"You're saying this is sort of like a voodoo doll, aren't you?" I asked.

"Yeah, sort of."

I smiled reassuringly, because I could see she was uncomfortable telling me I was a victim of this kind of activity. "I think I'd already sussed that out, and it doesn't really bother me. It's not very nice to think about, but I don't believe in that stuff. They can't really frighten me with it."

A pause.

"There is one thing that bugs me, however," I said, "one thing I can't figure out. And that's the fact that the doll was placed with its head under the tire and its body back under the car. In ordinary circumstances, I would never have discovered it was there. It was only by chance that there was enough snow during the day for my car to get stuck. In any other instance, I would have simply driven away, smashing over the doll and being none the wiser for having done so. Was that just lack of sophistication, placing it there? Had someone just made a mistake? Because if they were trying to warn me off or frighten me, it would have made more sense to put the doll somewhere that I would have been sure to see it. The way it happened seems pointless to me."

"I don't think they were trying to scare you," Brenda replied. "Like, I suspect the doll was deliberately hidden. This is black magic, not just some game. The point of it was to get you to destroy the doll, which you wouldn't have done, if you'd known it was there."

"But why?"

"The doll's in your image, isn't it? If you destroy your own totem, you're destroying yourself. They will have put a very powerful spell on that doll. To invoke a willing sacrifice. They want you to commit suicide."

Chapter Twenty-Three.

The drive back to Pecking on Sunday evening was a depressing one for me. I hadn't been totally honest with Brenda when I'd said I wasn't frightened by what had happened. I was. It was an insidious, creeping sort of fear, oozing into unoccupied corners of my mind; whenever I stopped actively thinking, I became aware of it. Four hours alone in the car made keeping it at bay hard work.

Did I believe in this kind of stuff? Might it be true? I could hardly ignore the fact of June Harriman's suicide the previous year, and, while there was in all likelihood no connection, it still made a chilling backdrop to the implications of the ruined doll. What I couldn't deny was the fact that a turning point had come for me. I could have accepted that Jadie had put the doll there; if she denied it, I could have even accepted that, knowing that if she was suffering from a multiple personality disorder, she might genuinely not remember having done it. What I couldn't accept was the obscure placement of the doll under the tire. It implied someone else. Even if Jadie had put it there herself, it implied someone else's instructions.

Over and over and over I pondered the various points of the case. It occurred to me that what I'd like to do was just keep driving, to go past Falls River, past Pecking, and on along the freeway to someplace different, someplace new. I had visions of reaching New Mexico, if I kept going long enough, emerging from the winter darkness into sunshine and heat.

Monday morning I took the blond-haired Sasha doll into school and carefully laid it out on one of the benches in the cloakroom. Jeremiah, the first to arrive, shrieked when he saw it.

"Wowie! Lady, come look at this!" he called from the cloakroom. "Some boog's come in here and fucked up one of your dollies. Come here, quick!"

"I know about it already, Jeremiah," I called back from the classroom.

The other children arrived then, clattering into the cloakroom with their schoolbags and lunch-boxes.

"It was you!" I heard Jeremiah say. "It was that girl!" He came running out to me in the classroom. "It's that boogy girl in there. You just ask her. She done it. You let her have that nice doll of yours, and just look what she done to it. Boy, bet you're sorry now. Bet you're never gonna let her have something nice again, huh? And it's gonna serve her right."

"Jeremiah, calm down."

"Man, lady," he said and leaned close to me, his eyes round, "what you gonna do to her?"

Reuben and Philip emerged from the cloakroom, their eyes huge with the drama of it all. Then out rolled Brucie, oblivious, as usual. But no Jadie.

"Time for morning discussion," I called. "Come on, everybody."

Still no Jadie.

"Coulda told you not to give her nothing. Coulda told you that girl's no good. Bet she's gonna say she didn't do it. Fucks up your doll and bet she thinks you're gonna believe her little pussy face, when she says she didn't do it."

"Jeremiah, please." I turned him physically around and pushed him gently toward the reading area, where we held morning discussion. Then I stalked to the cloakroom door. "Jadie? Come on, now."

Jadie wasn't in there. The doll remained, but the room was empty.

"Jadie?" I went into the cloakroom, then to the hallway door. I stuck my head out. No Jadie.

I returned to the classroom. "Was she here? Did you actually see her, Jeremiah?"

"Yeah, sure she was here. But when she seen what she done, she got the fuck outa here."

I held off morning discussion as long as I could, hoping Jadie would venture back, but she never did. At recess I went down to Alice's room to see if Amber was there. Sure enough she was, but there was no sign of her sister. Had Jadie come to school this morning? I asked Amber. Yes, she apparently had. When lunchtime came and she was still missing, I reluctantly had to admit the need to call her home and let her mother know I'd somehow lost Jadie.

"Jadie's not there?" her mother said over the phone. "Well, no, she's home. Didn't she tell you? She got feeling sick, said she puked in the school toilets, so she came home. Didn't she say nothing to you first?"

I hung up the phone in dismay.

"I didn't do it."

Startled by the unexpected voice, I jumped. There, in the classroom door, stood Jadie. She wore no outer clothes whatsoever, only a saggy, well-washed jogsuit and bedroom slippers.

"Does your mom know you're here?"

"I didn't do it. I didn't hurt that doll. Cross my heart."

I closed my plan book. "No, I know you didn't. I did. Because I didn't see it there in the snow."

Closing the classroom door gently behind her, Jadie crossed the room to stand on the opposite side of the table.

"But I think you know how it got there. And why."

Jadie's mouth drew down, her face puckered with tears.

I sat, watching her. "So, what're we going to do about it?"

Jadie began to cry.

Rising from the table, I went into the cloakroom and picked up the doll. Then I returned to the classroom. Holding it out, I looked at it. "Well, what I think we ought to do is try to make it better."

Laying the doll on the counter beside the sink, I began to remove its soiled clothing. "It's only the head that's been damaged," I said. "There was a lot of snow and I think that acted as padding. I expect we could send her off to a doll hospital to be fixed."

Jadie, who had come back to stand beside me, watched my activities intently.

"Let's wash her off. You get the bottle of dishwashing liquid from under the sink. The dirt makes her look much worse than I think she is." I put the plug into the sink and began to fill it with warm water.

For several moments, Jadie, still tearful, made no effort to retrieve the bottle of liquid detergent. Then, hesitantly, she knelt and opened the cupboard door.

"When things go wrong," I said, "we try to make them better. Sometimes we can. Sometimes we can't. But trying gives us control over them, even if we fail."

I scrubbed the doll and then lifted it from the water. Strangely, it looked even more damaged clean than it had dirty. The broken face stood out in stark contrast to the smooth curves of its body.

Jadie leaned against the counter and watched as I took an old towel out and started to dry the doll. Cautiously, she reached a hand up and with one finger gently stroked the doll's arm.

"If I tell," she said, her voice soft, "will the policemen look for Tashee?"

I glanced over.

"Will they try and find her?"

"Do you want them to?" I asked.

"I always tried to take care of her. She wasn't as big as me. She was my age, but she was little. I tried to help her best I could ..."

I continued drying the doll, running the soft fabric of the towel over the smooth limbs.

"Would they believe me?" Jadie asked.

"We won't know if we don't try."

Jadie looked up. "Would you stay with me? If I told? If I did it now?"

I nodded. "Of course, I would. Shall we go talk to Mr. Tinbergen?"

Jadie took in a deep breath and then, at last, she nodded. "Okay."

Once again. The Story. Jadie wouldn't tell it. The moment we reached Mr. Tinbergen's office, she went stone silent, her head down protectively between her hunched shoulders, so I recounted all the private moments that had passed between us. Sitting on the hard plastic chairs, bathed in the bright fluorescent lights of Mr. Tinbergen's office, I reconstructed the world of the cloakroom.

Mr. Tinbergen's expression grew stricken as I talked. He paled. His eyes left my face, to wander restlessly around the perimeter of the room. He never looked me in the eye again that afternoon.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked, when I'd finished. His voice harbored a plaintive note I hadn't anticipated. Then again, he cast around the room, as if searching for something familiar he couldn't find. "I think I'm a little out of my depth on this one," he murmured. "We're going to need some help. This isn't a decision I'll want to make by myself."

I glanced at Jadie, beside me. Hunched down, doubled over, she had the constricted rigidity of a cerebral-palsied person, her limbs pulled back against her, her fingers twisted in to grip the material of her clothes. Her head was so far down, I couldn't see her face, but I didn't need to see it to know her mouth was clamped shut.

"You're sure about this?" Mr. Tinbergen queried, looking at Jadie. "You're sure she knows what she's talking about?"

"Yes."

"We're going to need help."

The first person Mr. Tinbergen called was Arkie in Falls River. Would she come down? Right now? he asked. After concluding the call, he paused a moment, the end of the receiver resting against his chin. Then he dialed Social Services. Explaining briefly that he had a case of suspected child abuse to report, he asked for a representative to come to the school.

Since both people coming were in Falls River, this meant a half hour's time lag before we could expect them to be in the office. I rose from my chair to go back to the classroom and get Jadie's school file and my own notes. Did she want to come with me? I asked Jadie, but she remained silent and immobile on the red plastic chair. She couldn't even manage a nod or a shake of the head.

I knelt beside the chair. "Do you think you can talk, Jadie?" I asked, bending low enough to see her face. I gently pushed her hair back slightly.

No response.

"I know this is frightening. I know you're scared, but do you think you can manage? I'll stay with you. I'll be right here."

No response.

"She's going to have to say something," Mr. Tinbergen replied.

She raised her eyes then to meet mine, although she didn't raise her head. With only a slight movement of her constricted arm, she pressed her fingers against her mouth.

Arkie was the first to arrive. "Well, you do know how to pick up live wires, don't you?" she said to me when we met out in the front office. I sensed a note of irritation. Perhaps she thought I was blowing this all out of proportion, that I'd let an overactive imagination run away with me, when we could have solved this in a calmer, more civilized fashion. Or perhaps she was simply tired and hungry, as I was, and annoyed to be pulled out when she'd have rather gone home.

The social worker was named Delores Verney. Short, overweight, and fiftyish, she wore a pair of huge, owlish glasses pushed up on top of her head. Her hair, dark at the roots and bright blond at the ends, was in a short, cropped style, now rumpled to stand up in a manner very similar to Jeremiah's, when he needed a haircut. Her smile, however, was broad and easy, and she shook my hand with a heartiness that intimated that we were old friends.

"I think we have to face the fact that a criminal offense may have been committed here," she said, as way of greeting. "From what I'm told, we well may have to take this child-and most likely all other children in the home-into care for the time being. The only way I can get a place-of-safety order at such short notice is in conjunction with the police, so I've gone ahead and phoned the station. We should be getting an officer out here in a few minutes."

This conversation, like the one with Arkie, was hissed in the front office, while Jadie remained with Mr. Tinbergen in his office. Both he and I realized immediately that the most serious problem facing us was not the abuse but Jadie's fear. Indeed, she had yet to say a word, even to Mr. Tinbergen. So he and I took it in turns to sit with Jadie or meet-and-greet in the front office, in hopes that Jadie would not be intimidated by a rush of new people. Thus, everyone was shuttling back and forth in what could only be described as organized confusion.

"I prefer to work with someone from our station in Falls River," Delores said to me. "I know we're going to need to go through the Pecking police to do anything, but there's only what? Two officers here? Three? I wouldn't trust them with a case like this. I wanted a woman officer-that's the usual procedure around here with child victims, if at all possible-and my girl in Falls River is experienced. One of the best in the state for child abuse. Now," she said, pausing for breath, "who's the one making the complaint?"

Heart long since sunk into my shoes, I knew, like Pandora, I had opened the box and was never going to get the lid back on again.

The policewoman's name was Lindy. She was much younger than I'd expected, perhaps no more than thirty, and startlingly attractive. Large brown eyes and glossy, well-cut hair framing her face gave her the look of a Hollywood starlet, not a midwestem police officer; her appearance was further enhanced by stylishly casual clothes rather than a uniform.

Lindy had worked with Delores on several child abuse cases and seemed competent and confident. I took heart from this. On the other hand, the officer from the Pecking station seemed ill at ease. Unless there was concrete evidence, he kept saying, it was just going to be this girl's word against her parents. Gotta find semen, else there wasn't going to be a case.

Unexpectedly, I once again found myself downplaying the occult connection. In the heat of the first few moments with Mr. Tinbergen, it had been easy to mention the broken doll, the Black Mass symbol, and other aspects of Jadie's bizarre tales that indicated ritualistic abuse; however, as time wore on and more and more professionals joined us, I found myself disinclined to go beyond the obvious. Yes, I said, there were definite indications of abuse, particularly sexual abuse. Yes, I said, there was the possibility of more than one person being involved. But I couldn't make myself go out on a limb and say I thought we were looking for a coven or something like that. When Lindy turned to me and asked who, precisely, I thought was abusing Jadie, I paused. Who, indeed? I sputtered and tried to explain that she used some kind of code name for them. At this point Arkie jumped in to say Jadie appeared to be suffering from a dissociative disorder and that either she, herself, was disintegrating into an assortment of personalities or she had splintered her abuser or abusers into multiple personalities. Possibly both. Of course, Arkie said, sexual abuse was commonly implicated in dissociative disorders. I fell silent at this point and didn't add anything to Arkie's statement. I'd be grateful just to get Jadie out of the home, I thought. That was the main objective.

Jadie, herself, was no help at all. Despite her initial agreement to talk about the abuse with Mr. Tinbergen, she clammed up the moment she went into the office and had not said a single word since. She managed an occasional nod and that was all. Hunched over, drawn up, every muscle rigid, she appeared to have been turned to stone by fear.

We stayed in the school office until almost 7:15 in the evening, discussing among ourselves the type and extent of abuse suspected, the possible perpetrators, Jadie's psychological makeup and that of other family members. It was decided that Jadie, Amber, and Sapphire would be taken immediately into the care of Social Services on an eight-day place-of-safety order, during which time the police would examine the case.

The time then came to adjourn to the police station, and it was decided that Mr. Tinbergen, Arkie, and I had probably made our contributions to the proceedings for the evening and didn't need to go along. They had our statements and that was all we could give. It went out of our hands from this point onward. Despite my emotional involvement, I could appreciate this, but I mentioned my concern for Jadie. Would she be comfortable going alone in the police car with Lindy and Delores, or would she be better with one of us along? Lindy pointed out the extreme care now needed to keep from inadvertently biasing anything Jadie might say. It might be better if we kept contact to a minimum. And Jadie seemed to accept this next step. She disappeared through the door of the school, her hand in Lindy's, and didn't give a backward glance.

About 9:15, Lindy phoned me from the Pecking police station. They'd brought the Ekdahls in, she said. Mom and Dad seemed completely bewildered by all of this. Amber, who had been interviewed separately from Jadie or her parents, denied all knowledge of abuse. Jadie refused to talk to anyone about anything. There hadn't been a word out of her since she'd arrived. Lindy didn't need to mention the amount of frustration she was feeling because of Jadie's silence; it echoed clearly in her voice, but she made it plain how damaging this attitude was going to be. She explained that she'd already called Arkie, and Arkie had told her to phone me. I was the one would could make mutes talk.

At the police station, I was met at the front desk, let through a heavy door with an electronic lock, and taken down a long corridor to a large back room. The place was alive with people, mainly from Social Services in Falls River, but also with additional police personnel.

Lindy greeted me. "We've put a place-of-safety order on the girls, and Delores has managed to find a short-term foster home in Red Circle that'll take all three of them for the week. That's super, because it means they'll be close enough to continue attending school here. I think that's best. It's going to be a disruptive enough week as it is. Mind you, we still haven't got anything out of Jadie, and, heck, Torey, the whole works'll fall right through the floor if this kid keeps it up. I'm praying to God you're going to be able to make her see sense."

"One won't talk, one won't shut up," Delores muttered. "I was trying to explain to the six-year-old that they'd be staying with another family for the week, and she's gone hysterical on me. Absolutely hysterical."

"It's going to be difficult," I said.

"Why's that?" Delores asked.

"They're a closed-in family. The mother told me they've never left the girls with anyone for any length of time. Not even a babysitter for the evening."

"Oh Jesus, are you joking?"

I was led down the hall to one of the interview rooms, and the door was opened. There sat Jadie, alone. I came in and the officer shut the door behind me and left us.