When his attempts to reach Allison failed, Josh drove to her condo. The Wagoneer was parked in its usual spot. He rang the doorbell and knocked. No one answered. He trooped around back, scaled a plank fence and dropped onto the rain-slicked patio. The door was unlocked. Hippocrates scooted out as Josh stepped in.
He found himself in Allison’s bedroom. Her bed was unmade. A beige bra lay strewn on the floor. A silky nightgown pooled on the seat of a chair. Josh took a deep breath. The place smelled feminine, intimate. The only light came from a television which flickered silently in the corner with the image of a naked woman. Allison.
He watched transfixed. Even for a jaded newsman, the images were shocking, well beyond commercial pornography. The DVD loop began to repeat. He could not tear himself away. Josh stepped closer. He studied Allison’s face. Was she aware she was being recorded? He was stunned by what he saw and horrified by his fascination with it. What kind of sick bastard got pleasure from humiliating someone like Allison he would never know. He felt his rage building. Feeling like a participant in Allison’s violation, he grabbed the remote, snapped off the video and turned on the overhead light.
His heart stopped. Allison stood in the doorway. Gone was the poised, confident physician. She looked half dead. He’d seen the look before—in disaster survivors and on the faces of people after the bombing at the Atlanta Olympic Games. He rushed to her and drew her tightly to him.
Allison pushed away. “Get away from me,” she said woodenly.
Josh took a step forward. “Are you okay—?”
She lashed out at him with both arms. Josh grabbed her wrists and pinned them to her sides. She fought to get free but Josh held on until Allison stopped struggling and melted into heaving sobs.
He held her until the sobs became sniffles. He led her to the edge of the bed, sat beside her. She would have to speak first.
“I never thought . . .” She shook her head. “I’m going to have to leave town. My life is shot.”
Allison slammed a pillow to the floor. She’d worked so hard to gain the respect of her patients, to regain her own self-respect. Now, she’d been crushed. She dissolved back into tears.
Josh wanted to make her feel better but he couldn’t think of the right thing to say.
The phone broke the silence. Allison didn’t move. She let the call go to the answering machine. “It’s Carl. We’ve restored almost the whole note. I’ve emailed you a scan.”
She could sense Josh’s anxiety. They both believed the note in the fish had been aimed at him. The DVD’s arrival helped her appreciate his need to know who was targeting him and why. “Check my email,” she said. “I’m signed on.”
Josh went to her computer. He found the email and opened the attachment. “W-Y-N-E- something-U-E-C-H-S-I-K-A- apostrophe—S. Followed by the word CURSE,” he read. “We knew about ‘Curse’. There’s also a signature. ‘One of the Remaining.’”
He studied the smudged letters. Something about the note looked familiar but he couldn’t place it. “What starts with W-Y-N-E?”
He went to dictionary.com and typed the letters. No results.
“The apostrophe means it possessive. Maybe it’s a person,” Allison suggested. She could feel her own natural curiosity pulling her back from the brink.
Josh Googled WYNE. “WYNE is a radio station in Erie, Pennsylvania. And there’s a stripper named Brandy Wyne.”
“See what you get if you type in all the letters we have and guess at the one we’re missing. Start with A and keep going until we get a match. There are only twenty-six possibilities.”
Josh studied the letters. “It almost has to be a consonant.” Seconds later, he reported, “The word is Wynepuechsika. It means maize plant. It’s the Indian name for Chief Cornstalk.”
“‘Cornstalk’s Curse.’ Signed ‘One of the Remaining,’” Allison said. “What the heck does that mean?”
Josh Googled “Cornstalk’s Curse.” The site of the West Virginia Historical Society came up first. “It says Chief Cornstalk issued a curse before he died and supposedly a lot of local disasters have resulted—coal mine accidents, bridge collapses, that kind of thing.”
“Might as well blame him for the Marshall football team plane crash, as long as they’re at it.”
Josh scrolled further. “Actually, they do. Here’s the curse itself. ‘May the curse of the Great Spirit rest upon this land. May it be blighted by Nature. May it even be blighted in its hopes. May the strength of its peoples be paralyzed by the stain of our blood.’”
“That’s one upset chief. But what’s the curse have to do with a radioactive catfish? And why direct it to you?”
“Interesting.” Josh looked again at the scan of the note. “Bradley Hand,” he said.
“What?”
“The fish note is typeset. A font called Bradley Hand. You don’t see it often except in newspapers.”