thought we might stop by,” Vickie said.
“Not a bad idea,” Griffin determined. He was driving now; Rocky and Devin were pouring over files in the back seat. “Has anyone had a sense of anything?” Griffin asked pointedly.
“No,” Devin said.
“No. Which isn’t a bad thing, is it?” Vickie asked. “I mean, I’m sorry, it always seems so sad when someone is lingering years after a horrible event.”
Griffin nodded, smiling at her. “But then,” he reminded her, “you have those incredible souls like Dylan Ballantine. He’s strong, he stays to help.”
“He saved my life,” Vickie agreed. “And he and Darlene...love after death. Very nice, I...guess?”
“The cemetery is quite pretty, anyway,” Devin told them. “And, Vickie, I know you love the history in cemeteries. This one is lovely and intriguing.”
The cemetery was beautiful. Griffin drove through gates that informed them they had reached Oak Grove.
Devin pointed out the building that once been the “ladies’ comfort station” where Mr. and Mrs. Borden had received their second autopsies—and had their heads removed—prior to their burial.
“Death, and the investigation of it, has never been pretty,” Griffin commented.
“Crazy, though, huh? They kept the bodies in the house all night and the first autopsies were done on them there—with Lizzie in the house!” Vickie said. “It seems...barbaric.”
Griffin thought of many times he’d watched during an autopsy.
There was just no way to nicely rip up the human body.
“Maybe, years to come, there will be all new science—and they’ll look back at us as barbaric,” Griffin told her.
“Maybe we are barbaric,” she murmured.
Devin knew exactly where the Borden family was buried. They respectfully went to the graves; there, they talked about the fact that the wife of a Borden ancestor—years prior to the murders of Andrew and Abby—had gone into a terrible depression and tried to drown her children before killing herself. Two had drowned in the well; one had survived.
Naturally, the children were rumored to haunt the Borden house, next door to where their home had once been.
“So sad!” Vickie sad.
“The poor woman might have had help today. Those in the know seem to believe that she had postpartum depression. Medicine might have helped her.”
“Maybe,” Vickie murmured.
Griffin noticed the way that she looked out across the graveyard, as though she was expecting to see someone else there.
Vickie had discovered her own talent, curse, gift or ability when she had nearly been the victim of an escaped serial killer when she had been a teenager. The ghost of Dylan Ballantine, watching over his baby brother when Vickie was babysitting, had saved her life. And, in doing, opened a new world for her.
The world of the dead.
And now Vickie often saw the dead.
She had told him that the hundreds-of-years-old cemeteries of Boston weren’t actually all that haunted, but sometimes she did come upon a lively discussion between spirits, or, now and then, an old-timer complaining about the way the world had gone.
He did, of course, know the dead himself. He’d learned to deal with it as a child.
And Devin and Rocky had their experiences, as well.
But that day, he didn’t sense anything in the cemetery. He watched the others; Rocky noticed the way that he was looking at him and just shook his head.
Rocky had been a teenager, too, just about to graduate high school, when he’d heard a call in the night.
And found that a friend had been murdered, and that her cries had led him right to her.
Devin had grown up in what the neighbors had always considered to be a “witch” house, but she had actually been an adult when she had discovered what she was capable of seeing—who and what.
Vickie shielded her eyes from the sun looming above the cemetery.
She frowned and started walking.
“Vickie?” he murmured, starting after her.
Rocky caught his arm gently. He looked at his friend and fellow agent and nodded. He needed to let Vickie follow her own path.
They passed by an odd assortment of tombstones. Angels and cherubs.
The cemetery had been founded in the Victorian era; the art tended more toward the beautiful and ornate than the dire and horrible.
Vickie kept moving and they all followed at a distance, none of them seeing what she saw.
Then she stopped. She turned back to him, shaking her head.
“I don’t understand. I saw...someone. Someone beautiful and blonde hurrying this way. She turned and looked at me. She was so sad! And then...she was gone. Just gone.”
“Have you seen her before?” Devin asked.
“I think so. Yes. But...” Vickie said.
“But what?” Griffin asked her.
“This sounds crazy. I don’t know. They all seem to be beautiful blondes with heart-shaped or oval faces. Am I seeing one woman, or more than one woman? I don’t know!”
“Look where we’re standing,” Rocky said.
There was a beautiful marble angel in the center of the little hillock Vickie had come to, but the graves were all different, modern; none of them were ornate.
“Read the plaque,” Devin said dryly.
And they did. The angel was watching over victims. She had been purchased by the law officers of Bristol Country, Massachusetts.
A very simple grave with nothing but a name and dates lay before them.
The name upon it was Sheena Petrie.
* * *
Griffin stood a slight distance away from the others, watching the river roll by. He kept thinking about Vickie’s dreams.
Water seemed very important in the dreams. A large body of water.
The river was a large body of water, of course.
And Sheena Petrie had died here.
“A long time has gone by, but there are things you never forget,” Charlie Oakley told them. They were down on the bank of the river. The highway wasn’t far off; they could see bridges in the background, hear the rush of traffic from every direction. “Sheena Petrie lay right there. You can still see some of the landmarks in the crime scene photos. But if you couldn’t, well, I’d know where she was found. And the writing...they’ve widened the highway since she was killed, but we’re walking now where the words were written.”
Griffin held up the crime scene photos and compared them to the landscape that they saw. He could well imagine that Charlie Oakley had been haunted all his life by the scene he had encountered.
Devin, Rocky and Vickie looked over his shoulder, studying the photos, and then the landscape.
“Even now, with the highway widened, with cars here and there,” Rocky said, hunkering down where the letters had once scarred the earth, “this isn’t a bad place to leave a body. The trees along the embankment are still thick in places. We’re at a slope, and I think we’re about a mile out of town. By night, he could easily manage all this without being seen.”
“And the report says no blood,” Griffin noted, looking at Charlie Oakley.
He shook his head. “She was in the water at some point, and all the blood was washed away. Whether it all washed into the water or if it was taken for...some reason, we don’t know. But it wasn’t in her when she was found. She was white and cold and...so white. Drained of blood. Excuse me.”
Charlie Oakley walked back to the car.
Griffin watched the water. He thought of the dead. He imagined Sheena Petrie, and Helena Matthews, and nothing came to him.
He walked back to the others.
“Does anyone get anything here?” Griffin asked quietly. “A sense of her spirit, anything?”
They all looked at one another.
And then at Vickie.
“Nothing,” she said softly. “But we’ve all talked about this. If anything of Sheena Petrie does remain, it just doesn’t seem likely that she’d be here, where her life ended.”
“But you saw her today,” Devin said. “You did see her at the cemetery. She is here...somewhere. She’s trying to help. She’s been dead years now, but I think she hates seeing this happen to anyone else.”
Griffin considered Devin’s words. “The dream that plagues Vickie over and over again is always about a woman on an inverted cross, her throat slit,” he said. “It’s certainly possible that Sheena Petrie died in such a manner, but not at the hands of those young adults playing at Satanism. I think we need to seriously consider that whoever killed Sheena was just getting started back then.”
* * *
There seemed to be a lot of silence during the day.
Alex had received his breakfast—a tray with cornflakes, milk, a banana and coffee—and the tray had been picked up. He had received his lunch—ham and cheese on rye with an apple—in much the same way.
Breakfast and lunch had been dropped off by a red-cloaked figure.
Breakfast and lunch had been picked up by a red-cloaked figure.
He didn’t know if the same person had brought the tray and picked it up; they had both looked pretty much the same.
He knew he was supposed to be reading. Perfecting the incantation that would bring forth the devil.
It wasn’t that he hadn’t looked at the massive and ancient tomes brought before him.
He had; he had admired every book, awed by the preservation.
He had to admit, too, that since he was a scholar, there was a certain thrill—almost euphoric, when forgetting to panic—to be reading books that had been handwritten by Ezekiel Martin himself.
The books declared that the devil was as real as God. As he had so nearly been a minister, Ezekiel knew about God. God, however, was destined to lose out to Satan. Worshiping Satan was much better than worshipping God; Satan enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh—through his priests, of course, except at such times when he came to earth himself, and his flock was then well-rewarded.
Alex did a lot of paraphrasing in his own mind, but basically, to Ezekiel Martin, it was ridiculously obvious that Satan would win the day. God was terrified of people turning to Satan. People were terrified of other people turning to Satan. Satan wasn’t terrified at all. He was amused. He didn’t care if people went to God, because he knew that he would be the supreme ruler in the end.
God had sent down His Son.
That hadn’t worked out terribly well.
It was Satan’s turn. And he was ready. He had whispered in the night to Ezekiel, and he was ready and waiting for the signs to be right, the ceremony to be performed. Satan had high expectations from his servants on earth; Ezekiel meant to see that they were fulfilled.
Despite his fascination, Alex began to feel a creepy sensation, as if he was being watched. He wasn’t, of course—he was in his cell. A cell once meant for someone criminally insane. There was a little slot—food trays or other such materials could be passed through it—and there was a little door, head-height. Of course, it could only be opened from the outside.
But it was open.
He left his book and hurried over to the door and looked out.
She was standing there. She was tall and slim and ethereal, beautiful and blonde.
She looked like an angel.
He thought at first that she was in the hall alone. But she wasn’t. A red-clad figure was at her side.
She started to fall.
The figure quickly swept her up into his arms.
There was a sudden, hard bang against his door and he jumped back; he realized that someone was just outside the door.
Watching him.
The door opened, nearly sending him flying back. He caught his balance.
The red-cloaked figure walked in. He was alone. Alex wondered if he had imagined the woman—if she had been real.
If she had been an image from the past.
“Have you already found out everything that I need to know? You’re supposed to be reading,” the red-clad figure told him.
“I have been reading. I’m learning quite a bit.”
He couldn’t see the figure’s face; it was the high priest, though. The guy calling the shots. Head honcho of Satan, or whatever. Strange thing, though. He wasn’t always there. Or, at the least, he didn’t always come to talk to Alex. When he did, Alex somehow knew. The others...they were lackeys. This guy was the main guy.
“Curiosity killed the cat, you know,” red-cloak said. “You really should watch that.”
“If I weren’t curious, I wouldn’t be such an amazing researcher,” Alex said. He was scared, so scared, in fact, that it startled him that he wanted to try to hold his own.
Idiot! he told himself. Right or wrong, cool or coward, none of it matters if you’re dead.
And he’d already seen one headless body!
Alex, of course, had no idea what reaction he had drawn from his masked jailor. At least it wasn’t fury. It might have even been amusement.
“I like you, Alex,” the man said. “Since I do like you, let me warn you. Don’t think you can outsmart us. There is nothing that you can do. I actually like you so much that I’m considering the fact that maybe you’ll come around to where you get to live. You should come around,” he added huskily. He threw out an arm dramatically. “Satan is coming.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Alex said. “‘Hell’s afire and witches are real.’”
Okay, now he was really an idiot. What the hell was wrong with him?
“Hey!” Alex added quickly. “Maybe he is coming. The more I read, of course, the more sense that it makes. I mean, it is his turn, right? Satan’s turn, that is.”
“You don’t believe.”
“I haven’t really believed in much of anything—other than man’s inhumanity to man,” he said. “As you know, I’m a historian. You can’t help but get a lot of that.”
“And most obviously,” the man said, “you were not an English major.”
There was something that suddenly struck Alex as odd; he couldn’t place what.
Did he know the man?
“Don’t play games with me, or you will die. I know when you’re lying, and when you’re telling the truth. And right now, you think this is all a bunch of bunk. Well, think of it this way, Alex. Satan is coming. And he will either arrive in a streak of brimstone—or he’ll enter right into my flesh and blood and bone. Either way, he’ll kill you, Alex. Unless, of course, he does decide to let you live. That’s all going to be in the way that you come around, and the way that you behave. So, I’ll go back to where we started. Forget the woman. She’s not going to be here for you.” Alex sensed his smile. “I hope you did get some reading in. We need the place, Alex—the precise place where Ezekiel had his altar. And the precise words he used in his rite. You’ll have more time tomorrow. I am patient. This evening, you’re not going to feel so well.”
“Why?” Alex asked, moving back nervously. “I’m feeling fine.”
“Oh, you’re not going to hurt or feel sick or anything, just a little weak,” the man said. He moved back and two of his followers entered the room. Alex felt his mouth go dry.
They grabbed him by the arms. He was leaving his little cell. He was being dragged somewhere; they were going to do something to him.
He began to scream.
No one seemed to care.
* * *
They drove back to Boston for Griffin and Rocky to head to the station and study the endless pages of material they had received since the pictures of Audrey Benson, Helena Matthews and their red-haired Jane Doe had gone out in the press.
Devin accompanied Vickie to her apartment where they found Dylan Ballantine and Darlene—once again curled up on the sofa together, enjoying a season of The Walking Dead.
Dylan jumped up, clearly upset.
“You really need to leave a note or something. I didn’t know where you were. No one knew where you were. I even had Noah ask our parents for me, and they were oblivious—they have no idea that you’re involved in anything.”
“You’re a ghost,” Vickie said. “Dylan, I’m sorry. I didn’t think to leave a note.”
“I’m dead, not stupid or illiterate,” he informed her, talking to her as though she was a dumb little sister.
“Dylan!” Darlene warned, rising to squeeze his hand and smile at Vickie and Devin. “He was worried. I mean...we can’t be everywhere, you know. And you guys were just...well, you were gone.”
“It’s okay,” Vickie said. She looked at Dylan. “I’m sorry. We’re going to be heading out again. I’m not sure exactly where we’re going.”
Devin’s phone rang. She answered and they all looked at her as she listened to the person at the other end, replying here and there with monosyllables.
“What’s going on?” Vickie asked her.
“Okay, so, I know where we’re going.”
“Where?” Vickie asked.
“Barre.”
“Barre, Massachusetts?” Dylan asked.
“Yes. It seems that they finally pinpointed Alex Maple’s phone,” she said.
“And it’s in Barre?” Vickie asked, trying to keep her voice steady. They’d found Alex’s phone. It could mean they were coming closer to finding Alex.
Or it could mean that her friend was dead.
“Not exactly,” Devin said. “It was actually at the bottom of the Quabbin. They had state police divers go down. Barre is the closest city to the area where it was discovered.”
“Toward the west,” Vickie said thoughtfully. “Four towns had to be destroyed to form the Quabbin. And, I believe, if it had been standing at the time the reservoir was formed, Jehovah might have barely made the cut.”
“I still don’t understand,” Devin said. “Where exactly is this place? It doesn’t sound to me as if there is an exact location that anyone can really pinpoint.”
“There are theories,” Vickie said.
“But if there isn’t an exact, how come? Is there an almost exact? I’m thinking that there has to be an educated guess exact? I think we were so inundated with the stories of the witch hysteria, we never found out enough about Ezekiel Martin. He was a known rebel, and known to commit murder—without any kind of spectral evidence coming into the mix. Now, of course, everyone knows that the so-called Salem witches weren’t witches at all—and if they’d confessed to being witches instead of risking their souls with a lie as they saw it, they wouldn’t have been executed. But here’s the thing. Ezekiel Martin was a murderer. He deserved the punishment for murder. And he claimed that he could summon Satan.”
“Ezekiel Martin took his own life—slit his throat—when his people panicked and started to desert him.” Vickie elaborated for her. “I believe when Charles II had his men come in, he was truly weary of the restrictive bull that had cost his father his head. Okay, so Charles I did believe in the divine right of kings and was kind of an arrogant bastard, but all in all, not really such a bad one. Still, while most historians say that Charles II showed admirable constraint against the enemies who had done in his father, he wasn’t exactly any man’s fool. And his commander in the field, Captain Magnus Grayson, knew what Charles II’s opinion of a man like Martin would have been. No doubt about it, Ezekiel Martin would have been executed, so it’s not a terrible surprise that he took his own life.”
“Slashed his throat,” Devin said. “That’s meaningful, I think. He slashed his own throat.”
“Well, there’s definitely a pattern. We don’t really know a lot about the crime in 1804, but we do know that the saying was used, and we could reasonably presume that whoever was killed also had their throat cut,” Vickie murmured.
Devin looked at Vickie unhappily. “I don’t want to believe that Helena Matthews is dead—no one does. But the amount of blood that was thrown at you was...was a lot. If she had her throat slit, too, I’m afraid that it’s part of the ritual being carried out.”
“Then why take Alex? It’s so frustrating,” Vickie said.
Devin nodded and smiled slightly. “It is frustrating work—but it can be rewarding, too.”
“Oh, I know! It’s just that Alex became my friend when he helped me with the Undertaker case. People did die, but some did live—including me!—so I care about him, and I owe him.”
“We need to come with you,” Dylan said.
“Out to Barre?” Vickie asked. “But, Dylan, your family is here, in Boston.”
“I spent plenty of time down in New York City with you when you were in college,” Dylan reminded Vickie.
“But when Noah and your parents were in danger, it was so important that you were here,” Vickie said.
“They’re not in danger—you’re in danger,” he told Vickie. “And besides, what? I could be in danger? I could die young?” He looked at the two of them determinedly. “You haven’t come across anyone else ready to help you on this, right? I mean, to be specific, anyone dead?”
Vickie glanced at Devin, who was smiling. She shook her head.
“No,” Vickie admitted.
“Shocking, really. These victims should be bitter and hateful and longing for justice somewhere along the line for someone!”
“There is someone out there. I see her, and then she disappears. I think that she may be a woman whose name was Sheena Petrie. She was killed in Fall River in 1980 and the truth regarding her death was never discovered.”
“I know what it’s like to be adrift, a remnant left behind, lost and unable to touch the world of the living,” Darlene said quietly. “We just might be able to help.”
“And we’re going to need two cars, anyway,” Devin said.
“I guess...” Vickie murmured.
“You guess?” Dylan asked.
“I guess you’re coming with us,” Vickie said.