“Yes, it’s Koko.”
She answered on the first ring, like she’d been sitting over the phone waiting for me to call. She said “Hi,” not “Hello,” and her voice was gentle and soft. She might have been twenty or fifty.
“Is this Koko?”
“And you would be Mr. Janeway.”
“I take it Mrs. Perkins told you what happened.”
“Yeah, she did. Not the best news I’ve had all year. Jo was a good person.”
“I didn’t know her long, but I sure liked her spunk. That was some trip she took on alone. Apparently nobody at Perkins had any idea.”
“They’re all pretty uptight this morning. I think they’re concerned about losing their standing with the state.”
“Over one incident?”
“Oh, there’s always something. All those places are understaffed. That’s why I volunteer. I go out there twice a week. It’s not their fault when something like this happens—at least it’s not all their fault. Actually, I like Mrs. Perkins. She tries, which is more than I can say for some of them.”
“But there’ve been other incidents?”
“Mr. Janeway.” Now there was a slight edge to her voice. “Are you putting together some kind of file for someone, like maybe for a claim? That’s how it’s beginning to sound, and I just want to make sure we both understand why we’re having this conversation.”
“Let’s start over. Forget the questions about the facility; I’m not out to sandbag anyone. What I want to talk to you about is Mrs. Gallant. And her grandfather.”
“Charlie,” she said, and I sat up straight in my chair at the real affection in her voice.
“You sound almost like you knew him. Like she sounded when she talked about him.”
“I do know him.”
“You talk as if he’s still alive.”
“That’s how he seems. I’ve spent a good deal of time digging through her memories of him. I’ve got lots of tape—the two of us, just talking.”
“Tape,” I said densely.
“I’m writing her story,” she said, and I felt my heart turn over.
She said, “I taped everything,” and my battered old heart flipped back again.
Then she said, “We used extensive hypnosis to get at what she knew.”
“Hypnosis,” I said in the same inane tone of voice. “You hypnotized her?”
“Does that bother you?”
“No, it just surprises me a little. Did it work?”
“I guess that would depend on how you define
“You do this for what, a hobby?”
“If you want to call it that. I retired two years ago and this seems to be worth my time.”
“You don’t sound old enough to retire.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere. I’m probably old enough to be your mother.”
“I doubt that. So what did you do? In your career?”
“I was a librarian. In my last ten years I was head librarian in a smallish suburban branch. I moved over here when I retired.”
“Where’s over here?”
“I live in Ellicott City now. It’s just across the river, a few miles from Mrs. Perkins’s house.”
“And you hypnotize the old people and record their stories. That’s fascinating, you know. Can you tell me about it?”
“We could be here all day. I’ll tell you this much: a good subject can be sent back to almost any part of her life. She can relive it and describe everything that went on. People have been known to remember letters in detail, even from their childhood. There’s nothing supernatural about it, it’s all stored right there in the brain. This is all very well documented and I shouldn’t be defensive about it. Take it or leave it.”
“I’m not doubting you, just being educated. So Josephine was a good subject?”
“She was great. She got to where she could go under almost as soon as she sat in my chair.”
“You did these sessions at your place?”
“Oh, sure. It would’ve been impossible to do it there, so once or twice a week I’d go over and pick her up. She loved coming out and she came to love our sessions. Afterward I would play the tapes back for her and she’d laugh
