Bones of a Witch (14 page)

We arrived at Willow Junction with sirens
wailing and lights flashing. Of course we were too late. The train
was gone, and so was Lilith—the problem now was where.

“Should have had him hold up just short of the
station,” I said, I thought to myself.

Tony looked at me funny. “What do you
mean?”

“I looked up at him. “What?”

“I said, what do you mean, hold up?”

“The train, we should have had the engineer of
the southbound radio the northbound and tell him to hold up for
us.”

“Are you kidding?” Ooh, if looks could
kill.

I shrank back sheepishly and swallowed hard.
“Sure, it seems obvious now, but it’s not like I thought of it
before and didn’t say anything.”

He looked at Carlos, who simply shrugged his
ignorance away. “Is this what you’re teaching the kid,
Carlos?”

“Me? I’m not teaching him nuthin`. But hey,
better he thinks of it now than not at all.”

“What?”

“Sure.”

“How the hell is that better?”

“So we’ll know next time.”

“No, no next time, Carlos. There is never going
to be a next time, because if we ever—”

“Stop.” I held my hands up in surrender. “I’m
sorry I said anything. You know everything happened so fast. You
jumped from the train and took off down the tracks, and we started
after you and—”

“Fuckit,” said Tony. “It’s fucked. You fucked
up, Spinelli. F`get it. It’s done. Look, let’s just focus on what
we need to do now. Do either of you have any ideas?”

I hate when he asks us that, because usually if
he doesn’t have any ideas, then we sure don’t either. So we stood
on the platform scratching our heads and feeling like complete
buffoons for letting Putnam get the better of us; Tony, especially.
I could see it in his eyes: the pain, the hurt; and if he weren’t
so damn pissed at me, the embarrassment, too. He paced the yellow
line along the edge of the platform, back and forth, mumbling to
himself and occasionally looking down the tracks as if the train
might return at any moment with Lilith on board. Carlos and I
waited, as we’ve done so many times before for Tony to find his
zone and work it out the best he could. But soon the wheels in his
head began turning, and it wasn’t long before he stopped and said,
“Besides staying onboard the train for the turn-a-round back to
Boston, where else could she have gone?”

“East,” I said, “to Ipswich.”

“West,” said Carlos, “to Lowell.”

“Yes, but what’s there for Putnam and Lilith?
What’s in Boston, Ipswich or Lowell?”

We both shook our heads. “Nothing?”

“That’s right.” He turned his gaze to the exit.
“There’s nothing there for them. The train station was just a ruse.
But out there,” he pointed to the street, “out there we have
Salem.”

“Yes.” I clapped my hands and rubbed them
together briskly. “Of course. Putnam is a witch hunter. If he
wanted to kill Lilith he could have killed her on the train. But if
he wanted to put her on trial he would want to take her
to—”

“Salem,” Carlos finished.

“Exactly,” said Tony. “Dominic, do you get the
GPS internet on your i-pod?”

That made me laugh, though I assure you Tony
saw nothing funny about it. “Well, Tony, first of all the i-pod
doesn’t come with GPS. You’re thinking of the i-phone. Secondly,
mine is not an i-anything; it’s a Merc-Vector 280.”

“What’s the difference?”

“The difference? Only about eight hundred
dollars; that and the fact that mine is built with the world’s
first perpetual capacitor regeneration modular based on
Merc-Vector’s mercury filled dual resonance flux compression
magneto.”

Tony looked at Carlos and gave him a who
gives-a-shit sort of shrug, to which Carlos promptly returned. “So
what are you saying, it doesn’t have the internet GPS
thing?”

“Hell yes, it has GPS. How’s fifteen split-load
megabytes a second at 128 MHz sound to you?”

“Sounds like hen squabble. But if it gets us to
Salem and lets you do some research on the Salem witch-hunts along
the way, then I’m happy. After all that’s happened, I think it’s
time we got a better understanding on just what we’re up
against.”

“Then let’s do it.”

“Carlos, is the cruiser gassed up?”

“Topped it off this morning.”

“Okay, what are we waiting for? Let’s go to
Salem.”

We hopped in the car and headed
out of town: Carlos driving, Tony riding shotgun and me with my
feet kicked up in the back, browsing the web for everything I could
find using the keywords:
Salem,
witchcraft
and
pizza
. Of course we had to eat on
the way; otherwise we never would have heard the end of it from
Carlos.

Lilith Adams:

I awoke, I don’t know, sometime later, still
in the back of the limo, only now my hands were bound behind my
back. Night had settled in, just barely. I could see a slither of
violet off in the western sky. The car was in motion, and though I
was not alone I assumed that Putnam was driving, because the man
sitting across from me on the leathered bench seat was not the
dubious witch hunter, but the man from the train, the gentleman I
assumed was as harmless as the newspaper he had retreated to when
last our eyes met. He waited for me to shake the weariness from my
head before speaking, but when he did, I recognized his voice right
away. His was the voice I heard over the phone on the platform at
Jefferson station. The voice of the devil, I supposed, if such a
creature existed.

“Ms. Adams, you’re awake,” he said. “Splendid.
I was afraid we would have to carry you in when we got where we’re
going.”

“And where’s that?”

“You’ll see.”

“No. I think I’ve seen enough already. If you
don’t mind, I’ll just….” I tried to pull free from the ropes that
bound my hands, but found I couldn’t. So I tried a little magic,
but for some strange reason my witchcraft would no longer work. I
looked to the old man. He smiled crookedly. Clearly, he had
anticipated my moves and squelched my ability to react
imaginatively.

“Something wrong?” he said, and a dull laugh
rolled up from his belly and then faded pathetically on his
lips.

I looked into his eyes, trying but unable to
penetrate his thoughts. I sensed the evil lurking within him, but
something wicked kept his secrets untold. “Who are you?” I
asked.

He elbowed his armrest and braced himself fully
upright in his seat. “Name’s Hilton: Emanuel J., pastor of Our Lady
of Grace Church.” Then, as if to validate his claim, he held up the
eight-inch golden crucifix from around his neck. “At your service,
ma'am.”

I shook my head with certainty. “No, you’re no
pastor. You’re a witch.”

“Me? Oh-ho, that’s rich. Look who’s calling the
kettle black. May I remind you that you’re the one who claimed the
bones of a witch as your kin? You even told Deputy Mayor Goodman
about the gate key. Who else might know about that, but for another
witch?”

“What would you know about a gate
key?”

He curled his lip and strained to smile.
“Plenty.” He pulled the gate key medallion from his inside coat
pocket and held it before me. “See?”

I felt my anger boiling to the surface, but I
tried hard to keep him from enjoying it. “That’s mine,” I said,
“you thieving bastard. How the hell did you get it?”

“Isn’t that just like a witch? Sooner or later
your greed betrays you all. Tell the truth. Isn’t that why you told
Goodman that Ursula Bishop was a distant relative of yours, so that
you could get your hands on the gate key?”

“No.”

“Tell me about the key. What powers does it
hold for you?”

“None, you idiot. It’s just a medallion. Who
gave it to you? Goodman? Is he an Ingersoll’s Witness,
too?”

“Would you kill him if he were?”

“Maybe, but I’m definitely going to kill
you.”

That made him laugh. “Try as you might,” he
said. “Let me see you.”

I struggled to whip up something caustic and
painful for the old wolf, certain that I could stop his heart or
boil his brain or at least give him a bad case of indigestion. But
nothing in my bag of tricks would work on him. I finally ask, “What
have you done to me?”

He reached behind his back and pulled out a
stun gun and squeezed the trigger as he held it up, causing a riot
of sparks to flicker in nervous fits between two wishbone
electrodes. “We needed something to incapacitate you while we tied
you up,” he said. “I trust you don’t find it too uncomfortable now,
do you?”

“That’s not what I mean and you know
it.”

“Oh, you mean your powers, yes.” He pointed the
gun at a small gem dangling from a gold chain around my neck. “Of
course, we had to take certain precautions there, as well, you
understand. So, I took the liberty to bestow upon you a witch’s
stone—my gift to you. I believe you’ll find that your powers are
completely ineffective as long as you’re wearing it.”

“You must be mad if you think you can get away
with this. There’s not a witch’s stone on earth that can stop me
from kicking your ass the minute we step out of this
car.”

“No, Ms. Adams, your days of ass-kicking are
over now. The men of Ingersoll’s Witness will see to
that.”

“Oh, but you’re wrong. Just so long as I still
have my legs I can kick the shit out of your sorry old ass.” I
rocked back in my seat and stretched my legs across the limo to
give old Hilty a good swift kick in the groin. But he countered my
attack with a righteous zap from his stun gun, knocking me flat on
the limo floor and leaving me in a semi-unconscious state for the
duration of the ride.

Tony Marcella:

Dominic had done a fair job of web surfing to
find out what he could about the witch hunts of 1692. He filled us
in on the highlights as we ate pizza in the car on the road to
Salem.

“In a nutshell,” he started, though with
Dominic nothing is ever in a nutshell, “John Putnam, whose name
came up earlier in connection with our suspect, James T. Putnam,
was an influential elder in Salem village. In 1689 he hired Samuel
Parris for the job of village minister. Parris—”

“Wait a minute,” said Carlos. “Samuel
Parris?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that supposed to be funny?”

“Why?”

“Could be a coincidence,” I said.

“What’s a coincidence?”

“Our pastor fellow last night said his name was
Emanuel Hilton.”

“So?”

“So…Emanuel/Samuel, Hilton/Parris?”

“Parris Hilton?”

“Go on,” I said.

“Oh, yeah, that is funny. Anyway, this Parris
fellow accepted the job and later that year moved to Salem with his
wife, Elizabeth, his daughter Betty, a niece Abigail and a slave
woman named Tituba.”

“You’re shitting.”

“No, that’s what it says, Tituba.”

I shook my head. “Not that. You said
Abigail.”

“Yes, that’s right. It was Abigail and her
cousin Betty, along with Tituba and Putnam’s girl, Ann who first
made accusations of witchcraft against some of the village women.
And they got good at it, too. It says here that most of the accused
were put on trial, found guilty and hanged up on Gallows
Hill.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Believe what?”

“Abigail and Ann: that’s the names of the girls
from my apartment building.”

“No,” said Carlos, and Dominic echoed the
sentiments. “This is getting creepier by the minute.”

Dominic said, “Tony, let me ask you. You’ve
been living in that apartment for over a year now. Have you ever
seen those two girls around there before?”

“No.”

“You notice anyone new moving in
lately?”

“You know, come to think of it, I
haven’t.”

“I don’t like the sound of this,” Carlos
mumbled. “Too many coincidences.”

I turned in my seat to face Dominic. “Where did
you say they hanged those women?”

“Gallows Hill.”

“Can you get us directions there?”

He held his Merc-Vector 280 up for me to see.
“Already got the satellite image locked in. Just give me another
sec to program it into the GPS.”

“Carlos,” I said, “pick up some steam. Run the
siren and lights if you have to. I don’t think we have a moment to
waste.”

Lilith Adams:

The limo pulled up next to a barn behind a
softball field in a residential part of town. I had been unable to
see out the windows from the floor of the limo, but I knew right
away we were in Salem. I had been there a hundred times in the
course of my long life, and though I’ve never been on that street
or in that particular neighborhood before, I recognized the subtle
nuances of the roads and buildings. But more than that I recognized
the smell—not that it’s bad or anything. It isn’t. But all cities
and towns have their own unique smells, their historic essence
captured in the hills and valleys, sequestered by the trees and
released in subtle bouquets like spirits, inconspicuous, but to the
uninhibited.