Deadly Harvest (17 page)

But there had been so much to fear in those days. The cold, hostile natives—even hostile neighbors.

And it was onto this stage that the Harvest Man had made his entrance.

Perhaps he had been there all along, unnoticed at first because the collective concentration of the people had been on the persecution of the witches, those who had supposedly signed the devil's own book. Yet even in the height of the witch frenzy, a young girl had gone missing. Her friends thought she had found a way to leave the area before she could be accused. Her enemies were certain that she had run from justice.

She was never found. Perhaps she really had gone on to live elsewhere, changing her name and leaving behind no record of her existence.

But as the 1700s began, so did the periodic disappearances. And then bones—human bones—were found in a cornfield.

Rowenna, staring at the text, gasped.

“What?” Daniel said.

“In the seventeen hundreds, they found bones in a cornfield!” she exclaimed, looking over at him. “Why have I never heard this? I need to read more.”

He set his own book aside and came to stand behind her. Rowenna began to read aloud.

“‘She was picked bare of flesh, and she left no blood. Scratch marks on the skull indicated that beaks had pecked the eyes. Other carnivores and carrion eaters had come, and thus they had scattered those pathetic bones that were found. No man came then to justice to pay for the act of murder, nor would any man pay for the indignity for years to come. Only after the disappearance of Annie Rigby, in seventeen twenty, would there be a suspect. The people had whispered of the Harvest Man. They sometimes said that he was a black man, for it was poor Tituba's race and color that made the people think she had the mark of a witch. She was from a foreign land, and thus she innocently began the witchcraft hysteria that created the age of darkness here. Those days were over, though. Witches were not to blame. Then they claimed that it was the Devil himself in the dress of the Harvest Man. But Annie Rigby had been seen in the company of a man, and when his cottage was stormed, it was seen that though he laughed at the charge of witchcraft, he told his accusers that he did indeed worship the Most Divine, and that the Most Divine being was none other than Satan himself. At trial, Andrew Cunningham said that he was the Devil in the flesh, that the Devil cohabited within his bones, and that the Devil demanded his due. They ate, they survived, because the Devil was given his due. Thus was Andrew Cunningham—who also claimed he became Satan in the flesh—condemned, and thus should he have gone to the gallows, but for on the day of his scheduled execution, he was not to be found. Indeed, they searched the dungeon—that same dungeon beneath the sheriff's office where so many had waited their fates not three decades earlier, that pit of rankness and leaking sewage and rats that none had escaped before. Cunningham was gone, and the people were very afraid, not that he might walk among them again, but that the Devil was at large. In their rage they dragged from his house and hanged the old hag who was his housekeeper, as it was always said that the Devil needed a handmaiden.'”

Daniel peered over her shoulder to see that she had reached the end of the page. “Is that it?” he asked.

Rowenna stared at the next page. There was only one sentence to finish the chapter.

She looked up at him, and then she continued reading.

“‘The Harvest Man will come again.'”

B
y noon Jeremy was back at the bar in the Hawthorne Hotel, sitting with Joe Brentwood and going over every recent missing persons report from the Northeast, a time-consuming process.

He'd been surprised that Joe was more or less willingly including him in all facets of the investigation, but when he had thanked him and asked why, Brentwood had merely shrugged and told him, “Hey, my pop always taught me, keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

“But I'm not your enemy,” Jeremy had told him.

“The jury is still out on that one,” Joe had replied.

Jeremy had chosen not to argue the point.

Maybe Joe had decided that even if he
was
the enemy—because of his relationship with Rowenna?—he had the skills and training to help in an investigation that had boiled down to looking for a needle in a haystack without knowing whether it was even there.

So they went over data and, when they got hungry, headed to the bar and ordered sodas and hamburgers.

The numerous federal and state agencies had finally learned to cooperate in trying to apprehend kidnappers, rapists and murderers; technology had been the key. Despite that, they found themselves engulfed in information.

They had extended their search as far south as New Jersey, as far west as Pittsburgh, and north to the Canadian border. If they couldn't find the identity of their Jane Doe within those parameters, they would have to extend their search cross-country. But Halloween wasn't like Thanksgiving or Christmas; it wasn't a holiday when people traveled to join their families or went far because they had extra vacation time. Since their Jane Doe apparently wasn't local, she had most likely come from somewhere not too far away.

They had an approximate height of five-three, weight of one-twenty. In decent physical shape. Age, seventeen to thirty-three. They had no eye color, given that she no longer had eyes, and her hair was dark brown to black.

“Here,” Joe said, indicating one of his data sheets. “Lily Arnold, last seen at her parents' place October twenty-eighth, went out for a date with a new guy.” He looked pleased with his discovery, but then he swore softly. “Never mind. There's an addendum. The mother called in to say that she'd heard from her—she'd quit her job and gone up to Toronto.”

Computers didn't catch everything.

“How about this woman?” Jeremy asked, reading from the sheet in front of him. “Dinah Green, from Boston. She fits the physical description, and she didn't show up for work on October twenty-seventh. She'd been on vacation and had told co-workers that she was going to drive up the coast, but when she still didn't show up the following day and didn't answer her phone, her boss reported her missing. She lived alone, but her apartment was empty and didn't look disturbed when the local police went to check. They questioned her friends and neighbors, and she had told the woman next door, a Clare Faith, that she would be back for a Halloween party she was throwing. She didn't make it, and apparently Clare also called the police and reported her missing. Dinah still hasn't shown up, and she didn't pay her rent for November or any of her bills. No one has heard from her, and her cell phone hasn't been used since October nineteenth.”

Joe took the data sheet from Jeremy, frowning as he studied it.

“There's not much more here,” he muttered. “Where's this girl's family? She kind of went off the radar, and it looks like no one was out there hounding the police.”

“Claire Faith seems to be worried. And her co-workers.”

Joe shook his head. “There ought to be a parent out there somewhere. Hell, I don't get it. I mean, kids have to grow up, but you invest a lifetime in them—don't people keep up with their kids, at least? Then again, maybe she just left home and forgot about them, so they tried to forget about her. If you distance yourself, I guess you don't hurt as much when something does go wrong.”

Jeremy held awkwardly silent for a moment, then said, “I'm sorry about your son, Joe.”

Joe nodded and looked away for a long moment. “Hell, I'm sorry for your folks. Three boys—all in law enforcement, one way or another. They must worry.”

“My folks are dead.” Apparently Joe had only checked out his current circumstances. “Maybe Dinah Green's are, too.”

For a minute, Joe stared back at him. Then a rueful smile curved his lips. “Well, I'm sorry for you boys, then.”

“We managed. They were great when we had them. We have the memories.”

“Memories. Yeah, my memories are all good,” Joe said, smiling in reminiscence. Then he frowned suddenly. “Why the hell did you up and resign the way that you did? According to my sources—and yes, even we local-yokel types have them—you found guys who had decayed in a six-seater Cessna, a woman dropped into a canal chained to a block of cement and a couple who crashed and died twenty feet down in a souped-up dragster. You even saved some lives, so what made you throw in the towel?”

“The kids,” Jeremy said.

“The kids?” Joe echoed.

“A van full of foster kids.”

“Because they were dead?”

“Because one of them wasn't. And because I was about two minutes too late to save him,” Jeremy said flatly.

Because he's alive in my dreams.

Not that he was about to admit
that.

But Joe was still looking at him curiously, studying him. Jeremy wasn't sure why he wanted the man to think well of him; he didn't have to prove himself to anyone.

But Joe's good opinion mattered to him.

Because Joe mattered to Rowenna?

He didn't want to think about that.

“You learn in this business that you can't save everyone—and you can't blame yourself for that,” Joe said at last.

“I don't blame myself. I put the blame where it belongs, on the idiot foster father who went drinking, then drove into that canal, but it doesn't help. I didn't blame myself. I was just ready to leave. Anyway, I like what I'm doing now. Working with my brothers…We make a good team. And I like the flexibility. Brad needs me, and I can be here. It all works.”

Joe nodded slowly, still staring at him. Jeremy had no idea what he was seeing, but the older man's gaze was too penetrating for comfort.

Besides, they were getting off subject, and he was certain that Joe Brentwood was as eager to solve what was going on as he was, so he tapped the paper Joe was holding and asked, “What does the credit card trail show?”

Joe looked down and skimmed quickly. “She checked into a hotel in Saugus, just down the road, on October eighteenth. Checked out Halloween morning…No, wait. She was due to leave on the thirty-first, so the charge just went through as an express checkout. Nothing left in the room, so no reason for the hotel staff to suspect a problem. She made a withdrawal at an ATM there for a few hundred on October twentieth. That looks like the last credit or debit card usage.”

“What about her car?” Jeremy asked, and Joe slid the paper over to him.

Jeremy's eyes skipped over the page while Joe stared at him. He found what he was looking for and turned back to Joe. “It was found abandoned off of I-95 north, just south of the Maine line. It was towed on November first, but the authorities don't know how long it might have been there. It was reported the day before by a state highway patrolman who had seen it there at least two days before.”

“I think we may have something here,” Joe said. He pulled out his cell phone and put through a call. He gave Dinah Green's name to one of the deputy sheriffs, and crisply informed him that he wanted any additional available information requested from Boston and any dental records patched through to Doc Harold immediately. He wanted current pictures, and he wanted his men canvassing the area bars and shops asking if anyone had seen her, and if so, when and with whom. Then he snapped his phone shut. “Anything else? Any
one
else?” he asked Jeremy. “I have a feeling you've found our Jane Doe, but just in case she doesn't pan out…”

They spent another twenty minutes flipping through the rest of the missing persons reports, and in the end, Jeremy pulled out three of them. “These fit the description but not much else. There's a girl from Princeton who apparently had a huge fight with her boyfriend, but according to the police in New Jersey, she made a withdrawal in person from a branch of her bank in New Hampshire. And here's a woman from New York City, but she took off with her boyfriend—the mother called it in. She told police she hates the boyfriend, he's Italian and probably Mafia, and he kidnapped her daughter to an island in the Caribbean.”

“You're kidding me. He's Italian, so he has to be Mafia?” Joe said in disgust.

“The mother hates him. She has to find something,” he said calmly, then returned to the files. “Here's one more that's worth looking into—Charlene Nottaway, left New York City for a cabin in Maine, but she hasn't shown up there yet. She left the city the last week of October and hasn't used a credit card since.” He looked up at Joe. “She's thirty-eight. A little older than the M.E. seems to think our cornfield corpse could be.”

“Yeah, well, I think your first girl is the one, but I'll pull more information on this one, as well,” Joe told him grimly.

He frowned suddenly, staring at Jeremy suspiciously. “Where's Rowenna?”

“She was going to do some research,” he said.

“In town?” Joe asked sharply.

“Yes.”

“She didn't drive in alone, did she?” Joe demanded.

Jeremy shook his head. “No.” He hesitated for a moment. Rowenna wasn't Joe Brentwood's daughter. She was over twenty-one. Her life was her own. So why did he feel like a college kid who had kept a girl out too late? “She stayed with me here in town. I'm renting a house over on Essex Street.”

“I see.” Joe stared at him and let out a long sigh. “The thing is, I want her to have a life. I just didn't want her having a life with a cop or another serviceman,” Joe said. “And I don't imagine your profession's a whole lot safer.”

Jeremy looked down at the remains of his hamburger. Well done. He usually liked his meat rare.

Not after an autopsy. He was a carnivore, and he had no interest in going vegetarian. But there was something about seeing the remains of a human being that just wasn't conducive to enjoying rare meat.

He looked back up at Joe. “There are no guarantees in life,” he said.

“No. There are no guarantees. But there
are
statistics. And statistics aren't good for servicemen, cops—anyone who messes with perps. Why don't you just play your guitar?”

Jeremy laughed. “I'm not good enough to make the big bucks.”

“I hear otherwise.”

“That in the file you're putting together on me?”

Joe just grinned.

“I like to play, don't get me wrong. But I like investigating, working with my brothers, more. There's a real satisfaction in it. It's important to me. And, I might add, I don't see you putting in for early retirement.”

Joe was quiet for a minute. “Well, I kind of feel like I'm on borrowed time anyway, if that makes any sense. Wife and son, both gone. I have friends. I'm not the suicidal type. But my work
is
my life now.”

“It's not really a life if you don't find some kind of meaning in it,” Jeremy pointed out.

Joe shook his head and changed the subject. “She worries me.”

He didn't have to say who he was talking about. Jeremy knew he was referring to Rowenna.

“She worries you—but you go looking for her to help you out with potentially dangerous situations,” Jeremy reminded him.

“She's going to get into things with or without me,” Joe said. “The thing is, I know I would take a bullet for her. The question is, would
you?
”

He was serious. Deadly serious.

Jeremy smiled. “It's part of the training, you know. Not just because I care about her, but you know the drill. Protect and serve. Protect. Be the front line. That means you take the bullet.”

Joe nodded, then rose impatiently. “Just…You have to be careful with her. Really careful.”

“Because she…rushes in?” Jeremy asked.

“Because you never know quite what she's seen,” Joe said. He picked up the check the waitress had left when she brought over their food. “You got my dinner last night. I can do lunch. I'll call you when I've got something.” He picked up the files and headed out. Jeremy watched him go, then found himself reaching for his phone.

To his irritation, he found that Joe's words had made him anxious.

But Rowenna answered on the second ring.

“Jeremy?”

“Yeah, it's me. Where are you?”

“Having lunch with my friend Dan from the History Museum. I was there this morning, and I found out all kinds of stuff.”