The Hexed (Krewe of Hunters) (10 page)

Devin glanced over at her aunt. “I don’t know what to think. Aunt Mina saw a woman in Puritan dress. It might have been an actress, of course—there are reenactors all around the city. But...if she saw a ghost, what would that mean? Whoever the killer is, he or she might have been around thirteen years ago—but not three-hundred-plus years ago.”

“No, that’s very true. But if we can identify the woman you found or your aunt’s Puritan, we might be able to find out how they’re related, and that could help us solve our case.”

“Okay,” Jane announced, breaking into the conversation. “Here’s what I have so far,” she said, then turned her sketch pad around, showing them what she’d drawn.

The woman in the sketch was pretty and delicate. She had fine features, and large, light-colored eyes. She wore the cap typical of the Puritans and a white pinafore over a dark dress.

“Close?” she asked Aunt Mina.

Aunt Mina sighed softly. “Close? She’s nearly exact. But I’ve never seen her before—or since—that night.”

“Have
you
ever seen her?” Jane asked, looking at Devin.

“No, I don’t know her,” Devin said.

“Well, then, I guess we’re set here,” Jane said. She rose and smiled at Devin. “You have a lovely home,” she said.

Devin didn’t respond. It was still Aunt Mina’s home, really.

But Aunt Mina seemed to be disappearing.

“Thank you,” Devin said distractedly, her eyes on her aunt’s fading form.

Jane followed the direction of her gaze and said sympathetically, “It takes a lot to appear and speak, and your aunt had to really focus to give us so much information. She’ll be back.”

“Don’t be startled when she arrives out of the blue,” Angela warned.

“Oh, I’ve gotten used to her,” Devin said.

Jane and Angela got set to leave, and Devin walked them to the door. When she opened it, she had to stifle a scream.

Because standing there was Rocky.

“Hey, how did it go?” he asked.

Jane produced her drawing. Rocky studied it for a long moment. Then he looked at Devin. “Anyone you’ve ever seen before?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No, I don’t know her.”

“We’ll find her,” he said, his eyes holding hers. “Thank you,” he told Jane. “Are you ready?” he asked Devin.

“For?”

“It’s after seven,” he said. “The tours all start around eight, right?”

“Oh!” she said, amazed that the afternoon had gone by so quickly. “Oh.”

“So...ready to go?”

“Yes, yes, of course.” She turned to the other two agents. “Would you like to join us? Brent is a friend of mine, he won’t mind.”

“We were going to go back to the hotel and assess what we have so far,” Jane said. “I think a tour—a refresher course—of the city’s history is actually a good idea, but we’ll go another night. Witchcraft does seem to be the key to solving this case, doesn’t it?”

Devin didn’t let herself reply, reminding herself that Jane wasn’t attacking the city’s Wiccan community, only stating the obvious. Because one way or another, witchcraft
was
at the heart of these killings.

It was the pentagrams found on the victims.

Devin grabbed her purse, let the others out ahead of her and locked the door. The other women took their rental, and she went in Rocky’s car. As they drove, he seemed preoccupied.

“Your friends—your coworkers—are very nice.”

He flashed her a smile. “They are. I’m just getting to know them myself. But what I know already is that they’re pretty amazing.”

“Oh.”

“New assignment,” he told her. “I just joined the Krewe. I’d been working across the country.”

“It must feel strange to come home to...this,” she said.

“Not at all—I asked for this assignment.”

Of course, he had. He had said it: he was haunted. Had been for years.

And now...

“Have you come up with anything?” she asked him, then smiled. “Or is that classified?”

“We’ve followed every lead, and we’re running some computer searches. But as to answers...no, none yet.”

“It makes sense that you wanted a sketch of the woman Aunt Mina saw.”

He glanced her way. “Of course. I’m trying to figure out how the victims are chosen, because I do believe there’s a reason they’re being targeted. I just keep thinking...our killer’s not a sexual sadist. The women aren’t being molested. It’s more like a ritual—a sacrifice.”

“Which is more proof that the killer’s not Wiccan. Today’s Wiccans don’t sacrifice—no matter what the Druids might have done. And if you’re looking to history to clarify what’s going on, the accused at the witch trials weren’t even witches. They were the innocent victims of paranoia. So if you think tonight’s tour is going to point a finger at the big bad witches, think again.”

“I know that.”

“Then...?”

“I don’t know. But I keep feeling... Well, I have been gone awhile. I just keep thinking that something in tonight’s tour will dislodge a clue from my memory.”

“Well, you’ll like Brent’s tour even if it doesn’t solve the case for you. There’s no hocus-pocus. No pun intended.”

Brent’s tour began at the Salem Witch Trials Memorial and ended at his shop—which, being a clever businessman, he opened for business as soon as they arrived.

It was a busy night. Over twenty people had gathered to take the tour. As they waited, Devin watched Rocky’s face. He was listening intently to those around them.

“I don’t think tourists really have to worry, do you?” one woman asked another.

“No, of course not. The victims were all locals,” her friend replied.

“They haven’t identified the second victim yet,” a man standing nearby pointed out. “And if she were local, wouldn’t someone know her? They posted her picture in the paper, and it’s been all over TV.”

“Hush, Henry, the children,” said his wife.

“They need to know to stay with us at all times,” Henry said gruffly.

“How do you feel about the memorial? Or do you remember when it wasn’t here?” Rocky asked Devin.

“Yes, I remember,” she told him, grinning. “You’re not
that
much older than I am.” She’d been very young when it had been erected for the tricentennial of the trials, but it had been a big deal in town, the kind of thing that stuck in your memory.

There was always controversy when the powers that be made a big change in town, but Devin personally liked the little area—adjacent to the cemetery—where twenty individual stone benches were each engraved with the name of one of those who was executed during the witch craze, nineteen of them hanged and Giles Corey pressed to death. Most tours began here, but she particularly liked the way Brent began his tours at this spot, with the real history of the time and an explanation of the situation.

The memorial was atmospheric at night; the moon and city lights cast a glow over the graveyard—closed at dusk, but easily visible over the low stone fence. None of the victims was buried there in the Old Burying Point Cemetery, but Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ancestor—John Hathorne, the only witch trial judge never to repent of his actions—was interred near the memorial. Sometimes a low fog would roll in, which made the stories especially poignant and a bit eerie.

“Hey! You two made it. And on time,” Brent said, smiling, as he found them in the crowd.

“I’m always on time, Brent,” Devin said.

“That’s right—Beth is the one who never seems to know what time it is,” Brent said. “I’m glad you’re here,” he told Rocky. Suddenly he turned around and started coughing.

“Brent, are you sick?” Devin asked him.

“Allergy. And I don’t even know to what,” Brent said with disgust. “But if I yell for help, you take over, okay? And you might as well have a seat while I do my intro.”

Devin sat with Rocky on the bench dedicated to Bridget Bishop. She’d always felt empathy for Bridget—she’d actually worn a color other than black at times and had some sass in her. It had proved to be her undoing.

Brent stepped forward, welcoming the crowd, checking his watch—and moving right into his first speech.

“If we’re going to think about the deaths of people, first we have to think about the lives they were living. So think about Salem back then—a divided place, one town loosely divided into Salem and Salem Village. The first was near the coast—more urban. The second was made up mainly of farmland. The farmers closest to town didn’t want to break away. They were economically tied to the seaport. Others wanted to separate and make Salem Village an official town of its own.

“The Putnam family—one of the most affluent in the area—wanted to separate. To that end they hired Reverend Samuel Parris to come and lead services near them. If that didn’t make relations with those in town bad enough, they gave Parris a house and grounds to go with the stipend and firewood they provided. That seemed outrageous to people who felt a minister shouldn’t be compensated to such an unheard-of degree. So even before the claims of witchcraft and pacts with the devil began, the community was at odds.

“On top of that, remember that it was winter. If you’ve been here for a Massachusetts winter, you know it can be brutal. Imagine winter with no electricity and only a fire for warmth. Such darkness and cold. Not so long ago they had been at war with the Indians, and many still found the woods a terrifying place. There was a devil out there, the strict Puritans believed, and he was ready to seize those who showed signs of moral weakness. And anything fun was a sure sign of sin. I’ve got to say, I’m awfully glad there aren’t any Puritans still living in the area today.”

Laughter followed Brent’s last statement. He grinned and looked at Devin. “Pipe in here for a minute, will you?”

She was surprised. Brent loved to tell his stories. She started to demur, but then, as he pointed to his throat and reached for a bottle of water, she remembered what he’d said earlier about helping out. By then, the crowd had turned to her, and Brent, coughing, had turned away.

Devin stood and stepped forward. “So, leading up to the accusations, arrests and trials, you had dissension in town, with those who were close to town and didn’t want to separate refusing to pay certain taxes—taxes that paid to build the new minister’s house and on Samuel Parris’s property. Now, I don’t think that the young women in his house were horrible people. And why the elders let things go so far, we’ll never know. Somehow a number of books on fortune-telling—prophesy—began to circulate among the young people in the community. I imagine they were greeted with the same enthusiasm as
Harry Potter, Twilight
or
The Hunger Games.
Remember, they weren’t allowed to dance, and even hide-and-seek was considered a game for the idle.

“Parris happened to have two slaves, Tituba, and John Indian, her husband. Tituba was often in charge of the girls who lived in or visited the Parris household, among them Parris’s daughter, Betty, and his orphaned niece, Abigail. They began to form secret little circles, reading their books, even going so far as to break eggs into water, then ‘read’ the patterns to tell the future. Tituba was from Barbados, and she brought with her stories about spells and witchcraft. Betty and Abby undoubtedly got carried away.

“The two girls began shouting blasphemies, running around on the floor like dogs and scaring their parents. Dr. Grigsby was immediately called. He found nothing physically wrong with the girls and said it had to be a clerical matter. The community prayed, even fasted, but to no avail. The girls were pressured to name the witches who were tormenting them. They named Tituba and two local women, Sarah Good—who was a homeless beggar—and Sarah Osborne, who was very old and hadn’t been to church in a long time—a grievous sin in the community. The three women—all of low social class—were formally accused of witchcraft. Magistrates Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne—no
W
in the name, Nathaniel put that in to disassociate himself—came to investigate.

“The three women were arrested on March 1 of 1692. Tituba actually confessed
to being a witch, though what they did to make her confess isn’t known. Regardless, she told her examiners that she was visited by Satan, sometimes as a large dog, and that there was a coven of witches in Salem. By May, over two hundred people had been arrested on the charge of witchcraft. A court of Oyer and Terminer—from the old English version of the Latin “to hear and determine”—was called, and soon the frenzy had begun in earnest. Many more were accused and arrested, many of high-ranking status—and most of them those who opposed the Putnam family.”

“So they had their own neighbors killed?” one lady said.

“Well, it wasn’t that simple. Remember, the devil was very real to them. And they lived in a time when all of Europe believed in witchcraft. People really believed that witches could harm your livestock and kill your children. So what was really going on with those girls? Were they simply cruel? Deluded? Some think there was ergot, a hallucinogenic fungus, in the wheat, but then the whole town would have been having visions. Or was it something I think we’re all capable of at times? You tell a lie so many times, it becomes the truth. You believe it yourself.” She glanced over at Brent. He had taken a seat and was catching his breath.

“In June,” she said, “one gentleman of the court, Nathaniel Saltonstall, resigned, horrified by the other members’ reliance on the ‘spectral evidence’ that was being presented. But that didn’t bring any rationality to the proceedings. On June 10, Bridget Bishop was the first to be hanged by order of the court. The hysteria had begun.” She indicated Bridget’s bench; Rocky was still sitting there.

He smiled at her and winked. For a moment, she stared back at him blankly, thrown off and far too attracted to him and the way he smiled at her.

But Brent was still sitting down and drinking his water, so she gave herself a mental shake and kept going.

“One of the oddest things—the way we see it today, anyway—was that some of the accused confessed, then accused others, and none of them were hanged. Instead, they were left to rot in jail. Those who
were
hanged were, in fact, the true Christian believers, the ones who wouldn’t confess to a lie and admit to being witches. That would be against God, and they were intent on saving their immortal souls.