Witch House

by Dana Donovan

  Witch House

  Dana E. Donovan

  Smashwords Edition

  Published by Smashwords

  Books in this series include:

  The Witch’s Ladder

  Eye of the Witch

  The Witch’s Key

  Bones of a Witch

  Kiss the Witch

  Call of the Witch (late 2011)

  Other titles by Dana Donovan:

  A Talisman’s Tale

  Abandoned

  Skinny

  Resurrection

  Death and other Little Inconveniences

  Paperbacks available at Lulu.com

  Author's notes: This book is based entirely on fiction and its story line derived solely from the imagination of its author. No characters, places or incidents in this book are real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, places, events or locales is entirely coincidental. No part of this publication may be copied or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy or otherwise without the expressed written permission of the author or author’s agent.

  Witch House ©Dana E. Donovan 2009-2011

  ONE

  As I sit reflecting upon a recent case of mine, I take comfort realizing I have finally come to terms with what I am; an enigma personified, a fitting title I should think, and a distinction intrinsically qualified for also defining who I am. That is no small revelation for a man who has walked this earth for sixty-odd years, the last of which especially proposed challenges of some magnitude. For the vast majority of my adult life, I considered detective work my reason for being. But after Lilith involved me in her witch’s rite of passage ceremony, returning me to my physical prime and endowing me with powers of witchcraft, I have struggled with my new identity and harbored an overwhelming sense that obligatory reparations of existential proportions are due Lilith in the worst way. Worse still, I feel that Lilith expects nothing less. With that I can now say, though I shall forever remain in Lilith’s debt for breathing a second life into my tired old bones, that witchcraft will always take a back seat to my paramount calling as Detective, grade one, N.C.P.D. 2nd precinct, New Castle, Massachusetts.

  The recent case in point, itself not overly sensational, but pivotally significant, started on the heels of an argument I had with Lilith. Although it centered on our sleeping arrangements at the apartment since Ursula arrived, I see now that other mounting frustrations may have contributed to its ferocity, the details of which I shall spare, as the account I aspire to communicate requires no such condition for sufficient conveyance. I suppose it does bear mentioning, however, that Ursula is a witch, too, but with a very different past, or more precisely, a very distant past.

  Lilith, in her ever-astounding repertoire of spells, recently managed to resurrect Ursula from a pile of seventeenth-century bones. Because Ursula is Lilith’s Great Aunt (though the two are about the same age) and a woman truly out of her element, she has moved in with us, and the two have made it their mission in life to make my life miserable. Never in all my years have I felt so much the outsider in my own home, as when they conspire behind my back, cackling like hens, giggling like schoolgirls (at my expense, I am certain) and upsetting the balance of nature by trashing the only bathroom in the apartment. Every morning I find bras and panties strewn over the back of the toilet and across the shower rod, makeup bottles and powder compacts litter the vanity top; and do not get me started on the lumpy couch I have had to sleep on since Lilith insisted Ursula take my bed. Such a digression might hijack this narrative completely.

  Let me instead return to conveying the events to which I have earlier alluded, events that have inexplicably renewed my confidence, secured my destiny and fortified my convictions toward a higher purpose. Should I live another sixty years, and I might, I fear I shall never enjoy working a case as much as I have enjoyed working this one.

  It began on a Tuesday, early. I would like to say it was a typical morning, but it was not. I had just fumed out of the apartment after having, as I have mentioned, the worst argument with Lilith that I have ever had. I should have known then that something was out of alignment, the stars, her hormones—hell my hormones; I don’t know, but it was a screamer.

  I stood out on the front porch under the overhang, my collar pulled up against the chill of a rainy mist that seemed to float right up under my skin. Everything looked gray; the sky, streets, sidewalks, even the trees, whose autumn leaves had long since fallen and rotted to a soggy gray matter resembling sewer sludge; all of it reflecting my disposition precisely. I have to say, it made me yearn for my old condominium down in Florida. I still had the keys to the place. I do not know why; call it a safety net. Maybe deep inside I felt that a second go in life, even as a witch, would not make me any better a detective now than when it all seemed so new and exciting.

  I do not suppose I stood there brooding more than a few minutes before my partner, Carlos Rodriquez, pulled the car up to the curb, and not a moment too soon.

  “Nice timing,” I told him, hopping in while ducking raindrops, as if that were possible. “I was just about to walk down to the corner for a coffee and a pack of smokes.”

  He looked at me with that know-it-all smirk of his. I never noticed it much when Carlos was my junior, but the return to prime event that Lilith included me in on, returned me to the ripe old age of twenty-five or six, and now when he smiles, he looks as old as dirt to me. I want to tell him not to do it, that the lines around his eyes seem to wrap all the way around his head when he does that. But I won’t. It would not be fair. It is bad enough that he is ten years younger than my real years and he will probably die fifty years sooner. I remember thinking that only a year or two earlier I thought his smile boyish and charming. Of course, that was the old me. Was it just the gloom of Lilith’s parting words driving me down? I did hope so.

  “You don’t smoke,” he said. I think he saw my stare fixed on his smile. He dropped it in a single wiper blade sweep.

  “I was thinking of starting,” I told him.

  “Ah, I see. Trouble in paradise?”

  “Paradise? Ha!”

  “Come on, Tony.” He reached out and slapped my knee. “Put it in prospective. Look at you. You look like a million bucks. You have got the hottest girlfriend this side of the Mystic River, and the second hottest girl living under the same roof with you. That’s not paradise?”

  I turned my gaze out the side window and watched my breath steam a patch of fog on the glass. “Sure, when you put it that way, but let’s see you try to get a good night’s sleep on the sofa.”

  “What? Are you still sleeping out there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tony, what’s wrong with Lilith’s bed?”

  “Lilith sleeps in Lilith’s bed.”

  “But aren’t you two still—”

  “Yes, we’re still…but she won’t let me sleep with her. She says I’m all over the place.”

  “Are you?”

  “No! She is the one who is all over the place. Sleeping with her is like sleeping with a barracuda, only not as much fun.”

  “Well, do you want to hear what I think?”

  I did not have the heart to tell him that I did not want to hear what he thought. Fortunately, I did not have to. A call came over the radio and ended that conversation. It was 10-54D, possible dead body. The dispatcher routed us to the parking lot behind Pete’s Place, a bar down on Jefferson. As soon as we got there, I could see that there was nothing “possible” about it. The victim lay face up on the ground by the edge of a chain-link fence at the back of the property. He wore a simple blazer, flared open, his arms splayed out crucifix-like, revealing a large washed out bloodstain over his heart. Two black and whites were already on
the scene with yellow crime tape cordoning off three-fourths of the lot. I checked my watch. It was 8:20.

  I turned to Carlos. “Got an extra umbrella?”

  “Got two,” he said, hiking his thumb up over his shoulder. “On the back seat.”

  I glanced there and a nod followed. “Well?”

  “Oh, right.” He reached back and grabbed the two, one a full-sized cane-handled job with a pointed tip the size of a javelin, the other a smaller pop-up telescoping type that looked like he could have stowed in the ashtray. He offered up both, holding the smaller one closest to my reach, clearly favoring the larger one for himself.

  I took the larger one.

  “Thank you,” I said, smiling for the first time all morning. “You ready now?”

  Police Sergeant Powell greeted us at the perimeter of the yellow tape and started us toward the vic. He had no umbrella, but like the other officers sweeping the site for evidence, he did have on a standard issue raincoat and a clear plastic wrap fashioned with a stretch band over his hat. I did not envy him for being there in the rain, but I did envy his rain gear.

  Although I have known Ronald Powell since graduating the academy with him over forty years ago, we have never been on a first name basis. He is what some call a whiff, which is really a twisted acronym for what’s in it for me. He thinks whiff is a complimentary term reflecting his ability to sniff out bad guys. Internal Affairs Division investigated him three times over the years for questionable conduct, yet all three times, he emerged unscathed, earning him another dubious nickname, Teflon Ron. Not addressing him by his first name used to make me come off a bit snobbish. Now that he thinks I am Tony Marcella Junior, he does not seem to mind, and in fact expects the formality.

  “Sergeant Powell, good morning,” I said. “Keeping dry?”

  “Hardly.” He snorted like a bull and swallowed back whatever it was that had come up in his throat. “I worked the graveyard last night,” he said, “and should be home by now. I was just heading in when I got the call to assist another unit on this 10-54.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  He peeled back the sleeve of his raincoat to reveal a bare wrist. “Hell, I forgot my watch. Guess about an hour. It took the damn coroner almost that long to arrive. Me and Smithy here,” he gestured toward the young officer standing over the body with a large umbrella, protecting what evidence he could from washing away in the rain. “We’ve been standin` out here like a couple of water-soaked rats, while these guys,” he nodded toward the waiting ambulance and the two paramedics inside, “sip hot coffee in their cozy caboose. It ain’t right.”

  What ain’t right, I thought, was why old Teflon Ron had not retired already. Clearly, he no longer enjoyed his job. I glanced sideways at Carlos and smiled thinly. He gave me that smirk again, the one I thought I disliked earlier. Somehow, it seemed like a fresh breath of air to me now.

  “Anyone see anything?” I asked.

  He pointed to a doorway niche at a warehouse some thirty yards away. “Just him, only he didn’t witness anything. Said he found the body around daybreak and flagged down the first black and white he saw.”

  “Did he touch anything?”

  “He told me he didn’t, but he wanted to know if he gets a reward.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him sure; his reward is I won’t haul him in for vagrancy.”

  “Wow, you’re such a humanitarian.”

  “I know,” he said, and he gave me a look as though he believed me. I remembered then why it was that Powell never made detective. The man simply lacks the capacity for grasping the obvious.

  Jack Cruz is New Castle’s coroner, and a damn good one. He is well into his sixties and still works the field harder than most men half his age. I thought I might sneak up on him and catch him by surprise, but he spotted us coming though his periphery and stood to face us upon our approach.

  “Jack,” I said, “look at you, not enough sense to come in out of the rain.”

  “Tony,” he said, and when he smiled, I almost believed he recognized me for who I was, and not who I pretended to be. Jack Cruz and I go back nearly as far as Carlos and me. Moreover, I have always felt a sort of kinship toward Jack that transcends mere friendship. I once mentioned this to Lilith, who told me that Jack and I were probably brothers in another life. Souls reconstitute close to their departure points upon reincarnation, she told me. This is why we so often sense a feeling of déjà vu when we meet total strangers. When related souls reunite, the feeling is strongest and everlasting. Such was the case with Jack and me. I reached my hand out and Jack shook it.

  “So, how are my two favorite detectives?” he said. “Carlos, are you eating well?”

  Carlos patted his stomach, which, for a man his age, still looked impressively flat to me. “Are you kidding?” he said. “Does it look like I miss many meals?”

  I think Jack was about to challenge that, when I interrupted. “He doesn’t. Trust me, though sometimes I do wonder where he puts it all.”

  Jack let it go at that. He reached out and tapped my arm, gently. “Tony, how’s your father? Is he still down in Florida?”

  “My father?” Funny how I let that catch me off guard. My first thoughts were images of a man I briefly knew and thought was my dad. They called him Pops, and he had only recently passed away at a hospice downtown. I think Jack saw the unexpected hurt on my face, perhaps even misinterpreted my blank stare as a cause for condolences. Then I realized he meant me, the old Tony Marcella who retired to Florida and never looked back. “Yes!” I said, snapping out of a self-imposed emotional exile. I smiled, as if recalling happier times. “He is doing great. I talked to him just last night. He hasn’t changed a bit. I’ll tell him you said hi.”

  “Do that,” said Jack. “Better yet, let me have his number. I would love to call him and pick his brain. You know, I am thinking of retiring soon, maybe to Florida.”

  “Are you? All right.” I nodded and kept smiling, although that was getting harder to maintain. “I’ll definitely get that to you.”

  “Okay, can we get this thing wrapped up?” This from Sergeant Powell, whose mood was decaying faster than our vic’s corpse. “I’m on overtime, if you don’t mind.”

  I looked at Powell, wanting so much to hit him. I guess it is an inherent condition in young men. I do not remember being so impatient and impetuous the last time I was young. Maybe it is because I know now what I did not know then; that life to too short to put up with bullshit from assholes like Powell. I bit my lip and pressed forward.

  “So, Jack, what do we have?”

  He took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. Funny how even after all these years, he still feels a sense of loss for the human condition every time he pronounces another death. I watched him cast an empathic eye down on the victim. “Well, we have a White male here, obviously, late forties, early fifties. He’s got a single gunshot wound to the chest. It looks like it went through the heart. It’s a large caliber, probably a .38 or .357. I’ll know for sure after I get him on the table and dig it out.”

  “What is that mark below his eye?”

  Jack shook his head. “A nick, something` hit him. Was long before he died, though. It’s got some scabbing to it.”

  I pointed. “Did you see his wrist?”

  “Yeah, it’s all inked up. Looks like a prison tattoo.”

  “It is,” said Carlos. “It’s the Flying Pegasus gang tattoo out of Walpole. He probably has a couple more, one on his back and another over his heart.” Instinctively, we all looked down at the gunshot wound that likely tore right through Pegasus’ wings. “Once you’re in that club, you’re protected for life.”

  “Sure,” I said, “maybe on the inside.”

  “I guess folks on the outside have no respect for institutional traditions.”

  I said to Jack, “Got a T.O.D.?”

  He crossed his arms at his chest and gave a little sigh. “It’s hard to pin it do
wn, what with the cold and rain, but I would say somewhere between one and three o’clock this morning.”

  I saw Carlos check his watch. “That’s a long time in the rain. Probably not much in the way of evidence left now.”

  I looked to Powell. “Have you picked up anything?”

  “What, like shell casings?”

  “Yes.”

  He drew a bead on me as if I had stuck him with my javelin-tipped umbrella. “You’re just like your old man, Marcella. Do I look like I just stepped off the short bus? Of course I haven’t picked anything up.” He did that heavy snort again and swallowed. “Except maybe a cold. Can we hurry this along?”

  I gave my umbrella to Carlos and asked him to hold it for me while I kneeled down to check our vic’s pockets. I reached first into his right side pants pocket and pulled out a few bills and some change. Seeing nothing extraordinary, I put it back. His left pocket yielded a wad of lint and a balled up bar napkin. I unfolded the napkin and saw what looked like a phone number with the initials PTA written above it. “Take this,” I said, handing it to Carlos. “I want to know whose number that is.”

  “I’ll call it in to Dom,” he said, slipping it into his overcoat pocket. Dom is Dominic Spinelli. Carlos handpicked him as my replacement after I retired. He is a young guy, eager, bright and in every way the product of a technologically driven society. In no small way, it is thanks to Spinelli that I got my job back as lead detective after my return to prime. His courage and wizardry with E.I.N.I., the electronic intelligence network interface system, at the Justice Center made it possible. After I graduated from the academy—for the second time in my life—he was able to somehow merge my official entry into the force with my previous records as a senior detective and have it spit out a legitimate title for me. To the computer, I am an old acquaintance. To the rest of the guys on the detective’s floor, I am Tony Marcella Junior, son of a local legend; and that’s just the way I liked it.