Dark Rites

  They were at the hospital, outside Gloria’s room. Vickie still seemed baffled—willing to help, but baffled.

  “A hypnotist got nowhere, but you think that I can do something?” Vickie asked Barnes.

  “I think she reacts to you,” Barnes said. “Vickie, this case just seems to grow and grow. Gloria’s a connector. She could remember things today. She could remember them in five years, according to both the doctor and the hypnotist. Unless something jars her memory.”

  “And I’m that something,” Vickie said.

  Barnes shrugged.

  “Okay. But here’s a suggestion. Get me a puppy.”

  “What?”

  “She reacted to having had a puppy. Did she mention what kind?”

  “A yellow Lab.”

  “Find me a yellow Lab,” Vickie said.

  “I can do that,” Barnes said. “You want to go in with her now?”

  “Where’s her doctor?”

  “Her primary physician is off today,” Barnes told her. “The on-call doctor is seriously busy with a patient down the hall.”

  Griffin shook his head, wondering how Barnes had managed to get another patient to keep the doctor occupied.

  “I’ll go in with Vickie,” Griffin said. “Barnes, find that puppy, please. Oh! And what about Milton Hanson?” He’d told Barnes that the man who had apparently been with Helena Matthews when she had last been seen was a dead ringer for the professor.

  “I have men looking for him. He didn’t respond at his residence. But don’t worry—we’ll find him.”

  Vickie looked at Griffin. “Smarmy,” she reminded him beneath her breath.

  Gloria looked better than she had the last time they had seen her—even though it hadn’t been long at all. Her color was better—she didn’t seem as pinched and strung out as she had, either.

  She blinked, and then almost smiled when Vickie walked in ahead of Griffin.

  And then she said her name.

  “Vickie.”

  Vickie nodded, smiling. “You remember me.”

  “You saved my life. You and...” She paused, looking around and seeing Griffin, but no one else. “The other agent,” she said. “Oh, nothing against you, sir!” she told Griffin. “But I was told that Vickie and her agent friend saved my life.”

  “And that’s true,” Griffin assured her.

  “We still need to know why you wanted to take your life, Gloria,” Vickie said.

  “I don’t want to take my life!” Gloria said fervently. “I don’t know why I did what I did, except that they’re out there. And I know that if we don’t do what we’re supposed to do, it’s worse. He’ll find us.”

  “Who will find you?” Griffin asked.

  Gloria thought about that. “Satan himself, I think.”

  “Satan,” Griffin murmured.

  “He told us that we believe in God, and if there is God, then there is Satan,” she said. “And...if we carry out his tasks, we sit with the great and those who are rewarded. If we don’t... I’ve seen what they do. It was better...” She stopped speaking, perplexed again. “And I’m so sorry. I know I should remember things, but I don’t. There are snatches of things that come back, but...” She broke off, shaking her head.

  “I think you’re already doing better,” Vickie said pleasantly.

  “Yes?” Gloria asked hopefully.

  “Yeah. Well, you were living somewhere before you came here. I don’t think that you were staying in Boston. I think you were out by the Quabbin somewhere,” Vickie said.

  “The Quabbin,” Gloria said softly. “Yes, the reservoir. We used to do nature walks there.”

  “When you were a child?” Vickie asked her.

  “No. No...not long ago. We would walk and look for things. For landmarks.”

  “By the Quabbin,” Vickie said.

  “And do you know what you were looking for?” Griffin asked her.

  “There was a hill, a very pleasant hill, with a beautiful valley. And it was all surrounded by rich forests. There was an area where granite struck out of the earth, and it formed a natural podium, and it was where the high priests could speak to their flocks. And it was where...”

  “Where what?” Griffin persisted.

  Gloria turned to look at him. “It was where they gave to him that which was his. It was where they were before, years before... It’s where he will come now.”

  Griffin glanced at Vickie.

  “He had you looking for Jehovah?”

  “Yes. Jehovah is out there, so near. Jehovah is key. He must find Jehovah. When he is there, he will find the granite high altar. The place where the words were written is there, by the granite. And when he finds it, we will bring Satan to earth, and be richly rewarded,” Gloria said. She blinked and shook her head. “I don’t want a reward. I just remember that there would be a reward. I—I don’t know what I wanted,” she said. “They...they all liked me. It was like...having a home.”

  “You were with a group of people. There was someone who was a high priest, and you all flocked around him, right?” Vickie asked.

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “And you remember walking around the Quabbin?” Griffin asked.

  “Yes, we had to find the hill and the granite shelf that made a podium. And there was a patch of land before it. Ezekiel Martin wrote into the earth. He knew that Satan was coming.”

  “Satan was coming,” Vickie murmured, “but Captain Magnus Grayson, under the authority of King Charles II, made it first.”

  “I didn’t even want Satan to come!” Gloria whispered. She frowned. “But... Martin. I thought that maybe we were related. I think that it was one of my names. That’s what he told me.”

  “That’s what who told you?” Griffin asked.

  “The high priest. He serves as Satan’s voice and body on earth, while we await the coming.”

  “Do you remember where you met the high priest?” Vickie asked.

  Gloria stared at her blankly. Then it seemed that her face brightened and new energy filled the whole of her body. “Music! I was at a concert. A concert in the park. It was...a big park. It wasn’t far from that big building that used to be a museum. It was full of all kinds of arms and armor, but now...they moved the stuff to an art museum. But the park isn’t far. There were a number of acts. A really great Beatles group. Some guys who did... Dylan! They did a bunch of Dylan.”

  “Guys? Or a brother-and-sister act?” Vickie asked.

  Gloria nearly jumped out of the bed. “Yes! A brother-and-sister act. They were very good!”

  The duo. Cathy and Ron Dearborn.

  She went on to name several of the cover songs the sister and brother did, songs that Vickie had seen them perform.

  “So, you met the high priest at a music concert. What did he look like?” Griffin asked her.

  “Oh, he...”

  Gloria went dead blank again. “I... I remember his voice. I remember him saying that I should join with him, that it was wonderful, that it was sweet music all the time. He had such a way about him, such a smile, such a tone of voice...”

  “But you don’t remember what he looked like?”

  “Red. He wore red. Like a sheet over his face. No...like a cloak and then a weird headdress kind of a thing, and then—I think it hung from the hood he was wearing.”

  “He wasn’t wearing anything like that at a concert, was he?” Vickie asked.

  “No...”

  “Will you help a sketch artist lay out what you do remember?” Griffin asked her.

  “Of course—but it’s just a mask. Or a scarf, or a little sheet. His eyes...they gleam. I think that they gleam all the time. As if hell’s fires are really alive in him.”

  Griffin and Vickie looked at o
ne another.

  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.”

  “Well,” Vickie said, aggravated. “I don’t believe that the real killer here—the man behi
nd it all, head Satanist or whatever—believes in his cause. He’s a horrible human being, evil—for real! But there’s something else he wants that has nothing to do with Satan. Griffin, call Barnes again, please,” Vickie said. “We really need to know if he’s found Milton Hanson yet.”

  Griffin pulled out his phone, although he looked as if he wanted to tell her that he would have let them know immediately if they’d found the man.

  He spoke briefly with Barnes. “No Hanson,” he told Vickie. “But he said that it’s important that we get out to the Quabbin as quickly as possible.”

  “Something has happened there?” Vickie asked.

  He nodded.

  “Another body has been found.”

  * * *

  Griffin was glad that young doctor Evan Graves was the medical examiner they met when they reached the end of the road—literally, the end of the road, as it continued, but did so right into the water. Graves was knowledgeable and serious, and he was with the remains—which had been removed to the back of an ambulance—when they reached the spot.

  “Remember what I was telling you about our other victim?” he asked Griffin. “This girl is down to bone. And, of course, the bone is why I know that we’re looking at a young woman. Probably about the same age as the last victim we found.”

  “But this girl was killed earlier, right?” Griffin asked.

  “I’d say she was killed a month before the other girl. You have two victims here...and I’m afraid that a year ago we also found another body. I wasn’t working here at the time, and they had it down as a bear attack.”

  “The divers will have to keep looking for...more bodies,” Griffin said.

  “Yes,” Dr. Graves told him. “Look. Look here.”

  He paused and pointed to what should have been the victim’s neck. There was barely anything there anymore—and whether what was there was muscle or sinew, Griffin didn’t know.

  “Right where I’m pointing,” Graves said.