Chain of Souls (Salem VI) (5 page)

John looked at the small group. Behind Daniels's joking demeanor, which was the only way the man ever expressed anything, he knew the old reporter was dead serious, and that meant the others were, as well. "I have to tell you I'm pretty sure the building and presses won't be for sale," John said. "I don't think Mrs. Lodge wants us putting out a paper. I think that's the whole point."

"What's the old bag got to hide?"

John ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth. He glanced at Amy out of the corner of his eye, and he saw her give him a nod. "Um, it's possible that what she has to hide is so strange that reporting on it will make this paper sound like the
National Enquirer."

Jack Daniels nodded. "I've felt for a long time we've been overly constrained to writing about the news people actually know about. We've never been able to write about two-headed babies or haunted buildings or UFOs or Elvis sightings. Think how many more papers we would have sold."

"Think what you would have been like before you rotted your brains with booze," Hagstrom said.

Jack Daniels gave him a wicked smile. "Not nearly as charming." He grew serious and turned to John. "We've all heard a few rumors about Jessica, so we know whatever the truth is it might be pretty weird. I don't think any of us are afraid to report on anything that happens in this town. Everybody else agree?"

The other all nodded their assent.

"You're saying you don't care about money and you don't care if you sound like a bunch of crackpots," John asked. "I've always sounded like a crackpot," Jack said, "so I'm in."

"We're all in," Tim Monahan said. He was a tall, cadaverous reporter who had been at the paper for ten years, and before then had spent thirty years in a storied career at
The Boston Globe.
"There are nine of us all together. Me and Jack can do the reporting on the days Jack's sober. The other days I'll do it alone."

"That'll be Monday and Thursday I'll be helping out," Jack said. "That is if I have to be sober."

"Jackie can do the ad sales," Monahan went on, nodding toward Jackie McKinny, another old-timer and the best of the three-person ad sales staff. "Bert will keep everything running just the way he always has and Lucinda will keep us all straight." He went through a couple other key positions, and John realized that, along with Amy and himself, they had all the major holes filled.

"So are you with us, you worthless sonofabitch?" Jack Daniels asked. He looked at Amy, "We, of course, would like you to join us, as well. But we also realize you're a bit younger than this group of fossils and you may need the money."

Amy smiled and nodded. "I think I could be persuaded."

Daniels's expression became serious. "It's a lot of security to give up."

"It's Jessica's money. She's trying to buy our silence."

"Then we're proud to have you," Daniels said. He looked at John again. "Well?"

John wondered if her willingness reflected a rekindled sense of spirit or a hope that getting the two of them involved in a new daily paper would keep him close to home and not running off to track down Jessica Lodge. Either way, it didn't matter because he was in with both feet. He looked at the staffers standing in front of him and felt his eyes burn with tears of pride and gratitude. He blinked a few times to get things under control then nodded. "I'm in."

"Well, don't get all emotional about it," Jack Daniels grumbled as he started walking away. "We got a goddamn paper to get out."

John turned and went into his office, his mood suddenly far more buoyant than he would have thought possible a short time earlier. An hour later he had spoken to Sarah, reiterating the dinner invitation he had left on her voice mail the previous evening. She agreed to come over that night at seven. He had also contacted Chester Cabot who confirmed that neither the building in which the paper was located nor the printing presses would be offered for sale, in spite of the fact that the paper would no longer be publishing.

"Am I to interpret these questions as an indication you intend to continue publishing some sort of paper independently?" Cabot asked.

"That's probably a reasonable assumption."

"Everyone who chooses to do this will be leaving quite a bit of money on the table. You included."

"We are all able to do the math."

"So be it. My client also wishes me to advise you that we will adhere very strictly to the laws relating to libel and defamation of character should you be tempted to try and seek some sort of misguided vengeance through the press."

"Thanks for the
advice."

John did his best to ignore his hangover and spent the rest of the day working with half his staff to put out a paper with a smaller number of articles than usual because the other half of the staff, including Amy, were involved in trying to lease computers and office furniture, as well as secure guaranteed printing contracts and office space. By the end of the day they had found a small, free weekly paper that was available in most shops and restaurants and was aimed primarily at the tourist industry. The paper's management was delighted to pick up a contract to print their daily circulation. Amy also found some space in a recently renovated warehouse a little ways from the heart of Salem that could be had for much less rent than was available in the city center.

By the time he left the office for the evening, John had actually started to think setting up a new paper and maintaining their old subscription base was not only possible, it was starting to appear very doable. It made him feel good that, in at least a small way, he was getting back at Jessica Lodge, because the people who put out the
Salem News
day after day, year after year, weren't going to let the paper go out of business.

Amy had left a little earlier because she needed to shop for the food for their upcoming dinner with Sarah. John finished up, said goodnight to the last folks in the newsroom then went to a wine shop and bought a couple bottles of good pre-chilled Chardonnay and two bottles of well-aged Oregon pinot noir. By the time he walked into his house, Amy had water boiling and a pile of vegetables on a chopping board.

"What are we having?"

"Veal chops and ratatouille. You want to start the grill as soon as you change your clothes?"

John put the Chardonnay in the refrigerator and the Burgundies on the counter then went up to slip into blue jeans. A minute later he was back downstairs where he opened one of the chardonnays and poured a glass for himself and one for Amy.

"Let's hope this goes well," he said, clicking his glass gently to hers.

"Have faith in your daughter."

"I do, but . . ." Instead of finishing the thought he went outside, put charcoal in the grill, and lit it. Most of his neighbors had gas grills, but John was stubbornly old fashioned and stuck to his time-honored tradition of real coals.

He tried to shove down the nervous tremor that churned through his guts as he thought about the last conversation he'd had with Sarah in which Amy was the topic. What was that Sarah had said?
"It would be nice if you picked somebody a little closer to your age. She could practically be my sister."
Yes, that was it exactly. How was Sarah going to react tonight? He wanted to share Amy's faith in Sarah, but he didn't have a good feeling.

AS HE WAITED FOR HIS COALS TO LIGHT,
John paced around the house. Sarah had extremely early hours in the morning for her news show, so she tended to arrive early and leave early so she could get to bed. It was part of his daughter's rigidity. She kept to her schedule and didn't deviate. In her personal life she liked hard walls and black-and-white opinions, strange for a TV news journalist whose profession required dealing with issues colored in constantly shifting shades of gray, he thought.

But even as he thought this, he realized he was wrong. Sarah was perfect for the FOX News affiliate where she worked. Unlike his, her politics were right wing, and she and her co-workers loved absolute positions, like the fact that older widowers shouldn't fall in love with younger women. John sipped his Chardonnay, told himself he shouldn't have any more, but took another sip anyway and drained the glass. To keep himself from going into the kitchen for more wine, he straightened a few pillows and peeked out the front curtains a couple times.

On one pass by the front window he saw someone who looked like they were hurrying away from his front door, and for half a second he wondered if Sarah had come, stood at the door for a few seconds, then lost her nerve and walked away. As soon as he thought it, he decided no. The person he had seen had been too big, a man almost certainly. Besides, Sarah wasn't going to lose her nerve. That wasn't her style. More likely she would come in with her barrels loaded with buckshot and pull both triggers at once, verbally of course.

John looked at his watch. Five past seven. Okay, for once in her life Sarah was late. Probably she'd gotten caught in traffic, or maybe she was as nervous as he was about this dinner and that was causing her to drag her feet a bit. Thinking about it that way made him realize the stakes were huge. He wanted his relationship with his daughter as well as his relationship with Amy. He just hoped he could work things out with Sarah so he could have both.

At fifteen after seven he gave up and went to the kitchen and poured himself more wine. Sipping it, he started to pace harder, his nervousness tinged with worry.

"Take it easy," Amy said in a calming voice. "It's all going to work out okay."

"Yeah," John said, but he wasn't convinced. If Sarah was going to be this late, it was strange she hadn't called. What if she'd been in a car accident? He tried to wall off the memories of the other night he had paced like this—the night Julie had gone out in a rainstorm to pick up some wine for a party they were hosting. It had been the night she had been killed in a terrible accident, the night, as he learned much later, she had been murdered by the Coven because they had thought John was driving the car.

He looked out the window again, relieved to see the pavement was dry, the sky perfectly clear. He dug his cell phone from his pocket and checked the battery, nearly full, and then looked at the ringer to make sure the sound was turned on. There were no missed phone call or text messages.

At twenty-five past he went into the kitchen. "I'm getting really worried. This isn't like Sarah."

"Have you called her?"

John shook his head as he dug his phone from his pocket and pressed Sarah's number on his speed dial list. He listened as the call went through and the line began to ring. When her message came on he killed the call.

"John, she's about to have an awkward dinner with her father and his lover, a woman who is much younger than her mother was. In spite of the fact you think Sarah has balls of brass, she may be outside sitting in her car trying to work up the nerve to come to the door."

John nodded, relieved that Amy was thinking in logical emotional terms and not traffic accident terms. He went to the front door, put his wine glass on the side table, and opened the door. An envelope rested on the doormat at his feet. It was small and square, the kind used for invitations. It was addressed to "John Andrews," and underneath it read, "By Hand."

Curious, he picked it up, stepped back inside, and closed the door. He slipped his finger under the flap and removed the stiff note card inside. On the card, written in lovely calligraphy were the four words: "She is with us." Below the words was a carefully drawn symbol that drew his eyes like iron shavings racing to a magnet: a pentagram.

John closed his eyes and grabbed his chest, feeling the world spin around him. Was this some sick bastard's idea of a joke? He fervently hoped it was because he couldn't deal with the idea he was reentering the nightmare from which he had escaped barely a week earlier. The pentagram had been the Coven's symbol. It was on the grave markers of the Coven's original members. The graves at Gallows Hill of those founders of Salem's first Coven actually formed a pentagram, although the symbol was so well hidden among the other family gravestones in Harmony Grove Cemetery John had only been able to see it when the spirit of Sarah Nurse had made the gravestones glow.

John shook his head to try and clear his thoughts. Okay, he told himself, if this was a joke, maybe the jerk who'd put the envelope here was waiting around to see what kind of affect it might have. The rage he felt was empowering. It helped push away the other possibilities, the ones he could not bear to think about. Instead he remembered the person he had seen hurrying away from his front door over thirty minutes earlier. That had to be the one who put the envelope on his steps.

Stepping back outside, John looked up and down Pickering Wharf for any sign of the man, but the sidewalk was empty. He pulled the door closed behind him and started right, in the direction he had seen the man walking. He went fast, his pace just short of a run, and tried to remember what the person had looked like: big shoulders, tall, maybe six feet, walked with a bit of a stoop, wore a hat so he had no idea of head shape or hair.