The White Witch

by Rory B. Byrne

  “Why the mounds, I’d think something like that has to do with historic preservation. But the little I read up about Equinox, they’re not affiliated with anything that has to do with Scottish preservation or archeology. The best I got out of scanning the internet had to do with quantum physics.”

  James shook his head. “It’s all Greek to me.”

  Alice laughed lightly. Here was a man who chose to stay home instead of seeing the rest of the country. For whatever reason, he had an anchor to the countryside.

  “Do you know anything about Mr. Edmund?”

  “I do. I’ve got to warn you, Inspector. He’s a little unorthodox. He left the department following the Biel girl’s mother ‘relocating.’”

  “He thinks Phoebe Biel leaving and Equinox has something to do with your fairy mound,” Alice said. She stopped smirking when James adjusted his cap before climbing from the car. She saw he wasn’t smiling at the attempted humor.

  Lasting Legacy

  Alice wasn’t someone interested in the local pub business. Often the proprietors of rural drinking circumvented county ordinances and country laws. The Three Heads was no different than a lot of other drinking establishments across Scotland. They served food and drink with music and layers of cigarette smoke.

  When patrons saw James’ uniform and Alice’s demeanor, they quickly snuffed out the random cigarettes. Alice noticed the ‘no smoking’ ordinance placard on the door before they entered the place. Another banner graced the space above the bar next to the tartan and coat of arms for the region.

  James nodded to a few people who dared watch them. Alice counted fifteen people, including the female barkeeper. Her nose burned with the strong cigarette stench filling the unventilated tavern. She ignored the bartender, who waited for some warning from the constable about smoking in public places. She followed James through the collection of mismatched tables and chairs to the small two-person booth with wooden benches at the back of the tavern. One side had a large man with a gut. He had wedged himself between the fixed table and bench. He had a bowl of beans and potato stew at one elbow, a half-empty glass of lager at the other elbow. In front of him in plain sight was the pack of filterless cigarettes and a tea dish for an ashtray.

  “Constable Abernathy, how is your Ma?” the man asked.

  “She is well, Sir. Thank you for asking.” James stood next to Alice and introduced her. “Mr. Edmund, this is Inspector Lemont, she’s—”

  “Lemont?” Edmund interrupted. “That Donovan Lemont’s little girl?”

  Alice felt a flush of embarrassment. She felt the sting of smoke in her eyes and sinuses. She nodded at Edmund. “Yes, Sir, he’s doing well, retired, and enjoying his free time.”

  “Good, good,” Edmund said. There was a moment between Alice and him. She saw the way he looked at her with one eye closed.

  He shifted at the table. Somehow Edmund managed to pull his bulk from between the mounted table and bench. He collected the cigarettes and pocketed the pack. Before Edmund moved away from the table, he gulped the rest of the dark amber lager. He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his jacket and waved to the barkeep.

  “Put that on my tab, dear,” Edmund called.

  Outside Alice breathed deep. She knew the scent of cigarettes clung to her clothing and hair. Edmund quickly fished out the crinkled pack and lit a cigarette while standing in front of the pub entrance.

  “You’re here to talk to me about those American girls,” he said. He shook the glowing end at James. “You think it’s the same as before, don’t you, boy?”

  “I explained to Inspector Lemont that you have some insight into Phoebe Biel’s disappearance.”

  “Well, help me walk off this meal, and we’ll talk about it.”

  “You think Equinox Technologies has something to do with those girls?” Alice asked.

  “Aye, lass, I do. But you’d have better luck catching a fart in the wind than landing a kelpie like Brian MacIomhair.”

  “Kelpie?” Alice asked.

  Edmund grunted. “Are you sure you’re Donovan Lemont’s little girl, lass? Kelpies, you know, loch spirits.”

  He puffed on the cigarette. In the nighttime mist, the ember lit up the old man’s grizzled face. Edmund had pockmarks and a bulbous nose with big pores. It was the similarities between the older man and her father that made Alice bristle. Both were former police. Both men indulged too much in drink and cigarettes. Her father tried telling tall tales to her before he divorced her mother. Once he walked out, it wasn’t easy for Alice to forgive the man anything.

  “Tell us about your experience with Brian MacIomhair and Equinox Technologies,” Alice said. She wanted to change the subject. James had warned Alice about the old man’s affinity for the classic tales. She didn’t want fantasy, only facts.

  “That bastard thinks capping off the mound was a way to capture the magic. He doesn’t know what forces he’s dealing with, and it’s going to be the man’s demise.”

  “Mr. Edmund, I have two missing girls. I’m interested in anything you can tell me about Phoebe Biel’s disappearance eight years ago. Constable Abernathy and I are under the impression they went into the facility.”

  “You cannot get into the place, can you, lass? MacIomhair probably tied it up tighter than a nun’s knees.”

  “We don’t have any clear evidence that suggests MacIomhair has anything to do with the missing Americans. I’m hoping you have some insight into what goes on inside the warehouses.”

  “You got as far as the main gate I bet, the same as us eight years ago.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, I never once believed Phoebe Weatherspoon went off to some chocolate farm in Switzerland.”

  Rather than correct the man’s geographical indifference, Alice kept her mouth shut and listened.

  “Her father holds the ancient line here in Eskdale. The Weatherspoons are keepers of the mound. Somewhere along the way, they lost access to the property. Generations ago, they held a blood pact between the sìthiche and the humans. It was their birthright to hold the line.”

  Alice felt James had wasted as much time as the old man. Peculiar and rambling, they had nineteenth-century mentalities in a digital world. It did no good to talk about something fictitious when real lives were on the line.

  Alice stopped walking in the fog with the Scotsmen. She rubbed her face. The mist clung to her eyelashes.

  “Mr. Edmund, either you know something, or you’re wasting my time. I can’t stand here and listen to something idiotic and made up to keep scared children from wandering around in the dark on the moors. It’s not helping. This business you’re talking about, either you know what happened to Phoebe Biel, or you don’t,” Alice said. She glared at James. “I don’t have time for this. I expect from one police officer to another that you have some piece of history that links these two cases together. I can’t get a warrant based on fairytales.”

  Edmund pulled hard on the cigarette, causing its end to flare orange. He snuffed out the end into the palm of his left hand. It made Alice wince at the sight. He pushed the snubbed end into the pocket of his jacket. Edmund sighed.

  “We responded to Phoebe Weatherspoon’s sister, who first reported the woman’s disappearance. She had explained that Phoebe came back from America to work for MacIomhair. Keep in mind, eight years ago, that warehouse had dozens of workers. They had people in and out of the Equinox like it was a factory. That’s when we had a lot of hope for a boom in business for the town. That was how MacIomhair presented it the day he started writing checks to buy up the land. He wrote checks to ship up the materials to build the warehouses. We made the fences and the rest of the bloody place. Then he shut it all down.

  “Phoebe worked for MacIomhair, but her family came first. Beth Weatherspoon and her late husband knew the moment Phoebe didn’t return to the Guesthouse that MacIomhair h
ad something to do with it.

  “The minute me and the boys tried to set foot on the property, just to have a look around, he started pulling favors from the white-collar blokes in the south. They shut down any investigations that took us into the facility. Whatever MacIomhair had going on inside the place, it didn’t matter. We had a missing woman.

  “I knew when we received reports from Interpol that Phoebe Weatherspoon’s passport had showed up in some Scandinavian country, I knew Brian MacIomhair had used his political noose to close the loose ends.”

  “You never got into the warehouse?” Alice asked.

  “I wouldn’t say that exactly, lass.” He eyed James. The constable stood patient and quiet beside Alice. “I shall not incriminate any others in acts of contrition, but I found a way into the place. I wanted to know what those lads hid inside there.”

  “What did you find?” Alice asked. She knew they’d ventured into unfounded, unsubstantiated hearsay. Whatever Edmund confessed had no bearing on the current missing persons’ case. It weighed solely on one man who talked too much after drinking even more.

  “They excavated the fairy ring. Whatever MacIomhair plans for the mounds, it has to do with the doorways.”

  Alice resisted rubbing her face in frustration. Instead, she wanted to redirect Edmund away from his fantasy ideas. “What about Mrs. Biel. Did you find any evidence of her inside the warehouse?”

  “Aye, lass,” Edmund said “Weatherspoon left her belongings in one of the onsite offices. I found her coat hanging on a hook and a framed photograph of her daughter.”

  “That’s circumstantial,” Alice said. “It doesn’t prove anything.”

  “Nothing we could hold up to a magistrate for a warrant. But what mother do you know leaves the country suddenly without her coat or a picture of her lovely daughter?”

  There it was, Alice knew. She’d missed it. Edmund found a vital fact she’d overlooked. A mother abandoning a child was rare, even among humans. Biel left her coat, a photo, and probably a collection of other personal belongings.

  “Okay, I’ll give you that,” Alice said. “But we’ve got nothing linking Equinox to the missing girls now. We can’t do anything about Phoebe Biel. Whatever’s going on inside the warehouses almost claimed the life of one of MacIomhair’s employees.”

  “I heard about that,” Edmund said. “He got his arm cleaved off. Did they find the limb?”

  “I don’t know. I met with Simon Hinton once. After our brief meeting, MacIomhair’s attorneys put an end to any conversations with the man again,” Alice said.

  “Hinton, I remember him. He spent a lot of time in town years ago. I can’t say for sure if he had anything to do with Weatherspoon’s disappearance. I know him and the rest of the crews from Edinburgh shuttered the doors the minute she disappeared all those years ago.”

  Alice shook hands with Edmund. He had a thick palm, short fingers, and a serious grip. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Edmund.”

  “Tell your Da I said ‘hello,’ lass.”

  “I will.”

  Alice and James left Edmund, who was lighting another cigarette. They returned to the Astra. She settled into the seat for the ride back to the Guesthouse. It was happenstance taking a room at Weatherspoon’s bed and breakfast. There were other hotels in Inverness, but Alice liked staying close to the scene. She felt whatever happened to Amy and Harper, the closer to the last place someone saw them together, the better for her.

  “Philip knows everyone’s family. It seems,” James said. “I didn’t know your father was law enforcement.”

  “Back in the day. When it was okay to wallop someone over the head for peeing in the street,” Alice said. “Those were the days of my father. He got a reputation as a man who stopped at nothing when they tracked some fugitives out of Glasgow up here, and they killed a girl on the moors. They killed five people—four they found. The last girl, the one who apparently traveled with them, the police never found her. My dad wanted to bring her home, no matter what. I remember he spent more time up here looking for her than home having dinner with Mom and me.”

  “I don’t think I remember that.”

  “Well, we were young then, but Dad tracked Roy Hall and Archibald Fontaine, and Morgan Goodlet. Together they killed four people. The girl was Roy and Archie’s last victim.”

  “That rings a bell,” James said. “I remember a lot of the volunteers from town walked with the police into the hills. They never wanted us kids going out there looking for dead girls in the swamps.”

  “I don’t blame them.”

  He pulled up to the front walk of the Guesthouse. It was a little after eleven. Alice wanted a shower and a few hours of sleep.

  “I’ll come by in the morning to pick you up around six.”

  “Thank you, James.” Alice caught herself breaking protocol. She quickly segued into another topic, hoping not to linger. “For what it’s worth, I appreciate you taking me to meet Mr. Edmund. I think a lot of what he said made sense.”

  “I think you mean a little of what he said made sense, and a lot of what he said was nonsense.”

  “I’m not judging a man based on his beliefs, only his actions. He shouldn’t have gone into the warehouse. But what he found convinced him of Phoebe Biel’s disappearance.”

  “That might have a lot to do with his decision to leave the police force,” James said. “I think Edmund felt responsible for Phoebe Biel’s disappearance. He knew MacIomhair and Equinox had something to do with it, and he couldn’t prove it.”

  “Is that where we are now?” Alice asked. She stared out the window at the large Victorian summer house. The place glowed from within because the Weatherspoons were dealing with another crisis. Not only did they lose a guest, but they also lost another member of their family.

  “What are they doing with William Laverty?” James asked. “When we arrested him for possession, it turned into a major issue. I don’t know if he expected us to turn a blind eye on his drugs because his girlfriend disappeared.”

  “I don’t think Police Service wants any negative press during this whole thing. I suspect they’re quietly letting him go back to the States.”

  “That makes sense.” James turned fully to Alice. She felt him taking in her features in the dashboard illumination. “Do you think MacIomhair has anything to do with the girls vanishing?”

  “I can’t make a speculative guess on that, Constable.” Alice opened the car door. The dome light cut the mood lighting. She got out of the car. “See you, 6:00 AM.”

  “Right, Inspector,” he said.

  Alice closed the door and passed through the small gate leading up to the house. Inside, she saw Beth Weatherspoon pacing the receiving room through the window. Alice sighed. She wanted to sleep, but comforting the family came with the badge. The trouble with that part of the job was that it gave people a false sense of expectations.

  Rory Weatherspoon opened the front door before Alice reached the entrance. He was a strapping giant specimen of a Scottish Highlander. He was the kind of young man Alice’s supervisors wanted her to recruit. Rory looked like he had other things weighing on him than a career choice. Alice had no interest in giving him or his mother false hope. But it was another part of the job that she just had to accommodate.

  Haunting Past

  Simon had to live with the fact that he’d lost an arm. His right arm, at that, his dominant arm. He mentally stretched the limb, flexed his fingers. He made a fist and wiggled his ghostly fingers. Simon had reached for the phantom girl who disappeared into oblivion, taking his good arm with her. Before the accident, Simon took his limbs for granted. Now he had to learn to accept the absence of one.

  The hospital staff in Glasgow sent an orthopedic team to counsel him. Once they transferred him from Edinburgh to the larger medical center, Simon had another focus instead of the lack of holding something
in two hands. They talked to him about alternative options. MacIomhair wanted Simon back on top as soon as possible. The solicitors managed to bar the police from further investigations. The missing Americans weren’t the responsibility of Equinox Technologies. He had physical therapy to endure, and the endless streams of medical personnel who continued to bother him when all Simon wanted was to write down his memories of the incident.

  Every day following the incident was one day further away from getting back to the truth. Somehow, Harper Biel managed to crossover, just like her mother; there was something special about the girl.

  Simon stopped henpecking the keyboard on the laptop. He had a private room in the large hospital. Arranged and paid for by Equinox Technologies, Simon had everything he needed, including the company phone and laptop. Brian refused the recovered data from the incident. Simon had to wait for access. Until he recovered fully, Brian had his best people analyzing the data. Brian had hinted that there was new evidence.

  “How are you feeling?”

  It was the night intern. A young lady, easy on the eyes with a pasty complexion because she had sacrificed day for night, looked after Simon. He tolerated her more than other staff. She brought him tea and snacks.

  Simon looked up from the laptop. He saved the data and closed the cover. It was a little after three in the morning. Rain tapped at the window that overlooked Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Shieldhall, a southwestern province of Glasgow.

  “I am well, thank you.” He didn’t mean to be curt with the woman. It had something to do with Simon’s lack of appreciating social interaction. She turned to leave.

  “I could use a cup of tea,” he added quickly. “You could join me.”