by Sarah Biglow
Every time I found myself in the captain’s office I felt like was being called to the principal’s office—even if it was for something good. So, like always, my gut tightened ever so slightly and my neck muscles tensed. Despite the fact that there were two chairs waiting for us, both Jacquie and I remained standing at attention as Captain Beech rounded the desk.
“I apologize for calling you both in on your day off, but this case has gotten bigger than we expected. So far we’ve been lucky that most news outlets haven’t reported on the murders or connected them.”
“We’re working as hard as we can, ma’am,” I said.
She held up a hand. “I know you are, Detective. But we’ve had three dead bodies in nearly as many days and no indication that our killer is close to being done with whatever their agenda is. We need some fresh eyes on this. That’s why I’ve called in the FBI.”
The door opened behind us and, instinctively, I turned toward the sound. A tall man with enough pomade in his hair to rival a Ken doll strode in. He wore an expertly fitted black suit with a white dress shirt and skinny black tie. He could have walked off the set of a Men in Black movie and I wouldn’t have been surprised. Despite too much product in his hair, he had a sort of elegance in the way he moved and I caught myself admiring the gentle slope of his nose and chin.
“Detectives Trenton and DeWitt, this is Supervisory Special Agent James Taggart. He’s going to be assisting us with the investigation.”
Jacquie shook his hand first. I followed suit and the moment our fingers touched, electricity jolted up my arm. His grip was firm and my already aching fingers throbbed under the pressure. He caught and held my gaze for far longer than necessary.
“Pleasure to meet you both,” he finally said. Something about his voice sounded familiar and my brain struggled to place it. The clipped cadence bore a hint of the voice I’d encountered disentangling the magic from the video footage, but that was ridiculous. The killer wouldn’t imitate an FBI agent. What would a Fed get by killing random innocent people? There was something else familiar about Taggart, like I’d seen him before, but my brain was overloaded trying to solve too many problems to add the mystery to the list right now.
“Let’s get started,” Captain Beech said.
Taggart released his grip on my hand and I tried to cover the pain as my fingers throbbed. I shoved it in my pocket and focused a little energy into the skin, urging the pain to slip away. I was halfway to the conference room when I felt a hand on my shoulder.
Jacquie came up beside me and said, “Don’t let them psych you out. This is still our case. They’re here because one of the victims was one of their own. But the captain’s right. We don’t have any leads and we need the extra eyes. Maybe we’ve missed something.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I muttered.
We joined Agent Taggart and his team in the conference room. Both of the whiteboards in the room were in use. One was covered with a brief breakdown of each victim—photo, location and date of death—while the other held a map of the city with little colored flags denoting the locations. There was a rough circle drawn around the three points and a small black “x” drawn in the center of the three points.
One of the blue-jacketed agents—a woman who looked to be in her 30s with jet black hair trimmed to just below her chin and watery blue eyes—stood beside the map. “We think we’ve triangulated the killer’s comfort zone,” she announced.
I studied the map and wasn’t impressed. It was too simple. Sure, geographic profiling was a useful skill and had helped to catch killers plenty of times, but this felt unfinished. They still had almost a week before the Equinox and, if it were me, I wouldn’t have stopped at just three. I did have to give them some credit for emphasizing the geography since I’d come to the conclusion that location was the key to these killers.
“How do we know that’s it?” I asked.
The agent looked at me, her mouth slightly agape. “Excuse me?”
“How do we know we won’t have any more victims? The killer is getting more brazen. The time between bodies is shortening. Whatever is driving these acts is ramping up, not slowing down. I just think it’s too early to think we can narrow it down.”
“Well that’s your opinion, Detective.” The way she said the last word made my skin crawl, as if the title I’d earned was somehow useless.
“Let’s hear the detective out,” Taggart interrupted.
“And what about the video surveillance? Has your team managed to make any headway with that?” I pressed.
“Well, we’ve got our best analysts on it.”
“So, you’ve got no more than we do. How about the first victim, Altagracia Mendoza? She worked for your agency. Have you any leads there you want to share?”
She opened her mouth to snap back at me, but Agent Taggart stepped up and placed a hand on his subordinate’s arm. “Agent Mendoza’s work is classified. But we have our people looking into any potential leads there and we will of course share anything we find with you. For now, why don’t we focus on the ‘why’ of these three victims? Perhaps if we can determine their connection, we can stop the killer from claiming another life.”
“This is where we could really use some help. So far, the families of the first two victims haven’t been able to provide any helpful connections,” Jacquie interjected.
“What about the third victim?” Taggart kept his attention on me.
“We have the boy’s parents coming in this morning for an interview,” Captain Beech said, much to my surprise.
“Let us know when they arrive. We’ll speak with them.”
Captain Beech nodded and ushered Jacquie and me out of the room. “You two should stay for the interview. This is still our case.”
“Understood,” Jacquie said.
As soon as the captain was out of earshot I turned to my partner, a cold drizzle of sweat snaking down my neck. “We never notified the family.”
“Third shift handled it. But don’t worry, I made sure they gave both of our cards. I’ve also let Marcy in reception know to page us when the family arrives.”
“You want to get into the interview room before the Feds,” I said with a smirk.
Jacquie winked. “I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting you to pick a fight with a Fed two minutes after being introduced, but I’m with you, there’s no way in hell we are getting sidelined from our own investigation.”
I watched as the woman I’d snapped at earlier came striding out of the conference room, hands shoved in her pockets. Taggart remained in the room, bent over some files on the conference room table. The tip of his tie brushed the bottom of the paper and for a moment he looked up and our gazes met again. He gave me a brief smile before turning his attention back. I felt heat creep up the tips of my ears. I was clearly imagining things.
“Do you want to take the lead on the family interview before the Feds kick us out?” Jacquie asked.
I shook my head. “No, you go ahead. I actually realized I have to check on something.”
“Check on what?”
“Something for the case. I’ll let you know if anything comes of it. Let me know if you get anything from Preston’s parents.”
I didn’t wait for her to respond. I weaved between the morning shift coming in with their coffee mugs. The fact that I’d barely slept caught up with me and I couldn’t stifle a yawn. I wasn’t going to let Taggart and his team steal this case out from under me. Sleep could wait until the killers were caught.
Nine
Battling rush hour traffic out of the city wasn’t nearly as harrowing as my trip in, but it still took me nearly a half hour to get back to my apartment. Mercifully, you couldn’t go more than a couple blocks without hitting a Dunkin’ Donuts so I’d grabbed a bagel and a large coffee before heading inside.
Some part of me knew it was all in my head but that first sip of coffee set my synapses blazing, jolting me awake more than I’d felt in days. It wouldn’t last long. I intended to
take advantage of it. My laptop sat askew on the living room table where I’d left it in the wee hours this morning. My throat and ribs ached, as if to signal a revolt if I tried to attack more of the video footage. Knowing I wasn’t in a place to handle more abuse—at least not without a lot of extra protection before I started—I traipsed into the bedroom and pushed aside the lower row of work pants and jackets in my closet, rummaging until I found the two printer paper boxes hiding in the back. Dragging them out sent a cloud of dust into the air.
“Note to self, clean the closet once in a while,” I said, coughing, before getting a grip and hoisting the boxes into my arms.
I dumped the boxes on the edge of the couch, dusting off my blouse and pants before opening the top box. When my mother died and I took my magical education upon myself, I’d gathered all of the family journals, secreting them away from my father and the Authority. At least I assumed they didn’t know I had them, otherwise they’d have come knocking down my door to get them back.
An unexpected wave of sadness washed over me as I studied the carefully preserved leather-bound diaries of the witches who’d come before me and for a split second I was that eight-year-old holding Theodora Harrow’s words in my hands for the first time. Four hundred years of lives and spells condensed to one 11 ½” by 18” box.
Setting the lid aside, I moved on to the second box. My mother had kept a lot of books and other bits of local history from the time of the Witch Trials for the Authority. Lucky for me, she’d kept them at home and I’d gotten my hands on them before the Authority came looking. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was looking for, but the locations of our murders now were somehow significant back when Theodora and Eleanor were alive. It was the only lead that made any sort of sense.
Gently, I pulled out the thick tomes on magical lore from around the world. Our brand of magic came along with us to the Colonies, but that didn’t mean it was the only kind out there. Setting it on the floor beneath the table, I moved on to the next layer of materials—hand drawn maps of Massachusetts circa 1690. The height of the persecution of my kind. I spread the first map out on the table, careful not to pull it for fear it would tear. Whoever had done the cartography had been spot on and it amazed me how I could still pick out the edge of the Charles River running through what would become downtown Boston. Even some of the named cities and towns were still in their current locations. Over the landscape, I spotted tiny red circles. I lifted the map up to the light and saw that there were minute burn marks through each of the spots.
“That’s weird,” I muttered.
There was no other sign of burning or damage to the map. I brushed the tip of my thumb over one of the dots and for a moment it burned, giving off the same choking ash and sulfur smell of the women at the crime scenes. The burning subsided after maybe thirty seconds, but the deepness of the red on the map remained. In fact, red scorch marks brightened all over the map. Smoke to my right caught my attention and I turned in time to see the journal on the top of the pile in the first box starting to smolder. I pulled it free and blew on it, hoping whatever magic I’d just invoked didn’t set everything else ablaze. The pages began flipping open of their own accord to reveal what I assumed was a ledger of sorts. Text—in the same flowing script as Theodora Harrow’s—burned bright against the page. As I ran my finger across the words, they dimmed enough for me to read:
Agatha Warren – hung by the neck until dead for poisoning children. Date of Death: 2 July 1690.
I studied the entry again. There was no suspicion on Agatha’s part. Someone—another witch or a fearful local—had decided she was guilty and punished her accordingly. Out of curiosity, I turned back to the map and traced my finger across another of the red scorch marks. In my lap, the ledger grew warm again and another entry, this one dated from March of 1689, ignited. This woman, Margaret Keene, had also been hung, this time for cursing the town clerics.
Setting the map back on the table for the time being, I turned my attention to the other entries in the ledger. By and large all of them recorded hanging deaths of women who had used magic for dark purposes. Is there one somewhere marking the losses on our side too? I knew that Eleanor Pruitt’s name would be on that list. She’d been born a Harrow just like Theodora so, for hundreds of years, the two branches of the family tree never knew which would bear the prophesied Savior. Not until I came along.
My eyes blurred from lack of sleep and too much concentration. The coffee was definitely wearing off. I blinked the map back into focus. Maybe it was my mind playing tricks on me, but the lines crossing the map denoting longitude and latitude sharpened into focus. Everything else seemed to fade to the background.
“Of course!” I snatched up my laptop, hastily pulling up the department database. My fingers flew over the keys, pulling up the GPS coordinates of the crime scenes. I plotted them in Google Maps and made the digital map as big as possible. Balancing the computer on my lap, I scooped up the old map and studied it. I followed the curve of the river to where the Esplanade would be today. Sure enough, an angry red scorch mark sat at the intersection of the same coordinates as Mrs. Mendoza’s scene.
Excitement coursed through me, the nape of my neck and upper lip growing damp with sweat. I bit my lower lip to keep myself under control. One shared point could be a coincidence. I scrolled to Mr. Cho’s crime scene and checked the coordinates. My heart beat double time against my ribs as I traced my index finger on the map, finding another angry circle in the same location. With my pulse now thrumming in my temple, I checked Preston’s GPS location and found a third mark.
An involuntary whoop erupted from my mouth. Our killers were taking lives on spots where dark practitioners had been hung. It all made sense now. The two women I’d seen vanishing in brimstone had to be the souls of the women who’d been killed. Evil or not, my heart broke just a little for their deaths. Magic was not inherently good or evil so everyone had the same potential to use it. They could have just as easily been kindred souls to my family. Now I just had to figure out where the next attack was going to occur and what they were planning.
A broad grin broke out over my lips. Let the FBI chase their tails trying to link the victims. I had the real ammunition in my hands for solving the case. The pinpoints of the physical map glowed bright again. There had to be a few dozen spots spread out across its surface. Now that I knew what I was working with, maybe I could get ahead of the killers and stop them before they struck again.
Ten
Time passed but I was hardly aware of it. I was studiously going over the ledger in Theodora’s book, matching the scenes of execution to points on the map and keeping detailed notes. The video files of the crime scenes taunted me from the taskbar on my computer. I knew I should try to make progress, but diving into the past and into what my ancestors faced seemed a more enjoyable use of my attention and energy, not to mention it carried less chance of physical harm.
As the sunlight shifted through the pair of windows in my living room, casting light along the way on the sun’s descent into evening, my stomach rumbled and I forced myself to take a break and warmed half of a leftover panini in the toaster oven. Munching it one-handed I turned on my phone expecting to see missed calls from Jacquie or maybe even Tricia with new information on the physical evidence. I had a missed call and a voicemail from Jacquie from an hour ago. Pressing the phone to my ear I listened.
“Trenton, it’s your partner. I don’t know where you’ve run off to, but people are going to start taking notice soon. Call me back.”
I hit her number on speed dial and waited. It rang four times before flipping to voicemail. “You’ve reached Jacqueline DeWitt. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you when I can.”
I waited for the beep and said, “Hey, Jacquie, it’s me. Sorry I missed your call. I’m following up on a lead that’s taking longer than I expected. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Hanging up, I tried Tricia’s work number. We usually worked the same shift and
it might be too early for her to be back at the lab but I could hope. The line rang for a sixth time and then, “Medical examiner’s office, Tricia Karo speaking.”
“Tricia, it’s Ezri.”
“Oh, hey. I see they’ve got you working overtime on this too.”
“Seems like it. The captain’s called in the FBI for an assist on our cases.”
“I’m not surprised. My boss has had calls from the federal crime lab asking questions too.”
My throat went dry. “They aren’t asking you to turn over evidence, are they?”
Tricia laughed. “Not yet. And even if they did, you know I keep backups of all the reports.”
“Speaking of, have there been any new results back? DNA or fingerprints from the victims’ clothing?”
“We ran the prints but so far nothing. The DNA is going to take a few more days.”
“Damn. What about that dust? Any luck identifying it?”
“Yes, but don’t get too excited. It’s granite and it’s pretty common in a lot of the statues in the city. It could have come from someone cleaning or doing repair work on a statue or other granite structure.”
Adele’s “Hello”—the tone I’d programmed for higher ups in the department—interrupted our conversation. “Tricia, thanks for the update. I appreciate it. I’ve got another call I need to take.”
“Sure thing. Chat later.”
I ended our call and accepted the incoming call. “This is Detective Trenton.”
“Detective, it’s Captain Beech. Where are you right now?”
I started to tell her that it was my day off and I was at home, but I stopped short. This case was all hands on deck no matter whose day off it was. So I gave her a version of the truth that was in line with what I’d just told Jacquie. “I’m following up on a possible lead about the geographic profile, ma’am.”
“I need you back at the precinct as soon as possible.”
