“I wasn’t there. I didn’t see them.”
“So she’s delusional, too?”
“No, but it’s possible that she’s lining things up to fit a predetermined conclusion.” Then she added, “Look, Elizabeth Luria came into this project hoping to prove there’s an afterlife, and she got huge support from a televangelist. So scientific objectivity may not have been her bottom line, okay? Yes, they had your father’s neuropatterns. But what they found could also be an anomaly.”
“So if a tree falls in the forest and Sarah’s not there, it didn’t fall.”
“I didn’t say that, and frankly I don’t like your tone.”
“And frankly I don’t like your automatic dismissal of other possibilities. I’m getting painful flares in my side, so how do you explain that?”
She looked out the window for a moment to cool the air. Then she said, “Since there’s no evidence you got injured, I’d say you’re experiencing some kind of psychosomatic effect. You imagined or dreamed your father was shot, and this is just a case of autosuggestion or sympathetic delusion.”
“And so did you once.”
“Well, maybe this card-carrying reductionist is seeing other possibilities.” He felt another flare in his side, and he shot through the tunnel onto the northbound ramp of 93 and straight up the Zakim Bridge.
“Will you please tell me where we’re going?”
“I think I’ll know when we get there.” Ahead was the sign for a down-ramp that would take them back to Cambridge. “Still want to come?”
“Only if you tell me where.”
“Call it ESP, call it telepathy, call it cosmic fucking sentience—but I want to get to him before he dies for real. If I’m wrong, I’m an asshole. If not, I get to see him one more time.” He slowed down and pulled into the right lane for the turnoff. Sarah saw it approach.
“What’s up 93?”
“Maine.”
“Maine? Zack, will you please tell me something definite?”
“Okay,” he said, trying to flush away the festering irritation that she might be right: that he was talking himself into believing his father was beckoning him. “When my father was young, his father purchased a tract of land in the woods of southwestern Maine. He built a little hunting and fishing cabin on the property, where my father was taken as a kid. When he got older, he’d hole up there for weeks on end.”
“By himself?”
The exit was upon them. “Should I turn?”
“No.”
He swerved back into the ongoing lane heading north on 93. “There’s another exit two minutes up.” Then he continued. “Yeah, by himself. He was a loner, and he loved the wilderness and learned survivalist skills. After college, he lived there for a year without seeing another person. It was his hideaway.”
“Have you ever been there?”
“Once, but I was four or five. All I remember is woods and a small cabin. My mother didn’t like it because it was too isolated and primitive—no electricity and well water.”
“Do you know where it is?”
“Off of 95, somewhere in the vicinity of the New Hampshire border.”
“Gee, that narrows it down nicely.”
He let her sarcasm pass. “I think I’ll know where to go when we get there.” They drove for a few more miles without saying anything. Then he turned his head toward her. “There’s one more exit before we get to 95. I can still take you home.”
“Do you want me to come?”
“Yeah, I do. And if I’m not delusional, he’ll need medical attention.”
“I was a nurse for only ten months, and that was five years ago.”
“Beats my experience.”
“Does this place have a name?”
“Magog Woods.”
“Magog Woods? Sounds vaguely familiar.”
“That was the name back then. It may not even be called that or on any map.”
“So, it’s been twenty years. Chances are old landmarks might be gone.”
“Most likely.”
“Then how will you know how to find it?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I’m hoping I’ll just know.”
“I feel like a character in
“You can get what you need up there. There are outlets everywhere.” They were closing in on Exit 36, Montvale Ave./Stoneham. “I can still take you back.”
Just short of the turnoff, Sarah said, “Keep going.”
Zack felt his internal organs unfist themselves. “Thanks,” he said, thinking,
Zack kept that to himself and shot into the passing lane.
73
The Kashian kid was missing.
After dispatching Morris Stern, Roman drove to Kashian’s apartment on Hemenway Street in Boston—a four- story redbrick building for college students. When nobody answered, he hit other buttons on lower floors until someone blindly let him in. Before that party came out to investigate, Roman was already above and jimmying the lock to Kashian’s door.
The apartment was dark and looking as if the kid had left in a hurry. Bureau drawers were open, and underwear and tops were strewn about. His laptop was on his desk. No toothbrush or toothpaste in the bathroom. The kid was planning overnights.
He left and drove to Harvard Street in Cambridge. Sarah Wyman was also nowhere to be found, and the downstairs neighbor said she had seen her leave the building before eight that morning.
An hour later, he was at the address given him by Stern. GodLight Tabernacle Church sat at the front of a wooded compound in the suburbs of Medfield, about an hour southwest of Boston. A large empty parking lot separated the church from the road.
Roman pulled in and drove to the rear of the structure. Sitting behind a shiny new chain-link fence was a large white house with an extension on the back. Its blandness masked the kind of research that apparently went on below—Warren Gladstone’s personal Manhattan Project. That explained the guard shack and barbed wire atop the fence.
The shack was empty, and the gate was closed and padlocked. Because of the weekend, the place was abandoned, except for a single blue Volvo against the building.
Roman had rented a Ford Explorer with a grille guard, which could have pushed his way through the fence. But that might set off an alarm. He had packed sundry paraphernalia in the back, including flashlights, rope, duct tape, and a variety of tools, including a long-handled cable cutter capable of snipping through half-inch steel wire. It took him only seconds to cut through the padlock.
He drove through the gate and parked beside the Volvo, which was unlocked. On the upper corner of the
