THE WITCH'S KEY (Detective Marcella Witch's Series. Book 3) Page 12

  “He was naked?” I heard Carlos say.

  Lilith answered, “Au naturel and standing at attention, if you know what I mean.”

  “So, what did you do?”

  “What do you think? I did what any self-respecting girl in my position would do. I….”

  Her reply trailed off in a whisper, to which both responded by breaking out in robust laughter again.

  “You didn’t!” he said.

  “I did,” she answered, and they laughed still harder. I turned the corner ripe for fight and boiling mad. But I didn’t want them to know it, so I smiled at their red faces and laughed with them.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked, directing the question to Carlos because I knew he would have the hardest time making something up.

  “Oh, just telling jokes,” he said.

  “Really? Let’s hear it.”

  Lilith came back, “It’s an old one. Probably just bore you.”

  “Yeah,” said Carlos. “It’d bore you stiff.”

  Oh, how that brought down the house. I put my shoes on while they fell over laughing on the floor.

  “Meet me outside when you think you’re done.” I told Carlos, and I walked out, slamming the door with substantial satisfaction.

  Carlos came out right behind me, but not before I made it to the car and took a seat on the passenger side. He climbed in behind the wheel, still smirking. I waited until we were on our way before asking him what Lilith said.

  “About what?” he asked.

  “You know.”

  “No.”

  “Carlos, I heard you two talking. I was right around the corner the entire time. What did she say happened in bed?”

  He cringed, clearly uncomfortable about the matter. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “All right, fine. Then let’s drop it. But you better not utter a word about this to Spinelli.”

  He turned to me abruptly. “That reminds me.”

  “What?”

  “Dominic called this morning. Another transient kissed a train last night.”

  “Suicide?”

  He shrugged. “That’s what they’re saying.”

  “Who is saying?”

  “Dell, over at the First. It happened in his precinct.”

  “Can we check it out?”

  “Not until later. I talked to Dell after hanging up with Spinelli. He asked to wait until he finished his prelim. Protocol, you know.”

  I turned my head and gazed out the side window at the passing scenery. “Yes, I don’t suppose I’d want him nosing around if it were our investigation.”

  “You sound disappointed.”

  “I am. He thinks it’s a suicide. He won’t treat the scene with the same reverence he would a homicide.”

  “He’s supposed to.”

  “I know he’s supposed to, but he’ll have his men trampling all over the place; you watch. There’s no telling what evidence they’ll destroy.”

  “You want me to call him?”

  I shook my head. “Nah, leave it. He’s liable to find something and then not share it with us. Let’s just carry on with what we’re doing. Where do we go first?”

  “Crook’s Blind,” he said. “That’s where Peter Corey killed himself. I figured we should start with the latest and work backwards. The evidence trail might be fresher.”

  I gestured a simple nod. “Let’s do it.”

  Eleven

  We had to park on the side of the road and slip down a wooded incline on foot to reach the spot where Peter Corey died. I remembered reading about him to Lilith. His encounter with a train made front page when the train’s engineer admitted to drinking on the job, but claimed that his drinking had nothing to do with the incident. I scoffed at that notion then, but seeing the condition of the tracks, I conceded that maybe he was right. The wooded embankment curved in a natural bowl shape, creating a blind bend in the tracks that would scarcely allow a train’s operator more than a dozen yards visibility beyond his window, especially at night. Anyone determined to kiss a train, as Carlos put it, could hardly pick a better spot.

  A recent rain had washed away most of what remained of Peter Corey after the coroner’s office removed the body from the scene. Spray paint on the ground, ties and tracks gave us a fairly good idea of where impact occurred. Further up the line, an X indicated where the train’s engine had come to a complete stop. Everything in-between seemed perfectly ordinary, except for a stitch of clothing or two, diced into little squares by the train’s wheels. I had Carlos collect them in the unlikely case that they held any clues as to what really happened there. All assumptions, however, suggested they didn’t.

  After working the scene for only a few minutes, I turned to Carlos, already disappointed. “I’m getting nothing. How `bout you?”

  He shook his head. “Same here. You know it seems like this spot is off the beaten path for transients, doesn’t it?”

  I looked around the earthen bowl in broad sweeps. “Yes, it does. It seems to me that if Gypsy was able to make this guy step in front of a moving locomotive, she would likely have been close by.”

  Then Carlos spotted something. “There,” he said, pointing. “That’s a clearing, isn’t it?”

  I followed his aim. I saw a small opening in the brush on the hillside, surrounded by a natural wall of branches and foliage, which gave way to bare ground and open sky. We investigated the site and found evidence of a recent campfire with spent cigarette butts and empty liquor bottles. I turned and looked out over the train tracks below.

  “Check it out,” I said. “Anyone hanging out here the night Cory killed himself, would have had a balcony view of the show.”

  “We should collect some of these cigarette butts for evidence.”

  I shook my head. “She doesn’t smoke.”

  “Gypsy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why, because Lilith doesn’t smoke?”

  “Yes…no. I mean, I don’t know. I just don’t think she does.”

  Carlos came up beside me and wrapped his arm around my shoulder. “Tony, it’s not Lilith.”

  “You don’t know that,” I said, and I shrugged his arm off me. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Wait!”

  “Forget it, Carlos. I’m not—”

  “No. Look.” He pointed at the rocks surrounding the fire pit. “Look at how those rocks are arranged.”

  I stepped back to gather a full view of the rocks, the fire pit and the charred pieces of wood scattered about. What seemed at first like a hastily extinguished fire with some of the border stones knocked out of the circle, appeared now like a loosely shaped skull with the charred branches making up the cross bones below it. Upon closer inspection, we noticed that someone had carved a capital letter ‘G’ in the center of the pit.

  “That’s the sign!” I said. “That’s Gypsy’s sign!”

  “I know! I see it. She’s been here. Did you bring your camera?”

  “No. Did you?”

  He smiled like a cocky fool. “Yes,” and then pulled a disposal 35mm from a small tote he carried. “This is going to cost you lunch, though.”

  I punched him square on the arm. “Just take the picture.”

  He snapped a few pictures of the fire pit, getting my shoe in one of the shots for scale. We collected the cigarette butts and packed them into a plastic bag. After stashing his camera and the bag o` butts into his tote, he asked, “You ready for the next stop?”

  “Is it close?”

  “Just the other side of the yard.” He pointed up the tracks. “That’s where Terrence Forman, AKA, Texas Terry, bought it. He made it easy for the coroner. Laid his neck on the outside rail and waited.” Carlos made a quick slicing motion across his neck. “They found his head about a hundred yards up the tracks...what was left of it.”

  The mere thought made me want to chuck my breakfast. “Please, Carlos. Spare me the details from now on. Will you?”

  “Ah, what’s the ma
tter?” He came around and patted me on the back. “Still hung over?”

  “Yes.” I elbowed him in the gut. “Let’s move it.”

  The spot where Terrence Forman bought it differed greatly from where Peter Corey died. The tracks there ran straight and clean for the first couple of miles after leaving the yard. In Forman’s case, speed was likely the deadly factor. All he had to do was wait until the train got close enough before laying his head down on the tracks and kissing his ass goodbye. In my mind, I could picture the engineer hitting the brakes and then bracing for a collision that he could not have possibly felt.

  As in Corey’s case, bright orange spray paint marked the point of impact for old Texas Terry. About a football field away, we found another blotch of orange paint where his head had rolled to a stop. In-between, we found another one of Gypsy’s calling cards. This one came in the form of a serrated lid from a tuna can left by the side of the tracks. On it, she had crudely carved her signature cross bone and skull with the letter G in the center where the nose hole should have been.

  “How could they have missed this?” Carlos asked, speaking of Captain Dell’s investigators, whose precinct held primary jurisdiction over this case as well.

  “For starters,” I said, “they weren’t looking for clues to a murder. Secondly, maybe the lid had flipped over in the breeze of a passing train. You should cut them some slack.”

  He agreed, reluctantly, before taking out his camera and snapping a few pictures. He then collected the tuna lid, handling it by its edges and dropping it into its own plastic evidence bag.

  “That’s two-for-two,” he said. “You want to go for a trifecta?”

  “I made a sweeping backhand motion along the tracks, presenting the way forward. “After you, my friend.”

  He hiked his thumb up over his shoulder and nodded vaguely in the other direction. “Um, actually we’re going this way.” I knew then, it was going to be a long morning.

  Our next stop took us to the bloodiest scene we investigated so far; that of George Wagner, AKA, Georgie Boy; Vagabond George, G-man, Wagman, and my favorite, George of the jungle.

  According to Spinelli’s research, Wagner was a captain among hobos, respected, well-liked and considered a breed apart by the old-timers. He had become a champion of sorts, participating in local town hall meetings and pushing advocacy for the homeless.

  Throughout his travels, George had succeeded in getting municipalities all along the NEC to adopt a friendlier attitude towards transients and encouraged a greater tolerance of the disadvantaged. His suicide, more than any, should have raised red flags from the start. Of all the hobos from oldies to goldies, and newbies to wannabes, George Wagner defined the role. As anyone in the autonomous jungle could tell you, his was a life that many working stiffs could only dream of. He lived simply, traveled light and enjoyed every breathing moment that came his way.

  Carlos and I needed no orange paint to tell us where George caught out his final train ride. It happened beneath the bridge on Jefferson, and judging from the splatter patterns, most likely about six feet above the tracks. The engineer said that the body just dropped out of the sky without warning.

  “I never saw exactly what it was,” he told police. “It was dark and foggy. I thought some punk kids tossed a dummy off the bridge in front of the train to scare me. I hav`ta say; it worked.”

  We took some pictures below the bridge, but I suspected that our best chances of finding what we were looking for remained above us. And sure enough, up on Jefferson, overlooking the tracks, Carlos and I found Gypsy’s third sign, drawn simply in white chalk along the railing. We made note of its location, snapped another picture and rolled on.

  We investigated the remaining sites on our list, finding Gypsy’s calling card at all but one: the site where Fred Long died. But that didn’t necessarily mean she hadn’t been there or that she hadn’t left a sign. It could have simply washed away in the recent rains. She had left George Wagner’s sign in chalk, as well as Chris Jennings’. Teddy Bishop’s, she left in charcoal on the underside of a trestle, which we think she drew using the burnt end of a stick. So, finding no evidence of Gypsy’s hand in Long’s suicide did not convince us that she hadn’t facilitated it.

  We took more pictures and made notes of the varying evidence trails surrounding the circumstances of each site. In Raymond Kosinski’s case, for instance, we found the orange paint that Dell’s investigators sprayed on the gravel between the ties where he took his last breath. But for human remains, we found none.

  Chris Jennings, Theodore Bishop and Fred Long, on the other hand, left their marks in large bloodstains where their bodies fell after the train spit them off the tracks like pit seeds.

  Jim Taylor, much like George Wagner, had gone one better. Taylor, AKA, J.T. or J.T. Bones, left behind nothing of himself for investigators to recover. His body had slipped under the train after impact where it dragged along the tracks for miles until virtually nothing identifiable was left. If not for an old shoe and shredded clothing, his demise may have gone unnoticed entirely.

  Perhaps because his was the first of a soon-to-be string of suicides, Gypsy left J.T. something special: a silver dollar-sized hand-carved skull and crossbones made of ivory, complete with the letter G scribed into the skull’s forehead. Carlos found it at the bottom of the track mound, half-covered in mud. How he spotted it, I’ll never know. I’m only glad he did.

  “Well, I guess it’s official,” I said. “A random string of suicides would hardly have such a common thread associated with them.”

  “Hardly,” he answered. “But it still doesn’t mean that Lilith has anything to do with this.”

  “I didn’t say she did.”

  “But you thought it.”

  “I have to think of everything.”

  He laughed. “Yes, but I know you’re not thinking that an eighty-five year old woman did this, either.”

  “Or that her ghost did it.”

  “Could be someone else wanting us to think it’s a ghost.”

  “Gitana officials?”

  “Why not? It makes sense.”

  I considered the possibilities, and none other appealed to me more. I already had my hands full with the thought of Lilith being my biological mother. I didn’t really need to beat myself up with the notion that she was also a cold-blooded killer. But I wanted to rule it out before blocking it out. I tapped Carlos on the shoulder and headed for the car. “Come on. We have to get going.”

  He started after me. “Where to?”

  “I have to see a man about a witch.”

  “We do?”

  “Not we. Me.”

  “Can’t I go?”

  I stopped and shot him the look. “You really want to?”

  He gave it only a moment’s thought before coming to his senses. “You know, maybe not. I just remembered I have something to do.”

  I nodded. “That’s what I thought.”

  Twenty minutes later, Carlos dropped me off at the apartment. I told him to hook up with Spinelli as soon as he got back to the justice center. “Have him run a search on those murders from the 40s to see if any suspect photos of Gypsy exist from back then.”

  “Got it. Anything else?”

  “Yes. Go through archives and try to find pictures like the ones we have of Gypsy’s signage. Compare them for similarities and accuracy. I want to know for sure if this is the genuine thing or just a copycat.”

  “Good thinking.”

  “Oh, one more thing. That skull and crossbones medallion you found?”

  Carlos pulled the ivory sculpture from his pocket and held it up. “Yes.”

  “Have Spinelli test it.”

  “For what?”

  “I think it may be human bone, not ivory.”

  “God!” he cried. “No!” and he tossed the carving across the seat onto the floor. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  I laughed. “Relax. It’s dead.”

  “That’s the point.”
/>
  I started away. “Get with Spinelli and then get back with me.”

  As he drove off, I noticed him leaning against his door as far from the sculpture as he could get. I felt badly because I really didn’t believe it was carved from human bone like I told him. But I owed him one for not telling me what he and Lilith were laughing about in the kitchen. I didn’t consider us even, but it was a good start.

  Lilith greeted me at the door with a cup of some God-awful liquid that looked like molasses and smelled like old cheese. I pulled away in disgust and held back the urge to hurl on my shoes.

  “Good God, Almighty! Lilith, what is that?”

  “It’s harmless, I swear. Try it.”

  “No!” I pushed it away and a splotch of it splashed out and landed on my hand. “Are you insane? I’m not drinking that.”

  “Tony, it’s meant to help you with your powers. I got the recipe on Witchit.”

  “Oh, so that makes it all right, eh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Forget it.”

  “Pleeeease.”

  “No!” I started toward the bathroom, but only took two steps when I realized that Lilith was following me. I knew she wouldn’t stop at the door, so I turned to confront her. “Look. I’m not interested in your little witchcraft experiments. I’ve got lots more important things to do.”

  “But this could help you.”

  “How?”

  “It’s a potion that stimulates electro-sensitive cells in your body to create new synapses for neurotransmitters, which let you channelize the kinetic impulses that lie dormant within you.”

  “What?”

  “It’s an energy drink.”

  “No.” I headed once more for the bathroom, this time determined to slam the door in her face even if she was still talking.

  “Anthony.”

  “Forget it, Lilith.” I smiled at my little victory as I shut the door tight.

  “I’ll do anything.”

  I opened the door and poked my head out. “Did you say anything?”

  She planted one hand on her hip. “Except that.”

  “You didn’t hear me out.”