“You said a man and a woman took her. Did they take the veil as well?”
Again, he freezes at the mention of the veil. It’s obviously something the two kept secret. “Your family was in the camp?” he asks warily.
“Yes. My grandparents were in Poland during the war. Harrah and Ralph told them about the veil, and together they escaped from Auschwitz.”
“What were their names?”
“I’m named after my grandmother. Her name was Sita. Roger, I know you’ve heard the name before.”
He nods weakly. “From Sarah’s grandmother. Harrah.”
“Then you know you can trust me. You have to trust me and my friend. We’re the only ones who can get your wife back. You have to tell us what you know. Did the people who kidnapped Sarah take the veil?”
An unlooked-for strength enters his voice and his face hardens. “No. They tortured us, but Sarah wouldn’t tell them where it was.”
“Do you know where it is?” I ask, and it’s difficult to keep the desperation out of my voice. Of course, I’m relieved to hear it hasn’t fallen into enemy hands, at least not yet, but I fear what they will do to Sarah to get her to talk. Roger Goodwin sighs, the sound as sad as his approaching death. The man knows he’s finished.
“Sarah never told me where she kept it,” he says. “She said only women could know.”
Harrah had told me something similar.
Only women could possess the veil.
It was a rule in the Veil of Veronica tradition.
“Can you describe the man and woman who took your wife?” I ask.
“The woman, she looked like you, a little older. Blond, beautiful, but with cold eyes.”
“What did the man look like?” And I half expect him to describe the man lying only ten feet away.
But Roger Goodwin’s face twists into horror at the question. “He was the Beast. I swear it was him.” He stops and frowns. “But he was young.”
For a moment I don’t understand the reference.
Yet his choice of words sends a chill through my body.
At Auschwitz the Jews called Himmler the Beast.
Roger Goodwin’s spasm of strength is fading. His eyes fall shut as more blood leaks from his mouth. I don’t have to hold his pulse to hear his heart skip in his chest. Physically prodding him to talk will no longer work. Once more I lean over and whisper in his ear.
“Roger. There’s another man lying here. He’s unconscious, we don’t know if he’ll wake up. Who is he?”
Mr. Goodwin’s voice is faint. “A man came. He came to help us. He burst through the door. But they struck him down.”
“Do you know who this man is?”
“Never saw him before. But he fought . . . he fought for us.”
“Roger. You’re dying, but Sarah is still alive. You’ve got to tell us something we can use to save her.”
The words come out in a fading gasp. “They took her into the sky.”
“Into the sky? I don’t understand.”
“In a vim . . . A vim . . .”
“Vim.” His last word, and it means nothing to me.
His breath rattles in his chest and his heart stops.
I stretch him out so he can rest more comfortably on the floor. A useless gesture but I want to do something for him. A brave man, it’s sad he had to die brokenhearted. The way he said Sarah’s name, it was obvious he loved her very much.
Matt puts his hand on my shoulder. “Did he tell you anything we can use?” he asks.
“Not really.”
“Sarah must be strong to hold out under such torture.”
Standing, I shake my head. “A mortal can only hold out so long. She’ll break eventually.” Frustrated, I pound the wall, and my fist goes right through it. “Damn it! We should have gotten here earlier.”
Matt gestures to the dispersal of the blood on the floor, how some of it has dried. “This happened two or three hours ago. Even if we’d come straight here, we would have been too late.”
I brush the plaster from my fist, my anger still raw. “True. But we could have gotten more out of Roger.”
“What’s done is done. What do we do now? Do you want to try to wake the other man?”
“Not yet. I need a moment.” Linking my mind with Mr. Goodwin’s has drained me. The man is dead but I still feel his pain, his anguish.
“I understand,” Matt says.
We survey the mess the assailants have made of the house. The man and woman did a thorough job, and we can tell by the force they used that they might have the strength of a vampire or a Telar. However, we both agree that we should be able to see things that they missed.
Yet the land behind the house draws me. Roger was clearly heading that way when he fell. It must be the direction they took Sarah.
“Search the house for anything unusual,” I say. “I’m going to check outside.”
“Why?” Matt asks.
“I want to know what he was trying to tell us when he died.”
The backyard is a field of grass, sprinkled with trees, that leads to the lake. The first twenty yards are carefully trimmed, then the growth turns wild and the footprints are easy to spot in the matted green blades. There is a combination of three sets of footprints, followed by only two, which makes me think that Sarah stumbled and was swept off her feet and carried away.
But to where?
The footprints suddenly dead-end at the edge of a clearing. At the center of the meadow is a three-foot scorch mark. Here the grass has not simply been burned—it’s been incinerated into a fine black powder. Yet the footprints stop thirty feet from the mark, and the grass around it appears untouched.
I kneel to examine the powder, but something keeps me from touching it. What’s left of the grass—and the underlying earth for that matter—is giving off a sickly glow. Humans couldn’t see the faint radiance but I can and know what it signifies.
The burned powder is radioactive.
“They took her into the sky,” I say to myself.
Matt calls from the house. He has found something, I can tell by his tone. I’m tempted to take a sample of the powder but doubt the Goodwins have a lead-lined container in their kitchen or garage. I can tolerate tremendous heat, your standard house fire for example, but radiation and I do not get along, especially in high doses. For me to be able see the glow emanating from the scorched circle means it is hot enough to drive a Geiger counter wild.