The Hexed (Krewe of Hunters) (14 page)

He glanced her way again. She was smiling—not attacking him. She was truly curious.

“Well, we all have our reasons,” he said. “Most of the time we have physical evidence to work with. This case...”

“Apparently, what you did was right. You got your answer—and you got everyone to admit they feel the same as you about your friend Melissa’s death.”

“At least I can track down the truth about Vince’s athame,” he said. He looked over at her again and realized that he wanted to pretend they were driving home from a date, that they had met and liked each other and had been out tonight for the sheer pleasure of being together.

Instead, I met you over a dead body,
he thought.

It hadn’t taken him more than a few minutes earlier to appreciate the fact that she cleaned up nice, as the saying went. She was always stunning, but tonight she’d worn a blue halter dress with some kind of a wrap. The color emphasized the blue of her eyes, and the silky fabric clung to the curved length of her body. And her natural warmth had won everyone over. Whenever someone had complimented her books she had been modest and gracious, explaining that her aunt’s stories had enthralled her back when she was a lonely child.

“So was he telling the truth?” Devin asked, breaking into his thoughts. “Vince said he can tell when people are lying. Do you have some kind of radar for that, too?”

He laughed. “Yes, there are certain physical manifestations that go with lying,” he told her. “But those who know them can hide them. I don’t think Vince would have lied, though. He knows that even if I don’t verify his story myself, one of the Krewe will.”

She turned to look out the window. “It’s strange. I knew some people talked about Auntie Mina, but I never realized just how...well, how ignorant and vicious they could be.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” he said quietly. “The world is filled with wonderful people. But there are also a lot of people who are ruled by their bone-deep prejudices, and some of them think the laws of this country deserve lip service and nothing more.”

When they reached her house, he walked with her to the door, as always. And though Auntie Mina was there—watching reruns of
Murder She Wrote
―Rocky went through the place and checked things out, anyway.

Thoroughly.

Twice.

Because he didn’t want to leave.

He’d finished his sweep of the house—not wanting to offend Mina, he’d told her that he’d wanted to make sure no one had tampered with the doors or windows from the outside—when his eyes lit on the pentagram Devin had purchased from Beth’s store.

“Mind if I borrow this?” he asked her.

She looked at him with a slightly ironic smile. “You think a retired schoolteacher who works as a medium and creates jewelry might be a serial killer?”

“No need to get defensive,” he said. “Although we all get defensive sometimes, don’t we? No, I don’t really see Gayle as a murderer. But if we can trace the medallions, at least we’ll have something concrete to work with.”

“But when she first started making them, they were sold in dozens of venues,” Devin said.

“We follow leads,” he told her. “That’s what we do. Some of them go somewhere, some don’t. If this turns out to be a lead, we’ll follow it.”

Devin lowered her head for a moment. “Of course, feel free to take it.”

“Thank you. I’ll get it back to you,” he promised.

He really couldn’t stay any longer.

When he finally bade Mina good-night and headed to the door, Devin followed to lock it behind him. “Tomorrow...well, I know you’re busy with the case, but...”

“Yes?” he urged her.

“Did you mean it earlier when you talked about checking out Perley’s theory on Gallows Hill?” she asked.

“Of course. I’m not the only one working the murders, you know—it really is a task force.”

Hell, yes, I meant it,
he thought.
Anything to be with you.

The thought of feeling that strongly about someone was disturbing. But he couldn’t forget the fear that had raced through him like wildfire when he’d arrived earlier that evening and seen her door standing open.

When he’d rushed into the woods, following the shrieking cry of the raven carried on the wind.

“And,” he added a little too harshly, “no running into the woods by night. I don’t care if you see our Puritan ghost and she asks you out to tea. No leaving the house like that.”

“No, I think I’ll stay in. Sorry,” she said when she saw the thunderous look on his face. “I was teasing. I promise.”

They were close again. So close he could feel her heartbeat, feel her breath. The compulsion to simply reach out and pull her to him, press his mouth to hers, was almost overwhelming.

He really needed to leave; he didn’t know her feelings for him. He needed time himself—away from the temptation of being with her.

He stepped back. “I’ll get here around nine-ish, okay?”

“Perfect. Thank you,” she told him.

She closed the door between them. He waited until he heard the bolt slide, and then he headed to his car.

* * *

That night, sleeping—though perhaps not exactly sleeping—Devin found herself on Gallows Hill again.

She was part of the air, there in her mind but not in the flesh. It was the end of summer, she thought. Right when the nip of autumn hinted now and then that fall would be brief and the warm days of summer would quickly give way to winter’s bitter chill.

She heard the sound of the death cart that brought the condemned to the hanging tree.

As the cart drew closer she heard sobbing. Any conversation was whispered, but sobbing was allowed. One could cry for the fact that the devil had come to Massachusetts and targeted the vulnerable among them.

This time she caught only fragments of conversation.

“...must be done.”

“She’ll be the death of all of us.”

“What difference...legal or illegal?”

“If she is gone... no mockery in court.”

Devin couldn’t see the speakers, couldn’t even tell their sex, though she thought there were only two of them. She tried to hear more than the brief snatches of conversation that hung on the air, but she couldn’t.

The sound of the cart grew louder.

That...and the weeping.

She awoke with a start.

This time she was shaking, though she didn’t feel frightened. She ran out to the parlor. The television was still on, showing reruns of
Perry Mason.

“Devin! What is it, dear?” Auntie Mina asked.

Devin was already busy at the bookcase, searching through all the titles. Auntie Mina had loved a good mystery. There were shelves of fiction. There were also numerous books on herbs, on witchcraft, on the history of religion and on just about every other topic that dealt with spirituality.

There were also history books. She was looking for one that Aunt Mina had purchased forever ago—a reprint of a work that had first been published in the early 1800s, as she recalled. It had been written by an author named Michael Smith, who’d claimed to be a descendant of Hattie Smith, who had been arrested for witchcraft, confessed and then rotted in jail for almost a year after the last hangings. His conclusions had been hotly disputed, if she remembered correctly.

“Devin?” Aunt Mina said worriedly.

“I’m all right, Auntie Mina. I’m looking for the Smith book on Salem.”

Aunt Mina looked at her curiously. “The Smith book? Really? It’s never been considered one of the better histories of the area. Why that book in particular?”

“He wrote about a young woman from Salem Village who had been accused. She was never arrested because she simply disappeared.”

“Yes,” Auntie Mina said. “I remember reading about her.”

Devin found the book at last. She looked at the copyright page and saw that the first printing had been in 1804. It had been reprinted once in 1886 and then again in 1964.

“You found it,” Auntie Mina said. “You’re going to want the last few chapters. The first half deals with the situation here in Salem in the context of the witchcraft panic across the Christian world at the time. But the second half is specifically about the people here in Salem. I was particularly touched by the story of little Dorcas Good. Only four and half years old when she was arrested. Poor thing. She confessed to the magistrates that her own mother was a witch, and that she must have been, too. But who knows what those so-called ‘examiners’ put into her head. She was in jail for over ten months and came out of it completely insane.”

Devin took the book to the sofa and sat down. Her ghostly aunt followed her. Somewhat disturbed by the very late—or very early—hour, Poe let out a few squawks of protest to let Devin know that they should both still be sleeping.

But she had found what she wanted and ignored his complaints.

“‘Chapter thirty-three,’” she read aloud. “‘Margaret Nottingham, nee Myles, was young, just nineteen, lovely and well-liked within the community. Shy and sweet, she was married just a year and had an infant daughter the year the winter of discontent came upon Salem. Despite her humility and kindness, she answered truthfully when spoken to. She felt strongly that they were overpaying Reverend Parris and that they would be a more closely knit community if they were to maintain only one house of worship. She was equally vocal against the first arrests and was heard to say the girls themselves were witches to accuse one as goodly and pious as Rebecca Nurse. A day before she was to be arrested and taken to her own examination, Margaret disappeared. It is to be hoped that Margaret escaped the area entirely and perhaps made her way to New York, but letters and diaries of the time suggest that she met with a different end, possibly murdered by a member of her own family lest others should be accused due to their association with her.’”

“You believe she’s the woman at our window,” Auntie Mina said.

“When I was a little girl, you told me that dreams can be memories. Maybe, in my dreams, I remembered that I’d read about Margaret,” Devin said, smiling. “The woman who comes here is obviously a ghost—and I believe she’s a ghost from the time of the trials, not a reenactor. Yes. I believe that we’ve found the identity of our mystery woman. I think that Margaret Nottingham comes to our window in hopes that we’ll discover her truth.”

“And what does that have to do with the recent murders?” her aunt asked. “While a killer might have been in the neighborhood now and thirteen years ago, he couldn’t possibly have been here in 1692. So what is the connection?”

Devin smiled grimly. “That, Auntie Mina, is what we must find out.”

10

W
hen Rocky arrived in the morning, Devin had the parlor strewn with books and papers and maps. Auntie Mina was nowhere to be seen. Devin explained that she didn’t yet have the necessary strength to remain visible at all times.

“What is all this?” he asked, gesturing at the mess.

“Research. Did you know that the last witch to be executed was a woman named Temperance Lloyd, killed in England in 1682? Lord Chief Justice Sir Francis North was disgusted by the proceedings, saying that the poor woman was condemned on ‘fancy and imagination.’ She confessed, but of course you can get anyone to say anything if you torture them.”

“I’m sure the confessions here in Salem were coerced, as well,” Rocky said.

“Well, naturally. Tituba must have been scared out of her wits with everything going on—ready to say anything to make the men ‘examining’ her happy. But they were only falling back on a long history of torture and interrogation in Europe, where tens of thousands of supposed witches were burned on the Continent and in Scotland, and hanged in England.”

“You’ve certainly been busy,” Rocky said, looking around at the amount of material surrounding her. “What brought this on?”

“Another dream,” she admitted, then hesitated, looking at him. “The ghost of our Puritan woman has been around awhile. And we know that,” she added quickly, “because I found reports that people have claimed for years that they’ve seen her at this house. Think about it. Less than thirty years ago people—including your friends―thought my aunt was scary just because she was Wiccan. Even though a lot of things started changing in the sixties and seventies, when Laurie Cabot arrived and was declared the Official Witch of Salem by the governor, and tourists started coming in droves, some people are still afraid,
and people who are afraid strike out at others.”

“You’ve lost me,” Rocky said. At the same time, he realized that if he had a cause, a passion in life, he would certainly want her on his side. Feeling off balance, he moved away to say hello to the bird.

He wanted to touch her.

He couldn’t let himself.

“Okay, I think this murderer is killing because of whatever happened to a Puritan woman named Margaret Nottingham all those years ago.”

“Why?” Rocky asked her.

“I don’t know, exactly. But somehow, I feel like it has to do with old practices and the past.”

“You think that somehow this woman was a practicing witch in the middle of a Puritan colony in 1692?”

“No, I think she was murdered because her family were afraid she was going to accuse them to save her own life. I think Margaret Nottingham was murdered by someone close to her.”

“Why didn’t you just ask her about it when you talked to her?”

“I never talked to her.”

“Then how do you know her name?” he asked.

Devin shook her head. “I found a book that talked about her. It’s mostly theory and conjecture, of course, but his argument that she was murdered makes sense. And since so many ghosts are murder victims condemned to walk the earth until justice is done, it makes sense that she’s the Puritan woman.”

“Okay, let’s say you’re right, and that’s her and she was murdered. So are you saying someone wants to avenge her death now—over three hundred years later? And they’re trying to do so by pinning the murders on today’s Wiccans?”

Devin stared back at him, obviously frustrated. “No, I just think there’s a connection. Maybe some rite was going on when she was killed. Maybe someone is just picking up again where her murder began because they’re crazy or something. I don’t know. But...” She hesitated momentarily. “What happened when you—how did you find Melissa Wilson that night?”

He stared back at her and let out a long breath. “She called me.”

“On the phone?”

“No.”

They were both quiet in tacit understanding.

“How did you explain that to the others?” she asked him.

“It wasn’t easy, and as you saw last night, they didn’t exactly believe me.”

“I noticed.”

He shrugged. “I said pretty much the same thing you said to me—that I’d heard something coming from the woods. Everyone assumed that the killer had hung around and then when Jack, Vince and I burst into the woods, he ran away. We were only seventeen, but the three of us were pretty big. He wouldn’t have wanted to take on all of us.”

“No one ever suspected you?”

“Yes, actually, the police grilled me for hours,” he admitted. “Helped me get an edge on interrogation techniques before I even started in criminology.”

Her eyes were on his, and he knew she understood exactly how he had felt.

“I bet it was rough,” she murmured.

“Explaining that I thought I had heard a dead girl? ‘Rough’ doesn’t begin to cover it.” He smiled dryly. “That’s what’s so great about the Krewe. You don’t have to go through a song and dance, don’t have to lie. You don’t have to pretend that trees were rustling when you really heard a voice. But...back to the point. We need to figure out if the past really does have anything to do with the present.”

“Well,” Devin said, “there’s a way to do almost anything. We just have to figure out what it is.”

His tone was far harsher than he had intended when he said, “You don’t really have to do anything, you know. Except keep your doors and windows locked, don’t go wandering off alone if you’re out...and be careful as all hell.”

She smiled grimly. “Really? I don’t think so. If I’m in danger, I’m in danger wherever I am and whoever I’m with. I found the body. I introduced you to Beth, Theo, Gayle and Brent. And I went with you to Jack’s house, so...I’m in. Now, are we going to check out Perley’s theory on Gallows Hill? Because whether you’re coming or not, I’m going. Oh, and since you’re so worried about me, what about that pepper spray? I’d ask for a gun, but I don’t know how to use one.”

“Guns are easy at point-blank range,” he told her. “Point and shoot.”

“You’re giving me a gun?”

“No, but I do have pepper spray in the car for you. And I’ll be damned if you’re going off investigating anything alone.”

She smiled in satisfaction, and he realized that she’d been waiting for him to say exactly that.

Her smile was a killer. She wasn’t just unusually beautiful, with her vivid coloring. It was her energy, her
life
and her passion that were so arresting.

He knew he needed to take an emotional and physical step back—again.

Somehow he took a step forward instead. And she didn’t move away. It was as if she waited, both hesitant and anxious. And if he touched her...

“Ah, Agent Rockwell,” Mina said suddenly.

And there she was, peeking out through the kitchen doorway.

There went that moment,
Rocky thought ruefully.

“I feel so much better when you’re here. I can watch the house, of course, and warn Devin if I see someone, but I can’t always be here, and I can’t actually
do
anything to an intruder. I’m not really much of a protector, all in all.”

“You do a fine job,” Rocky said reassuringly. “But actually, Devin and I were just on our way out, so we really should get going.”

“Where are you headed?” Mina asked.

“To check out Sydney Perley’s theory on the location of Gallows Hill,” he said, turning to Devin. “Shall we?”

* * *

Before they got in the car, he showed her how to use the pepper spray, which didn’t take long.

He’d brought her three containers: one normal spray can to keep in the house—particularly by her bed at night—one small enough to go on a key chain and one disguised as a lipstick tube. Same basic principle as a gun, he explained. Point and shoot, but aim for the eyes.

“Don’t forget, this doesn’t bring down an opponent, it just blinds him and gives you time—up to half an hour or forty-five minutes—to get away.”

“I got it,” she told him. “Point, spray, aim for the eyes.”

“Exactly.”

“Pink,” she said.

“Pardon?”

“
Pink.
The other two are black, but the one for my key ring is pink.”

“You don’t like pink?”

“I just didn’t see it as a color you would choose, Mr. Man in Black,” she said, smiling.

Devin found herself near him during his pepper-spray demo, and she couldn’t help noticing all kinds of ridiculous little things. The soft feel of his corduroy jacket, the crisp look of the shirt he wore beneath, his clean-shaven cheeks and, of course, his eyes. He smelled clean—soap and shampoo and some kind of masculine shaving cream or cologne. There was something intriguingly intimate about the way they stood so close.

“Actually, I don’t use lipstick, either,” he told her, humor in his eyes.

“They’ll have to come up with lip balm pepper spray,” she said.

“I’m sure they already have.”

His fingers brushed hers as he warned her to spray in the right direction—nothing worse than blinding yourself when you were already under attack.

“Got it,” she assured him. Their faces were inches apart. She thought he was going to lean forward just another inch and...

But his eyes were on the house, and he backed away.

Nothing like having a chaperone at her age, Devin thought—and a dead one, at that.

But she didn’t speak and neither did he. Instead, they got in the car and she dug her copy of Perley’s map out of her shoulder bag.

“Okay, in 1692 Peter Street was Prison Lane. And Essex Street led to Bridge Street and on to Boston Street—and the only way in or out of town was over the bridge the street was named for. We know
from many sources that the condemned were taken by cart to the execution site. Most historians think it’s unlikely that Magistrate Corwin would have chosen a site too far outside the town limit. Which leads us right here.”

“There’s a drugstore on the corner,” Rocky said.

“And houses all around, yes, but all of that development, even the houses, is from the past hundred years or so. I’ve read some blogs by people who were doing the same research. There’s still a patch of woods here, though, on a rocky little rise behind someone’s backyard. I wonder why...”

“Why it hasn’t been developed?” Rocky asked. He cast her a glance and a grin. “Imagine a house built on a killing field like that. I see horror movie written all over it.”

She gave him a warning stare. “I haven’t had a chance to look up the county records yet, but Perley had a letter written by a Dr. Holyoke in 1791. Holyoke talked to a man who had lived to be a hundred and whose mother had often spoken about the hangings. She said she could see Gallows Hill from her house and had hated the days of the executions. She’d stood at her window with her baby in her arms and prayed that they wouldn’t come for her. What I need to do is see if I can find genealogical records to figure out who the woman was and a deed of ownership to tell me what house she lived in. Obviously it won’t be easy or someone would have done it by now, but if I can track down that information, I bet we’ll have proof that her house was right around here somewhere.”

A few minutes later he parked along the street and they got out of the car. After a bit of walking around they spotted the little hill with its patch of trees.

The terrain had probably changed a bit, of course. Three-hundred-plus years of snow and rain led to erosion and reshaping.

But she could still see it.

She could narrow her eyes and see the hill rising higher than it did now, could imagine that the pond still existed, and she could even visualize the well-known story of Benjamin Nurse, his mother’s youngest son, though a man of twenty-six, rowing his boat silently in the night to find his mother’s body where it had been discarded and take it away for burial.

The air stirred, but it was a warm breeze. The world around Devin seemed to grow distant, and she saw the lonely hill higher and scattered with rocks, along with a few strong trees. Someone whispered about the heat in July, and soon she heard the sound of horses, footsteps and a cart being trundled down the rocky path.

She wanted to cry out that they were wrong. That fear led only to hatred and prejudice, and that one day they would regret what they had done.

There were half a dozen women in the cart, and it was surrounded by others who had come on foot to watch the hangings, as well as those who were required by law to witness the executions.

Some were there only because they were afraid to stay away, as if refusing to watch as the ungodly were removed from the world might brand them as ungodly themselves.

She watched as the rope was thrown over the tree branch. She heard it rasp over the limb.

And she heard sobbing...

From the victims, from the crowd—maybe from both.

Suddenly she felt a presence beside her. She looked and saw that it was Margaret Nottingham.

“Walk with me,” Margaret said softly.

Together they started toward the hill. The women huddled in the cart, eyes turned away from the ropes dangling from the tree, nooses tied and at the ready. The Reverend Stoughton began to speak to the condemned, demanding that they confess and save their immortal souls.

The cart was drawn up beneath the hanging tree and the condemned women were made to stand. A noose was slipped over each woman’s head, and together they began to pray, finally fading into silence. All but one. Someone in the crowd demanded that Rebecca Nurse be allowed to finish her prayer.

And next to Devin, the specter of Margaret spoke. “It was all a mockery. A mockery of all that is just and good. Rebecca...how could any fault her? She lived a life of piety. The others...poor, often begging, or perhaps of different beliefs.” She turned to look at Devin. “You must understand. When even such a woman as Rebecca can be brought to the gallows, people are terrified. When one member of a family is taken, more follow. If you give testimony on behalf of one you love, you risk the hangman’s noose yourself. A four-year-old child resides in prison and did give testimony against her mother. And yet how do these confessions come to be heard? The weak are tortured, oppressed by fear and the demands of their oppressors and the examinations. They are so afraid they will say anything. When Governor Phipps demanded corroboration, goodwoman Rebecca Nurse was stripped before the crowd to find her witch’s teat, and she suffered humiliation beyond bearing. The prison itself is rank with disease and sickness, and food is scarce, and several died there with no hope. And so―”