The Witch's Ladder (28 page)

“
What the hell was that?” Carlos asked.

I coughed up a dribble of swallowed water and spit it out in the gutter. “That?” I said, my voice throttled, “was the swimming pool.”

“
What?”

I pressed my nose to my sleeve and took a whiff. “Smell that?” I then held my forearm out for him to do the same. “Chlorinated water.”

He took a sniff. “Are you kidding?”

I shook my head.

“
But how? Where did it come from? I mean, we saw it get sucked up in the tornado.”

“
It’s the witch’s ladder. I told you. Valerie must have one, too.”

“
I don’t get it.”

“
Don’t you?”

“
No.”

“
You said you felt dirty. She said she could fix it.”

Carlos flopped backwards onto the soggy grass. “You’re a ball buster, Marcella, you know that?”

“
Yeah, Rodriguez.” I flopped backwards onto the grass beside him. “I know.”

After several minutes of catching our breaths and regaining our composure, I said to Carlos, “What do you feel like for lunch?”

He thought for only a moment. “You know it’s funny, but I have a strange craving for fish.”

I laughed. “I knew you were going to say that.”

Back inside the Spencer residence, Valerie peered through the blinds at the front window. “They’re okay,” she said, before allowing the blinds to snap shut again. “I told you it wouldn’t kill them.”

Across the room in a darkened corner, an obscure figure sat quietly in the shadows, her hands busily working the rope of another witch’s ladder. “It wasn’t supposed to kill them. Besides, you don’t need another death with your name linked to it.”

“
But Lilith, what could anyone prove?”

“
It doesn’t matter. Two drowned cops, one empty swimming pool. It has all the makings of a bad Sunday night mystery movie of the week.”

“
I still say we need to do something about him.”

“
Let it go, Val. Marcella’s a good egg. He’s not your biggest worry anyway.”

“
I’m calling Michael. He’ll know what to do.”

“
I’m not helping you.”

“
We don’t need your help. We’ll get Jean. Marcella still trusts her.”

“
Fine, then count me out.”

Eighteen

The following morning I received a call from Jean Bradford. To say I was surprised would have been an understatement. After the incredible episode with the kitchen tornado, I hardly expected to hear from her anytime soon. If I thought she might still be upset, I couldn’t hear it in her voice.

“
Ms. Bradford, I’m sorry I couldn’t hang around and help clean up after that…incident.”

“
That’s all right, Detective. You know it’s the funniest thing. I went to the track later and bet a thousand dollars on a horse named Windy.”

“
Don’t tell me.”

“
She paid ninety to one.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m happy for you.” I really wasn’t. “Perhaps someday you’ll tell me how you do it.”

“
Well, that’s sort of why I’m calling.”

“
Oh?” I sat up in my chair and grabbed a pencil in case I needed to jot down something important—like maybe the name of a horse. “You have a tip for me?”

“
I do. It’s about your case. I’m not sure how to broach this exactly, so I’ll just come out and say it.”

“
Whatever it is, I’m sure I’ll have no trouble forgiving you. So go ahead and tell me.”

“
You know the bag you’ve been asking everyone about?”

“
The brown paper bag, of course.”

“
I’m afraid I haven’t been totally honest with you.”

“
I see.”

“
I guess I got nervous. I’m sure you can understand?”

“
Ms. Bradford, please.”

“
I found the bag in Doctor Lieberman’s office. When I saw the towels inside, I didn’t know what else to do. The next morning I heard about Doctor Lieberman’s murder and I became frightened. I thought the towels might implicate me, so I hid them.”

I struggled to contain my excitement. I knew that finding the towels could be just the break I had been hoping for, the one hard piece of evidence that could link any or all of the workshop members to the murders. I still had the beads, of course, but I understood that those were circumstantial, lacking the most critical of all courtroom evidence: DNA. The bloody handsaw and Gordon’s jumper cables had plenty of DNA on them; unfortunately, it all belonged to Doctor Lieberman. And the finger of guilt from those items pointed to three dead suspects.

“
Ms. Bradford, you say you found the towels in Doctor Lieberman’s office?”

“
Yes. In his desk drawer.”

“
Why were you looking in his desk drawers to begin with?”

She hesitated, perhaps wondering if I would find it so difficult to believe. “Well, Detective, to be honest the others all thought Doctor Lieberman was the Surgeon Stalker. They wanted me to search his office for just such a clue. I didn’t want to do it, but I wanted to clear the good name of the Institute. I didn’t expect to find anything. I swear. Once I showed it to the others, I hurried home. I didn’t want anything to do with whatever was going to happen next.”

“
What did you expect would happen next?”

A cold silence gapped the next ten seconds. “Ms. Bradford? Are you still there?”

“
Detective, I want you to listen closely. Down at Suffolk’s Walk there’s an abandoned fish house at the end of Pier Four. Inside that fish house you’ll find a large bait box. Lift the cover. The bloody towels are there. If you’re lucky, they’ll contain a loose hair, a piece of fingernail or maybe a drop of the killer’s own blood. That’s all I can tell you.”

“
Ms. Bradford, I don’t understand. If you found the bag inside Doctor Lieberman’s office, then why—”

“
I said that’s all I can tell you, Detective. Goodbye.”

The line went dead. I reached into my pocket, pulled out the witch’s ladder and ran my fingers along the line. It still had thirty knots tied in it. It occurred to me that at the rate I was going, the next one I untied could be my last.

“
Jean Bradford, huh? Sounds like you have a lead on the phantom brown bag.”

I looked up at Carlos. “I do. This could be the break I’ve been waiting for.”

“
What’s she doing with it?”

“
Nothing. She dumped it.”

“
Why?”

“
I don’t know. None of this makes sense.”

“
What exactly did she say?”

“
She said the others all thought Doctor Lieberman was the Surgeon Stalker. They had her rummage through his office to look for incriminating evidence. That’s when she found it.”

“
They?”

“
The group, everyone in the workshop.”

Carlos took a seat opposite me. “All right, let me get this straight. The members of the workshop all believed Doctor Lieberman was the Surgeon Stalker. So they had Bradford search his office and she found this bag with bloody towels inside. Right so far?”

I nodded.

“
Okay. She shows the bag and its contents to the others and they just decide to kill Doctor Lieberman?”

“
I guess. That’s certainly the way it looks, isn’t it?”

He eased his chair back on two legs and laced his fingers behind his head. “It does look that way, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from you over the years, it’s that things aren’t always what they seem.”

“
So what do you think?”

“
I think Doctor Lieberman wasn’t the Stalker.”

“
No, of course not. Not after—”

“
After someone cut out his liver.”

“
That’s right. He didn’t do it himself.”

“
I think I get the picture now.” He dropped his chair back on all fours and folded his hands up on the desk. “I think those guys killed Doctor Lieberman, but then the next morning found out that the real Surgeon Stalker came along and cut out the doctor’s liver. Realizing their mistake, the twins threatened to go to the police with the truth. The others voted against it. They argued about it at the gazebo. Unfortunately, the twins were unable to convince the others to turn themselves in to the police. A fight ensued, they bludgeoned the twins to death, and to cover up the crime they set the gazebo ablaze.”

This time I shook my head. “No. I don’t think it’s that simple, Carlos. I think you’re overlooking a couple of important details. For instance, how did the Stalker know to find Doctor Lieberman’s body hanging from the tree? And why were the bloody towels in Doctor Lieberman’s office in the first place?”

“
You think he was set up?”

“
It sure looks that way.”

“
Did the twins set him up?”

“
Perhaps, and then maybe the others found out. So they killed the twins.”

“
Or maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe the twins figured out that Michael was the Stalker, and he killed them for discovering his secret?”

I agreed, remembering how Michael actually did the deed according to the flashback I witnessed at Lilith’s house. “That brings us full circle then, doesn’t it?”

“
How so?”

“
There’s still Valerie’s role in all this. Don’t forget, yesterday while you were strolling around the pool, I had an opportunity to read her thoughts about the bloody towels.”

“
That’s right. You did, didn’t you?”

Oh, how times had changed, I thought. Not twenty-four hours earlier if I had made a statement like that, Carlos would have accused me of bordering on the lunatic fringe, unable to resist making snide comments laced with sarcastic overtones and stinging innuendoes of psycho dribble. It seemed amazing how readily he accepted the notion that I could read another person’s mind.

“
I’m not really sure what to make of her thoughts, Carlos,” I said. “The image was very strange. I think she may have performed a psychometric analysis on the towels.”

“
Psycho…?”

“
It’s when someone reads a record of events connected with an object that someone once possessed.”

“
Oh, I thought it was the study of psychos.”

“
Yeah, close. Anyway, the killer used the towels to wrap up the bloody livers so he could carry them away.”

“
Carry them where?”

“
That’s just it. I don’t know. Valerie recited the phrase, attraction of blood, to herself. I’m sure that has something to do with it.”

“
What?”

I shook my head. “I have no idea. The questions still outnumber the answers. But I do know one thing.”

“
Yeah?”

“
Valerie thinks you have one hell of a nice butt.”

Laughter broke out among the guys in the immediate vicinity. I got up and scuffed my fingers through Carlos’ hair as I walked past him on my way to the door. I made it halfway across the room before he stood and hollered, “Where’re you going?”

“
To pick up some dirty laundry.”

“
You think I should go with you?”

“
No, I got it,” I said, and I waved goodbye with one hand over my head. He retreated to his desk in a hail of teasing catcalls and whistles.

Fifteen minutes after leaving the station I pulled up to the gates of the once thriving marina district of Suffolk’s Walk. As I strolled along the boardwalk, I slipped my hand into my pocket to check on the ladder. The move had become routine to me, subconsciously drilled into my brain. My fingers brushed the rope’s burly knots. The confidence it gave me seemed disproportionate to my apprehensions, seeing as I still had no idea how to control its awesome powers. It seemed just when I thought I knew what to expect from the ladder, it showed me another side of its fickle tendencies. Perhaps Lilith intended it that way, I thought, and perhaps its most awesome surprise awaited me in the next knot.

At the end of Pier Four, just as Jean said, sat an abandoned fish house. It stood battered and worn from years of neglect and the relentless assault of Mother Nature’s elements.

I walked the length of the rickety planks out over the oil-stained waters of the bay. The boards groaned with every step as I placed one cautious foot in front of the other, avoiding the loose and broken timbers awaiting the chance to deliver me to the chilly waters below. When I reached the tattered structure at the end, I looked back to assess the virtual minefield I would have to negotiate on the return trip. The tide was high and rising. Closest to the shore, the waters broke in rhythmic waves, slapping into the pilings and spraying like geysers up through the cracks and spaces in the planking.