THE WITCH'S LADDER (Detective Marcella Witch's Series)

by Dana Donovan

  I imagined that the beads Carlos found came from the same strand Leona held in her hand. They were not rosary beads at all, but the beads of a witch’s ladder, as I remembered Lilith saying that a strand of forty beads, so designed by a witch, could serve as a witch’s ladder equal in power to that of forty knots on a rope. Somehow, a witch’s ladder had played an important role in all of the murders, beginning with Travis’ and including Doctor Lieberman’s. Leona had come to tell me that the beads, not the towels, were the key to the mystery.

  But had she come too late? The intense heat and blinding smoke forced me back down. I struggled to breathe the last few morsels of clean air left hovering only inches off the floor. Many thoughts ran through my mind, the suspects, the motives, the witch’s ladders....

  The witch’s ladder!

  I looted my pockets and came across my last and best hope for salvation. Though my eyes were welded shut by the smoke, I knew I had untied enough knots under the table to undo one or two more without looking again.

  As it happened, the first knot surrendered quickly, but time for tremors and warning gusts had long expired. I needed results immediately. I untied a second knot and then another until I felt the earth began to shake. I didn’t know what to expect, a tornado, an earthquake or tidal wave. Any one or all I would have gladly welcomed. I forced my eyes open in time to see Leona disappear into the swirling black smoke. The trembling structure rocked beyond all reasonable tolerances. Hot tar and bits of wood rained down on me in a hail of burning ash. I pulled my coat up over my head, sprang to my feet and jumped into the bait box. The tension springs made sure the lid came down hard and stayed there, and for that, I was grateful.

  Seconds later, an explosion ripped through the fish house, annihilating the tiny structure and sending thousands of fragmented bits into obliteration.

  Nineteen

  Nightfall found Carlos Rodriguez at the police station frantically working the phones. No one had seen me since I left that afternoon, giving him sufficient cause to worry. First responders found my car at Suffolk’s Walk shortly after the explosion on Pier Four. The keys were in the ignition, the windows were down and a half-eaten hamburger sat on the front seat in a to-go box next to a watered down soft drink. Although they hadn’t recovered my body, all indications pointed to a sad and obvious conclusion. I was dead.

  Carlos hung up the phone following a call from the New Castle Fire and Rescue Squadron. They called off the search for me due to nightfall, but promised to resume in the morning. That didn’t sit well with Carlos. He knew that in the morning it would be too late. In the morning, the gulls would have picked at my bloated corpse like the ocean vultures they were and left my face an unrecognizable mess.

  He crossed the room, sat down at my desk and dropped his head upon it. I walked up to him and said, “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be out looking for your best friend?”

  He rocked his forehead along the blotter. “Give it up, pal. I’ve had a bad day.”

  “You had a bad day? Ha!” I nudged him on the shoulder. “You should try getting blown up, why don’t you.”

  “What?” He raised his head, his red eyes blinking through tears. “Tony?”

  “You were expecting maybe a ghost?”

  “Yes!” he said, laughing. “Actually, I was.” He bounced out of the chair and sprinted around the desk. “I thought you were dead.” He grabbed me and pulled me in close, wrapping me up in a bear hug so tightly he almost squeezed the life right out of me—again.

  “Carlos, please, if you don’t mind.”

  “I’m sorry, Tony, man, I’m just so happy to see you.”

  I smiled, knowing that I had looked death in the face and cheated it. I sidestepped Carlos, eased myself around the desk and dropped into my chair. “Carlos, my friend, I thought I was dead, too.”

  “So what the hell happened? I told you I should have gone with you. Did you find the bag with the towels? Who blew up the pier? What did you—”

  “Whoa, whoa. Slow down. Come on. Please, one question at a time.”

  By then, others had gathered around to welcome me back and to share their relief. There were few in the group who had not already heard my wild stories concerning the case, and all were eager to hear the latest spin on that morning’s episode.

  “I don’t know if you’re going to believe this,” I began, “but after Jean lured me to the fish house, somebody shut and locked the door on me. Before I knew it, the whole damn place went up in a ball of fire.”

  Carlos pushed the telephone aside and set his butt up on the corner of my desk. “You were inside it?”

  “I was, and it was awful. The smoke grew black and thick,” I said, squinting to simulate the trouble I had seeing. “It filled the room with sickening fumes. I knew my time had come. Then I saw something move in the corner of the shack. I looked up and saw somebody standing there.”

  “My God, who was it, Tony? Who?”

  “Leona Diaz. Sure as I’m sitting here now, she stood there. At first I thought I was crazy, but then I realized she wasn’t really there at all. She was astral-projecting.”

  “Astral what?”

  “Bilocating.”

  “No kidding? You saw her bilocating?”

  “Yes,” I answered, though I found it amusing how Carlos accepted without question such a phenomenon. The others were more skeptical, however. “She tried to tell me something,” I said, and I went on to explain about the beads. “I believe they are the key to this case. Although the bag with the towels is relevant, it was only a decoy to lure me to the fish house. The whole thing was a setup and I’m sorry to say, Jean Bradford is into this thing up to her neck.”

  “That’s all fine,” said Carlos, “but tell us how you got out of the fish house alive.”

  I surveyed the expressions on the faces of my fellow officers. They already only believed half my story. Witch’s ladders, bilocating—of course it would all sound ridiculous to nonbelievers. I imagined that if Carlos had not experienced the bizarre episodes of paranormal and supernatural for himself, then I would likely be telling the rest of the story to an empty office. At the risk of branding myself a total lunatic in front of the entire department, I went on to explain my adventure.

  “Okay,” I said, my voice falling into a gravelly hush. “I’ll tell you how I escaped. After Leona showed me the witch’s ladder, it dawned on me to try and use the one I had in my coat pocket. I didn’t know what to expect, but I knew anything would be better than dying in that fiery hellhole. After I untied a couple of the knots, I hopped into a bait box and closed the lid. The next thing I knew, a terrible explosion blasted me through the floorboards and into the icy waters.”

  With that, all but one of the officers huddled around the desk turned and walked away, leaving only Carlos to endure the story’s conclusion. Undaunted by the other’s cynicism, he pressed me to finish.

  “At that point, I think the explosion knocked me unconscious. When I awoke, I had this sensation of floating on a cloud. I really thought I was dead. My ears were ringing and there were all these tiny lights beckoning me from the darkness. I remember thinking, is this a test? Which light do I go to? What if I pick the wrong one, will I end up in hell? I didn’t think death was supposed to make you choose like that. I was cold, wet and achy. I remember saying to myself, ‘Surely this can’t be the road to heaven.’ Then I realized that those tiny beacons of light were the holes in the lid on the bait-box. I was outside. The lights were beams of sunlight streaming in.”

  “You were still in the bait-box?”

  “Yes, Carlos, of course. And to the best of my knowledge, I was floating around in the bay somewhere.”

  Carlos smiled, but skeptically. “That’s incredible. How did it happen? The explosion I mean, was it the witch’s ladder?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe, or maybe it was the propane tank on the side of the building. Either way it got me out of one predicament and into another.”

  “Ho
w so?”

  “Well, the blast freed me from the burning building all right, but then I found myself hopelessly imprisoned inside the bait-box. The force of the explosion jammed the latching mechanism on the lid. It was sealed shut. I tried pushing on the lid, but as hard as I tried, I couldn’t budge it.”

  “Holy cow, Tony. You could have been carried out to sea in that thing.”

  “Could have? Carlos, I was. I drifted inside that box for hours. It carried me so far out into the Atlantic I could hear the bells of Nova Scotia. If that wasn’t bad enough, the waves breaking over the top of the lid were starting to fill the box with seawater. I tell you, Carlos, I thought I was a gonner.”

  “Gees, Tony, how did you get out?”

  “Sheer luck, Pal. That’s all it was. Sheer, dumb luck. The currents were flowing just right, or maybe it was the wind. Hell, maybe it was the witch’s ladder. I don’t know. Just when I had all but given up hope, along came a fishing trawler heading back to shore with a full haul. Lucky for me they had a little room for one more catch. They saved my life.”

  Carlos shook his head. He had heard so many of my stories in the past, some more far-fetched than others, but this one beat all. “I don’t know, Tony,” he said. “I think maybe you’re pulling my leg this time. Do you expect me to believe an explosion blasted you and the box through the floor of the fish house and that you weren’t killed?”

  “Do I look dead to you?” I quipped. Then, having glanced down at my ragged condition, added, “Don’t answer that. Listen, I know I sometimes have a propensity for exaggerating. But this time every word I told you is true.”

  “Really?”

  “I swear.”

  “Okay, if you say so.”

  “Wait. You want to hear the best part?”

  “There’s more?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “What?”

  “Her name was Tony’s Dream.”

  “Whose name?”

  “The trawler that picked me up.”

  Carlos shook his head and turned away. “In your dreams,” he said under his breath. A few steps in, he turned back and added, “Well?”

  I shrugged. “Well what?”

  “Did you find the bloody towels?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Uh-huh. I knew it. You owe me lunch.”

  “I owe you what?”

  “Lunch. We had a bet. Remember? If you found the bag and there were no bloody towels inside, then you would buy me lunch for a week.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so, my little Cuban hustler. The deal was that you had to find the bag, not me. Besides, I think the beaded witch’s ladder is the thing we need to find now.”

  “How’s that?”

  I leaned back in my chair, propped my muddy boots up on the desk and laced my fingers across my chest. “I don’t know for sure, but there has got to be a link. Why else would Leona come to me with it?”

  “Maybe she wanted you to have it as evidence.”

  “Evidence? What would she be doing with it? How would she have a witch’s ladder in her possession if it were used by the killer?”

  “Maybe she is the killer.”

  “No. The killer’s holding Leona hostage. That’s how she can get her hands on it and take it with her when she bilocates. As far as leaving it, she can’t, at least not in the physical world. She can only show it to us as long as she can get her hands on it.”

  “You know, Tony, I’m not sure if this helps, but while you were out taking a pleasure cruise today, I looked something up on the Internet for you.”

  I reluctantly let the remark go unchallenged. “Does it have anything to do with Leona?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me. It’s about that phrase you said Valerie kept repeating.”

  “Phrase?”

  “Attraction of blood?”

  “Yes, of course. What did you find out?”

  “It turns out that attraction of blood has been around for centuries, millenniums even. As far back as the Stone Age, observations held that when a man lost enough blood, say from a battle or an animal attack, he died. It’s a fundamental rule of survival, no blood—no life. That lead to the belief that a man’s blood is his life, and when it all leaks out he is no more a man. These beliefs eventually evolved to include the notion that a man’s blood not only contained his life, but also his character, his qualities and abilities. It soon became accepted that the very essence of a man resided in his blood, and if one were to touch or consume another man’s blood, then that person might acquire some or all of the qualities and characteristics of that person.”

  Carlos continued explaining the history of the phenomenon, but somewhere in the mix my mind began to wander. I didn’t need to hear more to understand the importance of what he was saying. It all made perfect sense at last. Before then, I had not ruled out pagan ritual sacrifices as a motive. After hearing his explanation, however, and knowing that the liver purifies the blood, I understood the connection. If someone wanted to consume the richest, purest blood of an individual, then the liver would be the way to go. It seemed reasonable to assume that someone was consuming the blood of only workshop members for their abilities in the paranormal. Certainly those were qualities worthy of the attraction. Attraction of blood was not merely the key to finding the motive. It was the motive.

  “Carlos, stop. That’s it. You’re a genius. That’s the one thing this case has been missing, a motive.”

  “What, attraction of blood? All it means is that someone is out there sucking down other people’s blood.”

  “Not exactly, Carlos. To be precise, someone is out there cutting up people’s livers to eat them.”

  “Whoa. You think?”

  “Of course.”

  “Someone is eating the livers because he thinks it will make him psychic?”

  “Sure, but since I suspect the killer is someone in the workshop, then perhaps the expectation is that he or she will become more psychic.”

  “Doctor Lieberman wasn’t psychic.”

  “I know, and you’re going to ask me why they took his liver. Aren’t you?”

  “Well?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m sure of one thing. Attraction of blood is definitely the motive. The question now is whose motive? Frankly, I suspect Lilith Adams. She seems brazen enough.”

  Carlos took a seat at the desk opposite me and shook his head in doubt. “Tony. I never met Lilith Adams, but from what you’ve described these past several months, I just don’t see it.”

  “Why not? She’s a witch, you know. She made the witch’s ladders.”

  “That’s my point. She’s too smart. Why would she remain so high profile, knowing that she’s on the top of your list of suspects? Besides, she gave you one of those witch’s ladders. Why would she do that if she didn’t want to help you?”

  “Maybe she didn’t think I would use it.”

  “Maybe she did. And maybe someone else got a hold of one of her ladders and is using it to try to kill you.”

  “Jean Bradford?”

  “She did lure you to the fish house.”

  “If that’s the case, she most definitely had help.”

  “Want to know what I think?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Michael Dietrich and Jean Bradford are in this together. I think they tried to kill you.”

  “I think you’re probably right, Carlos, but I still want to know who the Stalker is, because he or she will be the most dangerous to approach.”

  “Perhaps not.”

  “Why?”

  “Remember, everyone thinks you’re dead. That should buy you time to formulate a plan.”

  “You’re right about that.”

  “So what’s our next move?”

  I glanced down at my ragged wet clothes still stinking like day-old fish. “I don’t know about you, but my next move is to go home and take a long hot shower.”

  The grimace on Carlos’ face conveyed his concurrence. />
  Twenty

  The following morning, I met up with Carlos at the Percolator. I no sooner sat down when he launched into his theory about the Surgeon Stalker.

  “It’s Jean Bradford,” he said excitedly. “I’m telling you. I thought about it all last night. It makes sense.”

  “What, that Jean somehow managed to overpower no less than five bigger, stronger men and kill them without receiving a single scratch? Or that she, with her one hundred and thirty-pound frame, managed to pull the considerably heavier Barbara Richardson over the front seat of her car while twisting her head completely around? No. I don’t think so. I don’t see it.”

  “No, Tony, you don’t understand. It wasn’t Jean.”

  “You just said—”

  “I know, but what I’m saying is that it’s Jean, but it isn’t. You see?”

  I hunched forward, picked my coffee up with cupped hands and sipped it. “No, I don’t see. Maybe instead of staying up all night you should have gotten some sleep. Then your head wouldn’t be in a fog this morning.”

  “Tony, listen to me. I got to thinking about what you said about the witch’s ladder. It does have incredible powers, we both agree. Maybe Jean learned to control those powers to allow herself to transform into a monster. I don’t mean like Godzilla or anything, but someone or something large enough to overpower somebody like Travis or Chris. It’s possible, don’t you think?”

  I leaned back and dabbed the glazed sugar specs from the corners of my mouth. “A monster?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go on. I’m listening.”

  “Okay. Look. Who in the group would benefit from this supposed law of contagion more than the only person with no special powers or abilities to begin with?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Nobody, that’s who. Nobody but Jean could possibly reap greater results, because she started with nothing.”