Tony Marcella 07 - Call of the Witch

by Dana E. Donovan

  Instead, I was thinking about Lilith. It wasn’t surprising, as I think about her often. I used to believe that she held a spell over me, one that caused me to think about her all the time. It seemed unnatural to me that any man could walk around with his head in a cloud, thinking of one woman so incessantly that he sometimes even forgot to eat. I finally mentioned it to Carlos one day. He laughed and punched me on the arm, making me feel uncomfortably inferior. He told me what my problem was, and to this day I can’t believe I didn’t realize it first myself.

  “You’re in love!” he said. I remember his silly grin and how at that moment he seemed so much older and wiser than me.

  “Sure, I’m in love,” I told him, “but what about the spell?”

  “Tony, there is no spell. That’s the magic of love. You can’t eat. You can’t sleep. You can’t think. You can’t do anything.”

  “I don’t understand. How come I’ve never felt this way before?”

  I remember how he set his hands on my shoulders and squared my body to his. At six-four, he’s a few inches taller than I am. I looked up at him, my eyes blinking; his were cast in a perpetual glint. “That’s because you’ve never been in love before, Tony.”

  “Yeah?” is all I said.

  He smiled back thinly. “Yeah.”

  So that’s where my mind was, as I sipped coffee and gazed out on the courtyard, watching late afternoon shadows creep from the lamp posts like echoes of Stonehenge on a late-summer’s day. I thought about how I left Lilith after she attempted to locate Kelly through scrying. Though her attempt was unsuccessful, she did give it her best shot. Afterward, she wanted me to go with her, to the bedroom and…. I pushed her away.

  I started to feel guilty about that. I looked down at my hands, my fingers and my arms. My skin looked smooth, my muscles firm and tight. It wasn’t so long ago when I was a washed-up sixty-something year old man. The backs of my hands rippled like the sands left behind by a receding tide. I had age spots the size of dimes and blue veins like tree roots budging beneath my skin every time I made a fist.

  Then Lilith came into my life. Better yet, she gave me life. She took me from the twilight of winter and brought me back to the dawn of spring. I couldn’t know the reasons why at the time, but did it matter? That she spent a century and a half of her child-bearing years never wanting children came as no surprise to me. She had always maintained her distain for the noisome varmints; her words, not mine.

  Perhaps she was simply waiting for the right guy to come along. We got married, sure. I think I wanted it as much as she did. I only wish she had first told me that she wanted a baby, instead of passing off the consummation ritual as nothing more than a completion of the wedding ceremony proper. Did she think I wouldn’t figure it out? After Ursula got pregnant following the ritual, I expected Lilith to come clean about its true purpose. Yet she didn’t. She continued to play dumb to keep me in the dark.

  Still, I supposed I owed Lilith. So in light of my overwhelming debt to her, I decided to lay it all out to chance. I took a coin from my pocket and flipped it into the air. Heads, I would fight Lilith on the issue of the consummation ritual; tails I would capitulate. The coin flipped end-over-end in its brief flight up and back down again into my hand. I slapped the coin to the back of my left hand and kept it covered with my right. I wanted to look. I really did, but the fear of what lay before me paralyzed my entire body.

  I sat there, staring at the back of my hand, my breath shallow, my chest tight. I resolved to look at the coin on the count of three and abide to whatever decision fate prescribed for me.

  “One,” I counted softly.

  “Two.”

  “Tony!”

  I looked up and spotted Carlos and Dominic hurrying across the cafeteria floor towards me. Without looking at the coin, I stashed it in my pocket.

  “Tony,” said Dominic. “There you are. We’ve been looking all over for you!”

  I stood and met them half way. “What’s up?”

  “The kidnappers called,” said Carlos. He didn’t seem the least bit angry with me.

  “They did? When?”

  Dominic checked his watch. “Twelve minutes ago. They laid out their ransom demands.”

  I put my hands to my head and rubbed my temples briskly. “So let me think. If we’ve got Santana and Martinez down in holding, then that means….”

  “Means they ain’t the kidnappers,” Dominic finished.

  “Maybe,” Carlos added. “Either one of them could still be partnering with the kidnappers.”

  “I’ll give you that,” I said. “Dominic, were both Lionel and Amanda Brewbaker present when the call came in?”

  “Brittany said both were.”

  “What are the details of the ransom drop?”

  “Tomorrow morning, ten o’clock, Lionel makes the drop alone.”

  “Is it still three-hundred thousand dollars?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, so he still needs to go to the bank. Where does it happen?”

  “They told Lionel he’s to put the cash in a flat leather bag and drop it over the railing at the south side of the Garfield Street Bridge.”

  “Drop it over the railing?”

  “Yeah. He’s to drop it into the water right in the middle of the creek.”

  “A leather bag, you say. What, like a satchel?”

  “Not a satchel. They were very specific. It had to be a flat leather bag.”

  “What are they thinking? A leather bag full of cash won’t float. They won’t be able to pick it up downstream anywhere.”

  “That’s what they want.”

  “Okay, that’s bizarre. Why don’t we head on out to the Brewbaker’s and work out the details of this thing?”

  “I’m ready when you are,” said Dominic.

  “Carlos?” I said. “We good?”

  “Yes.”

  “You sure?”

  He gave me a look as though I had asked him if he had eaten today. “Of course. Why wouldn’t we be?”

  I shook my head. “No reason.” I gave him a slap on the back. “Let’s go.”

  We arrived at the Brewbaker’s and assembled in the room we had set up earlier as a command center. Brittany Olson rolled out a two-foot by four-foot map of New Castle and began marking it up. The map was a beauty, a laminated satellite image showing streets, buildings, cars and even people in crisp details. The resolution was so clear I could see manhole covers in the streets and ripples in the water along the shores of Edgewater.

  She drew a circle around the Garfield Street Bridge and punctuated it with a jab of her red grease pencil.

  “This is the drop point,” she said. “It’s clever really. The kidnappers did their homework.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  “You can see here that Garfield Street is just a two-lane road about a mile long, stretching between Broadway and Madison. There are no side streets, and the bridge is just a mere puddle jump over Garfield Creek. Tomorrow morning crews from the DOT are going out to put up barricades at both ends of the street and block off the entire road to traffic.”

  “Why?”

  “Scheduled maintenance. The bridge is so old they have to close it down once a year for inspection. Starting at eight o’clock, they’ll detour everything, including pedestrian traffic, for most of the day.”

  “It’s going to be difficult, setting up surveillance without the benefit of blending in with the public.”

  “That’s why I say they did their homework.”

  “Tell me about the creek. How deep’s the water?”

  “Not so deep,” Brittany replied, sketching a dashed line with her grease pencil several hundred feet up and downstream from the bridge. “The area where the bridge crosses is the deepest and widest part on the creek for about a mile in either direction. After a hard rain, you can expect water levels to run about two to three feet there.”

  “But?” I said, sensing it coming.

  “But this time
of year, I’d expect to see only a foot or so in the area closest to the bridge.”

  “What about flow rate?”

  “Barely a trickle. Again, except when it rains.”

  “Are we expecting––”

  “No rain,” said Dominic, anticipating my question. “Least not for the next several days.”

  “All right then. That explains why the kidnappers don’t want the money bag to float. They’re going to pick it up right there where it drops.”

  “But why in the water?” Carlos asked.

  “Simple,” Dominic answered, “They want it out of sight so that no one happens up on it by accident like yesterday.”

  “He’s right,” I said. “That’s the reason they did the dry run at the park. If yesterday were the real deal, the kidnappers would have been shit-out-of-luck getting the money.”

  “Okay,” said Brittany. “So if we’re watching the creek, what direction do the kidnappers come from to make the pick up?”

  “Here,” I said, pointing to a heavy line of trees west of the drop point. “A person can move in from outside the surveillance zone and emerge from behind these trees. Once he felt confident that we weren’t too close, he could swoop in, jump into the water and retrieve the bag.”

  “No,” said Carlos, shaking his head. “If I were the kidnapper, I’d scope it out from back here.” He pointed to an area east of the drop point a hundred-plus yards back. “That’s a delicatessen. It’s a favorite hangout for high school kids. Tomorrow’s Monday. There’s going to be a dozen kids hanging around there between classes, smoking cigarettes.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I can imagine the kidnappers simply blending in with the kids, keeping an eye on everything we do.”

  “But it’s too far away,” Dominic remarked. “If anyone breaks from the group and starts walking towards the bridge, we’ll see him coming.”

  “Not if he’s on wheels.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Think about it. The kidnappers wait for Lionel to make the drop. Then two of them hop on a motorcycle and shoot over there in like five seconds. The one on the back of the bike hops off, grabs the money, hops back on the bike and then the two rip out of there like a bat outta hell.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “The bridge is so far out in the open, we wouldn’t be able to get within two hundred yards of it without being spotted.”

  “That’s what I’m saying. Even once we see that they’re making their move, they’ll be a hundred yards up on us and moving quicker than spit.”

  I looked at Detective Olson. “Brit?”

  She gave a little shrug. “Beats what I had.”

  “Which was?”

  “Not as easy.”

  “Let’s hear it anyway.”

  She ran her finger upstream toward the bridge. “Well, as I mentioned before, the creek is low this time of year. With three to four foot walls buffering each side, I figured someone might simply walk upstream in a crouch with his head below our line of sight. He might think we’d be expecting him to come from the road and thus not see him sneaking up right under our noses.”

  “That’s not bad,” I said. “That covers east, west and south. Dominic, any theories on how the kidnapper might try it from the north?”

  He shook his head. “No. The north is definitely out. Look. The woods there turn into heavy, thorny brush. It’s too thick and nearly impassable. Traversing it would be slow, arduous, painful and probably impossible. The only other way through it is just marginally better.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, if I’m not mistaken, there’s a concrete culvert about fifty yards long running through the heaviest brush there. It’s barely eighteen inches in diameter, though. Someone would have to get down on his belly and pull himself through on his elbows. He’d have to be in phenomenal shape to do it, and even then, it wouldn’t be easy. He’d come out ten yards short of the bridge where the creek bottom is the muddiest.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s where all the crap washing through the pipe gets deposited. With such a heavy build-up, he’d almost certainly get sucked in it and mired down. No….” He shook his head doubtfully. “If the kidnappers did their homework, as Brittany suggests, then I don’t see anyone trying an approach from the north.”

  “That’s it then.”

  “What’s it?” asked Carlos.

  “We cover all four bases.” I pointed to the wooded area to the west. “We’ll put a man here…” I slid my finger clockwise to the thorny brush, “one here…” across the school zone to the east, “here…” and downstream from the bridge, “and there.” I said to Carlos. “I like your theory best. I think we should move a blockade into position along the west corridor from Madison to Jefferson immediately after the drop.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Dominic, could you see if our friends at the Danvers and Essex PDs would be kind enough to pay a little social visit on Dmitry Kovalchuk and Russell Haywood tomorrow morning?”

  “Sure. What time?”

  “Just before ten o’clock would be nice. If those two are where they should be at that time, then we know they won’t be at the drop.”

  “I see, with Santana and Martinez in custody we’ll have half the field covered.”

  I gestured a nod over my shoulder toward Lionel and Amanda Brewbaker who were still in the parlor. She was drinking Scotch, smoking cigarettes and thumbing through a magazine. He was standing by the window, staring out blankly and mumbling incoherently to himself.

  “Yes, and with these two under raps, we should have a pretty good handle on things.”

  Dominic said, “What about Karina Martinez?”

  I looked at him strangely. “What about her?”

  “Well…didn’t I tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  His face grew flush, and I knew it was something big. “Oh, man. I thought I told you.”

  “Dominic. Spill it.”

  “All right. You see I did a background check on Karina this afternoon and….”

  “And what?”

  “And this isn’t the first time that one of her employers’ kids has been kidnapped.”

  “What!”

  “It happened a couple of years ago, in Boxford. She was working for a wealthy family there when her employer’s eight-year-old was abducted.”

  “Dominic! How could you forget to tell me something like that?”

  “I’m sorry, Tony.” He shook his head and drew back in a sheepish slouch. He fixed his gaze on the floor, and I could see it troubled him more than any scolding that I could dish out. “I guess my mind’s been a little distracted with Ursula and the baby and all. I didn’t mean to––”

  “It’s okay. Just tell me what you learned.”

  He looked up at me. I thought I would see his eyes pooling. He seemed that shook up. But I didn’t. His eyes remained dry, focused and sharp.

  “She was eight-years-old,” he said. “She disappeared from her back yard in the middle of the day. The kidnappers called that evening. They made a ransom demand. The FBI was called in. The ransom was paid.”

  “Was the girl returned?”

  I watched his chest rise and fall as he steadied his breath. His expression softened, but his eyes were welling now. “No. They found her body the next day in a Dumpster behind a McDonalds.” He shook his head. “Can you believe it, Tony? They tossed her away like an old ragdoll.”

  I heard Detective Olson gasp. Carlos sighed. Dominic turned his attention to the two-by-four map on the table and began tracing his finger aimlessly along the perimeter of the proposed drop site.

  “Dominic.” I placed my hand on his shoulder. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine,” he said. He took another deep breath through his nose and let it out through bloated cheeks. “I’m fine.”

  “Okay. Let me ask you. Was Karina ever implicated in the kidnapping?”

  “No. The FBI questioned her and Raul
both, but they never found any evidence linking either of them to the abduction. All the evidence pointed to the employer’s hired landscaper.”

  I looked to Carlos. “We better bring Mrs. Martinez in for questioning tonight.”

  “Good luck with that,” said Brittany.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Karina Martinez was packing her bags while we were there picking up Raul’s computer. I heard her tell a neighbor before we left that she’d be gone for a while. She asked him if he would pick up her mail and bring her trash can in.”

  “Did she say where she was going?”

  She shook her head. “If she did, I didn’t hear it. I knew she was upset about her son. I can tell you that she packed a heavy suitcase, though.”

  “We need to talk to the neighbor. Carlos?”

  “Uh-uh. Sorry.”

  “What do you mean uh-uh, sorry?”

  He looked at his watch. “I have to go see my accountant in twenty minutes.”

  Dominic said, “I’ll go with you, Tony.”

  “No. I want you to go home to Ursula. Spend some quality time with her. Get a good night’s sleep and then meet me back at the Justice Center in the morning. Seven o’clock. Conference Room One.” I turned to Carlos. “You, too, yeah? Seven?”

  He nodded. “Seven’s good. I’ll see you then.”

  “Brit?” I said. “You want to go with me?”

  She rolled her map up, tucked it under her arm and started for the door. “Thought you’d never ask, Marcella. I’ll drive.”

  On the way out to Martinez’s place, Brittany Olson asked me about Lilith. More specifically, she asked about my relationship with her.

  “I guess you can say we’re going steady,” I told her. Naturally, I avoided telling her about the witch’s wedding we had, and about the consummation ritual Lilith wanted me to partake in to consecrate our marriage.

  “She’s quite the witch, isn’t she?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Lilith. She’s quite the catch. I saw her last week when she came to see you at the office.”

  If I live another hundred years, I’ll never believe that Olson didn’t call Lilith a witch. Still, I let it go, assuming it was an honest slip and not intentional.