Last Grave (9781101593172)

by Debbie Viguié

  Samantha’s mind raced ahead of her. She could be wrong. The witch might have taken Jill somewhere else entirely. Part of her urged caution, to slow down and follow the trail. Time was her enemy, though. The longer Jill was with the witch, the greater the likelihood that she would lose them, or that if she did find Jill, she would be dead.

  She saw the park and put on a fresh burst of speed. She had no idea how she was going to best the witch, or even how she was going to hide the battle from the bystanders in the park. None of that mattered, though, if she didn’t get there in time.

  A moment later, she was in the park. She didn’t even need to look to see if her quarry was there. She could feel the energy rippling through the air, calling to her like a beacon. She slowed slightly, aware that she was drawing unwanted attention. A moment later, though, the energy started to ebb.

  No!

  She picked up speed again and ran, cutting across the park. She ran until she lost the feeling altogether and then she came to a stop. The witch was faster than she was. She reached out her senses, trying to feel which direction to go next.

  Tears of frustration welled in her eyes. If something happened before she could reach them she—

  “Samantha? Where are we?”

  Samantha spun and stared at the woman sitting on the park bench looking bewildered. It was Jill. Samantha threw her arms around her. “You’re okay? You’re safe?”

  Jill hugged her back. “Yeah, but what’s happening? I thought I was in the coffee shop.”

  Samantha pulled back so she could look Jill in the eyes. She saw no guile there, just honest confusion. Samantha sat down on the bench next to her. “It’s a long story.”

  “Okay.”

  Samantha took a deep breath. What should she tell Jill? Hypnotism? She might believe it, but then she’d tell the other officers that and things could start to get sticky. Samantha wiped a hand across her forehead. She was sweating profusely. She gazed out over the grass, knowing that the witch’s trail was growing colder by the second.

  “What is it?”

  Samantha sighed. She’d have to let the witch go, for now. She just prayed that when they met next, it would be on her terms. “It’s a very . . . complicated story. I need you to trust me for a little while though. I swear I’ll tell you the truth.”

  Maybe. Probably not.

  Samantha continued. “But you need to trust me that only you and I can know the truth. When the other police ask why you left the Starbucks, I need you to tell them that you got a call. It was garbled, but it was a woman’s voice telling you that because of the shooting you needed to meet me in this park.”

  I’ll pretend one of the patrons—don’t know who he was and he’s gone now—overheard her say park and that’s how I knew to find her here. It could work.

  “And what happened when I got here?” Jill asked.

  “You sat down and waited and no one talked to you before I got here.”

  “Okay.” Jill looked at her hesitantly, and Samantha could see the uncertainty in her eyes. She knew she was asking the other woman to trust a lot, but there was just enough history between them that she could feel Jill was willing to do it. Jill cleared her throat quietly. “Is that what really happened?”

  “Close enough for now. Ready?”

  Jill nodded. They stood and headed back to the Starbucks.

  When they got there, she noticed that Lance looked more stressed out than she had ever seen him. “Where have you two been?” he exploded.

  Jill glanced at Samantha and then parroted what she’d told her to say.

  Lance turned to Samantha. “And you didn’t see anyone there?”

  She shook her head. “I figured once I was there, she probably saw me and there was no use sticking around any longer.”

  He nodded and turned back to Jill. “Let me see your phone.”

  As she handed it over, Samantha’s heart flew into her throat. How could she have been so stupid to have not thought about this part?

  Think! How do you fix this?

  Lance tapped the phone and a moment later grumbled, “Unknown number. Great.”

  Samantha grabbed the phone from him and stared at it. Sure enough, it said Jill had received a call from an unknown number at the right time. She stared at her roommate, struggling to understand. Jill shrugged almost imperceptibly.

  Lance looked at the scene on the streets. An ambulance was present now. Two people were being loaded on stretchers. “One grazed by a bullet, one knocked down in the panic and broke an arm,” Lance said before she could ask. “Unfortunately, the other officers here were busy with that and missed what was happening with Jill.”

  Lance’s phone rang and he answered it. He took a few steps away. Samantha turned and looked at Jill, still wondering how on earth that missed call had shown up. A minute later, Lance hung up and signaled to her. She gripped Jill’s shoulder and then moved over to confer with her partner.

  “Well, at least we’ve got something.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “Robin called. She found one of the letters threatening her mother. I said either you or I would drive down and get it.”

  “I’ll go get the letter from her,” Samantha volunteered.

  “Are you sure? You don’t want to take your roommate home?”

  Samantha hesitated. She couldn’t pass up the chance to talk to Robin alone. “Can you do that for me? I just think I need the drive, clear my head a bit.”

  “Understood. I’ll take her home now. I’ll arrange for a car to be outside the building for the next couple of days. Given what our killer did today to try to talk to Jill, we can’t be too careful.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  She wished she could tell him that their killer might have already gotten whatever she needed from Jill, and if not, a patrol car wouldn’t be able to stop her.

  She turned. “Jill.”

  “Yes?”

  “Lance is going to take you home. I have to go pick up some evidence. I’ll be home as soon as I can. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  She turned back to Lance. “Now, take her straight home. And don’t do anything I wouldn’t . . . Just be careful, okay?”

  He raised an eyebrow, and she glowered at him.

  “You’ve got trust issues,” Lance noted.

  “You ever stop to think you might be part of those issues?”

  He shrugged. “I just call it like I see it. Not my job to diagnose cause. See the shrink for that.”

  She just shook her head and turned away. She didn’t have time to bandy words with him. She needed to get down to Santa Cruz. She was glad she had driven her own car over. She wished she could return Robin’s shirt, but it was in the laundry at home. If she stopped to get it, Lance would wonder why she hadn’t taken Jill home herself.

  She wasn’t ready to talk to Robin yet. She still wasn’t even sure what she was going to say to her. At least she’d have some time in the car to think about it.

  And to wonder about the call on Jill’s phone.

  Nothing about the day had gone well, and she was beyond exhausted. Yet the two different chases she’d been on had her completely keyed up. She could feel the adrenaline still rushing through her body. When it died down, she was going to crash hard. She would have been happy to let Lance deal with the letter if she hadn’t needed to talk to Robin alone.

  It sucked trying to do a secret investigation inside a public one. She thought of Ed. At least when everything had gone wrong in Boston, she’d been able to tell him what she was doing and why. She didn’t picture herself doing that with Lance.

  But she was going to have to come up with a better plan about how to handle the witchy aspects of this case. In some ways, she felt like she was in denial about the whole thing.

  She fought the urge to check in w
ith Jada. The coroner would call the moment she had anything, even if it was just speculation. There was nothing she could do right now but try to think and focus on getting back home in one piece. Today needs to end soon, she thought, even though she knew it wouldn’t.

  * * *

  Samantha didn’t know what she’d have done without the GPS device she’d bought for her car before moving to San Francisco. The sheer number of one-way streets in the city alone were staggering, and fortunately her GPS hadn’t sent her down the wrong way yet.

  Now it was guiding her back to Robin Lightfoot’s house, which she was fairly certain she would have had problems finding without it. At last she was finally parking in front of the girl’s house. She just hoped she was catching her at home alone.

  When she stepped out of the car, she could feel the slight hum of energy in the air. She was becoming more attuned to the presence of others like her again. When she knocked, Robin opened the door instantly.

  “Hi, Robin. Mind if I come in?”

  Robin shook her head and stepped aside.

  “Is Mrs. Braxton here?” Samantha asked as Robin closed the door behind her.

  “No. She went to pick up my great-aunt at the airport. She just left a few minutes ago.”

  Which meant they had some time to talk. Samantha relaxed slightly.

  “Did you find out anything?” Robin asked, her voice tentative.

  “Not yet, but we’ll let you know as soon as we do,” Samantha said.

  Robin walked into the family room and sat down on the couch. Samantha took a seat on the chair across from her. Robin pointed to a large envelope on the coffee table. “That’s the letter,” she said.

  Samantha had brought in a pair of gloves with her, and she carefully slid out the letter and read it. It seemed like a pretty straightforward hate letter, spewing vitriol and bile and claiming that Winona had betrayed her cultural heritage. It was unsigned. Hopefully the lab could get something off of it. When she was finished reading it, Samantha returned the letter to the envelope, which she noted was blank.

  “Is this what you found it in?” Samantha asked.

  Robin nodded.

  “Do you know what your mom was working on the last few weeks?”

  Robin shook her head, clearly uncomfortable.

  “Did you ever hear anyone accuse her of anything? Say she was a traitor or she was violating cultural heritage?”

  “Never. I can’t even imagine. She’s like a crusader for that kind of stuff.”

  “Where did you find this envelope?”

  “It had fallen behind the desk in her office and was wedged between it and the wall. I couldn’t focus or go to school. Mrs. Braxton helped me clean up. I told her what we were looking for.”

  “Well, thank you. This is a great help. I appreciate your doing this.”

  “I just want you to find whoever did this. Find them and make them pay.”

  Tears streaked down the girl’s face. She quickly dashed them away. Samantha bit her lip, not sure what she could say or do to help.

  “Well, that’s it. I think I’m going to take a nap before my aunt gets here,” Robin said, clearly trying to dismiss her.

  It wasn’t going to be that easy. There was no telling when they’d have the chance to talk alone again. “I’m sorry. I have to bring your shirt back later. I came here straight from work.”

  Robin nodded. “I called him. How come you came and not the guy I called?”

  There was fear in her voice, but curiosity as well. She could sense Samantha’s power as easily as Samantha could sense hers.

  “I’m here because we should talk about your gifts,” Samantha said.

  Robin dropped her head and squirmed uncomfortably. “I don’t want to,” she said after a minute.

  “It’s important. Did your mother know?”

  “Yes,” Robin whispered.

  “But she didn’t have them herself?”

  Robin shook her head. “My grandfather had them, though. He was a shaman.”

  “What did your mother think about that?”

  Robin sniffed and wiped tears out of her eyes. “She wanted me to study the old religion. She wanted me to be a shaman too.”

  Silence reigned for a moment while Robin continued to wipe at her eyes.

  “And you didn’t want to?” Samantha asked, trying her best to be gentle.

  “No. I said it was stupid, and we got in a huge fight. She was so mad at me. I told her I was sorry, that I didn’t mean it, but she didn’t understand. No one I know practices that. Not even her, not really.”

  “But you knew some people who practiced Wicca?”

  Robin nodded. “Mom didn’t like me hanging around with them. She said I was being a traitor to my people, my heritage.”

  It was so sad. Those who had accused Winona of being a traitor had sent hate mail. And yet Winona had called her daughter the very same word.

  “And how did you feel?” Samantha pressed.

  Robin shrugged. “It seemed so empty. I mean, they teach us in school that there are no gods and that everything is science and evolution. And the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if I was just a mutation, a stepping stone in evolution.”

  Samantha’s heart ached for the girl. She could hear the sadness, the loneliness in her voice. “Were any of the Wiccans like you?”

  “Yeah, one girl. She’s a couple of years older than I am. She had power. She said she was going to the circle meetings with the coven, worshipping the goddess, celebrating the moon and the major holidays just to make her family happy but that she’d found something else that fulfilled her.”

  “What was it?” Samantha asked, trying to keep her voice calm.

  “A different coven. They met in secret in the forest. And they all had powers and they could do amazing stuff. And it wasn’t about worshipping anything. It was just about empowering us.”

  Samantha closed her eyes. Witches. Witches had found Robin. Had the same witches killed her mother?

  “Did your mother know?”

  “Are you kidding? She would have been furious.”

  “So you had to sneak out to go to these meetings?”

  “Yeah,” Robin said, coloring at the admission. “I’d go out my bedroom window and walk down the road. Someone would pick me up and drop me off at the same place.”

  “Do you know the names of the other people in the coven?”

  Robin shook her head. “No. Everyone was kind of secretive that way.”

  Samantha nodded. The darker the magic, the more distrustful coven members became of one another. If Robin was new to the group, it would be quite a while before they trusted her with anything that could reveal them.

  “Do you know when the next meeting is?”

  “It’s supposed to be in a few nights, during the full moon.”

  “Do you know where they would take you?”

  “Yeah. It’s this place in the Redwoods. It’s called Cathedral Grove, where all the trees grow in a big circle. It’s about a twenty-minute drive from here, followed by an hour-long walk.”

  “Could you show me?”

  “Not how to walk in. But there’s actually a railroad—it’s like a tourist attraction that goes right through that area. It stops at Cathedral Grove so people can get out and take pictures, picnic. My mom’s taken me there every summer, so that’s how I recognized the spot where we were.”

  “How do I find this railroad?”

  “It’s simple. It’s called Roaring Camp. It’s just up the highway from here.”

  Samantha nodded, fairly certain she had seen a sign for it somewhere. “It’s happening on the next full moon?”

  “Yeah, it’s in just a couple of days.” Robin made a face. “I’m pretty sure there’ll be no sneaking out with Aunt Clara around. She has e
ars like a fox. Plus, I’m not sure I want to keep going anyway. The vibe can get kind of weird there.”

  If they were practicing the kind of magic Samantha thought they were, “weird” was an understatement.

  “If you want . . . help . . . or to talk, I’m here,” Samantha said. “I know what it’s like having these powers and not knowing what to do with them.”

  You know what to do with them; you just refuse to acknowledge it, the voice in her head whispered. She struggled to ignore it, but she felt like a hypocrite. She hadn’t exactly coped well with her abilities at any point, and she didn’t have the foggiest idea how she could help mentor somebody else.

  “Thanks, but I’m going to talk to Aunt Clara. I’ve been thinking about it. I think maybe my mom was right. I think I do want to be a shaman, help people.”

  Samantha didn’t say anything. It was natural that in her grief and feelings of guilt, Robin would make that decision. What would come of that six months or a year or two down the line, only time would tell.

  Samantha stood. “I should go. I have a lot to do. Unless you want me to stay until they get back.”

  “No, it’s okay. I’m good,” Robin said, standing as well.

  “You’ve got my number. If anything happens or if you need to talk, call.”

  “I will.”

  Samantha left, wishing there was something more she could do or say. She prayed that Robin would be okay. She got in the car and drove back down to the highway. It was getting dark and was definitely too late to visit Roaring Camp. She would have to go find this Cathedral Grove in the morning.

  Once on the highway, she sighed. It had been a long, crazy day and the lack of sleep was taking its toll.

  The phone rang and she answered.

  “Hello?”

  “You never called back.” It was Anthony.

  “Right, sorry about that. After the earthquake, things got crazy.”

  “Oh, after the earthquake,” he said.