Leaving her car in the hospital garage, Kim” walked up Beacon Hill and headed for the gold-domed Massachusetts State-house. After being cooped up all day, Kim enjoyed the outdoors. It was a warm but pleasant summer day. There was a slight sea breeze and the smell of salt in the air. Walking by the Common, she heard the complaint of sea gulls.
An inquiry at the statehouse information service directed Kim to the Massachusetts State Archives. Waiting her turn, Kim faced a heavy set male clerk. His name was William Mac-Donald. Kim showed him the copies she’d made of Ronald’s petition and Magistrate Hathorne’s negative ruling.
“Very interesting,” William said. “I love this old stuff. Where’d you find this?”
“The Essex County Courthouse,” Kim said.
“What can I do for you?” William asked.
“Magistrate Hathorne suggested that Mr. Stewart should petition the Governor since the evidence he sought had been transferred to Suffolk County. I’d like to find out about the Governor’s response. What I’m really interested in finding out is what the evidence was. For some reason it’s not described in either the petition or the ruling.”
“It would have been Governor Phips,” William said. He smiled. “I’m a bit of a history buff. Let’s see if we can find Ronald Stewart in the computer.”
William used his terminal. Kim watched his face since she couldn’t see the screen. To her chagrin he kept shaking his head after each entry.
“No Ronald Stewart,” he said finally. He looked again at the ruling and scratched his head. “I don’t know what else to do. I’ve tried to cross-reference Ronald Stewart with Governor Phips, but I get nothing. The trouble is, not all the seventeenth-century petitions survived, and those that did are not all properly indexed or catalogued. There’s a wealth of such personal petitions. Back then there was a hell of a lot of disagreement and discord, and people were suing each other just as much as they are today.”
“What about the date?” Kim asked. “August 3, 1692. Is there some way you can use that?”
“I’m afraid not,” William said. “Sorry.”
Kim thanked the clerk and left the statehouse. She was mildly discouraged. With the ease she’d found the petition in Salem, she’d had high hopes of finding a follow-up ruling in Boston that would have revealed the nature of the evidence against Elizabeth.
“Why couldn’t Ronald Stewart have described that damn evidence?” Kim wondered as she stalked down Beacon Hill. But then the idea occurred to her that maybe it was significant that he didn’t. Maybe that was some sort of clue or message in and of itself.
Kim sighed. The more she thought about the mysterious evidence, the more curious she became. In fact at that moment she began to imagine it might be associated with the intuitive feeling she had that Elizabeth was trying to communicate with her.
Kim reached Cambridge Street and turned toward the Mass General garage. The other problem that her failure at the statehouse presented was that she was being thrown back to the impossibly large collection of papers in the castle, a daunting task at best. Yet it was apparent that if she were to learn anything more about Elizabeth, it would have to be there.
Climbing into her car, Kim headed north for Salem. But it was not an easy nor quick trip. The visit to the statehouse had put her in the height of rush-hour traffic.
As she sat in the bumper-to-bumper traffic on Storrow Drive, trying to get through Leverett Circle, she thought about the blond woman Kinnard was dating. She knew it shouldn’t bother her, but it did. Yet such thoughts made her especially glad that she’d invited Edward to share the cottage with her. Not only did she truly care for Edward. She liked the message that her living with Edward would send to both Kinnard and her father.
Then Kim remembered Elizabeth’s head in her trunk. The more she thought about Edward’s failure to come along to Salem that evening, the more surprised she was, especially since he’d promised to take responsibility for the head and was fully aware of her distaste for handling it. It was behavior at odds with his attentiveness and, along with everything else, it disturbed her.