About a year after he started his research, Louise asked him, “What in the world are you doing, reading all those newspapers every week? Isn’t it the same news everywhere?”
He’d known that question was coming eventually and had an answer prepared.
“You’d be surprised how much difference there is. I’m thinking of writing a book about how different newspapers report the same story. That’s why I’m always sifting through the newspapers, looking for different angles.”
“Well, you’re certainly diligent about it. You’re my best customer!”
From experience, Scott knew that when he woke up again, he would only have whatever he’d had with him the day he had fallen asleep on his grandparents’ sofa.
That, and his memories.
He took a mail order course that taught him a number of tricks to improve his memory. The more he practiced, the better his memory got. After a few years, his memory become prodigious, and he filled it with a litany of dates, times, and names. A Hall of Fame for serial killers, rapists, murderers, and all-around awful people. He continually sorted and updated his list with the latest information that became available to him. It wasn’t unusual for a serial killer to emerge and Scott had to go back to a previous year’s notebook to make notes about where he had begun killing.
He found that true crime books, which were often deeply and impeccably researched, often provided the best insight into when and where would be the best place to stop a perpetrator. When Ann Rule began publishing her books in 1980, she became a go to source for him and he had a standing order with Greta for each new book.
Scott also knew that when he woke up, he would once again be in a weakened state, not yet recovered from his war wounds.
He wanted to have time to rest, rehabilitate and get strong, so he started researching events and bad happenings starting in the summer of 1974. That would give him time to get healthier, watch Cheryl and Mike get married—again—and get to wherever he needed to be to stop it.
He constantly battled with himself. One day he was anxious to get started on this new life, and the next he felt so happy with his quiet life in Vermont that he never wanted to leave it. He wanted to begin helping people and stop bad things from happening, but the longer he lived in this life, the more he would know.
Scott watched the seasons and years pass and he fell into a routine. He spent his two days each week in the Waitsfield library. He filled in for Greta at the used bookstore every fall so she could visit her children in Maine. There was something comforting about sitting among the dusty stacks, reading a new book and not knowing or caring if another customer would come in or not. Once each year, he made the trip back to Evansville to see Cheryl, Mark, and their brood of children, which had grown to include two new brothers for Andrea. They had named their oldest boy Scott.
Each time he visited, Cheryl and Mark both tried to convince him to move back to Evansville, but Scott never considered it. His home was in Vermont now.
In December, 1980, Scott was as shocked as the rest of the world to read about the murder of John Lennon. In picking out which cases he could do something about, Scott had typically tried to avoid high profile incidents. He didn’t want to become famous, or do anything that would put a crimp in his ability to move anonymously around the country. He knew he couldn’t let the murder of John Lennon pass unchanged, though.
Once he started making his list, the problem was in limiting it. He was initially shocked at how many bad things happened to good people. Over time, he realized that is the way of the world—part of the human condition.
His list grew. As the 1970s passed into the 1980s, serial killers became more prominent in the news. He followed their trails and researched their kills after they were captured to see if he could find an opportunity where he could have found and stopped them from killing early on. The more research he did, the more he wondered if he would actually be able to do what needed doing when the time came.
Can I really kill someone before they do something awful? But, what if I don’t? In a way, would that make me just as responsible?
It was a question he chased round and round in his brain as he drifted off to sleep each night.
The years passed quietly and easily for Scott. In the early spring of 2002, just a few months before his fifty-fourth birthday, he experienced a new pain. After all these years, he was used to pain flare-ups from his old war wounds, but this was something new. He did his best to put it out of his mind and concentrate on his work.
Soon after, he began to have a hard time urinating. He read up on home remedies and drank lots of cranberry juice. He found himself making more nighttime visits to the bathroom, which he explained away as his body getting older and from drinking all that cranberry juice.
As the months passed, the pain increased. Finally, when the worst of the snows had melted and he wasn’t so housebound, he made an appointment to visit Dr. Jasper. Jasper was the only doctor in town, and Scott knew him from seeing him in the bookstore.
Dr. Jasper gave him a full physical. A few days later, Scott returned to his office for the results. When he did, Jasper referred him to a specialist thirty miles northeast in Montpelier.
Scott planned to hitchhike the distance. He hadn’t owned a vehicle since he had moved to Vermont and he knew enough people in town that he was sure he wouldn’t be stranded for long. Dr. Jasper tipped off Greta, who was now a robust eighty years old, about Scott’s appointment. She insisted on driving Scott to Montpelier.
As they rode, Scott watched the scenery roll by and reflected on what he was about to learn.
I suppose if I’d only had one life to live, this would be a frightening moment. Preparing to face the unknown. Heaven, hell, or the abyss of total oblivion. It’s not like that, though. Unless something has changed, I’ll wake up in Evansville in 1972 again. Cheryl will be cooking dinner and Gramps will flush the toilet and come walking down the hall. It’ll be good to see him again, when the time comes. It’s been too long.
Greta glanced across at Scott and saw the faraway look in his eyes. She reached a hand out and gently laid it on his for a moment, then put it back on the steering wheel. It was the only vaguely maternal gesture she had ever made to him.
“It’s going to be all right, Scott.”
“It’s always all right in the end. If it’s not all right, it’s not the end, right?”
“True words.”
Montpelier is the state capitol of Vermont, but it’s really just a small town with a big title. When Greta and Scott rolled into town, there were only 8,200 souls living there. Still, there were some great shops and restaurants there that Waitsfield didn’t have. Greta dropped Scott off at the entrance to the medical center and promised to be back in a few hours to pick him up.
The oncologist that Dr. Jasper had referred Scott to was Dr. Gardner. He gave Scott another thorough exam, drew blood, and spent quite some time sitting opposite him, reviewing Dr. Jasper’s reports.
“I see you were in the army. Vietnam?”
“Yes, sir.”
Gardner nodded. “I am going to refer you to a VA hospital. They’re going to want to take care of you.”
“I don’t understand. How could what I have now be related to something that happened almost thirty years ago?”
“Agent Orange. Virtually everyone who was in Vietnam was exposed to it. There are a number of diseases associated with that exposure, including Hodgkin’s disease, multiple myeloma, and various other cancers, including prostate cancer.”
“Is that what you’re saying I’ve got? Prostate cancer?”