Heather Graham Krewe of Hunters Series, Volume 4

by Heather Graham

  He hoisted himself up out of the hole, his expression unreadable.

  “What is it?” Devin asked.

  “A pentagram,” he said quietly.

  * * *

  The dead woman was Barbara Benton, from Ohio. She had come to Salem on vacation with several friends. She was twenty-seven years old, single and the manager of a chain clothing store.

  The two friends she had come to town with—Juliet Manson and Gail Billet—had seen her picture on the news and had come forward to identify her.

  Jack was calling her parents.

  Rocky took the job of meeting with the two friends to find out what he could about Barbara’s activities once she’d arrived in Salem. Because he was afraid for her to be alone, he left Devin with Jane and Angela. She was going to go back to the hotel with them, so they could do further research into Margaret Nottingham and her family. Rocky had kept the medallion and sent it to the lab so it could be cleaned and compared with the others for style, chemical makeup and historical context. Jenna and Sam were waiting at the lab to reclaim it as soon as it was ready.

  Rocky met Juliet and Gail at their hotel, a small historic building right in town. They were both nearly hysterical, and getting them to calm down enough to answer questions wasn’t easy. How could they answer questions? She was dead. Barbara was dead.

  “And we owe it to her, her parents and you to bring her killer to justice,” he told them.

  Juliet was dark haired with red-rimmed brown eyes, and she fought to hold back her tears. “She was—she was the best.”

  “This whole trip was her idea. She wanted to explore her roots,” Gail said. She was a redhead with freckles that were nearly lost against the red blotches crying had left on her skin.

  “Her roots?” Rocky asked.

  Juliet nodded. “Her family moved to the Midwest sometime in the 1900s. But she could trace her dad’s family all the way back here. She said she had a great-great-whatever who’d lived here during the witch trials.”

  “One of the condemned?” Rocky asked.

  “No, no, just someone who lived here. But Barbara always wanted to come here. We’d planned this trip for years,” Juliet said.

  “It was her dream trip,” Gail told him. And then she began to sob again, and Juliet put her arms around her and they sobbed together.

  Rocky waited. When their crying eased again he asked, “When did you last see her?”

  “Last night—on Essex Street,” Gail said. “We were at the bar on the corner...almost directly across from the hotel.” She winced. “This was a bad time for her. Her fiancé was killed overseas a few months ago. He was in the service. But being here, taking a trip she’d dreamed of...she finally seemed to be having a good time again. She was talking about how she wanted to go and see where her family had lived.”

  “Somewhere in Danvers,” Juliet added.

  “And then what? Did you all go back to the hotel together?”

  He looked at the two of them as they both went pale, stared at each other and burst into tears again.

  “We did. But then she went back to the bar for her phone,” Juliet said.

  “She thought she’d left it on the table,” Gail explained.

  “And that’s the last time you saw her? Didn’t you worry when she didn’t come back to the room?” he asked.

  “She was next door—she had her own room,” Juliet said. “This place is historic and cool, but the rooms are small, and the bathroom... She thought that we should have two bathrooms between us.”

  “When she wasn’t there this morning, we just thought she’d gone out early,” Juliet said.

  “She wanted to explore the archives,” Gail said. “Do some research into her family.”

  “And she was afraid we’d be bored. We were going to spend the morning on our own today, shop, do what we wanted, then meet up for dinner,” Juliet said.

  “And then we saw her picture on TV!” Gail said with a sob.

  “What time was it?” Rocky asked them.

  “Not that long ago...I guess about four this afternoon,” Juliet said.

  “I mean last night. What time did you leave the bar?”

  “Oh. Late,” Gail said. “We had such a great day, so we were just relaxing over a beer, you know, and―”

  “What time did you leave the bar?” Rocky persisted gently.

  Juliet turned to Gail. “What do you think? Maybe near midnight?”

  “That sounds right. We’d been on a ghost tour,” Gail explained.

  “We had such a great guide,” Juliet said, tears welling in her eyes again.

  “Barbara loved him,” Gail agreed.

  “Do you remember his name?” Rocky asked.

  “Oh yes, Brent. His name was Brent,” Gail said. “Brent Corbin.”

  * * *

  “I know that we work in mysterious ways,” Angela said, sitting across the table from Devin in the suite the agents had taken, “but it’s going to be difficult to solve a three-hundred-year-old murder.”

  Jane and Angela were at their computers; Devin had a book open in front of her, having gotten them to stop at one of her favorite shops to pick up a few books, this one on the symbology and use of the pentagram through history.

  “Very difficult. And we’re not doing so well on finding the current killer, either,” Jane said.

  “And maybe the two cases have nothing to do with each other,” Devin murmured dejectedly. “I don’t know. I heard Margaret Nottingham—the woman whose grave we found today, I’m certain of it―the night I found the victim near my house. And then I kept dreaming about Gallows Hill—if that even is Gallows Hill. Maybe I was just being influenced by the things I’d heard all my life, stories I’d read and stored in the back of my memory, or...”

  “Let’s assume that it does mean something,” Angela said. “The ghost came to your house and found you. She somehow knew that she could reach you, and she led you to our Jane Doe. And whatever formed the impetus for your dreams, I think we have to accept those as true, as well, given what we—you—found today. So now we know that your ghost, Margaret, was killed, then buried—with a pentagram, just like our recent victims—on what seems to be Gallows Hill, where our newest victim was also found. So, yes, that does suggest that the current murders are related in some way to what happened to her during the witch trials.”

  Devin looked over at Angela and Jane. “Their friend—Rocky and Jack’s friend—who was murdered thirteen years ago, she was from here, right? Did her family go back to the days of the witch trials?”

  The other two women looked at each other, then shook their heads. “We’ve read the reports, of course,” Angela said. “But there was nothing in them about her family history.”

  “I guess we can wait and ask Rocky,” Devin said.

  “Or we can look it up online,” Jane said.

  “Do you have a deep, dark, secret federal way to find information?” Devin teased.

  “Sometimes,” Jane said, laughing, “and sometimes I just go to the same ancestry sites everyone else uses.”

  She took Melissa’s file from the stack in front of her on the table, consulted it, then started typing information into her computer. Several minutes went by. Both Angela and Devin watched her without speaking.

  “Melissa Wilson’s mother was a Harte,” Jane said at last. “The first Harte arrived in Boston in 1630. His son moved to Salem Village in 1660. The male line came to a halt with Melissa Wilson’s mother’s father,” Jane said.

  “I don’t remember anyone named Harte being associated with the trials,” Devin said.

  “I don’t know the history like you do,” Jane said, “but neither do I. Of course, there were plenty of families who weren’t accused and didn’t take part in the persecutions.”

&n
bsp; “Let’s look up Carly Henderson,” Angela suggested.

  “All right, good idea,” Jane murmured.

  She leafed through the files on the table for the right one and started typing again.

  Again, they were silent as they waited. Then Jane let out a long breath and looked over at the two of them.

  “This one is more complicated. Carly’s grandmother was from Los Angeles. Her father was from Providence. But his mother was from Andover, Massachusetts, and...” She looked up and nodded grimly. “Yes, her family dates back to the time of the trials, as well. Their family name was Manchester.”

  “Manchester,” Devin murmured.

  “Mean anything to you?” Jane asked.

  Devin shook her head.

  “Well, these two are related if only because of their family histories,” Jane said.

  “We need an ID on our Jane Doe,” Angela said. “Then we can see if she has family ties to the area, too. If she herself was from the area, someone should have noticed by now that she’s missing.”

  “What about the new victim?” Devin asked.

  “We don’t have much of a file on her yet. I could be spinning my wheels and not come up with anything useful,” Jane said. “Then again, I spend half my life spinning my wheels, because searching for the truth is almost always like hunting for a needle in a haystack.” She pulled over another file and started typing again.

  Devin turned to Angela. “They’ll give Margaret a real burial, won’t they? I mean, they won’t stick her in a museum somewhere, will they?”

  “Adam would never let them,” Angela told her. “Adam Harrison. He’s our director.”

  “What’s he like?” Devin asked, curious to know more about Rocky’s ultimate boss.

  “He came from family money, then multiplied it and became a philanthropist. His son, Josh, died young, but Josh had been―”

  “Special,” Jane said. “The same way we’re special.”

  “After Josh’s death, one of his best friends—the girl he was with when he was killed—somehow acquired his abilities,” Angela said. “She could see Josh.”

  “And she could use her ability to help people,” Jane said.

  “Adam didn’t have the ability to see ghosts himself, but he recognized the talent in others, so he began to collect people like us to work for him as private investigators,” Jane said.

  “The government started calling him in to help with cases no one else could solve,” Angela said.

  “And then he was offered the position with the FBI and officially allowed to recruit the Krewes,” Jane explained.

  “Special units, officially,” Angela said with a smile.

  “And so here we all are,” Jane murmured, but she was frowning, her attention back on her work.

  “My husband, Jackson, is our field director,” Angela said. “He was Adam’s first hire. Jane is from the Texas Krewe, and like a lot of us, she has a law enforcement background.”

  Conversation faded after that, as the three women lost themselves in their work.

  “Hey, listen to this!” Devin said a few minutes later. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, but it turns out people have been using pentagrams as jewelry for a very long time,” she said. “This is from the grimoire called the Key of Solomon, though it’s generally accepted that Solomon had nothing to do with it and it’s really a fourteenth or fifteenth century Italian study of the magic arts. Anyway, listen to what it says about pentagrams. ‘Thou shalt preserve them to suspend from thy neck, whichever thou wilt,’ and then there’s a long translation on what to do, things like using your name, turning to the east, and then, ‘Thou mayest be assured that no enchantment or any other danger shall have power to harm thee.’”

  “So does that mean our killer thinks that they’re a protection against evil, then murders the people he’s trying to protect?” Angela asked. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  Devin was thoughtful. “The Age of Enlightenment might have been dawning in Europe as the witch trials began, but that didn’t mean much enlightenment had reached the colonies. Back then, most people were deeply devout. God was everything because life was so dangerous. Infant mortality was high, women died in childbirth, men died early, as well, from disease and the hardships of making a living from the land. Maybe Margaret’s killer thought the flesh was nothing—that murder was all right because only the soul mattered. The pentagram has been used in Christian designs—it can represent the crown of thorns and the nails in Christ’s hands and feet.”

  “That’s possible,” Jane murmured. “I mean, maybe in the mind of a very sick puppy.”

  “Well, if you look at the things that were happening across the Christian world at the time, there were a lot of sick puppies out there. I’m not sure that someone who killed a loved one to save them from being tortured, publicly stripped and humiliated, then hanged, was any sicker than the rest.”

  “In an odd and convoluted way, that makes sense,” Angela said. “So you think Margaret’s death was a mercy killing, basically?”

  Devin closed her book. “I don’t know. It’s all so frustrating. And Margaret’s death may be completely unrelated.”

  “And it may mean everything,” Angela said.

  “Yes, it just might,” Jane said, looking up at them. “I’ll have to verify my findings, but—”

  Just then the door opened and they heard Rocky call out, “It’s me!” He walked into the room, his eyes going immediately to Devin. “I found out something interesting. I don’t know if it means anything, but Barbara Benton had family in this area at the time of the trials.”

  “We know,” Jane said, turning the computer toward him. “We looked her up online, along with Carly and Melissa, and they had family here at the time, too.”

  Rocky smiled. “You’ve been busy. In all the things you find in a file, three-hundred-year-old background checks aren’t usually included.”

  “Devin found some interesting things, too,” Angela told him.

  “About pentagrams,” she said. “There’s a long history of people wearing them for protection from evil.”

  “Does that include the Puritans?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know, but it’s possible. At times the pentagram has actually been associated with Christ.”

  “So while some people might have thought anything that wasn’t traditionally a part of their belief was evil, others might have seen it as a protective symbol—even in Puritan New England?”

  She nodded.

  Rocky nodded. “Thank you. Excellent work all the way around. You’ve given us some interesting angles to follow. Now if we can just get a name for our Jane Doe. Jane?”

  “Yes, I’m still trying to find out. We’ll ID her eventually, Rocky. I promise.”

  He nodded. Then he looked at Devin. “I need you,” he told her.

  “Uh, okay,” she said.

  “We have to talk to your friend.”

  “Which friend?” She frowned. “Do you mean Gayle Alden? To see what else she can tell us?”

  “Yes, well, we will need to see her. But later.”

  “Then?”

  “Your friend who took Barbara on a ghost tour last night, not long before she ended up dead. Brent Corbin.”

  “You can’t be serious, Rocky. Brent Corbin? He’d just turned fourteen, I think, when your friend Melissa was killed. And he’s—he’s a nerd!” Devin said.

  Rocky glanced at her. They were speaking as they walked. “Nerds don’t kill?”

  She shook her head. “You don’t know Brent.”

  He stared straight ahead and let out a long breath. “Devin—he followed you into the woods the other day.”

  “Because he’d brought me the map I was looking for and saw me go into the woods.
”

  “Devin, I’m not going to see Brent to arrest him, but I need to talk to him. He was one of the last people to see Barbara Benton alive.”

  “What about people at the bar where she was drinking before she disappeared? It would make more sense to ask the bartender if she really did come back or if he saw anyone paying special attention to her.”

  “Brent was at the bar, too.”

  “What?”

  “Her friend Juliet saw him there drinking a beer at the bar before they left. And no one remembers seeing her come back,” Rocky said quietly.

  “So she told them she was going back—and then she just disappeared?” Devin demanded.

  “Yes.”

  They’d reached Brent’s shop—Which Witch Is Which.

  Brent was behind the counter, selling tickets for his eight o’clock tour.

  “Hey!” he said, looking up. He was smiling, but his smile quickly disappeared when he saw their faces.

  “Oh, God, sorry. I heard you found another victim. I’m so sorry,” Brent said earnestly. “It’s weird, though. It hasn’t affected business. Don’t see many young women walking around alone, but the streets are still busy enough. I just filled my tour—I’m going to have to send people over to my competition tonight.”

  “That’s why we’re here, Brent,” Devin told him.

  “You want to take another tour?” he asked her, frowning.

  “No, we’re here because of your tour last night,” she said.

  “Why?” Brent asked, his confusion apparently genuine.

  “Haven’t you heard? They have an ID,” Rocky said, watching Brent’s face.

  Brent still looked baffled. “I’ve been working all day.”

  “Barbara Benton, the victim, was on your tour last night,” Rocky said, his eyes narrowed on Brent.

  Brent gasped. His surprise seemed real. “Oh, no,” he murmured. He looked at Rocky. “Who...which...?”

  “She was one of three women who came together—they were from Ohio,” Rocky said.

  Brent’s hands, still holding money from his last transaction, began to shake. “Which one?”