1001 Dark Nights: Bundle Seven

by Shayla Black

  He shrugged a little unhappily. “Probably. But Jeannette and I were getting ready for a meeting of the Salem Psychic Research Society. We did find a college kid walking around, just looking, not doing anything bad.”

  “But with this hugely popular attraction going on, you have no cameras, no eyes on the crowd anywhere?”

  “We have plenty of eyes,” he said. “Every room has what Hauntings and Hallucinations calls ‘security guides.’ Someone not in costume, but in a black uniform, carrying a flashlight, there to help out in an emergency.”

  “And the police have a listing of these people? Did they interview the ‘security guide’ working last night?”

  “Of course. It was William Bishop, and he was a basket case. The guides are just simple hires, like the kids who go in costume. Most of them are college aged, a few are retirees. Some are just high school students. We comply fully with all labor laws.”

  “Micah, I’m not concerned with labor laws. A man is dead.”

  “It’s not my fault he killed himself!”

  “But the point is, no one saw him do it.”

  Micah flushed. “I had no idea John was here. I was upstairs. I have some files beneath the dueling skeletons in the tarot room. Our computers and communications are still up in that room too. Jeannette was with me. Like I said, I don’t know what time Naomi got here because I just wasn’t paying attention. But she was a little distracted because she hadn’t heard from John, and assumed he was taking the night off. I told her not to worry, I’d work the ticket kiosk with her if he didn’t come in. She told me they were short a few actors, too. Sally Mansfield, a local housewife who does this every year, was sick with the flu. So Jeannette said she’d be happy to be chopped up or whatever.”

  “I saw Jeannette last night.”

  Micah looked at her, surprised. “She said she was going home to bed. She was really upset by what happened. We all cared about John. Poor Naomi. She has to keep this going or the monetary loss will be incredible.”

  “I’ve seen businesses closed down for weeks after a tragedy like this. But, I guess you’re right, the show must go on.

  He hesitated and looked at her suspiciously. “Why are you trying to make a bad situation even more difficult?”

  “I’m a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Micah. This is my job.”

  She preferred not to be so pretentious, but sometimes she had to be. And with Micah, it worked.

  “Of course, I understand,” he said. “But it was a suicide, wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Am I a suspect?”

  “Actually, you are,” she said pleasantly. “So any assistance you can give me will certainly help in eliminating you.”

  “Whatever you need. But you know that John’s personal life wasn’t going well. Oh, my. There was a murderer in here with us? But how? When? I don’t see how this can be possible. Oh, my God.”

  He was panicked, of no help any further. So she decided to leave. “Thanks for your help. I’ll call you if I need anything.”

  She turned to head up the stairs, back to ground level, and out through the front. Micah followed.

  “Someone could have come in through the back, through the delivery entrance, I suppose, and we wouldn’t have known,” he said. “You can’t hear. I mean it is a big place.”

  Outside on the front porch, Jenna noted the quiet location and sad feel to the day. The ticket kiosks seemed cheaply thrown up, the Halloween decorations worn and frayed. Everything was much more magical at night. Naomi Hardy sat at the kiosk, head bowed. Jenna glanced over at the cemetery. Midmorning light was rising, sending streaks of yellow and gold down on the graves. Both the cemetery and house occupied a hill that sloped down to thick forest, the leaves a brilliant collage of orange, crimson, and gold. Past a decaying mausoleum and a weeping angel, she thought she saw something.

  A strange flash of darkness and light.

  Near the weeping angel and a worn tombstone stood someone in a black cape. Someone with a red face and body. The boo-hag they’d seen the other night. What would someone in costume be doing at the edge of a forlorn graveyard at this time of day, just looking up at the mortuary? She excused herself and headed down the rocky drive toward the cemetery. She leapt over a few tombstones and wove around ancient sarcophagi. But, when she reached the far side and the forest edge, the boo-hag was gone.

  She drew her weapon and called out, “FBI. Get the hell out here, whoever you are.”

  She hadn’t really expected a reply, not unless it might come from some holdover partier unsure of where he was from a function the previous night. She moved cautiously into the woods, alert and wary, careful of the leaves and twigs beneath her feet.

  And then stopped.

  No boo-hag was in sight.

  Instead, a woman dangled from a tree limb.

  * * * *

  “Hanged by the neck until they be dead,’” Detective Gary Martin said, quoting from the death warrants handed down to those executed back in 1692.

  Sam watched as a forensic photographer snapped pictures. The victim had been dressed up for display. Their male victim, John Bradbury, had also been decked out in Puritanical garb. Whether this woman often dressed in period clothing for one reason or another, they had no way of knowing. He and Gary Martin had arrived on the scene within minutes of Jenna’s call, both on the outskirts of Salem. Once again, Sam was plagued with a feeling of urgency and fear.

  The boo-hag.

  But Jenna hadn’t mentioned a boo-hag. She just said that she’d left the mortuary, come through the graveyard, then walked into the forest, finding a dead woman hanged from a tree. She was calm. No surprise. She was one hell of an agent. She’d touched nothing, securing the scene until forensics and a medical examiner could arrive. They’d asked if Laura Foster might be sent, explaining that they might be looking at a serial killer. He and Martin stood next to Jenna, watching while the crime scene techs did their thing.

  “Think this one is a suicide too?” Jenna asked Martin sarcastically.

  “Kind of hard to hang yourself from a tree,” Martin said. “Unless she climbed up there, then out on the limb, tied the rope, then jumped. Not likely.”

  Jenna smiled at him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be a pain.”

  Martin moved around the tree, trying to get a better look at the hanging victim. A large white bonnet hid most of her face and it was difficult—without disturbing the rope—to get a good look at her face.

  “It’s Gloria Day,” Martin said. “She’s a big Samhain fest organizer and throws a witches’ ball on Halloween. Or it’s Samhain, to her, I guess.”

  “You knew her?” Sam asked.

  Martin shook his head. “Not really. I know of her. Her face is on a number of advertisements. This is really going to shake up the community.”

  Sam and Jenna moved carefully around to where Martin stood to study the corpse too. As they did, the medical examiner’s van arrived through the trees. When Laura Foster stepped out, Sam was grateful. They were going to need her on this one. Jenna had not met her, so he introduced the two women and then Laura went to work. Enough photographs had been taken from every angle so the rope was cut and the corpse lowered, laid carefully on a tarp that could be formed into a body bag. A temperature check indicated that the time of death had been somewhere between five and six A.M.

  Laura provided as many specifics as she could from a cursory inspection, pointing out the corpse’s coloration, the neck had not broken, and she was probably strangled to death, slow and excruciating.

  “This is Gloria Day,” Laura said.

  “Did you know her?” Martin asked.

  “I’ve only seen her. She runs an ad on the local news about her ball every year. She also has a shop and helps promote classes run by some of her coven members. She’s kind of a big cheese around here.”

  “Like John Bradbury?” Jenna asked.

  “That’s right. But look
at the way the rope was tied. It’s exactly the same as with Bradbury. When you look at the photographs, you’ll see what I mean. I don’t believe that either victim tied a rope that way around their own neck.” Laura shook her head. “This is going to be one wicked Halloween.”

  “What about the costume?” Jenna asked.

  “She could have worn that herself. She ran the ball, owned a shop, and did some tour guide stuff. I know all that from the ads you can’t help but see if you live here. I know she was thirty-eight years old, born in Peoria, Illinois, and a fairly recent transplant to Salem. She arrived in the city in a big way, though her commercial devotion was twitching away.”

  “Maybe we’re looking at a rival coven, or group of covens, or even one of the other sects. Like the voodoo guys, the Haitians, or the Asian-Indians. Maybe I should throw the Catholics and Baptists in there, too,” Martin said.

  “They’re not going to stop,” Jenna said.

  “Why do you say that?” the detective asked.

  She looked up at him. “Someone is trying to recreate the witch craze.”

  “John Bradbury wasn’t a Wiccan,” Sam said.

  “And neither were any of those executed long ago for signing pacts with the devil,” Jenna noted. “People like Bridget Bishop, Rebecca Nurse, Sarah Goode, Susannah Martin—”

  “You know their names?” Martin asked.

  She nodded. “Elizabeth Howe, Sarah Wilde, George Burroughs, John Willard, Martha Carrier, George Jacobs, Sr., John Proctor, Martha Corey, Mary Eastey, Ann Pudeater, Alice Parker, Mary Parker, Wilmott Redd, Martha Scott, and Samuel Wardell.”

  “That’s impressive,” Martin said. “I can add Giles Corey—pressed to death. Had the reputation of being somewhat of a mean son-of-a-bitch, stuck to his guns. He had that famous line, ‘More weight!’” He studied Jenna. “Were you from here? You’ve got it down.”

  “Boston. But I spent a lot of time here while growing up. What I’m afraid of is some kind of large-scale plot, or sick deranged thing going on. They’re both dressed. No man was hanged first during the real deal. Women got that honor. But there were men condemned and hanged as witches. From what I understand, John Bradbury had a love of local history, but he wasn’t a Wiccan. Gloria Day was a big-time Wiccan, apparently famed for her classes and her ball.”

  Martin looked at Sam. “Let’s get a search grid going.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Martin let out a whistle. A number of uniformed cops hustled over from the road area, around the outskirts of the trees, keeping their distance from the actual murder site until they were given instructions.

  “I’m going back to the graveyard,” Jenna said. “That’s where I came in from.”

  Sam frowned at her. What had she been doing running around among the tombstones?

  “No problem, whatever you need to do,” Martin told her.

  “I’ll join her,” Sam said, following Jenna.

  To his surprise, Martin came too, leaving his crew to grid search the crime scene.

  “You know,” Martin said, “it’s a ‘graveyard’ when it’s by a church. It’s a cemetery when it’s freestanding or planned. Most of the plots have names.”

  Sam was trying to catch up with Jenna, but she was moving ahead quickly.

  “Jenna,” he called out.

  She heard him and stopped.

  He reached her. “Did the ghost of John Bradbury find you? What were you doing here? I thought you were searching the house.”

  She glanced back. Martin stood close to the edge of the forest. “I think he might have whispered to me down in the basement.”

  “The winged-death’s-head is the most popular art on tombstones around here,” Martin called, pausing at one of the graves. “The Puritans didn’t want anything to do with icons that might suggest Catholicism. ‘Life is uncertain, Death is for Sure, Sin is the Wound, and Christ is the Cure,’” he read to them. “Pretty succinct.”

  “That’s a common epitaph in this area,” Sam called back.

  He looked over at Jenna, waiting for more information.

  “It was bizarre,” she told him, her green eyes intense. “I followed a costumed figure in there.”

  “But?”

  “I came into the woods and didn’t see a soul, except the woman hanged from the tree.”

  “Cigarette butt,” Martin yelled.

  “Great. Bag it,” Sam called back. “Jenna, what happened to the person you were chasing? You think that they might have done this, or do you think it was a spirit?”

  “No, nothing like that. And I don’t know if they were a possible suspect or not. The guy in costume might have headed straight for the road, while I cut into the woods deeper. And it’s Halloween. Finding someone in costume is going to be ridiculously hard. Half the world around here is going to be dressed up.”

  “What costume, Jenna?” he asked, holding her shoulders and trying not to grip too hard.

  “It was a boo-hag.”

  Chapter 6

  They were sitting in a meeting room at the police station when Craig Rockwell called Sam to say that he and Devin Lyle had landed and were on their way. Sam had seldom been more grateful to have other Krewe members around.

  Lt. Bickford P. Huntington, Supervisor for the Criminal Investigations Unit, had called a meeting to inform a task force from Salem and the surrounding areas about the two murders and bring them up to speed on what was known. He had Gary Martin speak and introduced Sam and Jenna as representatives from the federal government. Some there were old friends, some on the force new, not around four years ago when the murders had taken place at Lexington House, which Jenna and Sam had worked.

  Sam thought Huntington seemed competent as he laid out all of the information they knew. He also provided a good assessment for what they might be looking for. Someone with a deranged historical sense of revenge, or someone with a contemporary sense of it, or someone who just wanted to kill people. Huntington looked over at Sam and suggested that he provide the group his thoughts. Before he could speak one of the officers spoke up.

  “This woman you found today, she was a major commercial-style star Wiccan. Does that mean that we’re really looking for someone in a coven?”

  The answer was probably yes, but Sam was careful with his reply. He couldn’t say that a ghost had told a young woman that his killer had been talking about the witch trials and cults.

  “It’s my understanding that a feud has been ongoing. So I think it’s going to be important to discover if there’s someone in some kind of an offshoot cult that might be doing this, not necessarily Wiccan. We all know that today’s pagan religions, especially here in Salem, believe in treating everyone with love and respect. Murder would be a terrible sin to anyone truly practicing the Wiccan religion. There are many ways to look at this without stereotyping anyone.”

  “But, the two victims were killed in the same manner as those executed during the witchcraft trials,” another officer said.

  “You all know your history here. Anything was witchcraft. If you looked into the future, silly girls playing at love potions, even goodwives trying medicinal herbs, all of that was considered witchcraft. Of course, none of those executed was a witch. It was hysteria, fueled over petty squabbles and simple hatred among the people who lived here then. The pagans, or Wiccans, we have in Salem today have nothing to do with all that. Should we look at strange cults and fundamentalism of any kind, be it Wiccans or another group? Absolutely. Do we need to question people spouting against Gloria Day? Definitely. But the medical examiner’s office hasn’t even started on the second autopsy yet. Let’s see what comes of that.”

  Jenna was introduced—she smiled and greeted old friends and thanked those she’d worked with before, asking that they be especially vigilant in the areas surrounding the mortuary, graveyard, and forest, and to listen to what they heard around town. “You know Salem. You’ll know when something isn’t right or when it feels strange. We need to keep a close eye on
the mortuary. The first murder apparently happened at a time when those in charge were busy or unaware. And we need to watch out for local situations. Crack pots, cults, culture clashes of any kind.”

  The meeting ended and Sam and Jenna wound up discussing their next moves in one of the conference rooms while Lieutenant Huntington went on to speak to the press. The community, Sam knew, would be talking about nothing else. But, none of it would stop Halloween or Samhain celebrations. Salem had a life of its own at this time of year. A pulse. A beat. Like a living entity.

  Gary Martin was working hard. He hadn’t wanted a murder, but he’d wound up with two. His men had retrieved a fair amount of evidence from the forest where Gloria Day’s body had been found. All of the cigarette butts, cans, bits and pieces of hair, and everything else would go to the DNA lab. And while TV shows might get their results back in an hour, it would be days, possibly weeks, before these would be ready. Sam harbored no illusions. They were not going to get anything off an old cola can. Their killer wasn’t sitting there enjoying a soda before hanging a woman. Results would come from walking and talking and discovering what was going on in the community. Someone had to have seen a car. The hill upon which the mortuary sat alongside the cemetery wasn’t in walking distance from town. And Gloria Day’s killer had not forced her to walk up the hill then into the forest to be hanged. It made sense that John Bradbury had been in the basement of the mortuary. He worked there. But Gloria Day was another matter. Her shop and school sat in the middle of town, down the street from the Hawthorne Hotel. Had she been lured up there to see something unusual? To participate in some kind of ceremony? Sam was anxious to get to her shop, but he also wanted to know more about the various groups in the community now. And much of it, he thought, needed to be done by himself and Jenna, or Rocky and Devin. The local police were good. But the Krewe team was better.

  Alone with Gary Martin and Jenna in the conference room, Sam looked over the files on locals, along with the notes they’d received from Angela Hawkins, Jackson Crow’s wife and top assistant. She’d found pages and pages of Facebook, Instagram, Google, and other social media communications that spoke of an all-out verbal war between two factions in the city. Two main rivals were clear. The Coven of the Silver Moon, Gloria Day’s group. And the Coven of the Silver Wolf, Tandy Whitehall’s people. Each of the two had hives, where the overflow went when there were too many people in a coven. Thirteen was considered the ideal number, but that wasn’t etched in stone. Hives, he knew, kept their membership low so as not to become unwieldy, the perfect place for a newly ordained high priest or priestess. Both Day and Whitehall had enjoyed a lot of popularity, their hives numerous and, on occasions like Samhain, they gathered together. In Salem, that usually happened at Gallows Hill, which, frankly, Sam didn’t agree with, and for good reason.