The Witching Hours, page 3
“Well, not so simple, I’m afraid. I’ve seen horrible things, but I came here to see what happened in this house and I still don’t really have any kind of a full and complete picture. So far, my best image has been of a hanging during the Salem Witch Trials,” she told him ruefully.
But he shook his head. “I’m sorry, but you also saw something here that is really going to help guide this investigation. We know we’re looking for someone who wants to play dress-up while they’re committing crimes. Of course, the why is going to be important. Was the costume someone’s idea of the typical black hoodie that’s so favored by criminals—along with half the population when the weather is chilly. Or is there some symbolism behind it?”
“What could that be? The innocents accused of witchcraft back in the day were just ordinary citizens.” She grimaced. “Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz wasn’t written for another few hundred years.”
He laughed softly. “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, to be precise. And it was published in 1900. So, yeah, you’re right there; it was a long way off. Thankfully, long past the day when the world believed in spectral evidence and screaming kids—most probably influenced by words their parents had said. Hey, if you’re mad at someone or you feel that person slighted you in some way, why not accept they made you miserable because they were a witch, dancing with the devil, consumed with darkness. Oh, and our friends are on the way over here,” he added, indicating the doorway.
He turned and offered a grim smile to Detectives Cason and Berkley as they walked back over toward the house, Vincent Cason shaking his head and telling them, “Of course, we’ve kept the family out of the house since Alicia returned home yesterday—we’ve got them in a hotel in town. But at this point, we’ve had our crime scene unit through the place and … well, you know. Whoever was in here wore gloves and left nothing. We’re going to let them come home, although … that’s not going to be easy for them. Mike dead and the kid missing. Have you gotten anything?”
“I’ll take another look, if you don’t mind,” Skye said, stopping to add, “Oh, Zach—”
“It’s okay; I’m right behind you. The detectives can give me a better idea of the immediate surrounding area,” he said.
She disappeared inside.
“So,” Zach said, shaking his head, “I think you’re right; whoever did this also did a lot of studying on our easily accessible social media sites, or they’ve practiced what they’re doing, being criminals. Someone had to know, however, that Mike Bolton was older, and he had the usual ‘older body’ problems. Not a stretch to think that breaking and entering, and threatening the children, was enough to get him to imbibe the drug that could bring on a heart attack in just about anyone.”
“Yes, that’s what I was thinking,” Constance Berkley told them earnestly. “And it’s frightening to believe whoever did this is from the area. You can’t imagine how dense the forests around here can be, and just how many derelict buildings haven’t been discovered yet by the parks department.” She sighed softly. “We’re a tourist town. Go figure, tragic history makes us commercially viable. But we do get our share of …”
“Weirdos, wackos, and kooks,” Cason offered. “Trust me, you don’t want to be here around Halloween!”
Zach laughed softly. “Hey, I’ve been here for Halloween. My parents loved the place. I grew up in Harpers Ferry and then Boston, but had a great-aunt who lived here when I was growing up and we met here fairly frequently, Detective Cason. But, of course, at that time, all I had to do was watch with awe all the incredible costumes and things going on—didn’t have to deal with any of the things that could go on when it all got a bit crazy.”
Cason grinned. “First, looks like we’re in this together for the long haul—please, just call me Vince.”
“And I go by Connie!” Detective Berkley told him.
“Well, then, of course,” Zach said. “I’m Zach and my partner is Skye.”
They all nodded, looking at one another with small smiles. Working together was always easiest when everyone was on the same page.
“Hey, as I was saying, I’d love to get a better idea of the outside of the house—there’s a forest to the rear, right? But neighbors to the left and the right—” Zach began.
“Come on, we’ll show you,” Connie said. “Should we wait for your partner?”
“Right, sorry!” Vince Cason said, pausing.
“No, no, we’re fine. She just wanted to go back in there for a second; get a good sense of the flow of the house. Right now, it appears Patricia must have opened the door to whoever did this—which suggests, as we discussed before, that it was someone she knew, or someone who claimed to be part of the electric company or some such thing. I’ll be right out,” Zach assured them.
How the hell could I ever explain to anyone just what it was that my partner did? Of course, that’s the whole point of the “special” units within their law enforcement community; they didn’t have to explain.
Because, of course, they were all gifted, cursed, or just plain crazy.
But what Skye McMahon had …
He could barely put his mind around it. To see, to literally see things as they had happened …
Damn. Well, he was good and useful, too. And Jackson Crow seemed to think that their talents would complement one another.
That remained to be seen.
More importantly, a missing child and a young woman needed to be found.
Alive.
And right now, that mattered more than anything.
Skye stood still, closing her eyes for a minute, willing herself to see the past—and hoping it would be the past that she needed. And she was lucky; time unfolded exactly as she’d hoped.
The bell rang. Young Jeremy was sitting on the sofa in the parlor, reading from one of his schoolbooks. The baby was in her playpen, lying down, laughing up at a cloth doll. Patricia Yale, a young ponytailed brunette in a T-shirt and jeans, had been answering Jeremy on how to spell the word “believe.”
Patricia heard the bell; she’d come out of the kitchen to answer Jeremy. She had, perhaps, been getting a snack for one of them.
She opened the door.
She stepped back, laughing, not alarmed.
“Hey, it’s not Halloween! Funny, funny, who the hell—” she began.
But that was when the green witch, with the pointed black hat, produced a gun. “You, the boy, out here with me, now!”
It was the same witch who had killed Mike Bolton.
But the voice …
Male? Female? Distorted mechanically?
“I can’t just leave the baby—” Patricia said, trying to get out a sentence again.
“Well, I can shoot her if you like,” the green being said.
“No, no, no! Of course not! Uh, Jeremy … wait, please! You’re not going to hurt the boy, please—”
“Obey every word I say and neither of you gets hurt. But you don’t want the kid dead? Then don’t give me any grief! Out here, now!”
Jeremy sat on the sofa, staring in pure terror at the creature. But Patricia didn’t intend to give the witch any excuse to hurt the boy. She ran to the sofa, sweeping the boy up and into her arms and pausing just a second by the playpen to whisper desperately, “Your mommy will be home soon!”
She ran out, pausing at the door as she stared at the bizarre witch.
“Now! We go,” the witch said.
Patricia stepped out, Jeremy still in her arms.
The door closed in their wake.
It closed with a slam—the witch’s way of leaving, so it appeared.
* * *
It was the noise of the door falling shut in the past that brought Skye back to the present.
One person? Dressed up as a witch? Or …
Were there a few people running around dressed up as green creatures? Or was it just one person in makeup who was running around with green skin, a pointed hat … making a mockery of the tragedy that had long ago plagued Salem?
Skye quickly strode through the room, joining the others in front of the house.
Cason was pointing to the street and talking to Zach about Salem.
“Way back when, the entire area was ‘bewitched,’ one might say. Danvers was Salem Village back then; people were also arrested in Ipswich and Andover … It was a different world. A lot of people speculate that the ‘afflicted girls’ were prey to a fungus on the wheat or some such other physical cause. But I’ll tell you one thing—look at some of the forests around here at night. The darkness is unbelievable. And, remember, at the time, there was a fear of the Native American tribes. The tribes were so very different in their way of living, their beliefs, and their forms of worship. Maybe it wasn’t so hard that in the darkness of time and place to believe bad things might have been caused by witchcraft or another form of evil, something that awakened or partnered with Satan himself.”
Skye frowned, wondering if Zach had mentioned she’d “seen” the kidnapper—a person with green skin and a witch’s pointed black hat.
But he shook his head almost imperceptibly, and she knew that he had not. They had just fallen into a conversation that might be normal in the community.
Standing nearby, Constance smiled encouragingly at Skye and reiterated their request to be known as Connie and Vince. Then she grimly asked, “Anything?”
“Well, we’re late to the party, but I agree with the theory there was no break-in regarding the main house, and Patricia Yale simply opened the door. It doesn’t appear that the house was torn apart in any way. Of course, we’re a little later than you and the local police are to the situation, but it does seem what you’ve surmised so far must be the truth. Except, I don’t believe Patricia was involved with her own disappearance and the little boy’s kidnapping. I believe she was threatened, just as I believe Mike Bolton was forced to swallow the cocaine that brought about his heart attack,” Skye told them.
“These guys have just been showing me the area,” Zach said. “Directly in back are woods; but to the right and left are homes, and they are a few acres apart. A little more country out here, although we’re still walking distance to town and the tourist areas—if you really like walking, of course. But”—he paused and pointed—“look past the semicircle of the drive right before the house; there’s a place where you can pull a car in, far to the right, where it’s all but hidden from the street by the trees and foliage in the yard.”
“So, then, you think someone kidnapped Patricia and little Jeremy and simply drove away with them?” Skye asked Zach.
“I agree with him,” Connie said. “What else? Slide in back and into the forest? What then? Hey, you can wind up in a dense twist of trees, forever and ever, back there. I mean, don’t get me wrong! Salem is no Boston, but it’s a huge tourist area and still—lots and lots of deep dark woods, just like back in the day, as Vince was describing it. I don’t think the park rangers know everything around here, to be honest. To me, it makes far more sense for them to have been whisked far away—and easily—via a car.”
“What about traffic cams?” Zach asked.
Vince let out a sigh of frustration. “Not until you’re more into the populated area; and by then, a car could have come from anywhere, and just about everywhere, in the area. Yes, of course, we looked at what we could. No sign of the boy or Patricia Yale in any vehicle.”
“‘Fin’ Yarborough,” Connie said, looking at Vince.
“Of course, we’ve read the files. Fin—Phineas Yarborough—is Patricia’s boyfriend, right?” Zach said, looking at the two detectives. “From what I understand, he’s an amazing student himself at the college—”
“Okay, it bothers me that there was no break-in,” Vince said. “Patricia would have just opened the door to Fin. And who else might she have done that for?”
“I don’t know,” Skye said, smiling. She didn’t want to start off by offending the local detectives. “I’ve been a babysitter in my day. When you’re looking after two children, you can get so busy and torn that you might just open a door. Groceries are delivered fairly often these days, fast food … maybe she thought that even Mike Bolton might ring the bell, knowing she was watching the kids.”
“True,” Connie murmured. “But it’s true that … well, for one, Fin is a history major, completely taken with the area. He’s been published in a few magazines, though, and wants to teach himself. Maybe the two of you should interview him, see what kind of a vibe you get from him.”
“We should do that,” Zach agreed. “Does he have an alibi?”
“Oh, yeah, sure. He was home studying,” Connie said.
“Any witnesses?” Skye asked.
“Of course not, that would be too easy!” Connie told her. “I just …”
“You’re just so tired, you’re about to keel over,” Vince said, turning to Skye and Zach. “We’ve been on this since Alicia Bolton came home from work last night and found Patricia and her son gone, and her grandfather-in-law dead, and—”
“We’ll take over for the next few hours,” Zach promised.
“And we won’t stop; and anything that happens major, we’ll get to you immediately!” Skye assured the two detectives.
Vince nodded and looked at Connie. “Go home. That’s what I’m going to do. We have the Feds on our case now.” He looked back at the two of them. “Thank you!”
He pointed to his unmarked car in the drive, looking at his partner.
Connie smiled at him, nodding. She quietly added, “Thank you” to Skye and Zach before heading to the car.
With a wave, Vince joined her.
When they were gone, Zach looked at Skye.
“Well? Do you think it was the boyfriend?”
“I’m not sure.”
Skye wondered if he sounded skeptical. But …
A man who touches objects and can see something about the person who had touched it last should hardly be mocking any strange perception.
She was probably just being touchy or defensive.
She lowered her head for a minute. Her sight or vision or whatever it was had come down to her through her grandmother, a woman who had been born just outside of Dublin and who had also told a few fantastic stories in her day.
But she had seen something in Skye when Skye had been a child, and she’d been quick to warn her that people wouldn’t believe her. She needed to make sure she kept her ability silent, because others didn’t have it—and others wouldn’t understand. Not even her own parents. And until she’d been interviewed by Adam, Jackson, and Angela, she’d kept the secret to herself and found other ways to explain to co-workers before now why she had come to certain conclusions, why she had been able to discover the truth when they hadn’t seen it.
“Skye, are you all right?” Zach asked. He seemed really concerned. Maybe he didn’t doubt her, or …
Maybe he thought she saw what she wanted to see or thought that she should see?
Anyway, his behavior was respectful.
And Jackson believed in her—that was what mattered. Her new partner was going to have to accept her words.
As she would have to accept his.
“Yes, yes, of course, I’m sorry. Yes, I saw the exact moment she opened the door. I guess it’s pretty natural it was the same person who arrived at Mike Bolton’s little apartment, entered with a gun, and forced the drug into him. Whoever it was—I can’t even tell if it’s a man or a woman—had a gun, threatened to use it … and I saw Patricia. She is in no way or shape involved. She was almost crying as she told the baby her mom would be home in a minute and swept little Jeremy up. Of course, the witch threatened the child; and I believe with my whole heart, Patricia was worried about her own life, of course, but Jeremy’s life even more.”
He let out a soft sigh, looking out at the day.
“Well,” he said. “She should have known if it was Fin—even if he was painted green and in a costume. But we need to start somewhere. Let’s interview the man.”
“We don’t really have a place where we can bring someone in—except, of course, the local station,” Skye reminded him.
“And in this case, at least, I think we’re better off if we just talk to him. I have notes in my phone, and I’m assuming that you have the same notes. Yes, right,” he said, looking at his phone. “I have an address for him—it’s an apartment right off Essex Street. I have a car, so we’ll head on over.”
She nodded.
Zach reattached the crime scene tape to the door, glancing back as they walked away.
“I was just wondering if they should have a patrol officer looking over the house,” Skye murmured.
“Well, if not for you …”
“What does that mean?” she asked him.
She’d slid into the passenger seat. He slid into the driver’s seat and grinned at her.
“I don’t believe anyone is after anything in the house—they wanted Jeremy or Patricia or both of them. I’m going to say they wanted the kid, too—or else they could have left him the same as they left the baby. You’re seeing someone dressing up as, what I guess we should call, a movie-style witch. After all, the historic so-called witches were just ordinary-looking people. No, whoever did this wanted Patricia and the boy. That’s why I don’t feel like making waves over having an officer watch the place.”
She shrugged. “Seems like … Well, I was told that Connie and Vince were two of the best, so …”
“Let’s take this in the direction we can,” Zach said. “We’ll interview Fin; then I’m going to suggest, if you’re willing, we get some research done on movies being made in the area or just on local costume or monster shops. I think there are a few.”
“All right. It’s a plan,” Skye agreed. “In fact, I’ll start looking …”
She pulled out her phone, keying in costume shops for the area.
“And?” he asked.
She winced, glancing his way. “Here and in the surrounding areas? Dozens of costume shops, makeup shops, and even more wiccan shops and monster shops! Museums with movie monsters … tons and tons of shops.”
