Where am I? God, help me.
She pulled her legs in, pushed back and sat up against an iron-railed headboard. A knee-length silk slip graced her body. Her left leg moved freely, her right leg felt numb and tingly. She pushed the blanket away from her right foot.
Oh, my God, it’s tied with rope. She tugged and tried to scream. No sound came out. She glanced toward the window as an ambulance siren approached, then retreated. Part of a flashing sign became visible.
W-e-l...t-o...R-e-n, she thought, reading part of the sign. It didn’t make sense. Did I get drunk and picked up at bar? Where is Jeb? Alarming thoughts streamed through her head. Little people? Who are those little people? She squinted toward the far wall of the room, and instinctively reached toward a nightstand by the bed for glasses. Hah, dolls, Barbie dolls, she thought. Maybe a hundred or more. Each doll wore a separate and distinct set of clothes. All were female dolls with various colors of long hair. Wow, the best collection I’ve ever seen. For the moment, she forgot about her troubles and stared at the doll-filled ten-foot-wide shelf.
She mulled over the letters on the sign outside the window. W-e-l? Maybe Welcome? Welcome to Ren? Hah, Welcome to RenCen; it’s the Detroit Renaissance Center. I’m somewhere near the Detroit River. She now noticed a giant waving hand of changing neon lights. I’ve never seen anything like that downtown before.
Flushing water jarred her thoughts. Fear returned as she waited for someone to appear at the door near the other side of the bed.
Jeb? Is that you? Please, be you.
“Jeb, please help me,” she said. The words finally came out as a human figure approached through the doorway.
“Who the fuck is Jeb? Who are you talking to? What did I tell you about making noise here? Do you want Gunter to hurt you again? Do you?” The grey-haired man approached, lunged his right hand toward her face, slapping her left cheek.”
“No, please, don’t.”
Chapter 45
Harry Lopez sat rigidly in bed reading the journal he brought from home. Decontamination made the old pages dry and brittle. Two men, casually dressed, stood behind the glass in the observation area, waiting for Lopez to respond. They whispered while reviewing several pages of notes each had made.
“I know the statement is in here. Damn, there goes another page. How am I going to complete my work with all these ripped pages? Ah, here it is. It says...oh, hi Dr. Grace. Have you met Mr. Paul and Mr. Rubin from Wayne State? They are going to publish my theories. At last, someone believes in them.”
“Gentlemen,” Dr. Grace acknowledged the two men as he walked into the room. “Allow me to introduce Jeb Porter and Louis Dingman from the Detroit Times. They are helping me document today’s activities.”
“Reporters? We’ve met. Where’s that pretty sidekick of yours?” Lopez asked.
Porter felt awkward. “She’s ah—”
“She’s another patient,” Dr. Grace said.
“Too bad. Hope she’s going to be okay. To continue, it says here opposing forces of gravity can warp light and therefore reality and time. Hogwash, it’s the other way around as I’ve been telling you.”
“Not to kibitz into your wonderful dissertation, but could I get a brief synopsis of the discussion taking place here?” Dingman asked.
“Sure, it’s all written down.” Lopez held up a letter-sized sheet jammed with formulas and images of connected bubbles. “It’s really quite simple. Gravity as a force does not pull toward the center of an object with mass, but rather pushes toward the center from the outer rim of an invisible bubble around the mass.”
“Okay...what does that mean to a lay person like me?” Dingman asked, pointing his camera toward Lopez.
“It means the rim line between bubbles of gravity can be used to traverse the universe in days and hours versus light years.”
Dingman looked at the two men outside the observation window.
“His theories oppose everything we know or assume to know about gravity, but his calculations make a strong case. We have accessed a super computer to check them. But even if they do, we have no practical way to prove them,” the man, introduced as Rubin, said.
“How could that get by NASA? We’ve been to the moon and sent satellites to the outer planets. Wouldn’t we know if this were true?” Porter asked.
“NASA keeps a list of unanswered issues and anomalies they have encountered. It’s a surprisingly long list of unknowns documented about how gravity works. Every year, a new set of PhD candidates reviews the list for thesis material. Mr. Lopez is one of those candidates,” the other man said.
Lopez’ face flushed suddenly revealing red marks on his forehead similar to those displayed by Montagno earlier. His eyes grew red and vicious as he struggled to talk. His body became limp and fell back onto a waiting pillow.
“Whoa, he’s giving us the evil look,” Porter said.
“Is he all right? His face is about to explode,” Dingman said.
“Not good, not good,” Dr. Grace said, pressing a black button on the wall. “Gentlemen, please return to the waiting room.” The two men behind the glass nodded as the glass turned translucent. “Nurse, I need routine six followed—stat!” The doctor shouted toward the ceiling into an open microphone.
Dingman and Porter backed up to the wall by the doorway, each with video camera in hand pointed at Lopez.
“See that, his head is swelling,” Porter whispered.
“You keep your camera on him. I will keep mine on the doctor,” Dingman said. Porter nodded.
A nurse rushed into the room carrying a large needle and two vials of liquid. The doctor siphoned the first vial of reddish liquid into the needle and jammed it into Lopez’ neck. He then siphoned the second vial of white liquid into the same needle and injected it into Lopez’ lower back.
“If he hemorrhages we need to be ready for surgery,” the doctor explained. He handed the needle and vials back to the nurse and waved Porter and Dingman over to the bed. Porter hesitated, following Dingman.
“Has this ever happened before—has a head actually blown up?” Dingman asked.
“Highly unlikely, but yes, in a sense. The brain hemorrhages, pressure builds up and liquid discharges from every orifice, you know, eyes, ears, nose and mouth. I think we stopped it. The redness on the face and eyes and swelling appear to be a final immune response to the virus and Ergot poisoning. He should be on the downhill run now. He might clear up completely by tomorrow.”
“Is Katie going to go through this response as well?” Porter said, fidgeting with his camera.
“Perhaps.”
“Shouldn’t someone be watching over her? What if it happens and you’re not there?”
“She’s being monitored for it. If I’m not there, another doctor will respond.”
“Speaking of Miss Kottle, did either of you hear her voice calling out in the hallway,” Dingman said, walking toward the room entrance. “She was yelling for Jeb.”
“Let’s go,” Porter said. The doctor agreed.
~ ~ ~
“She recognizes me,” Porter said, looking into the room, waiting for the ion generator to stop. “Shit, one side of her face has dark red streaks. Is she about to blow like Lopez?”
The buzzing stopped and the three men entered Kottle’s room. She sat in bed with folded arms around her bent legs. She rocked slightly as she rubbed her right foot and sniffled.
“Jeb, he hit me. He had me trapped in bed. I was so afraid.”
Porter wavered, approaching her slowly. She reached out. He raised his arms and clutched her hands.
“It looks like someone slapped your face,” Porter said, looking closer at what appeared to be finger-like red marks.
“This terrible man was there. He hit me. My right leg was tied to the bed. I couldn’t get away.”
Dingman lifted his video camera and stayed several feet away as Dr. Grace moved closer to inspect her face.
“Aha,” he said, grasping her chin and turning her
head slightly. “Let me see your leg.” Kottle lifted her right leg slightly, revealing red-chafed skin around the ankle. “Here, chew this and swallow quickly. You’ll feel better.” The doctor removed Porter’s hand from her right hand and placed a quarter-sized blue pill into it. Kottle obliged, popping the pill into her mouth. “There now relax. Gentlemen, I would like you both to step outside. I need to give Dr. Kottle an exam.” The doctor made a sheepish grin and waited.
Dingman nodded and backed away.
Porter stuttered, “Huh, oh...yeah, sorry. I get it.”
“You are some piece of work,” Dingman said, pulling on Porter’s earflaps.
~ ~ ~
“So, what do you think he’s looking for?” Porter asked Dingman as the two men waited in the hall.
“Do not know. Perhaps clues of being with another man.”
“What? You’re not serious.”
“She talked about being in a strange room with a man who had her tied up and hit her. The outward manifestations are on her face and leg. My guess is the doctor thinks there is an outside chance manifestations of having sex with the man will show up too.”
“I can assure you I’m the only person she’s been with.”
“So you admit to a relationship beyond friendship?”
“Come on, you knew we’ve been together for the last year.”
“So does Pillbock.”
“Yeah, I figured he knew. Are we really helping here? Where is the structure? Where is the list of questions we should ask? How are we helping?”
“My boy, we are going to make a mostly unknown doctor famous. Seems like the obvious agenda. What we need is more outside research about Ergot, nineteenth century witchcraft, Hantaviruses, and other connected historic events.”
“While I’d love to stay and console Katie, I’ll volunteer to leave and do research.”
“Pillbock wants both of us here. He has assigned two other cub reporters to support us. I already have them off exploring as we speak.”
“That’s crap.”
“You will have the byline and get to actually help write the story, they will not.”
Porter half-heartedly agreed.
Dr. Grace approached through the doorway. “Well, whatever we witnessed has disappeared.”
“Excuse me,” Dingman said.
“She is back to normal. No mole, no facial marks, no leg marks—nothing.”
“Er...what about her...ah...”
“Nothing conclusive. All physical marks vanished before I could get a good look.”
A nurse walked toward them with a small envelope in one hand.
“Here are the results of the pathology test on the mole sample,” she said, handing the envelope to the doctor. He quickly opened it.
“Aha, not her DNA.”
“Are you saying that isn’t Katie?” Porter asked.
“No, it means we have an unexplained metaphysical occurrence to deal with. If we had DNA from her twin, it might resolve the issue.”
“Are you saying she somehow traded places with her twin, Rachel?”
“Not possible in the realm of science I deal with. Twins have been known to share DNA, and even absorb DNA of the other twin, though. For example, her liver could have different DNA than her skin.”
“Wouldn’t that destroy the confidence for all DNA testing?”
“It’s very rare, and if there is a court case involving twins or triplets, then more tests are required these days.”
“If I could make a phone call, I could get someone looking into this immediately,” Dingman said.
“No problem, press your right earflap and wait for the voice command.”
Dingman pressed the earflap.
“Please say a command,” a voice responded.
“Call...call 313, 555, 5151. Cory? This is Louis. I need...” Dingman continued talking to Pillbock. Porter and Dr. Grace returned into Kottle’s room.
~ ~ ~
“What the...” Porter remarked.
“My dear, please return to the bed. You’ve been through a major ordeal; you need rest,” the doctor said, approaching Kottle as she stood facing the observation window. Her hospital gown became untied, revealing her naked backside.
“She’s drawing a picture with lipstick. Where did she get lipstick?”
“Jeb,” she turned her head slightly, “this is the room I was in. See, a wall of Barbie dolls here, and a window, and—”
“Get back into bed, your butt is hanging out,” Porter said, embarrassed.
“Aha, let her continue; she could lose this memory in an instant,” the doctor said, adjusting her gown and tying the strap.
“This is the sign I saw. I think it might be near one of the casinos. It had flashing lights and a waving hand. The letters were W-e-l and t-o and R-e-n. I bet it’s: Welcome to RenCen.”
“There’s no matching sign near here. You said you were in ‘Neevadad.’ Does that make sense?”
“I did? I talked to you?”
Porter looked to Dr. Grace for guidance.
“Yes, you believed you were Rachel, your twin sister.”
Katie stared briefly at the doctor, then looked at Porter for answers.
“You know, I told you up north. You thought you saw your twin, Rachel, in the mirror.”
“I did? I don’t have a twin sister. What’s going on here? I...I...” Kottle stammered, lowered her head and began crying.
“Here, my dear, please sit,” the doctor led her back to bed. “It’s all coming back. She may go into shock. Nurse, IV with Valium stat.” A nurse quickly appeared at the doorway, rolled in an IV bottle on a hanger with one hand and carried a small needle in the other.
Kottle flung her head back, violently flipping her eyelids, as the nurse stuck the IV needle into her right arm.
“Rachel, no. Rachel, no...” she repeated, then fell relaxed onto the bed asleep.
“You’ll need to be gentle and very understanding for the next couple of weeks as she adjusts her mind around the fateful day when Rachel was abducted.”
“I understand,” Porter said, as Dingman entered the room.
“Whoa, what just happened here?”
“Another dose of reality. Look, she drew a picture of the room she thought she was in,” Porter said.
“Wel to Ren?” Dingman said, reading the text scribbled into the picture of a shade-drawn window on the glass. “What is this?” Dingman asked.
“I believe it’s supposed to be a waving hand.”
“Oh, I see it now. Welcome to Reno—Reno, Nevada. Been there many times. The sign is near the main highway into the city.”
“Neevadad. Holy crap, she was saying Nevada. You thinking what I’m thinking?” Porter asked.
“It is a long shot, but what the hell; let us pursue it.”
“Gentlemen, you just got a step ahead of me,” the doctor said, taking Kottle’s pulse.
“If any of what Katie’s talked about is true, we might be close to solving a 16-year-old case of kidnapping,” Porter explained.
“I would very much doubt it, but if there is a chance, then why not. I must caution you, though, not to get her hopes up, or those of Ida Kottle. Miss Kottle might simply be acting out a TV show she has seen recently.
“Pillbock will take the chance I bet,” Dingman said, tapping his earflap.
“Wait, let’s think this through. We call Pillbock; he calls the Reno police; they get a warrant to search apartments in the area; they come up clean; we look like idiots, or worse; and the Times gets sued.”
“Damn, I hate it when you make sense,” Dingman said, pausing. “Bugger it, let Pillbock decide. What do we care; we are just reporters doing our job.”
“I agree. Go for it. If there truly is a Rachel we will all be famous, and of course Katie will have her sister back.”
The doctor smiled and waved a thumb up.
Dingman winked, “I see talk shows in our future.”
Chapter 46
Moses Carpe
nter adjusted the white-hooded robe, hiding his face, as he slowly walked through the alley leading to his former home in Oak Park. The divorce had taken everything from him. His ex-wife had not remarried, and they had no children. He grimaced at the uncut and scraggly lawn, which he once treasured and preened constantly. The small brick home had a large add-on family room connected to the back. An aboveground swimming pool, half filled with green water and leaves, covered most of the backyard near the house remodeled for children he would never have.
He rubbed his eyes removing the blur. His hands wiped away bright red liquid, which he dabbed on the robe. He darted around the pool and jammed his body against a rear door leading to the kitchen. It gave way without force. She doesn’t keep it locked, he thought. She deserves to be robbed.
Carpenter heard voices emanating from the living room. His wife talked to a man about...he listened intently...about him. The man wanted to know if his wife had seen him or talked to him since the murder. She sniffled and replied, “No.” The man asked her if she would come downtown and answer a few questions, and maybe she could help save her ex-husband and others from future harm. She agreed.
What do they think, I’m the killer? I’m no killer...I’m no...killer...killer. He could not exorcise the thought. It heaved forward in his mind as he quietly opened a kitchen drawer, removed a large butcher knife and stepped into the hall leading to the living room. The front door opened, then closed. He ran forward into the living room holding the knife in his right hand behind his back. He watched through the front-door window as a uniformed man escorted his wife into a waiting police car and drove off. His prized Lincoln remained in the driveway.
I can use the car. I will go downtown and convince them I am not a killer. Father Fellorday was my friend...my only friend.
~ ~ ~
Carpenter stood in the shower, slowly drying and dabbing his skin, removing bloodstains. He took several antihistamine pills prior, and they were taking affect. The red mucus around his eyes stopped flowing. He stepped out of the shower and closely faced the mirror over the sink.
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