“I’ll take the Forest Field,” Gina said.
“That leaves the lab and office. I guess I’ll take that.”
“What about me?” Alex asked. The others turned toward him, then away as if embarrassed. Alex cleared his throat. “What should I do?”
Vinny tried to find a smile. “Pray.”
Alex blinked. “I need to do something,” he said hoarsely. “I need to move.”
“Then take the church.”
“The church?”
Vinny held Alex’s eyes with his own. “The church is connected, too. Mata fact, the church is even more central than the Forest Field when you think about it. Go through St. Stand’s records, see if you can find something – anything – that could be connected to what’s going on. I have a feeling this isn’t Lucien’s first attempt to be free, so if he tried to get free before…”
“—what happened then?” Alex finished, and for the first time, his face had color. Hope, Vinny thought, he’s got the color of hope.
“That’s a good point,” Marcus said. “Are the church records stored there?”
Alex nodded. “Baptismal records, confirmation records, marriage certificates…”
“Death certificates,” Vinny finished. “Go through them, Alex, as best you can. Start with – what was it? 1626?”
“St. Stand’s wasn’t built until 1789,” Alex said.
“So start there. I can’t believe Lucien would wait 350 years to try to get free. I’m willing to bet the son of a bitch tried way before us.”
Marcus turned to Kate. “I can drop you at the Historical Society on my way to Bo’s apartment.”
“Thanks for the offer,” Kate replied, “But I think I’ll walk.”
Vinny understood. Kate needed to get her feet back on Chelsea ground. Rising, he reached for his jacket. “We’ll meet back here in what, three, four hours?” They nodded and as they pushed back chairs and stood, Vinny realized he had one more thing to say. “Whatever you do,” he started, and then realized he didn’t have to say it after all. They all knew, it was on their faces, in the tight, tense way they stood. He said it anyway, just to let the words hang in the air. “For God’s sake, be careful.”
“Forget about God’s sake,” Alex said as he slid his arms into his coat. “Be careful for your own.”
Chapter 28
Kate
Kate stepped onto the front porch, drawing her coat tighter around her. There was a chill in the air, a coolness that spoke of fall and the smell of wood smoke, apple picking and raking leaves, but that was autumn in Vermont, not fall in Chelsea. And God knew, there was a world of difference between the two.
She walked down the stairs that led to the sidewalk, one hand on the railing, the other in her pocket. The wind lifted her hair, blew it backwards and she wished she had brought a scarf. She hadn’t packed for the weather – admit it, Katrenjia. You didn’t pack at all. You threw a couple of things into a suitcase on auto-pilot – and now she was regretting her lack of foresight.
Foresight. Actually, that was amusing. While Kate was rather strong on hindsight, foresight was a serious shortcoming. Or so her ex-husband always said. Dana. Funny, she hadn’t thought his name in months and now, twice within two days, she’d willingly invoked his memory. Kate stood on the sidewalk, looking across the street at a patch of weeds and ragged grass they had played in as children. It didn’t look as wild as she remembered, it didn’t resemble a field or a forest. It was a lot. That was all. A vacant lot.
No, Bo spoke in her mind, it was more than that. So so much more.
Kate turned left and walked down the street she had grown up on. She had forgotten so much. The oil tanks at the bottom of Blood Hill. The warehouse on the edge of the Atlantic. The dog pound by Quigley Park—
“Run, Katie! Run!” Bo shrieked, but she was laughing, a high, mad sound that spoke as much to fear as it did to humor and then Katie saw why Bo was yelling and she turned on her heels and ran as fast as she could because somehow Bo had opened the locked door to the pound and the dogs—
“Dozens of them,” Kate said aloud –
---streaked behind them, barking as they raced to freedom, their tails wagging, paws digging up tufts of grass as they ran down the strip of ground that ran the length of Essex Street. And right behind them came the dog pound man, dressed in a brown work uniform, Wallace stitched in blue on his shirt pocket. He ran behind the fleeing dogs, screaming, “Get back here, you mangy mutts!! Get your doggone arses back here NOW!”
“Oh, that’ll work,” Bo giggled as she ran into an alley, Katie right behind her. “Sure, mister, that’ll bring them back. They love the way you sweet-talk.”
And Kate giggled because—
“It was fun, being with you.” Kate was filled with an aching loss, not for the time she’d lost with Bo over the years, but for the past itself, for the innocence she’d once had. “It was always fun, Bo.”
She walked on, past the school yard where the Boston Strangler used to play, past the warehouses by the waterfront and then she crossed Riley’s Roast Beef to Broadway. Katz Bagel Shop was still on the corner. The smell of baking bread made Kate’s mouth water. On impulse, she went in.
Exactly as she remembered it. Long ovens behind a narrow counter, bagels of every variety in wire baskets behind a glass display case. A man in an apron came out when Kate shut the door behind her. He was tall and thin, save for the bowling ball gut.
“Help you?” when he spoke, she saw that he was missing a front tooth.
“Do you still make pizza bagels?”
“Course,” the man said. Without asking her if she wanted one, he pulled an onion bagel from its bin, split it in two. As he ladled on homemade tomato sauce, he glanced up at her.
“Do I know you?” he asked.
“Maybe. I lived here when I was a kid.”
He stopped sprinkling mozzarella cheese to look at her full. “Katrenjia Kowalski!” he said.
She was astonished. “Yes, but how--”
“You look just like your mother. I went to school a couple years behind you. Dominic Lapreza.” He stuck out a hand and Kate shook it. Smiling a little, he added a sprinkle of spice to the pizza bagel and using a long handled paddle, put it into the oven. “What brings you back to Chelsea?”
“A good friend of mine passed away. I came back for her funeral.”
The smile slid from the man’s face and his eyes filled with sadness. “Bo was a great, great lady,” he said.
“You knew Bo?”
“Course. She was one of my best customers.”
He opened the oven door again and took the bagel out. Melted cheese bubbled and Kate’s stomach grumbled. He put the pizza bagel on a paper plate, handed her a napkin. She reached into her pocketbook for her wallet, but he stopped her with a hand.
“No charge,” he said. “Bo was a good friend.”
Kate would have thanked him, but didn’t trust herself to speak. She went out of the shop, the pizza bagel in her hands.
Well, for petey’s sake, don’t let that go to waste! Bo’s voice again and Kate pulled herself together. She took a tentative bite. As soon as the sauce hit her tongue, she closed her eyes. Delicious. Maybe even better than she remembered. See? Now you know why I was a regular. Dominic makes an even better pizza bagel than his father did.
“I agree,” Kate murmured. Taking small bites, she continued her walk.
Across from Katz’s Bagels was the butcher shop and Kate glanced at the picture window as she walked past, expecting to see dead chickens hanging upside down, freshly plucked and oddly naked, but the shop was empty, the glass soaped over. She felt that pang again, the quick tightening of her heart. So many things were gone.
Bo’s house was just down the block and Kate slowed down as she reached the corner, waiting for the light to change. The neighborhood had gone to seed. The buildings were falling down, the clapboards in desperate need of paint. Chain-link fences ringed patches of cracked concrete and rusting swing sets. It loo
ked nothing like the city of her youth. It was…sordid.
The light changed and Kate crossed the street swiftly, wanting to be done now. Halfway down the block, Kate’s steps slowed, then stopped.
The cherry tree was still there. She began to walk again, no longer in a hurry, her eyes following the canopy of green that spanned the distance between Mrs. Ritzi’s house and Bo’s. The cherry tree had been a thing of neighborhood pride. It had also been an object of war between the neighborhood children and old Mrs. Ritzi. Mrs. Ritzi sprayed the cherries with some kind of poison so the neighborhood kids wouldn’t climb the fence and steal the sweet, black fruit. She did it, she said, to keep the children “safe.”
“Someday,” she’d said in her querulous old lady voice, “some child is going to fall off that fence and break his neck and I’ll not have it said I was to blame.”
Mrs. Ritzi didn’t eat the fruit that grew on her trees. She just liked to look at it. And if she didn’t eat the fruit, why should anyone else. At least, that’s what Bo said.
“Mrs. Ritzi,” Kate murmured under her breath. “I wonder if she’s still alive.”
She looked carefully at the house as she walked past, but the windows were dark, the shades down. If Mrs. Ritzi was still alive, she had to be over ninety. And probably still spraying cherries with poison, Kate thought. The house Bo grew up in was quiet. The shades were down here, too. Bo had moved closer to downtown years before, Kate knew. Mrs. Caveleska lived here still, she rented out rooms, Alex said. Strangers slept in Bo’s room now. She swallowed the last bite of bagel, wiped her mouth and shoved the napkin into her pocket.
Broadway was shaped like a giant Y. The center of the Y was made of back-to-back shops, fruit stands and green grocers on one side, pizza and florist shops on the other. The apex of the Y was the drugstore. The years had left it untouched. The Rexall sign still hung in the window, the wire stands still held newspapers and candy lined the bottom shelf of the prescription counter.
The Historical Society was just a few blocks away now, on the other side of Soldier’s Park, a city forest of maple and weeping willows. To the right was the apartment building where Roberta had lived. Roberta Vo5 Bo had called her, because she slicked her hair into thick, greasy strings. Roberta Vo5 had gotten pregnant when they were fifteen. Scandalous in and of itself, but made even more scandalous by the fact that the father of Roberta’s child was a fifty year-old man with a gold tooth.
“Disgusting,” Bo said when they heard the news. “I can’t believe anyone – even Roberta Vo5 would kiss someone that old! And with a gold tooth!”
Roberta dropped out of school and Katie saw her only once after that. Roberta had had her baby, a little girl the color of tea. The baby was dressed in a pink ruffled dress; diamond stud earrings glittered from tiny ear lobes. Roberta had put on weight – a lot of weight. She jiggled the baby on her hip as she said hello to Katie and Bo. Bo announced, as Roberta walked away, “I told you kissing an old man was disgusting, Look what happened to Roberta. She went and got stupid. Piercing a tiny baby’s ears. Guess that just goes to prove.”
“Prove what?”
“Never kiss men with gold teeth. They have no sense of style.”
Kate crossed the street on the diagonal and headed up the hill toward City Hall. She was aware of the looks that came her way, and the glances felt…hostile. For the first time, she wished someone had come with her. Vinny, maybe. He was strong and sure of himself—
Not sure, a voice said in her head, and the voice made the back of her scalp crawl. Vincent is not strong. Kate lowered her head and concentrated on the sidewalk. Just up ahead was the sign: Chelsea Historical Society. She reached the fence gate and a sudden pain flared in her head, only pain was too small a word. It felt like her head was splitting in two, breaking open like a coconut. She cried out and clutched the top of her scalp, but the pain was already fading from knife sharp to a dull ache. She stood with her hand on the gate, her heart thudding, waiting for the pain to come again.
Lucien, she thought, and as if in answer, the pain seared through her, lightening quick and deadly. Everything flashed white, white agony, and Kate clutched the fence post. A young woman in tight blue stretch pants and a print blouse looked at her curiously, then moved on.
Kate tried desperately to calm her heartbeat back into regular rhythm. When she was sure she could move, she opened the gate. The pain flashed, but Kate pushed it back and forced herself to keep moving.
There has to be something in here, she thought. If there was nothing to find, Lucien wouldn’t be here.
The pain flashed and Kate’s knees went weak, but she kept going, and somehow, even managed a smile. Go ahead, Lucien. I can take a headache. I’m going in there and I’m going to find whatever it is you don’t want me to see.
The pain roared inside her head and her nose gushed blood. She reached into her pocket for a handkerchief and came up with a napkin stained red from tomato sauce. It struck Kate as funny and she began to laugh, holding a napkin that smelled of pizza to her nose and she reached the landing of the Historical Society. Still laughing, she climbed the steps, her head tipped toward the sky, her nose bleeding, but the blood was slowing now. When Kate reached for the doorknob, the pain disappeared.
Taking a deep, wracking breath, Kate opened the door and went in.
Chapter 29
Gina
As she crossed the street into the Forest Field, Marcus drove past and Gina lifted her hand to wave. His own lifted in return, but he didn’t smile. The cool air felt good on her skin. A jet roared overhead, the noise a streak of sound. When she was a kid, Gina used to think she could see the sound of power in the trail of smoke behind each plane. She looked up, watching the jet as it glided past, the roar growing and growing in her head until it was a steady stream of metal, a long single-note of man-made thunder.
Man made.
Gina stopped at the edge of the Forest Field and looked toward the crumbling foundation. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to look for, but Vinny had been adamant. The Forest Field was central geographically and maybe she’d be able to find some trace of Lucien here.
Walled in, Kate had said. Lucien had been walled in.
Shivering, but not sure whether from cold or tension, Gina walked through a patch of ragweed. Broken glass glittered in the fading light. Clouds were gathering overhead; a storm was coming. A siren’s screech pierced the quiet and Gina turned to see a cruiser flash past, blue lights whirling. The sick feeling in Gina’s stomach grew.
Please don’t let it be another one, she thought.
A second cruiser dashed past, an ambulance close behind. Gina put her head down and counted to ten, a trick her father had taught her when she was six and about to give her first speech during CCD class. “Count to ten, baby,” her father had coaxed. “Keep counting, remember to breathe between each number. By the time you get to ten, you’ll be okay. No more shaking.”
No more shaking, Daddy, she thought now, No more shaking.
The foundation had all but disappeared over the years, leaving only a partially submerged shell of stone. The fact that the foundation was there at all was something of a miracle. Vacant land in Chelsea was a rarity; it was a surprise the property hadn’t been developed. Her uneasiness grew. Maybe the question should be why hadn’t it been developed?
When they were kids, they used to pretend that the foundation was a fort and as Gina climbed down the slight embankment toward the exposed end, she thought their imaginations had been on target. It did look like a fortress.
Her father had told her that the Forest Field really had been a field, way back in the old days, a cornfield. “This was all farmland, Geenie. Crops and barns.” She heard his voice so clearly in her mind sometimes, so there…
She stepped over a heap of crumbling stone, scrambling to keep her balance as she picked her way over small mounds of rubble. Apparently, they hadn’t been the only ones to use the foundation as a place to play. Candy wrappers
fluttered in the wind, soda cans rolled against stone. Paper flapped and tumbled as the wind picked up. Gina skirted around the edge of the foundation into the center of what her father had told had been a root cellar.
She looked around, remembering the games they had played, the pretend wars they had fought, the arguments over which was better: Devil Dogs or Hostess Cup Cakes?
A shriveled condom lay on the ground like snakeskin. Gina grimaced as she stepped over it, her eyes scanning the ground in front of her. There wasn’t much to see. Trash, brick rubble, a tennis ball. She took another step, raising her eyes to study the stone walls. The wind picked up and she was cold now. She stopped to button her coat to her chin, thankful for the heavy red sweater she’d worn. She wondered briefly how the others were doing. She wondered how long Kate would stay, how it would—
Her thought broke off cold. Gooseflesh prickled her skin. The back of her head tingled like it had fallen asleep and was just coming back to life.
She stared at the southern wall, unable to look away from the cross etched into the stone. Her heart pounded in her chest, her legs went to jello. She took a step forward breathe, honey, breathe, she heard her father say, count to ten and breathe between each number. One, breeeathe, two, breeeeathe, three—
She hadn’t imagined it.
The cross carved into the rock was almost six feet tall and three feet across. How on earth had they missed it when they were children? Why hadn’t she ever seen it before? Because, her father said, you weren’t meant to see it before. It wasn’t time.
“It’s a coincidence,” she whispered. “Someone etched that cross into the stone just recently and--”
And what? her father asked, This mysterious person carved an exact replica of what you saw when Katie brought you to that place? The cross in the wall you broke down to get to Lucien? You think it’s coincidence now you’re seeing another wall and another cross just like that one? Come on, Geenie. I didn’t raise no fools.
But Daddy, she thought this isn’t the same wall. It isn’t…
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