Eye of the Witch (2 page)

I remembered Karen telling me they had just promoted her to detective up in Ipswich the week before. Still, she came to the wake and subsequent funeral in full dress uniform. I don’t believe she ever really bought the final report that Carlos and I filed when we closed the case on his murder. I don’t suppose I could blame her, either. The wild and bizarre story that unfolded in the months following his murder still seems hard for
me
to believe. I imagined that’s the reason Karen Webber transferred to the New Castle police department after I retired. Perhaps she hoped to uncover further clues into her brother’s death that I could not. Heaven knows there were plenty of questions left unanswered in our final report.

So this was the Karen Webber I remembered, young, brave, spirited and dedicated-all the qualities that make for a good cop. And something else about Karen, like her brother Travis, she was no quitter. Carlos said he was sure Karen Webber didn’t commit suicide. In my heart, I agreed. That meant only one thing. Karen Webber, and possibly—probably the other two women were murdered.

Though my thoughts had drifted to a place I thought I would never revisit, I still had Carlos on the other end of the line to reel me in. I heard him clear his throat, this after what seemed like minutes. I blinked myself back to the room where the smell of grapefruit and guava now sicken me. All I could do was imagine a cold gray New England sky, the graffiti-riddled sidewalks and the pothole-filled streets of New Castle and wish I were there. Carlos cleared his throat again. “Tony?”

“
I’m here,” I told him. “Check the flights coming in tomorrow morning. I’ll need a ride.”

I hung up, though just long enough to get a dial tone. The airline had a flight leaving at seven in the morning, so I packed my bags and phoned a taxi. They say you should get to the airport a little early. I imagined six hours ought to do it. Besides, I suddenly craved a lousy cup of coffee to wash down the grapefruit and guava and figured where else was I going to find one?

TWO

Carlos met me at Boston’s Logan in the baggage claim area where we greeted each other with a hug—sort of. I mean it wasn’t really a hug. It was one of those things where two guys are happy to see each other but they don’t want to seem too friendly in public. We somehow managed to slap each other on the back a few times without our chests or bellies ever touching. It’s a practiced art.

I claimed my luggage and we headed out, walking the equivalent of four city blocks to get to the car. He came in a company sedan, a typical unmarked jobber, which means that the vehicle stuck out like a sore thumb. Aside from the obvious government license plates, the vehicle sported two curly antennas sticking out the trunk lid, limo-tint side windows and of course, no hubcaps. To top it off, the little door over the gas cap was riveted shut, a telltale sign that the city finally converted their police cruisers to propane.

“
Nice,” I said, nodding my approval. “They moved you into a Crown Vic.” Our old car was an Impala that could barely get out of its own way. A gondola on wheels, Carlos called it. The State Patrol drove Crown Vics. We used to hate them for it.

“
Yeah,” said Carlos, “they weeding out the Chevys last year. I got one of the first delivered to the department.”

“
You crash it yet?” I knew he had.

He dropped his head and opened the driver’s door. “It wasn’t my fault,” he said, and he got in without another word.

As we drove on to New Castle, I alternated stares out the side window and the windshield, noting how nothing had changed. I mentioned this to Carlos and he smiled. “You want change? Wait till you see the new box.”

He was talking about the police station. I knew they built a new one. Construction began a full year before I left the force—and none too soon, either. The old precinct building was in shambles, moldy, leaky and drafty. And that I nearly destroyed it with a mini tornado didn’t help matters much. But that’s another story.

“
Did they do a good job?” I asked.

He just nodded and winked. “You’ll see.”

And I did see. They did a great job. It wasn’t just a police station. It was an ultra-modern criminal justice center, complete with jails, courtrooms, administration offices and a state-of-the-art crime lab. It had everything a small town cop could want. Hell, it had everything a big town cop could want, too. I told Carlos if he threw in a couple of suites, a swimming pool and valet parking, he’d have a five-star resort. He laughed, and when he took me past the workout center complete with pool and sauna, I understood why.

“
It’s really different here, Tony. This facility serves the entire county. We all share resources now. We’re connected to an interstate computer network linked to a national database in Washington DC. From here we can pull up information on anything and anyone, from murderers and pedophiles to check forgers and deadbeat dads. And get this. Soon we’ll process for DNA matches right here! Can you believe it?”

“
No,” I said. We parked the car, got out and started for the building. “I can hardly understand it all. Maybe it’s a good thing I got out when I did. I mean…” I shook my head, and my loss for words overwhelmed me. Carlos’ expression melted with concern. He came up and put his arm around me.

“
You okay?”

I shrugged his hand off my shoulder. “I don’t know, Carlos. Police work is a young man’s game these days. I don’t know why I came here. I must have been a fool to think I could help you. If you don’t mind, I should take a taxi back to the airport and—”

“
No! Absolutely not. Tony, don’t let all the sparkle and glitter discourage you. These are only tools. They mean nothing if you don’t have the know-how to use them.”

“
But that’s just it, Carlos. I don’t. I don’t have the know-how to use them.”

“
Yes, you do. You just don’t know it.”

“
Come again?”

“
You have the know-how. You know what information you need and when you need it. All of this? It’s just a machine, a big calculator. I can run the calculator. All you need to know is what problems to ask it. I’ll feed them into the machine.”

“
No, I think that’s nice of you, but—”

“
Nice? Tony, this isn’t about being nice. Nice is having you up to my cottage in Rhode Island and taking you out for some of the best fishing this side of Narragansett Bay. Uh-uh, no, I’m talking about putting all of your forty-plus years of investigative experience to work behind some of twenty-first century’s finest technological advances to help solve a crime that no one here seems to even recognize has taken place.”

“
You mean that?”

“
Yes! This equipment is topnotch.”

“
No. I mean you really have a cottage in Rhode Island?”

He looked at me and winced. “Yeah, about that. It’s a shack, really. I was going to tell you about it.”

I plugged his arm with a stiff punch. “Forget it.” He fell back, but caught himself on replanted footing. “Listen. Do you really believe I can help you with your case?”

“
Tony, listen,” he said, and I have never seen a more serious look on his face before. “You’re the best I know at this game. You’re old school, but your aptitude for understanding criminal behavior is uncanny, and your deductive talents are immeasurable. I think we owe it to Karen Webber and the other women to do this.”

“
And to Travis,” I said. I put my hand out and we shook on it. “All right, then. Where do we start?”

“
My office. This way.”

“
You have an office?”

We started down a long hallway, past a checkpoint where they issued me a temporary VIP pass and scanned me for weapons.

“
It’s not really an office,” he said, as we single-filed through a door that required him sliding an ID card through a barcode reader before opening. “We call it a think tank, though I suppose that term really means something else. Anyway, you’ll see.”

We went through a door that opened into another hallway, this one wider and longer with a carpeted floor and acoustic-paneled ceiling that absorbed stray sounds like a recording studio. Along the walls, large plate glass windows overlooked rooms with smartly organized computer desks, workstations and oversized conference tables. Carlos told me they were branch offices for every municipality in the county, designed to allow representatives and first responders from each to communicate with state and federal government entities in times of crises. When I asked him which room was New Castle’s, he said, “I’m not supposed to tell you.” Then he pointed to the third window on the left.

Further down the hall, we came to another door, this one perpendicular to the main hall. Carlos swiped his card through the reader on the wall. The door buzzed and let us in. This led to another hallway like the last, only there all the rooms were considerably smaller and the plate glass windows were etched with the emblems of the police departments working behind them. I noticed that the room designated for the New Castle PD was larger than the others. When asked why, Carlos explained that the other municipalities only share police resources at the justice center, whereas New Castle’s entire police force worked from that single location.

“
So then this is the entire NCPD now?” I asked.

“
Oh, this is only the detectives’ area,” he replied, smiling. “The uniforms still work downstairs where booking and processing takes place. There’s no need for them to go through all the layers of security that we go through here. Come, I’ll show you my workstation.”

I followed Carlos behind the glass where he introduced me to the gang. Some I knew, old faces I had worked with for years. Others were not so familiar. We headed to the back of the room where the best desks sat situated by the outside windows overlooking the parking lot. It wasn’t the greatest view, but it was a view, and that’s more than what I had with my old desk for nearly forty years.

Carlos sat down and motioned for me to take a seat across the desk from him. There were no cubicles or half-walls separating his workspace from those of his coworkers. But careful placement of potted trees and furniture-styled filing cabinets, along with cushioned chairs and muted-colored carpeting, gave the room warm character and an impression of personalized space. I kicked back in my chair and started to prop my feet up on the desk, when Carlos shot me a look as if I might burn the place down with just the thought of it. I apologized with a simple, “Sorry,” and he dismissed it with a wave.

A young man entered the office area. I say young because he looked like a kid to me, skinny, glasses, crew-cut hair and one of them pen protectors in his shirt pocket. Carlos acknowledged him with a nod and waved him over. The kid approached the desk and handed Carlos an envelope. He looked down at me and smiled politely. I smiled back. I noticed he wore an ID card on a chain around his neck and a detective’s badge on his belt. The ID card said his name was Spinelli, Dominic, Detective, Second Precinct, New Castle, Massachusetts. I am sure it meant to read, Eagle Scout, 2
^nd
class, Boy Scouts of America.

“
What’s this?” Carlos asked.

“
It just came up from evidence,” Spinelli replied. “I thought you’d want it.”

“
It came up? Or…” Carlos made little quotation marks in the air with his fingers. “
It came up
.”

The kid smiled. Carlos pointed to me and then to the kid. “Tony. I want you to meet my partner, Detective, Dominic Spinelli. Dom, Detective Anthony Marcella.”

“
Retired,” I said. I reached up and shook his hand.

His eyes lit up like a Jack-O-lantern. “Detective Marcella? Wow! What a pleasure to meet you, sir! You’re a legend around here!”

I turned to Carlos and laughed. “Nice. You put him up to that, didn’t you?”

“
Not me, amigo. The kid read up on you. You’re like a second hobby for him.”

“
Second? What’s the first?”

Carlos looked at Dominic and gave him a little nod. I turned back to the young detective. “Well?”

He smiled and blushed. “Actually, my hobby is the occult. I study Neo-Pagan religions, customs and traditions.”

“
Do you?”

“
Yes sir. Oh, but I don’t practice none of that. I’m Catholic by heritage. I just think the off-religions are fascinating.”

I thought he was putting me on for a moment. I half-smiled to let him know the jig was up, but he didn’t break. And so I turned to Carlos and gave him the old highbrow. When that didn’t work, I decided to play along. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with that case Carlos and I worked on last year, would it?”

“
Would what have anything to do with it?”

“
You know. You’re trying to get me to talk about the Surgeon Stalker case.”

“
Tony,” said Carlos, bluntly. “Dominic knows all about the case. He’s read every report ever written by every cop, inspector, paramedic, detective, Indian chief and shoeshine boy. He’s combed over every newspaper article, watched every newsreel, talked to every witness and pored over every Internet site on the subject since the story first broke. He can probably fill you in on a few details.”

“
Really?” I turned to Spinelli and saw panic fill his eyes.

“
Oh, n…not that you need any details,” he stammered. “I’m sure you and Detective Rodriquez handled the case most expertly at the time.”

“
At the time? So, what you’re saying is that you would conduct matters differently now.”