Bones of a Witch Read online

  I could see the giddiness in him bubbling to the surface. “Well, I don’t….”

  “Go on.”

  “All right.” He cleared his throat with a croak and then swallowed. “It’s funny, `cause you see she seems to answer nicely when I call her Lilith.”

  Tony laughed. “Lilith?” He looked at me. “What do you think about that?”

  “I like the name,” I told him. “I think Lilith will be flattered.”

  “Carlos, it’s a Chihuahua.”

  “Sure.” I winked at him when Dominic wasn’t looking. “I know.”

  He dropped his head and shook it lightly. “You’re a sick, twisted old man, Rodriquez, you know that?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and we let it go at that.

  I gave Tony a moment to filter through the other photos, as well as the follow-up reports from the evidence collection team and the coroner’s office. It wasn’t much, but if we had anything useful I knew he would find it. My validation came when he turned one of the photos around and pushed it back to me.

  “What about this?”

  Dominic and I both looked, but neither of us noticed anything particularly special about it. I slid it back to him. “It’s a picture of a dead body.”

  “Yes, but where is it?”

  “In the gutter out front of the novelty shop.”

  “And can you see into the window of the novelty shop?”

  Dominic snapped the picture up and studied it closer. “There’s a camera.” He showed me the photo and pointed up into the corner of it. “Look, Carlos, in the window, on the back wall above the tee shirt racking. It’s a security camera.”

  “Right,” said Tony. “So, why don’t you get a hold of the shop’s owner and see if he can tell us if it picked up anything last night. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “Got it.”

  “Also, Dominic, get with the department sketch artists and see if you can come up with a composite of what that guy looked like: the one that passed by and tipped his hat to you.”

  “Why, you think that was Lemas?”

  “Could have been. Looked about the right size. Maybe he realized at the last second that you weren’t Lilith and so he aborted his mission.”

  “If that’s so, then it’s the reason he went and killed that poor woman. Isn’t it?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Dominic’s face grew flush. “God, I hope that wasn’t him. I don’t think I could sleep nights knowing I had a chance to take him out, but didn’t.”

  “Now you know why I didn’t get any sleep last night.”

  “Tony.” I said. He turned to me, and I could see the impatience in his eyes. I looked to Dominic and motioned a lazy point toward the door. “Go on, Dom. See what you can find out about that camera and get right back with us.” He nodded weakly and backed out of the room with his eyes to the floor. I said to Tony, “There. Are you happy?”

  “What?”

  I hate when he plays dumb. “You know what. It’s not his fault what happened last night. He’s a good kid, and he did a damn fine job last night.”

  “Who said he didn’t?”

  “Come on. You practically accused him of slicing the woman’s throat open himself. He had no way of knowing that was Lemas.”

  “Well it was.”

  “I know that, and he knows it too now. But none of us knew last night when we let him walk on by.”

  “I’m not saying anyone did.”

  “Then why the hell are you making him feel so guilty about it?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I—”

  “What? What do you guess you would have done so differently?”

  He didn’t answer that, and I realized then that the argument had nothing do with Dominic and everything to do with Lilith. I came around the table and sat on the edge of it next to him. He seemed agitated, but he took my cue and sat on the edge of the table beside me. For a long while we both just sat there, him with his coffee mug clasped between cupped hands, and me picking at imaginary lint on the knees of my trousers. I didn’t expect he’d talk first, so I did.

  “You know, you really do look like shit, Tony.”

  He laughed, and I laughed, and then for a second, things got quiet again. This time I waited for him, and soon he spoke.

  “Carlos, we’ve been doing this for a lot of years, haven’t we?”

  “More than I can count; I like to think.”

  “Yeah, you could hardly speak English when we met and now—”

  “What? I could speak—”

  “Nah, com`on, you know what I mean. Your English was terrible, admit it. But that’s not the point. The point is that your English was, let’s say, not so good. But look, after thirty plus years you not only have almost lost your accent, but now you know all the hip lingo that everyone uses these days.”

  “What?”

  “You know, all the sayings and phrases that young people use, you’re tuned into it.”

  “Tony, I’m not as tuned in as you might think.”

  “Sure you are. Take Spinelli for instance: a young guy, hip and knowledgeable about the mechanics of today’s world. He knows computers: you know computers.”

  “Tony, what are you getting at?”

  “What I’m getting at is this.” He slid off the table and stood facing me with arms spread out to his sides. “Look at me. What do you see?”

  I raked my eyes quickly up and down his frame. “I see a dear old friend in the body of a handsome young man.”

  “Exactly. Only this old friend is still an old man in the body of a young man. Don’t you get it? I’m a product of the mid-twentieth century. I can’t compete with guys like Spinelli. Oh, sure, maybe if I were you. You could go through the rite of passage and come out young again, and you’d fit in nicely with this generation…this, this new millennia.”

  “Are you kidding?” I started laughing. Cruel, I know, but I couldn’t help it. “Tony, you know what your problem is?”

  “My problem?”

  “Yes. Your problem. It’s that you are an old fart. You’re an old stick in the mud. And the worst of it; you can change it all with the wave of your hand and you don’t even know it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You. I’m talking about you, man. Look at you. You’re young. You have a new start at the job you’ve always loved, you have a smoking` hot girlfriend who may not tell you or even know it herself, but believe me when I say that she is in love with you. And on top of all that, you’re a witch, Man. You have the world by the balls and you don’t even see it.”

  “Then why am I so damn paranoid?”

  “Paranoid?”

  “Yes, I’m telling you, I’m afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of—Jesus, I don’t know. I’m afraid of young guys like Spinelli who will most likely climb the proverbial ladder of success, using my antiquated old ass for rungs all the way to the top. I’m afraid I’ll let Lilith down when she realizes that I’ll never be half the witch she is. And I’m afraid I’ll lose her, either to hotshot young guns like Dominic who push all the right sentimental buttons to make her love him, like naming some stupid Chihuahua after her, or to some crack pot psycho witch hunter who still thinks he’s living in a century where it’s okay to kill young women for the sake of God and country. It’s crazy, Carlos. I mean it. On the one hand, I feel invincible like I did when I was twenty. On the other, I feel like I’m not prepared for today’s world: its demands, its uncertainties. I feel like…like….”

  “Like you’re in love?”

  “What?”

  “Tony, what you’re feeling is normal—well, as normal as can be for an old guy that’s suddenly young again. Look, as I see it, it’s like this. When was the last time you were in love?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. How long has it been?”

  I slid over and let him reclaim his seat on the edge of the table as he thought about it. I thought I knew the answer mysel
f, having been his partner for more than thirty years, but I was honestly surprised to see how long it took him to figure it out. After what seemed like the longest time he answered, “1976.”

  “Really?” I said. “What about in ‘03’, that girl Melanie?”

  “The waitress? No.”

  “Barbara Fields? You dated her through most of the nineties.”

  “Nah-uh.”

  “Gina Roselle, ‘82’ through ‘87’?”

  “And again in ‘88’ and ‘89’,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “How `bout Gloria what’s her name?”

  He nodded. “Wickman.”

  “That’s her. She was cute.”

  “Yes, and nuts, too. Definitely not.”

  “All right, so who was it in ‘76’?”

  A smile inched across his face like a sunrise. “Janine Rossini.”

  “Ah, yes.” I smiled along with him. “I remember Janine. Yes, you were quite smitten with her, weren’t you?”

  “Smitten?”

  I rocked into him and jabbed his shoulder lightly. “Come on, spill it.”

  He shook his head as if giving up without a fight. “What’s to spill? We dated for about a year; things were going really well, and one day she just….” He trailed off and shook his head.

  “Yes?”

  I watched him take a deep breath and let it out in a sigh so great his entire body seemed to deflate. “I asked her to marry me. She said yes, but under one condition: I had to quit the force.”

  “I never knew that.”

  “Of course, I never told you. But yes, she insisted I quit, said she couldn’t live her life never knowing whether or not I’d come home to her safely at the end of the day. I told her I couldn’t quit and she told me make a choice. I went to work that next Monday and when I came home she was gone. I think she went to live with her mother up in Ipswich or somewhere.”

  “And you never heard from her again?”

  “Oh, eventually I heard from her: got an invitation in the mail to her wedding. Can you believe that?”

  “No.”

  “I did. Anyway, that was the last time I was really in love. After her, I never let myself get that close to falling in love again.”

  “Until now,” I said.

  He nodded faintly. “Yeah, guess you’re right. It’s got my head spinning. I don’t know myself anymore. I want to do well in my job, but I don’t want to screw things up with Lilith.

  “And that’s what I’m talking about. Your head’s in a fog because you love her, but you’re conflicted because you don’t want to lose control of your own situation. You don’t want to lose her, you don’t want to fail at your job, and you don’t want to fail at being a witch.”

  “Yes. That’s it. So what do I do?”

  “Easy. You just keep doing what you do best; only live a little.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that Lilith is a powder keg; a live wire, a Roman candle in a fireworks factory. But you know what? She digs you. So grab hold of her shirttail and hang on, man. You’ve been given a second chance in life with the most exciting woman on the planet and she wants to take you on a magic carpet ride. You don’t have to worry about losing her—you have to worry about her losing you, to self-doubt and indecision.”

  “You think?” He looked at me as though I had just explained the secrets of cold fusion. There have only been a handful of moments like that in our long careers together, and usually it’s good for at least a free lunch or dinner. But seeing that it was still too early for either, I tried my luck at breakfast.

  “Hey, I know what you need,” I said, slapping his knee as I jumped to my feet. “I bet you haven’t eaten since last night. Why don’t we go down to the Percolator for some omelets and coffee? That’ll cheer you up.”

  I saw the light of acceptance twinkle in his eye. Then he did just as I expected; he checked his watch, considered the prospect and then hopped off the table’s edge, patting me on the back with a satisfied smile. “Carlos,” he said—here it comes. Wait for it; wait for it. “That sounds like a really good idea. And I’ll tell you what. I’m buying.”

  “Really? Tony, you don’t have to do that.”

  “No, no, I insist. My treat. C`mon, let’s go.”

  And we walked out, he with his satisfied smile and me with mine. Yes. Life is GOOD.

  Tony Marcella:

  Carlos and I got back to headquarters just as Spinelli was also returning. He hadn’t had any luck with the camera at the novelty shop, but that didn’t stop him from going one better anyway. That’s the thing about Spinelli, the thing I suppose threatens me more than everything else. Deep down I believe he’s a better cop than I am. All he needs is a few more years to prove me right, and by then he’ll have my job.

  “Turns out the camera was just for show,” he told Carlos and me. “The owner had it installed to fool would-be robbers. Apparently it works, too. Since putting it in he says there hasn’t been a robbery attempt in six years.”

  “Impressive,” I said, “but I guess that leaves us out of luck.”

  “Not entirely. Look.” He opened up a manila envelope he was carrying and spilled its contents out onto the table. They looked like mug shots, a dozen maybe, all men varying in ages from mid-twenties to late-seventies.

  “These are police photos,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you get them?”

  He smiled coyly. “I put a call in to a buddy down at the Chelsea P.D. who made a call to his brother-in-law at Salem’s 1st precinct. Asked him if he had any info on the secret society known as Ingersoll’s Witness, and it seems that the society is not so secret after all. These are photos of all its known members.”

  “You mean all the known male members.”

  He shook his head. “There are no females in the society. They’ve been banned since its conception in 1692. They’re old school about things like that.”

  “Wow, that’s good work, Dominic. I commend you.”

  “Really?” His face lit up so bright I almost felt guilty for wishing I had thought of it first.

  “Sure, absolutely. Carlos?”

  “Yes, Dominic, Tony’s right. You keep that up and soon you’ll be running the entire show here.”

  That comment made me grit my teeth. “Okay, so tell me.” I shuffled the photos around to assemble them in some sort of order, mostly from youngest to oldest, though for no discernable reason. “What do you think?”

  He reached down and tapped on a photo of one tough-looking character in particular. “This one here; he’s Lemas Winterhutch. I recognized him from the boardwalk last night. To be sure, I took his photo down to Budget Car Rentals and showed it to the clerk there. He also positively ID the guy.”

  “He’d swear to it?”

  “Sure, only the guy’s real name isn’t Winterhutch. It’s James T. Putnam, distant grandson of John Putnam of Salem, Mass.”

  “Is that significant?”

  “Maybe not, but at the very least it’s interesting.”

  “Why so?”

  “Well, you see John Putnam’s eleven-year-old daughter, Ann, was among the first to accuse some of Salem’s townswomen of witchery. She, along with three other girls and a Barbados slave woman round out the cast of accusers that fanned the hysteria leading to the witch hunts.”

  “That’s spooky,” said Carlos, “and weird.”

  Dominic nodded. “You know what’s even weirder?” He looked down and pointed at another photo; only this one was not a mug shot. It looked like a surveillance photo from a night stake out: grainy, shadowy and far too blurry to make out any distinguishable features of its subject. “This guy,” he said, “this guy is the ringleader. He’s known only as Wolf, and this is the only known photo ever taken of him. The cop who took it was murdered right after shooting it. They found it in his camera the next day.”

  I picked up the photo and studied it closer.
“I’ve seen better pictures of Bigfoot.” Carlos laughed at that. “We know anything else about our mysterious Mister Wolf?”

  “It’s not Mister; it’s just Wolf.”

  “Sorry, Wolf.”

  “The only thing we know about him is that he may be a descendant of another prominent figure from 1692 Salem. The problem is we don’t know who. He must have been important, though, for this guy to carry so much clout.”

  “Maybe he’s a distant relative of Ingersoll himself,” said Carlos.

  Dominic only shrugged. I tossed the photo back onto the table. “All right, where does this leave us?”

  “No closer to anything, I’m afraid, unless Carlos has any ideas.”

  Carlos shook his head. “I don’t, but I am curious, Tony, what did Lilith say after you told her about last night.”

  “Lilith?” I gave him a guilty-looking sneer.

  “You didn’t tell her about the murder?”

  “I didn’t think she needed to know.”

  “She knows now,” said Dominic, and he nodded toward the glass divider separating the conference room from the open work areas.

  “Damn!” I found myself unconsciously ducking out of sight behind Carlos. “How the hell did she get through security?”

  Carlos waved to her. “Hey, Lilith.” I doubt she heard him, but she definitely saw him. She turned and made a beeline straight for us.

  “Quick, lock the door.”

  Dominic reached out and opened it.

  “Spinelli, I said lock…. Shit.” Lilith entered on a flaming jet stream. “Lilith, what a surprise.”

  “Don’t give me that. Why didn’t you wake me last night?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know damn well what I mean. Why did you sneak in last night like an alley cat and then slip out again this morning without waking me? Did you think I wouldn’t find out what happened?”

  Carlos and Spinelli started for door. “We’ll give you two some time alone,” Carlos began, and Spinelli nodded in agreement. “In case you need us, we’ll be right out—”

  Lilith pointed at the two with a loaded finger. “FREEZE, Fidel. You too, squirt.”

  “Squirt?”

  I shot Spinelli a look. “Let it ride, Dom.”