Everyone listened closely as Rebecca’s words grew clearer, more pronounced. Laura couldn’t make any sense of it, but recognized some of the words. She’d heard them before. Jack watched intently.
A Hispanic orderly entered the room, wheeling a very large garbage can on a cart. He retrieved a small trash container from inside the bathroom and dumped its contents. He replaced the plastic bag and set it down beside the toilet.
“What’s she saying?” Laura asked.
Doctor Harris shook his head, unsure. “I don’t know.”
The orderly turned his cart towards the door. “She’s praying.” All eyes turned to him, then back to Rebecca.
“Praying?” Laura asked, her face a question mark. Jack didn’t speak Spanish, but understood a few words. As they listened, Rebecca’s speech grew more audible and clear:
“Santa Maria, Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros, pecadores, ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte. Amen.” Rebecca repeated the phrase over and over, louder and louder. Laura watched with wide eyes.
Jack quickly withdrew his notepad and started jotting down what she was saying. He wrote the same sentence twice before he recognized she was repeating herself.
“Does your daughter speak Spanish?” Jack asked.
“No.” Laura said quickly. Doctor Harris listened, confounded by what was taking place.
“What about your ex-husband?” Jack asked.
“He can barely speak English, much less a second language.”
The doctor leaned over Rebecca, taking her pulse, holding her head to see if she was feverish. He whispered something to the nurse, who drew the curtain around Rebecca and Laura with one quick swipe, cutting Jack off.
CHAPTER 29
Jack stormed into Leonard’s office, the secretary following right behind him.
“I’m sorry Doctor Hellerman, he wouldn’t—” Leonard held up his hand.
“It’s okay, Mary.” Leonard had been expecting Jack. He waved her away and she closed the door. Jack stood across from his desk, rain dripping off his jacket.
“Something very strange is going on here,” Jack said, his gaze intense, the same he used on suspects during interrogations. Leonard had to avert his eyes. He spun his chair 45 degrees and looked towards the window at the falling rain.
“I risked my practice by confiding in you, Jack. I was trying to help you.” Jack saw the morning paper on Leonard’s desk, he picked it up. On the front page was an article about Carmen. The headline read: Body of girl missing 10 years found. Underneath the headline was a picture of Carmen, the same graduation photo Jack held in Carmen’s bedroom.
“There’s something you’re not telling me.”
“There’s a lot I haven’t told you.”
“I’m listening.”
Leonard turned and finally looked at Jack. “I’ve already said more than I should have.”
“We’re not leaving this room until you—”
“You told the mother. You didn’t mention the tapes, did you? I never even let her listen to them.”
“No, but she’s not stupid. How else could I have gotten Rebecca’s account of the murder? You were right, her descriptions were vivid.”
“A credible recollection, not a vivid imagination.”
“It’s not possible… How?”
“You mean, how could a nine year old girl describe a murder that took place… before she was even born?”
Jack slapped his palms flat on Leonard’s desk and leaned in. “The river, the train, that tree — it’s just as she described, not another like it in the whole damn world. How could she have known? Where’d she get it from? Even the method of death.” Leonard remained calm.
“You heard the tapes; that wasn’t her imagination re-creating something she overheard. She was there.”
“That doesn’t make any sense!”
“They’ve positively identified her body?”
Jack nodded. “We couldn’t release it otherwise.”
“And you’ve visited the family.”
“What’s going on here, Leonard?”
Leonard sat back and drew a deep breath. The office intercom buzzed: “Doctor, you have a call on 1, Mrs. Burke has a question about her son’s prescription?” Leonard ignored the page.
“I’ve exposed my practice too much already.”
“You called me. I could cite you with obstruction.”
“But you won’t.”
“Why?”
“Because you want to know just as much as I do.”
Jack studied Leonard a moment. He took a seat, not breaking eye contact. The two stared at each other a long while.
“I saw something yesterday I can’t explain,” Jack said. “No one could.”
“Doctor? Mrs. Burke’s on 1, should I tell her to call back?”
Leonard jabbed at the button on his intercom. “Mary, clear my afternoon.”
Leonard walked Jack into a room lined with file cabinets and thick, expensive mahogany bookshelves that looked like they’d been passed down for generations. The room was a complete mess, as if ransacked by thieves. Books, papers, entire drawers removed, notes hastily scribbled down and scattered about, nothing in its place. Well, Leonard, we have one thing in common.
Jack stared out a grimy window that hadn’t been washed in years. It was lunchtime. The rain had scaled back to a soft drizzle. People were racing around, going about their daily routines. Inside here, madness…
Leonard swiped a stack of folders off a chair. “Here, sit.” He closed the large door and grabbed another chair, pushing it up to a table stacked with books and notes. Several times he opened his mouth to speak, then hesitated, unsure of where to begin.
“I haven’t got all day,” Jack said.
Leonard rubbed his hands together. “At first I was convinced I was looking at a clear cut case of some sort of abuse, physical — mental. I noticed she had these marks on her neck — the mother said they were birthmarks. I was suspicious.”
Jack listened quietly, intently, desperate for Leonard to get to the damn point. But something about the drama in Leonard’s delivery forced him to hang on every word.
“No matter what I tried, I just couldn’t get Rebecca to open up. I suggested regression therapy to the mother. She agreed.”
Leonard got up and went to the window. It was open a crack and he pressed it down, shutting out the street noise, quieting the room.
“The sessions began normally. But as I regressed her further backwards, she became very distressed. I knew I was getting somewhere. Then…something happened. Something that altered my entire belief system, not just as a doctor, as a human being.”
“Get to the point.”
“Do you believe that the complexity of our bodies, our world…our universe, is too great to be just mere coincidence?”
“Never thought about it.” Liar.
“You a religious man?”
“Stop dancing around the subject.”
“Well, I’m Jewish; my faith doesn’t allow for the possibility of transmigration of the soul. So you can imagine my dismay when this nine year old girl began to recount, in wrenching detail, how she was brutally attacked and viciously raped. She went so far as to describe the pain of having her windpipe crushed, blood rushing out her nose and ears. You can see why I hesitated about telling the mother?”
“There has to be a logical explanation.”
Leonard walked over and opened a file cabinet. “There are two explanations. One is the possibility of transmigration, where the soul exits one body after death and enters another.”
“You’re talking about reincarnation?”
“Yes,” Leonard replied, locking eyes with Jack to make sure he knew he meant it. “The other is demonic possession. However, I gravely doubt that a demon would supply a young child with intimate knowledge of the problems a Dominican immigrant faces in a predominantly white American high school. Or fond memories of another loving family and mother. The evidence of xenoglossy alone was convincing enough.”