Murder, Ye Bones

by Rachael Stapleton

A t the hospital, Daemon waited patiently for the orderly who had first seen Danior. Luckily, he didn’t have to wait long, since nothing much was going on in the emergency room. Someone was waiting with a sprained ankle, someone else had gotten cut up on a coquina shell and a girl sat in one corner, sneezing.

  The orderly was a young man who seemed happy to talk to Daemon once he had seen his credentials. “I told the cops everything I could think of, which isn’t much,” he admitted.

  “You found her—just outside the emergency doors?” Daemon asked.

  He nodded. “She was just over there,” he said, pointing. “I saw her lying there all crumpled up, and I went running out there. Two of the nurses and the doctor on duty followed me, so we got her inside real quick. There was a lot of blood on her forehead—looked like she’d been whacked with something.”

  “Did you hear a car out there before you saw her?” Daemon asked him.

  “No, sorry.”

  “Are there security cameras out there?”

  “Yeah—but it’s a funny thing. The camera covers the area up to that trash can there. She was left just on the other side of it. Anyway, if there really is a serial killer out there and that’s who attacked her, she’s lucky as hell to be alive.”

  Daemon thanked him, and managed to talk to the doctor who had treated Danior, a harried man in his forties.

  “Lucky girl,” The doctor said, casting a glance Daemon’s way. “What with everything that’s going on around here.” He shook his head. “I saw Bianca Santos in the E.R. just a few days before she went missing. Nice girl. Cute. A real flirt, but nice.”

  “What was wrong with her?” Daemon asked.

  “She had a burn on her hand. She told me it was from incense. But she was with a friend, and they both kept giggling and whispering and looking through this book they had. I think she was playing around with some kind of spell book.”

  “You saw the book?” Daemon asked, suddenly excited. “What did it look like? Was it old?”

  “No, no, just a paperback. I wasn’t really looking. I just took care of her hand and told her to quit playing with fire. She was silly—she was young, but she was a sweet kid.”

  “What about Danior Vianu? What was up with her?”

  “We checked her alcohol level, that was for damned sure. She sounded like she was hallucinating, eyes were dilated, kind of panicky. Inspector Oliveira was here in seconds—I swear, it really was just seconds—after we called, and he was pretty brisk with her, mad as all hell that she’d been out alone.”

  “What were the drugs in her system? Maybe a neurotoxin, or strange herbs?” Daemon asked.

  “We didn’t get to do extensive drug testing, we were more interested in getting an X-ray of her skull. The cops didn’t ask me for anything else.”

  “Oliveira was here, and he didn’t ask you to do any drug testing?” Daemon said.

  “We still have the blood.” The doctor looked at him. “But I’ll need authorization to do anything with it.”

  “Don’t worry,” Daemon told him. “I’ll put in a phone call.”

  “All right, I’ll go back in and get things started.”

  He left the good doctor and put through a call to Oliviera’s office to get the tests authorized. Oliveira was behaving strangely, but he’d go above his head if necessary.

  Daemon was finally about to head over to see Danior when his cell phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number but decided to answer anyway.

  It was a husky female voice. “Mr. Wraith?”

  “Yes?”

  “The Voodoo Queen gave me your number.”

  For a moment, he was blank. The Voodoo Queen, the priestess witch who had lived and died in nineteen seventy-two?

  Of course not, he realized almost instantaneously. Maxine, the Voodoo Queen.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Cherry Newirth. You found my wife’s body at the bottom of the ocean. Please, I need to speak with you.”

  “I’m very sorry for your loss, but I’m afraid I’m fairly busy—”

  “Please, Mr. Wraith, you don’t understand. My wife’s death was no accident. She was murdered.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  _____________

  T he disturbed earth bothered me, but I wasn’t sure why or where to go with my feelings of unease. I could just imagine calling the police to tell them that I might have found a body. When they asked me where and I said “the cemetery,” they would laugh me into the next county.

  I texted Cody to let him know where I was then I tried calling Daemon, but he told me that he was meeting with Alexandra Newirth’s widow and would have to call me back.

  At last I found one of the pieces of information I had been seeking, amongst the old tombs was a name I recognized. It wasn’t easy to decipher, but it was there.

  Had Rigdon killed his own daughter?

  I was afraid he had. Nellie had seen too much.

  He and his housekeeper had been abducting and killing young women, probably for some ritualistic reason. He had most likely killed Francisca Medeh and hidden her body in the cabin’s basement, perhaps he’d already filled and sealed the wall in the main house or maybe he planned to move her but the villagers had come first and so he’d fled, leaving her body behind.

  The Voodoo Queen had helped him lure the girls with promises of potions, then met her end at the hands of a lynch mob and died cursing the Plantation.

  But she’d had a book. A book of voodoo rituals, a book of spells. Spells that required human sacrifice.

  The past was falling into place, and nothing I’d found out contradicted my belief that the current atrocities were related to those of the past. But where did we go from there?

  I hesitated, not knowing what to do. The evening was growing dark, so I headed back to meet Cody.

  I decided to try Wesley on the way, thinking he might have found out something about the body in the basement.

  He did answer my call, then groaned when I identified myself.

  “Please don’t tell me that you’ve found another body in the Plantation,” he said fervently.

  “No, but…I think I might have found…well, I’ve found a bunch of dirt that’s been recently dug up.”

  “On the property?”

  “No.”

  “Where?”

  “The cemetery.”

  “The cemetery? Is this some kind of a joke?” he demanded.

  “No. Please, Wesley…can you come out and see what I’m talking about?”

  “For God’s sake, why?”

  “Wesley—what if someone’s buried there? What if they’re still alive?”

  “In the cemetery?”

  “Yeah,” I paused, then drew a deep breath and went on. “You’re the one who mentioned the zombie ritual. What if Lise or Bianca is down there.”

  “Where exactly?”

  “Outside the cemetery proper, the unhallowed ground.”

  “All right.” He sighed. “Don’t go wandering around by yourself, though, seeing as it’s almost dark. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “Thank you, Wesley.” I didn’t bother to tell him I had Cody with me. “I’m right on the boardwalk, so I’ll wait for you in the café near the Rocha Sorveteria ice cream shop, okay?”

  “I’ll find you.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  _____________

  A lexandra Newirth’s widow, Cherry, was a perfectly named, slim redhead. She had pretty features that were drawn, now, from the sadness that seemed to weigh her down.

  She’d suggested they meet in the bar of one of the Island’s oldest hotels.

  “I’m very sorry for your loss,” Daemon said as he took a seat across from her. “But I’m not sure how I can help you. I found your wife’s body, but I don’t know anything about her or how she came to be there. You said she was murdered, but…”

  “First you should know that Alexandra didn’t speed and she knew these roads like the back of her hand. She w
as one of the most responsible people I’ve ever met. She didn’t drink and she didn’t do drugs. There’s no way her death was an accident.”

  “Perhaps there was something wrong with her car,” Daemon suggested.

  She shook her head, smiling sadly. “No way. She kept it in perfect repair.” She took a deep breath, visibly steeling herself. “I’ve asked around, and I know who you are and why you’re here. I’m just curious if you’re aware that my wife was a social psychologist.”

  “I did know that, yes.”

  “Did you know she specialized in the psychology of cults? She was a member of a political cult as a young woman. She believed there was a cult active here on the island. I think she got too close to the truth.”

  “Go on,” Daemon said.

  “The night she disappeared, I was talking to Alexandra on the phone. She was supposed to be meeting with someone who claimed there was a ritual happening that very night. She wouldn’t give me all the details because she knew I would follow her and she was worried for her own safety. When we were on the phone, she suddenly said something like, ‘What the hell is behind that tomb…?’ And then the call dropped and I never heard from her again. I think she was set up by the cult—that or she stumbled over someone or something. I think—no, I’m sure—that she got involved in something and was killed for it.”

  Daemon glanced at his phone, which he’d set on the table, and realized he’d missed a call from Penny.

  He rose. “Mrs. Newirth, thank you for meeting me. I swear to you, I’ll do my absolute best to find out what happened to your wife, and I’ll let you know if I find a connection to the disappearances of the girls.”

  She offered him her sad smile again. “I know you will. The Voodoo Queen told me there’s something special about you, that you would help me.”

  “That was very kind of her. I’ll keep in touch,” he promised.

  He walked out onto the street and pulled out his phone. He felt his heart slamming as the phone rang. Something was going on, he could feel it in his bones.

  “Daemon?” Penny answered.

  “I’m here.”

  “I was just trying to reach you. Come meet Cody and me as soon as you can.”

  “Where?”

  A long moment of silence followed, and his eyes narrowed in suspicion as he waited for her answer, and then he cursed silently when she finally replied.

  “The cemetery.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  _____________

  I lhabela was one of the safest places in Brazil, or so I’d been told. There were always people about: a dozen different tours going on, locals and tourists filling the bars and restaurants, even people just out walking their dogs.

  But that night, when we left the main streets and headed toward Nossa Senhora D'Ajuda e Bom Sucesso, the white-and-blue colonial Portuguese-styled church on the hill, there seemed to be no one around. No one but me, Cody and Wesley—and the statue of Jesus on the cross out front.

  A slight breeze had risen, drifting through the moss that hung from the oaks and cypresses along the way. Under the circumstances, even Wesley with his nerdy glasses and excessive sweating seemed creepy in the darkness.

  I gripped Cody’s hand and mocked myself for my fear. Wesley was a sweetie, a charming old guy, despite holding a job many people considered to be morbid. But he was an investigator, discovering clues in the bodies of the deceased, just as detectives sought them on the streets.

  “Where exactly are we going?” Wesley asked, his glasses slipping down on his nose so he had to look over the top of the wire frames at me.

  “The cemetery—where the Voodoo Queen was lynched,” I said. “But we can wait if you want. Daemon is on his way.” Cody and I had stopped as I spoke, but he had kept walking. Now he turned around, and for a moment the glare of his flashlight blinded me. I felt a sudden and terrible fear that he was going to attack us and start laughing maniacally.

  “Penny!”

  It was Daemon’s voice, and I spun around, shaking. He was striding down the street toward us, his steps brisk. “Sorry. Did I scare you?” he asked.

  “It’s okay—I’m a little jumpy.” I said, still slightly shaking—which was absurd, of course. I was perfectly safe.

  Cody and Daemon exchanged greetings and then Wesley hollered.

  “I’m over here,” He waved his light.

  Daemon stared at me. “What are we doing here?”

  We chatted as we hurried to catch up. “You said that the Jane Doe found on the beach had been moved—that she hadn’t been in the water all that time, that she’d been buried somewhere first. When I came out here today, I noticed a patch of land in the back—it’s where the so-called sinners were buried, back in the day. And it’s where the Voodoo Queen was lynched. Someone has been digging back there recently. I wanted to see if someone is buried there now. Possibly still alive? …Or if someone had been buried there.”

  Daemon shifted, “Well, Wes. Can you tell?”

  Wesley sighed. “We can take soil samples and find out if any organic material decomposed in the soil, but it’s not going to be easy to discover if a body was there and, if so, how recently.”

  With Wesley’s light leading the way, we started along the wall.

  When we reached the area of disturbed earth, Wesley said, “Maybe we should call Oliveira.”

  Daemon hunkered down and felt the dirt. “I already did,” he said. “He’s on his way.”

  He stood up and turned around, looking for something with which to dig.

  Wesley reached into his lab coat and began to take samples from various spots and depths. “Come help,” he told me, and I hurried over to take the sample bottles from him after he filled them.

  Cody walked away and then came back over with a thick oak branch and helped Daemon with the digging. After a while, sweaty and muddy, Cody leaned on the branch and said, “We could use a real shovel.” Then Daemon shoved his branch into the dirt one more time, shaking his head.

  I stared at the point where the branch was sticking into the dirt, and my words caught in my throat.

  Fingers—delicate, long fingers—were protruding from the earth, as if a hand were raised in supplication, begging for pity, pleading for help.

  I pointed, unable to speak.

  “Oh, lordy,” Wesley said.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  _____________

  D aemon found it difficult to stand there next to Oliveira while the floodlights lit the small field behind the cemetery. Oliveira was quiet, his jaw locked, as they watched the girl being unearthed, and everyone went quiet when Wesley carefully dusted the dirt from her face.

  It was Bianca Santos.

  Oliveira got on the phone immediately, as a van came to take Bianca Santos’s corpse back to the morgue in a body bag. Once she was gone, the digging continued, going on all through the night as they kept coming across bones.

  Old bones.

  It had been decades—at least a hundred years—since the so-called undesirables had been interred on the “unholy” side of the wall.

  “I’m still trying to figure out how you knew to look here,” Oliveira told Daemon, his tone suspicious, his eyes narrowed.

  “Yeah…and you had mud all over your shoes earlier today, before you ever came out here tonight, didn’t you?” Daemon countered.

  “Okay, boys.” Cody stepped in between them, “Now, let’s calm down.”

  “It wasn’t Daemon, it was me,” Penny informed him. “I heard this is where the housekeeper—the priestess witch—was lynched, and when I came out here on a tour today with Cody. I started looking around, and I saw how the dirt looked disturbed. Then I remembered that the Jane Doe had been buried before being thrown in the water. I didn’t know for sure if we’d find Bianca Santos, but I thought if not then we might find proof that Jane Doe had been buried here and then dug up.”

  Oliveira swore. “I’m a homicide inspector, and I know my business. Now get out of here
before I arrest all of you for tampering with my crime scene.”

  Furious, Penny spun around to leave the cemetery.

  Cody and Daemon followed her quickly.

  “Hey, Wraith!” Oliveira called after them.

  In unison, Daemon and Penny stopped and turned back. They might have been onstage, caught in the unforgiving glare of the floodlights. Everyone working the crime scene stopped awkwardly to watch.

  “Don’t even think about going anywhere,” Oliveira said loudly.

  Daemon felt more tense than ever before in his life. He was pacing like a caged animal by the time they crossed back into town, furious that Oliveira was trying to direct suspicion toward him.

  “Have a drink—you’ll feel better,” Cody told him as they headed inside of the local bars and ordered. “You know he had a point. We really shouldn’t have been messing with the crime scene.”

  Penny nodded. “I know but time was of the essence. What if she’d still been alive?”

  Daemon didn’t respond. Instead he sat at a table, grabbed a scratch pad and started making notes as he talked his way through everything they knew so far. “Killed, that we know about—Alexandra Newirth, social psychologist. Her wife claims she went to help someone and got herself murdered, and that she would never have driven off a curve. Jane Doe—we still don’t know her story. Bianca Santos, found this evening buried in unhallowed ground, near where a priestess witch was hanged.”

  Penny sipped her whisky sour. “Don’t forget the past. We know that Maman’s daughter, Francisca was murdered—and that Nellie Rigdon saw the corpse. Also, I saw her grave today so it’s true that she died not long after she claims to have seen them kill Frannie. And then there are the bones in the plantation’s walls. Maybe they’re connected somehow, too. Plus, there are several references to the Voodoo Queen’s book of spells. Our killer has to be someone who knows all the stories—who’s maybe even found the book—and is trying to replicate history.”

  She hesitated, then asked, “What was going on tonight between you and Oliveira? Why were you talking about mud?”

  “When I went to see him at the station today, he had mud all over his shoes. Mud—like the dirt we dug up tonight, outside the cemetery.”