On the Street Where you Live (11 page)

She spent the next three hours curled up in the big chair, absorbed in the books Wilcox had lent her. He had chosen well, she decided. She found herself pulled into an era of horse-drawn carriages, oil lamps, and stately summer “cottages.”

With the awareness of the price she had just paid for her house still fresh in her mind, the ordinance that the minimum amount a property owner could spend building a new home was three thousand dollars made her smile.

The report from the president of the Board of Health in 1893 over the need to stop the dumping of garbage in the ocean “to keep our beach free from offensive matter washed thereupon day to day” was a wry reminder that some things never change.

A book with many photographs included one of a Sunday school picnic in 1890. The list of the children in attendance included the name of Catherine Shapley.

Madeline's sister. My great-great grandmother, Emily thought. I wish I could pick her out. In the sea of faces it was impossible to match one of them with the few family photos that had survived the storeroom fire.

At eight o'clock she went back into the kitchen and completed preparing dinner. Once again she propped a book up on the table. This one she had deliberately saved because it looked the most interesting.
Reflections of a Girlhood
was the title. It had been published in 1938. The author, Phyllis Gates, had
summered in Spring Lake in the late 1880s and early 1890s.

The book was well written and gave a vivid picture of the social life of those days. Picnics and cotillions, splendid events at the Monmouth Hotel, bathing in the ocean, horseback riding and bicycling were described. What intrigued Emily most were the copious excerpts from a diary Phyllis Gates had kept during those years.

Emily had finished dinner. Her eyes were burning with fatigue, and she was about to close the book for the night when she turned the page and saw Madeline Shapley's name in a diary excerpt.

June 18, 1891. This afternoon we attended a festive luncheon at the Shapley home. It was to celebrate Madeline's nineteenth birthday. Twelve tables beautifully decorated with flowers from the garden had been placed on the porch. I sat at Madeline's table as did Douglas Carter, who is so very much in love with her. We tease her about him.

In an 1891 excerpt, the author wrote:

We had just closed our cottage and returned to Philadelphia when we learned of Madeline's disappearance. It was a great grief to all of us. Mother hurried back to Spring Lake to express her condolences and found the family to be in a state of profound grief. Madeline's father confided that for the sake of his wife's health he will remove the family from the area.

About to close the book, Emily skimmed through the pages. An October 1893 entry caught her eye.

Douglas Carter committed suicide. He had missed the early train from New York on that tragic day and was forced to wait for a later one. He became obsessed with the idea that had he been there earlier he might have saved her.

My mother felt that it had been a grave mistake for Douglas's parents not to move from their home, directly across the street from the Shapleys. She felt that the melancholy that overcame Douglas might have been avoided, had he not sat hour after hour staring at the porch of the Shapley home.

Emily set down the book. I knew Douglas Carter had committed suicide, she thought. I didn't know he lived directly across the street.

I'd like to find out a lot more about him, she thought. I wonder how sure they were that he did in fact miss the train?

T
HE RUMOR HAD BEGUN
with the question of
The National Daily
reporter to the prosecutor: “Do you think Martha's killer is a reincarnation?”

Dr. Lillian Madden's phone started to ring without stopping on Thursday afternoon. On Friday morning Joan Hodges, her secretary, had a stock answer, which she delivered crisply over and over again: “Dr. Madden has deemed it inappropriate to discuss the subject of reincarnation in regard to the Spring Lake murder case.”

At lunchtime on Friday, Joan Hodges had no problem discussing the matter with her boss. “Dr. Madden, look at what the newspapers are saying, and they're right. It was no coincidence that Martha Lawrence and Madeline Shapley both disappeared on September 7th. And you want to know the latest?”

Pause now for dramatic effect, Lillian Madden thought wryly.

“On August 5, 1893, Letitia Gregg—listen to me, Doctor—‘failed to return
home.'”
Joan's eyes widened. “Doctor, there was a girl, Carla Harper, who spent the
weekend at the Warren Hotel two years ago, then just vanished into thin air. I remember reading about it. She checked out of the Warren and got in her car. Some woman swears she saw her near Philadelphia. That's where she was going. She lived in Rosemont, on the Main Line. But now according to the
New York Post,
that eyewitness starts to sound like looney-tunes.”

Then Joan's eyes, wide open and demanding, bored into Dr. Lillian Madden's face. “Doctor, I don't think Carla Harper ever left Spring Lake. I think—and apparently lots of people think—that there was a serial killer in Spring Lake in the 1890s and that he's been reincarnated.”

“That's utter nonsense,” Lillian Madden said brusquely. “Reincarnation is a form of spiritual growth. A serial murderer from the 1890s would be paying for his transgressions now, not
repeating
them.”

With decisive steps, her entire posture telegraphing her disapproval of the tone of the conversation, Lillian Madden went into her private office and closed the door. There, she sank into her desk chair and put her elbows on the desk. Her eyes closed, she massaged her temples with her index fingers.

Before too much longer, human beings will be cloned, she thought. All of us in the medical field understand that. Those of us who believe in reincarnation believe that pain we endured in other lifetimes may affect us in our present existence. But
evil?
Could someone knowingly or unknowingly repeat
exactly
the same kind of evil deeds he committed over a century ago?

What was bothering her? What memory was trying to force itself into her conscious mind?

Lillian wondered if she could skip her lecture tonight. No, that wouldn't be fair to the students, she decided. In ten years she hadn't missed one session of the course in Regression she gave every spring at Monmouth Community College.

There were thirty students enrolled in the course. The college was allowed to sell ten more single-session tickets for each lecture. Would some of those reporters who had been phoning find out about those tickets and be there tonight?

In the second half of the session it was her practice to ask for volunteers to be hypnotized and regressed. That sometimes resulted in vivid and detailed recollections of other incarnations. She made the decision to eliminate the hypnosis section tonight. During the last ten minutes she always took questions from the students and visitors. If reporters were there, she would have to respond to them. There was no way around that.

She always prepared her lectures well in advance. Each one was carefully integrated with both its predecessor and successor. Tonight's lecture was based on the observations of Ian Stevenson, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. He had tested the hypothesis that in order to identify two different life histories as belonging to the same person, there would have to be continuity of memories and/or personality traits.

It was not exactly the lecture she would have chosen to give tonight. As she went over her notes
shortly before she left home, Lillian became painfully aware that Stevenson's findings could be interpreted as bolstering the theory about a reincarnated serial killer.

Lillian was so deep in thought that she was startled by Joan's brisk knock on the door. It opened and Joan was in the room before she could be invited to enter.

“Mrs. Pell is here, Doctor, but she's early, so take your time. Look what she brought to show you.”

Joan was holding a copy of
The National Daily
.
SPECIAL EDITION
was enblazoned across the logo. The headline read
SERIAL KILLER RETURNS FROM THE GRAVE
.

The story continued onto the second and third pages. Pictures of Martha Lawrence and Carla Harper, side by side, were captioned, “Sisters in Death?”

The story began, “Red-faced police are admitting that the eyewitness who claimed to have seen twenty-year-old Carla Harper at a rest stop not far from her home in Rosemont, Pennsylvania, may have been mistaken. They now admit it is entirely possible that Harper's purse was planted near that rest stop by her killer after the eyewitness account was widely published. The focus of the investigation is now centered in Spring Lake, New Jersey.”

“It's just what I told you, Doctor. The last time that girl was seen was in Spring Lake. And she disappeared on August 5th, the same day as Letitia Gregg—isn't that a great name?—did in 1893!”

The newspaper also had sketches of three young women in the high-necked, long-sleeved, ankle-length
garb of the late nineteenth century. The caption read, “The 19th Century Victims.”

A photograph of a tree-lined street of Victorian homes of that time was placed side by side with the picture of a remarkably similiar present-day street. The caption was, “Then and Now.”

The report that followed had the byline and picture of a columnist, Reba Ashby. It began: “A visitor to the lovely seaside town of Spring Lake has the sense of stepping back into a more peaceful and tranquil era. But in that time, as in the present, the peace was broken by a sinister and evil presence . . .”

Lillian folded the paper and handed it back to Joan. “I've seen enough of it.”

“Don't you think you should cancel your class tonight, Doctor?”

“No, I don't, Joan. Will you ask Mrs. Pell to come in, please?”

T
HAT EVENING,
as Lillian Madden had expected, all the available guest passes for her lecture had been sold. She sensed that several people who had arrived early enough to get front-row seats might be from the media. They were carrying notebooks and recorders.

“My regular students understand that no recorders are permitted in this class,” she said looking pointedly at one thirtyish woman who seemed vaguely familiar.

Of course! She was Reba Ashby from
The National Daily,
the one who'd penned the “Then and Now” story.

Lillian took a moment to adjust her glasses. She did not want to appear nervous or ill at ease in front of Ms. Ashby.

“In the Middle East, Asia, and other locations,” she began, “there are thousands of cases where children under the age of eight will talk about a previous identity. They will recall in vivid detail the life they previously lived, including the names of members of their former families.

“Dr. Stevenson's monumental empirical research explores the possibility that images in a person's mind and physical modifications in that person's body may manifest themselves as characteristics in a newborn.”

Images in a person's mind,
Lillian thought. I'm feeding Ashby her next column. She went on.

“Some people can choose their future parents, and rebirth tends to happen in a geographical area quite close to where the earlier incarnation led his life.”

The questioning, when it began, was heated. Ms. Ashby led off: “Dr. Madden,” she said, “everything I heard you say tonight seems to me to validate the idea that a serial killer who lived in the 1890s has been reincarnated. Do you think that the present-day killer has images of what happened to the three women in the 1890s?”

Lillian Madden paused before answering. “Our research shows that memories of past lives cease to exist at about age eight. That is not to say that we may not experience a sense of familiarity with a person we have just met or a place we have visited for the first
time. But that is not the same as vivid, recent images.”

There were other questions, and then Ashby cut in again. “Doctor, don't you usually include hypnotizing a few volunteers as part of your lecture?”

“That is correct. I have chosen not to do so tonight.”

“Will you explain how you go about regressing someone?”

“Certainly. Three or four people usually volunteer for the experiment, but some of them may not cooperate with the hypnosis. I speak, one at a time, with those who are clearly in a hypnotic state. I invite them to travel back in time through a warm tunnel. I tell them it will be a pleasant journey. Then I pick dates at random and ask if a picture forms in their mind. Often the answer is no, and I keep going backward, until they have reached a previous incarnation.”

“Dr. Madden, did you ever have anyone specifically ask to be regressed to the late 1800s?”

Lillian Madden stared at the questioner, a heavyset man with brooding eyes. Probably another reporter, she thought, but that wasn't the point. He had brought to the surface the memory that had been eluding her all day. It must have been four, maybe five, years ago that someone
had
in fact asked her that very question. He had been in her office, with an appointment, and told her that he was sure he had lived in Spring Lake at the end of the nineteenth century.

But then he resisted hypnosis, indeed, he almost seemed frightened of it, and left before the hour was
up. She could see him clearly in her mind. But what was his name? What was it?

It will still be in my appointment book, she thought. I'll recognize it when I see it.

She could hardly wait to get home.

I
N
A
LBANY,
Marty Browski walked up the path to Gray Manor, the psychiatric hospital where Ned Koehler, the man who had been convicted of stalking Emily Graham, was being treated.