Salem's Cipher Read online

  Jason was unaware he was grinding his teeth.

  Two men at the table next to him were tossing back draught beer and staring at the TV.

  “No way,” one of them complained.

  “I know,” his friend agreed. “A woman president? Not on my watch. Uhn-uhn. They’re too emotional. I don’t need a menopausal lady with access to the big red button, you know?”

  The first speaker opened his mouth to agree when he spotted Jason watching them. His eyes widened. He held up his hands in apology. “Sorry. We’re just talking big, you know? We’re both momma’s boys.”

  Jason’s chest tightened. Had he given himself away somehow? Then he realized, gratefully, that on the walk here, he’d let down his hair and, masking it as a sneeze, rearranged his face as a woman’s to match the photo on the driver’s license he carried. He wore gender-neutral jeans and t-shirt under his black blazer. The men had mistaken him for a female, the same disguise he’d used to sneak into Grace Odegaard’s women’s-only building.

  He tightened his vocal chords to raise the octave of his voice. “Are you kidding me? A female president would be terrible. Every woman I know agrees.”

  The men laughed, relieved.

  Jason matched their laughter.

  And he went over the Alcatraz plan for the millionth time.

  His mission was bloated with urgency. The Crucible was already too powerful. He left the bar and jogged across the street, not willing to wait the ten minutes to dispatch Isabel Odegaard and Salem Wiley. He had bigger fish to fry.

  31

  Salem, Massachusetts

  The Hawthorne Hotel was a plush brick cube straight out of the early 1900s. Room 325’s wallpaper was beige on beige baroque flocking, buttressed by ornate crown molding along the ceiling and somber carpeting. It was clean and cramped with barely enough room to contain two double beds, a nightstand, desk, and TV-concealing armoire. To navigate past one another, either Salem or Bel had to hop on the bed. At least, Salem assumed they would have to. They’d made for the desk as soon as they’d entered the room.

  Salem gently withdrew the paper from her pocket, the single sheet she’d retrieved from the central beam of the original First Church of Salem.

  With trembling hands, she flattened it.

  The paper was so ancient it felt like calfskin.

  She and Bel leaned close to it. It emitted the pleasant mildew of old books.

  A looping scrawl of crowded, half-cursive words with a sea of white space between them covered the paper. At the top was a title, and below that, a poem.

  My Life had stood—a Loaded G̣ụṇ

  Ṣome keep the Sạbbath going to church;

  I keep it staying at hoṃe,

  With a bobolink for a chorister,

  And an orchard for a dome.

  Some keep the Sabbath in Sụrplicẹ;

  I just wear my wings,

  And instead of toḷḷing the bell for chụr

  h,

  Ouṛ little sẹxṭon sịngs.

  God preạches,—a noted cler

  ̣yman,—

  And the seṛmon is never long;

  So instead of getting to heạṿẹn, at last,

  I’m going all along!

  The poem was attributed to Emily Dickinson at the bottom, with the Greek letter “sigma” below that.

  Bel and Salem stared at it in silence for several seconds. Their entire race from the Witch Museum to the lobby to room 325 had been a child’s bed-to-door ghost run, their feet barely touching the ground. And now they were looking at an Emily Dickinson poem scrawled out on an old piece of paper pulled out of an even older chunk of wood, heartbeats thundering to catch up.

  “Hunh,” Bel finally said.

  “Yeah,” Salem agreed.

  “You know,” Bel said, cocking her head, “I don’t think that title goes with that poem.”

  Salem reread it. English, particularly poetry, had not been her favorite subject. Too much room for interpretation. She drew out her phone and Googled it.

  “You’re right.” She clicked off her phone. “They’re two different poems.”

  Bel smiled. “Who ever thought that English minor would pay off?”

  Salem nodded absently. “This doesn’t seem like a code at all.” She held the paper up to the light. “And I don’t see any messages behind it. If it is some sort of cipher, it’s an amateur one. Far less complex than the cipher in the Gentileschi, and that was essentially only a hidden message.”

  Bel walked to the window and pushed aside the heavy tapestry drapes so she could peek out. “We’re not facing the Witch Museum, but I don’t see any sign of that creep. We paid cash, used false names. I think we’re safe. We have time to figure this out.”

  Salem was studying the paper, face screwed up as tight as a knot.

  Bel let the curtain drop. “I see you’re in deep-thought mode. I’m going to let you do what you do best and solve that thing so we can locate Vida and my mom. Meanwhile, I’m taking a shower and calling room service. Burgers and fries okay with you?”

  Salem nodded, but she wasn’t hungry.

  Bel called down to the hotel restaurant and placed an order before disappearing into the smallest, whitest bathroom Salem had ever seen.

  With Bel out of her sight, Salem realized she was coming down from an adrenaline high and, even worse, flirting with a panic attack. It slithered at the edges of her breath, threatening to pounce, to lay its hairy weight over her mouth, nose, and chest, picking out her sanity and flinging bits of it beyond her reach. She scrabbled for the plastic Ativan bottle and popped two of the seven she had left. It was probably conditioning, but she felt better immediately.

  Deciding to begin with the basics, she first searched “My Life Had Stood a Loaded Gun.” There were no obvious clues in the actual poem. Next, she Googled the Sabbath poem.

  Same.

  Behind the bathroom door, the whoosh of the shower came on. “Wow!” Bel squealed. “Cold water.”

  Their quarters were so tight that Salem heard when Bel squirted out shampoo. She broadened her focus, pulling up Dickinson’s Wikipedia page, figuring a wide net would catch more clues. Emily Elizabeth Dickinson lived from 1830 to 1886, was born in Amherst, and thanks to her father, received rigorous schooling, a rare privilege for girls of that time. She was a well-behaved, content girl until Sophia, her second cousin and a close friend, died.

  Her parents sent her to Boston in 1844 to recover from her overwhelming melancholy, and when she returned to Amherst, a religious revival was taking place. Dickinson jumped on board for a time, but it didn’t stick. More people close to her died, she became reclusive, and she wrote poetry, most of which wasn’t published until after her death of heart failure. In fact, during her lifetime, she was known more for her gardening skills, for wearing white, and for being so isolated that she rarely left her house and often talked to guests from the other side of a door.

  None of this helped Salem. She pushed back her curls and yanked her focus back to the moment, Googling “Emily Dickinson ciphers.” She didn’t land any logical hits. Same with a variety of synonyms in place of “ciphers.”

  Still nothing when she Googled “Emily Dickinson Artemisia Gentileschi,” “Emily Dickinson First Church,” and, as a last ditch, “Emily Dickinson hides secret in block of wood.”

  She wanted to scream her frustration. Instead, she opened Google Images and began scrolling through photos of Dickinson. She’d been a striking woman with dark eyes, a full mouth, and fierce hair. She’d also apparently not been big on pictures because Salem kept seeing the same photograph over and over.

  The shower twisted off with a loud protest. Salem heard Bel push the metal curtain rings down the rod and even heard her toweling off. She shoved the distractions aside.

  As she was looking at the pictures of Emily Dickinson arti
facts plus the millionth copy of the same Dickinson headshot, she wondered what the woman would have thought of the Hawthorne Hotel. By the sounds of it, the water pressure hadn’t improved much since her time. Salem’s mind was wandering. She was tired, emotionally and physically. She was scrolling almost too fast to see anything when her finger dropped on the scroll pad.

  Her eyes bulged.

  She leaned toward her computer screen. She couldn’t be seeing what she thought she was seeing.

  “Bel?”

  Bel rushed out, her towel tied around her waist. Salem, long-used to how comfortable her friend was naked, didn’t even give her a second glance. “What’d you find?”

  Salem swiveled the computer so Bel could see. “Look.”

  Bel bent forward. The screen reflected like a slumber-party flashlight against her face. “What am I looking at?”

  Salem pointed at the image she’d enlarged, wiping drips from Bel’s hair off the keyboard. “That letter on the screen. It was handwritten by Dickinson.” The note she’d found in the beam was lying next to the computer. She held it up. “Check out this note. The handwriting is identical.”

  Bel squinted, trying to catch up.

  Salem explained, her voice belying her incredulity. “Dickinson’s name at the end of the note? It’s not an attribution. It’s her signature.”

  Bel’s eyes went wide. “Emily Dickinson wrote the note you found in that old church beam?”

  A knock landed on the thick wood of the door. Salem and Bel flinched. Bel shook it off and peered through the spy hole. “Room service,” she told Salem, and through the door, “give me a minute.” She tossed the towel and pulled on her jeans, a bra, and a t-shirt before strapping on her holster, hauling on a jacket, and opening the door.

  The guy on the other side was tall and scarecrow-thin, in his late teens or early twenties. He wore a blue uniform constructed of a polyester so cheap that light reflected off the thread of it. The pants were two inches too short. Probably most pants were for him. He was at least 6'5". He held a tool box rather than a food service tray.

  “Sorry to bother you. Your bathroom has some sort of leak that’s affecting the room below. May I come in?”

  Bel stepped out of the way. Salem moved her laptop to the bed to clear space on the desk. She set Emily Dickinson’s note next to it. Having a false alarm on the room service food made her realize she was starving.

  The hotel worker ducked his head under the doorjamb and stepped in.

  Bel closed the door behind him.

  He ate up the three steps it took to cross the room and set down the toolbox on the spot Salem had just cleared. He turned to them both, his expression dark. He crossed his hands in front of him. “You two have to leave. Now.”

  32

  Salem, Massachusetts

  Bel tensed and dropped her body weight to her hips, hand dipping toward the gun inside her jacket. “Excuse me?”

  The hotel worker stumbled back toward the wall, his blue eyes wide. “Salem Wiley and Isabel Odegaard, right? Your moms are Vida and Grace?”

  Salem’s cheeks flushed. She found herself reaching out to him, though her feet didn’t move. “You know them?”

  He shook his head. “Not really. I met Vida once, never Grace. Heard of both of ’em plenty.” After casting a wary glance at Bel, he leaned toward the window, moving a corner of the drapery to peer out. His fingers were so long that they seemed to uncurl. Salem re-evaluated his height. He must be over 6'7". He made the hotel room look like a miniature movie set. “You guys have got to get out of here.”

  “Why?” Bel’s tone was aggressive, hand still on her gun, but her shoulders had relaxed slightly. “And who are you?”

  He turned back to face them. Salem noticed flesh-colored, sparse hair on his face, one shade lighter than the hair on his head. He wasn’t old enough to grow a real beard or mustache, but he was trying. “I’m nobody. But you two? You have far more enemies than you realize. And they know you’re here.” He spun his finger in a circle, indicating the room. “At the Hawthorne, not just in Massachusetts.”

  Salem stepped toward him, and then stopped. The Ativan had dulled her brain. “Do you know where our mothers are?”

  He dropped his glance, concentrating on a point near her feet. “No.” He shot a look in Bel’s direction but had no more luck meeting her eyes. He cleared his throat. “One of them is dead, for sure.”

  Salem’s legs turned to pudding beneath her. She dropped cross-legged to the floor as sure as if a giant finger had appeared from the sky and pressed on her head. Bel glided forward and twisted the young man’s arm behind his back, driving him to his knees before he had time to react.

  “I don’t know which one,” he whispered. “And the FBI found a finger outside Grace Odegaard’s apartment building. It might not belong to either of your mothers, they’re not sure.” He swallowed hard, his pale skin growing paler.

  Bel’s voice was fierce. “How do you know any of this?”

  “Dr. Keller called me.”

  Salem’s brain was whirling. Dr. Keller had acted strangely at the art museum, but everything had seemed so bizarre the last twenty-four hours. “Why?”

  His teeth gritted from pain. “He’s in the Underground. He said you’d stopped by the Institute and would be in Salem soon. I’m the Salem contact. I was watching outside the First Church—we know that’s where the trail starts—and followed you here.” He tried to toss his head toward the door, but Bel’s grip was too tight. “The toolkit was in my car. I grabbed the jacket from the hotel laundry room on my way up here. I figured you wouldn’t let me in otherwise.”

  Bel’s chin was quivering with the effort of holding him. “That explains how you knew where we were, but not why.”

  “The Underground sent me.”

  Salem and Bel exchanged a glance. Neither had words.

  He continued, his breathing shallow. “Your mothers were both in the Underground. Vida was a leader, I know that, because she came out here once for a history conference and talked to us. Grace Odegaard might have been a top leader too, I don’t know. Nobody knows who’s even a member and who isn’t. That’s to protect us, I guess.” He tried shifting. Bel tightened her grip. “Hey, you have to listen to me.”

  “I’m listening,” Bel said. She patted him down with her free hand, searching for weapons. “I can do that just fine in this position. Keep talking.”

  A bead of sweat rolled from his hairline toward his nose. “The Underground is a network. That’s how I know about the … situation in Minneapolis.”

  “Salem,” Bel commanded, “call the Minneapolis police right now. Ask them if anything he’s said is true.”

  Salem’s upper body reached for the phone. Her lower half was still not responding to commands.

  “Don’t bother,” he sighed. “The police only know about the neighbor and her dog, and maybe the finger. They will never hear of the other body. The clean-up crew has already come and gone. I know, because one of them sells information to the Underground. Even if that crew wasn’t so good, the bad guys have a plant in the FBI.” He finally looked Salem in the eye. His pupils were a startling blue, like a husky’s. “Bits, right?”

  A shaking began in Salem’s abdomen and traveled to her hands and feet. “What’d you call me?”

  “You’re Vida’s daughter? I recognize your curly hair from her description. She said that if I ever met you without her, it was desperate times. She said to call you ‘Bits’ so you’d know to trust me. She asked me to tell you about the Underground.”

  Bel snorted, but she let up slightly on his arm. “Anybody could find out that’s her nickname.”

  Except not really, Salem thought, because the only people alive who know about that are you, my mom, and Grace. “What else did she tell you?”

  The drop of sweat rolling down his face was joined
by others. His already-pale complexion was shading green.

  “Bel, I think you should let him go.” Salem didn’t know where that had come from. Her legs still weren’t working, for Christ’s sake. She was literally in no position to defend against him. But up close, he looked exactly like a scared kid, more boy than man for all his height, wearing his too-short pants and blinking his too-serious eyes.

  Bel glared at Salem, but she released her grip and stepped back, returning her hand to her gun while she watched him warily. He moved his arm slowly back into position, grimacing. He cradled it while he sat on his heels.

  “What’s your name?” Salem asked.

  “Ernest Mayfair.” His eyes flicked to Bel.

  She leaned against the wall, her posture still rigid, right hand near her gun. “All right, Ernest Mayfair. Let’s start at the beginning. How do you know we’re in danger?”

  He nodded as if his teacher had just asked him to give a speech he’d stayed up all night rehearsing. “Both your moms were in the Underground, and Vida was one of the leaders,” he repeated, “and every so often, the Hermitage Foundation does a ‘harvesting’ of Underground leaders, who are mostly women, to try and wipe out the organization.”

  “The Hermitage Foundation?” Salem asked. “That lobbying group that’s always in the news for its donations?”

  Ernest twisted his mouth. “That’s their public face. The truth is much darker.” He rose to his feet, offering his good hand to Salem. She stood with his help, her legs still creaky. “The Hermitage Foundation is an old, old organization that was dying out until Andrew Jackson revived it in the 1800s. He gave it new life, and a new mission: run the world. They renamed themselves after his plantation.”