BONES OF A WITCH (Detective Marcella Witch's Series. Book 4) Read online

  “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 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. “Tony, you know what your problem is?”

  “My problem?”

  “Yes. Your problem; it’s that you’re 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 myself, 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 to 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 way 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.

  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 s
top him from going one better anyway. That’s the thing about Spinelli: the thing I suppose that 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.

  “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?”

  “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.”

  “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, but like Lilith said, 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. Even weirder that you knew all that shit.”

  Dominic nodded and smiled back, “been studying up a little.” He looked down and pointed at another photo. 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. “Do 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 about last night.”

  “Lilith?”

  “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! 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 said, and Spinelli nodded in agreement. “In case you need us, we’ll be out—”

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

  “Squirt?”

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

  “Yes, let it ride,” said Lilith, “and take a seat. I’ll have your new buttholes ripped in a minute.”

  “How did you get up here?” I asked.

  “Don’t change the subject. Tell me what happened last night.”

  I pointed to the door. “Dom, shut that before someone calls the SWAT team in here.”

  He did, and I waited for him and Carlos to take a seat before pulling a chair out for Lilith. “Please,” I said, with a nod toward the chair. She looked at me with level eyes, but I knew if I could get her to sit, then I might actually have a chance of getting out of there with my balls still intact.

  After she reluctantly obliged, I pulled the fourth chair out and joined them at the table. I started by giving Lilith that stern eye I used to give her when I still looked older and more authoritative. It never intimidated her, though I used to think it did, but at least it held her attention long enough for me to get my point across. Now it only serves to cast me in a pseudo-serious light that makes me appear more boyish than manly. Still, I’ll take cute over scared if it helps keeps the genie in the bottle.

  “Look, Lilith, what happened last night was regrettable, but unavoidable. We’re dealing with a psychopath here, so nothing is predictable or certain. Now, we don’t know exactly what went wrong. Perhaps he made Dominic and decided to teach us a lesson; perhaps something else tipped him off. We just don’t know. But the reason I didn’t tell you is because of this. I knew you would fly off the handle and say or do something irrational.”

  “Irrational? You think I’m being irrational? Look around, Tony. Do you see sparks flying, winged creatures dive-bombing? Have the windows blown out from percussion rolls? Believe me, this is rational.”

  “Okay, fine. I agree. You’re being rational. My apologies. But you have to admit that last night would not have been a good time to tell you.”

  “Oh, so you thought it would be better if I found out on the morning news that a woman died because of me, is that it?”

  “No, not necessarily. I just thought it would be better if I didn’t have to tell you. Frankly, I wanted Dominic to do it.”

  “Me?” said Dominic, afraid I actually meant it.

  “Relax. She knows now. You’re off the hook.”

  Lilith looked down at the photos scattered along the tabletop. “What’s all this?”

  “The men of Ingersoll’s Witness.”

  “Is one of th
em Lemas Winterhutch?”

  “That one.” Dominic pointed. “His real name is James Putnam.”

  She picked up the photo and studied it, absorbing ever detail, burning its image in her mind. Carlos pointed at the surveillance photo next. “This guy’s the ringleader. We believe he’s calling all the shots and that Lemas is just an enforcer.”

  Lilith examined the second photo similarly. “Is that the best picture you got of him?”

  “It’s the only one,” Dominic replied. “And it cost the Salem PD one of its finest.”

  She looked up at me and then at the others. “I’m sorry,” she said. I know she meant it. She tossed the photo back down on the table. “So, where does this leave us?”

  “I was just asking that question before you walked in. I’m thinking we should hit the streets next.” I nodded at the photos. “We have all these faces and known aliases now. We can show them around at all the motels; see if anyone recognizes someone.”

  “Good thinking,” said Carlos. “We can ask the local new stations to post Putnam’s picture, maybe have them mention that he’s a person of special interest.”

  Dominic suggested we scour the immediate vicinity around the boardwalk for additional security cameras that may have picked up something useful. “I’m talking ATMs, convenient stores, open webcams; stuff like that,” he said. “Anymore, the public is always under Big Brother’s watchful eye.”

  “All right, then. It’s not a lot, but it’s a plan.” To Carlos I said, “We can have some uniforms do the footwork, but I’d feel better if you talked to the TV people. I don’t want word to get out that Dominic was our decoy, just in case Lemas didn’t already figure that out.”

  We were nearly ready to break it up, when Lilith’s phone rang. I knew from the look on her face and that peculiar ringtone that our plans were all suddenly shot to hell. “Is that him?” I asked.

  Her eyes came back from glancing down at her phone. “Yeah.”

  “Put him on speaker.”

  We huddled around Lilith, realizing at once that the dynamics of the case were about to change in a radical way. As we settled in, I gave her the nod. She tapped the screen and answered it.

  “Mister Putnam,” she said. “I don’t usually accept calls from cowards. They simply aren’t worth the time.”