“I don’t know,” Joanna said. “Irreversible brain death occurs in four to six minutes, but synapses continue to fire for several minutes after that—”
“It’s been longer than that,” Ms. Grant said hopefully. “Maybe—”
Joanna shook her head. “Time doesn’t—”
“The last regular lifeboat was launched at 1:55 a.m.,” Mr. Briarley said. “The lights went out at 2:15, and five minutes later the ship went down. That means there was approximately twenty minutes betwee—”
“Regular lifeboats?” Greg Menotti said. “What do you mean, regular lifeboats?”
“Time doesn’t what?” Ms. Grant asked.
“There were also four collapsible boats with canvas sides,” Mr. Briarley said, “but only two of them were launched. Collapsible A was washed off the deck and swamped, and Collapsible B capsized. The men who managed to climb aboard her bottom had to—”
“Where are they?” Greg said to Joanna.
“Greg—” Joanna said.
“Time doesn’t what?”
Greg grabbed her arm and yanked her to her feet, knocking cards and poker chips onto the floor. “Where did they keep the collapsibles?”
“On the roof of the officers’ quarters,” Mr. Briarley said.
“Where are the officers’ quarters?” Greg demanded.
“You don’t understand,” Joanna said. “This isn’t the Titanic. It’s a metaphor. We—”
Greg’s grip tightened viciously on her arm. “Where are the officers’ quarters? Which deck?”
“Even if they are there,” Joanna said, “it’s too late. You had a heart attack. You d—”
“Which deck?”
“The Boat Deck,” Joanna said.
“Where on the Boat Deck?”
“On the starboard side,” Joanna said. “Between the wheelhouse and the wire—” The wireless shack. Where Jack Phillips had kept sending out SOSs long after the boats were gone. Where he had kept sending out signals to the very end.
“Between the wheelhouse and the what?” Greg demanded, but she had already wrenched free of his arm, was already running.
48
“Hold tight!”
Mrs. Davenport told Richard she had spoken to Joanna only yesterday. “She has a message for you,” Mrs. Davenport said. “She said to tell you she is happy and doesn’t want you to mourn her, because Death is not the end. It is only a passage to the Other Side.”
“I need to know when the last time you saw her on this side was,” Richard insisted. “Did you see her on the day she was killed?”
“She was not killed,” Mrs. Davenport said. “Only her body. Her spirit lives eternally.”
I’m wasting my time here. Mrs. Davenport doesn’t know anything, Richard thought. But too much was at stake to turn on his heel and walk out. “Did you see her on the day her body was killed?” Richard asked.
“Yes,” Mrs. Davenport said. “I saw her walking toward a bright light, and in the light was an angel, extending his hand to her, leading her to the light, and I knew then that she had crossed over, and I was glad, for there is no fear or sorrow or loneliness on the Other Side, only happiness.”
“Mrs. Davenport,” Richard said, and her psychic powers must have told her his patience was at an end.
“I did not see her in her earthly body that day,” she said. “I hadn’t seen her for several weeks, even though I’d paged her a number of times.” She smiled beatifically. “Now I speak with her nearly every day. She said to tell you that you cannot find the truth of death, or life, through science. Instead, you must seek the light.”
“Did she also say, ‘Rosabelle, believe’?” Richard asked.
“Yes, now that you mention it, I do remember her saying that,” Mrs. Davenport said eagerly. “She said, ‘Tell Richard, “Rosabelle, believe.” ’ What does it mean?”
That you’re just as in touch with the Other Side as all those bogus spiritualists Houdini’s wife consulted, Richard thought. “I have to go,” he said.
“Oh, but you can’t,” Mrs. Davenport said. “You have to tell me what ‘Rosabelle, believe’ means. Is it some kind of secret code? What does it mean?”
“It means it isn’t Joanna you’ve been getting messages from, it’s Houdini,” he said.
“Really?” Mrs. Davenport said, thrilled. “You know, I had a feeling it was. Oh, I must tell Mr. Mandrake.”
Richard escaped while she was reaching for the phone, and went back up to the lab and science. He called up Amelia Tanaka’s scans, and then, after a moment, deleted the command. The secret, if there was one, lay in something Joanna had experienced, something Joanna had seen. He called up Joanna’s.
Her scan appeared on the screen, a pattern of purple and green and blue. Telling him something. “Is it some kind of secret code?” Mrs. Davenport had asked. It was, and like Houdini’s mind-reading code, it had to be deciphered a little at a time. He began going through her scans, analyzing the patterns grid by grid, mapping the areas of activity, the receptors, the neurotransmitters.
The last time he’d talked to Joanna, he’d told her about the presence of DABA in her and Mrs. Troudtheim’s scans. Could she have discovered something about—? But she didn’t know anything about inhibitors, and DABA was present in other NDEs.
Still, it was a place to start. He checked for its presence in each of Joanna’s sessions. It was present in high levels in her last three sessions and at trace levels in her first one. He went through Mr. Sage’s scans. No DABA at all, but high levels in all but one of Amelia Tanaka’s, and trace levels in the template scan. Wonderful.
He started through each session’s data, graphing the neurotransmitters. Cortisol in 60 percent, beta-endorphins in 80 percent, enkephalin in 30 percent. And a long list of neurotransmitters present in only one blood paneclass="underline" taurine, neurotensin, tryptamine, AMP, glycine, adenosine, and every endorphin and peptide in the book.
All right, combinations of neurotransmitters, he thought, and started looking for endorphins in tandem, but there weren’t any. It’s totally random, he thought at ten-thirty, grabbed a stack of transcripts to read through, and went home.
But the answer wasn’t in Ms. Kobald’s “The angel touched my brow, and I knew Death was only the beginning,” or in Mr. Stockhausen’s “Brigham Young was standing in the light, surrounded by the elders.” It lay in the Titanic.
He looked at his watch. Eleven-thirty. The Tattered Cover and Barnes and Noble would both be closed. Who would have books on the Titanic? Kit. She had said Joanna had asked her to find out about fires and fog, and Mr. Briarley had been an expert on the Titanic.
Richard picked up the phone and then put it down again. It was too late to call her, but as soon as he got to the hospital the next morning, he got her on the phone and said, “When you come to pick up the transcripts, can you bring me an account of the sinking of the Titanic?”
“Yes, but I’ve got a problem. Eldercare can’t send anyone over till this afternoon, and I really wanted to get started on the transcripts.”
“I could bring them over to your house,” Richard offered.
“No, I don’t want you to have to do that. Look, I can bring Uncle Pat with me, I just can’t leave him in the car by himself. Could you meet us in the parking lot at ten with the transcripts?”
“Sure,” he said, but, looking at the transcripts, he knew there was no way he could get them all down to the parking lot in one trip. He needed a box. He went down to Supplies to get one.