Bones of a Witch (24 page)

What happened next is partly conjecture based
on what we felt, saw and heard, but I think it’s how things went
down. Putnam dropped the van into drive after backing up some and
then hit the gas. Ursula and I tumbled backwards through the van
and ended up packed into a corner in a twisted knot. Spinelli,
having jumped out of the way to keep from getting run over, began
firing his .38 at the van, with one round hitting the windshield
and several more punching holes in the canvas-thin wall just behind
the driver’s door. Putnam returned fire with his .45, carving out a
new porthole window in the church above Dominic’s head. I tried to
sit up then, but the van again lurched as he hit the gas, crossing
the lot in a crabwalk on spinning tires and plowing into the back
of my car, sending both of us forward into the passenger
compartment beyond the curtain. From there I could see Spinelli. He
had emptied his revolver and was reaching for his backup tucked in
his ankle holster. Now on a better angle, Putnam took aim at
Dominic and squeezed off a round, but not before I managed to nudge
his arm at the last second to force his shot wide. Putnam tried
again to take aim and so I threw myself on him, pinning his gun
hand between me and the steering wheel and momentarily disarming
him.

“Dominic, GET DOWN!” I yelled; my head now out
the window in the thick of gun smoke.

But Putnam was not finished. He grabbed my hair
by the fistful and yanked me off him. Then he shoved me aside with
an elbow to the gut, and squeezed off a second round. That one
exploded in the dirt by Dominic’s foot. A third and a forth blast
sent Dominic into a spill, rolling across the lot for cover behind
a parked car. Putnam’s last two shots peeled back the sheet metal
on the trunk lid above Dominic’s head like two curly fries. At that
point I expected Dominic to return fire with his back-up, having
counted Putnam’s shots and knowing he was out of rounds. But to my
surprise, the bullets this time came from behind us in quick
succession, blasting four new holes in the back doors and popping
out both glass windows.

That’s when I heard Tony holler at Carlos to
stop firing, citing Ursula’s safety and mine. Putnam, not missing
the opportunity, dropped the van into reverse and floored it. The
van hesitated for only a second as the tires and loose gravel
quarreled over traction. But the van found its grip, driving Tony
and Carols back, as it rocketed on by them. Then, as a last measure
of defiance, Putnam stopped the van at the edge of the lot; pulled
a shotgun out from behind his seat, took aim out the window and
flattened the rear tire on Carlos’ car. Minutes later Ursula and I
found ourselves on the floor of the van, sailing down route 107
with one of Salem’s most notorious witch hunters, our butts
bruised, our egos deflated and our hopes for Tony and the boys
saving us fading fast.

Tony Marcella:

Jesus, I don’t know where to start. My head
was in a damn tailspin about then. Something told me when Lilith
and I got back from Salem the night before that we had not heard
the last of Lemas Winterhutch or James Putnam, or whatever the hell
his name is. Lilith told me she had killed him up on Gallows Hill,
but I was suspicious after we got there and found the body had
disappeared.

So there I was the next morning, sitting at the
kitchen table, drinking coffee, reading the paper and wondering
what the hell was keeping Spinelli. The phone rang. It was Carlos
telling me that Spinelli had followed Lilith from the apartment to
some remote field in the outskirts of town. And there—though I was
sure that Carlos had gotten the story wrong at this point—there
Lilith spun her magic and brought Ursula Bishop back from the dead.
I mean, I’ve seen Lilith do some amazing shit before, but
reanimating a pile of old bones? I could hardly believe
it.

You know, if there’s one thing I can say about
Carlos it’s that he knows me well and hardly needs to ask me what I
want to do or when I need to do it. That’s more than I can say
about Spinelli. Sometimes I think the kid doesn’t look before he
leaps. Why he didn’t call me when he put the tail on Lilith in the
first place, I’ll never know. Had he done so, I doubt we would have
had to drive to Salem, which means that what happened next might
have never happened at all. But it did.

Carlos was waiting out front for me by the time
I grabbed my jacket and ran out to the curb. I hopped into the
passenger seat and started in right away with the questions. He put
up with it for all of two seconds before handing me his
phone.

“What?” I asked, looking at it
oddly.

“It’s ringing,” he said. “Say
hello.”

I put the phone to my ear and heard Spinelli
answer with, “Hey, Carlos. `Sup? Djew call Tony yet? Bet he’s
pissed, huh?”

Till then I didn’t realize just how pissed I
was. “You’re damn right I am,” I said. “What the hell’s going on
Spinelli?”

“Tony? I…I….”

“Forget it. Listen, where are you
now?”

“I’m on Highland Ave., just outside
Salem.”

“You still have them in sight?”

“Yes, I have…uh-oh.”

“Uh-oh, what uh-oh?”

“Shit.”

“Dominic, tell me what’s going on.”

“I just ran out gas. I’m pulling over to the
side of the road.”

“What? Oh, great.”

“I’m sorry, Tony.”

“Forget it. Stay there. We’ll get
you.”

I guess that was the straw that broke the
camel’s back. I couldn’t believe he had lost the girls. I was so
pissed at him that I couldn’t even talk to him after we picked him
up on the side of the road. I felt bad for Carlos because of it.
Without meaning to, I had put him right in the middle of mine and
Spinelli’s petty differences. But he’s all right like that.
Sometimes I really underestimate his depth of human understanding.
After all these years I am only now just beginning to appreciate
it.

After we arrived in Salem, I figured the only
place Lilith could have gone was to the church, and sure enough, as
we pulled into the gravel lot we spotted her car parked by an old
van.

“There” I said, pointing out the windshield.
“Pull up alongside that van.” We hopped out and crowded around
Lilith’s car for a closer look. “That’s hers all right. They must
still be inside.”

Carlos cast his gaze out over the parking lot.
Noticing how sparse it looked he commented, “Let’s hope we’re not
too late.”

I turned to Spinelli and pitched a glance back
over my shoulder towards the front of the church. “Look, Carlos and
I will go this way. You take the back. The first one of us to see
either of them needs to holler out. I want whoever the girls are
after to know that we’re here, too. You got it?”

“
Got it,” they said, and we split
off to make our way into the church. As Carlos had surmised, Mass
was over, and most definitely so for the old man we found up front
by the altar. In our long careers, Carlos and I had seen some nasty
things, but none nastier than this poor old bastard, who had been
beaten to a bloody pulp. I looked at Carlos, and he at
me.

“This was no ordinary whoop-ass,” he
said.

I nodded. “Looks more like a lynching. It’s
crazy how they just left him here.” I took a look around the church
and felt uneasiness about its vacancy, almost as if someone were
watching us. “Wonder where Lilith is?”

Carlos shook his head and started to offer his
opinion on the matter. But the words had yet parted his lips when
gunfire erupted out in the parking lot, voiding any need for
further guessing. “That’s Dominic,” he said, instinctively reaching
for his weapon. We started in a run toward the front doors, and
before reaching them, heard another series of shots; this time from
a second shooter.

“That’s a .45,” I said, now with my own weapon
drawn and cradled in a classic two-fisted grip. “Does Dominic have
a .45?”

We held up at the doors, flanking each side for
a second to make sure we were not stepping into an ambush. “Just
his .38`s,” Carlos answered, “his primary and a
snub-nose.”

I gave him a nod when I saw that the front of
the building was clear. “`Kay-then, let’s go.”

We tore off around the corner in time to see
someone (I later learned was Putnam) taking shots from a van at
Spinelli, who had hunkered down behind a parked car. Immediately,
Carlos crouched into a shooter’s stance and pounded out five or six
shots at the back of the van, taking out its back windows and
drilling several holes into the back doors. At that instant I
realized Lilith and Ursula were probably inside. I hollered for
Carlos to hold his fire and commanded Spinelli to do the
same.

I don’t know, in hind sight maybe that was a
mistake. I know that Carlos and Spinelli believed it was. I mean,
it gave Putnam the opportunity to pull the van away. In fact he
nearly ran us down with it. Then, to add insult to injury, he took
out a shotgun and flattened one of our tires so that we couldn’t go
after him. Man, I don’t mind telling you that I felt mighty stupid
at that point. Naturally, I couldn’t let Carlos or Spinelli know
it. So, instead I masked my chagrin with anger, feeling somewhat
justified for getting on Spinelli’s case, claiming he should have
taken Putnam out with a clear shot when he had the
chance.

“It wasn’t actually a clear shot,” he
protested. “Everything happened so fast.”

“Yeah, like the train at Jefferson Station? I
pushed past him and Carlos on my way to find a seat beneath a
sprawling oak at the edge of the lot. “And stop wasting our time,”
I added. “Get that friggin` tire fixed.”

It took only a minute to cross the parking lot
and find a shady spot in the grass below the branches of that tree,
but already Carlos had given Spinelli his pep talk; set him to work
on the flat tire, and then headed out to see me. I watched him
cross the lot with this serious-Joe look on his face; even smiled
up at him politely when he clicked his heels together upon reaching
me. But I didn’t say a word to him, not even after he sat down
beside me and nudged his shoulder to mine. But if he knew how much
that meant to me he would have known that he really didn’t need to
say anything at all. Truth was; he probably would have been more
successful in getting me to lighten up had he just sat there and
let me stew in self-guilt. Eventually I would have come around. But
Carlos doesn’t always see the forest for the trees, and I guess he
thought I needed a reality check. So instead of easing in with
something incidental, he dumped the mother-load of criticism on me,
setting my mood from aggravated to terminally pissed for the next
six hours.

“Tony,” he started, “that was harsh. You know
it wasn’t Dominic’s fault that Putnam got away.”

“Hmm.”

“And you know what it’s like in a shootout. You
said yourself it’s the most scared you’ve ever been in all your
years on the force.”

“Carlos, Lilith was in that van. You saw it:
holes all over the place. The kid’s shots were wild. All he had to
do was hit Putnam once. It’s like he was firing with his eyes
closed. What if he hit her?”

“Well, what did you expect him do, stand there
and take fire without returning it?”

“I expected him not to put civilians in his
crossfire. And you, blasting away like that at the back of the van.
You’re no better.”

“Tony, he was shooting at a fellow
officer.”

“Was shooting, you’re right, but he was out of
shots. Didn’t you count them?”

“He could have had a semi-auto.”

“He didn’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do, Carlos. I know it because I can hear the
difference, and so can you.”

“All right, maybe you’re right, but that
doesn’t change anything. Dominic reacted exactly the way he was
trained to react. You just can’t stand that Putnam slipped from our
fingers and you want to take it out on Dominic. If fact, you’ve
been on his case ever since the boardwalk incident. If you ask me
you should be thanking God he’s not dead right now.”

“I’ll thank God if Lilith isn’t dead right
now.”

“Tony, we’ll get her back. I
promise.”

It’s funny, but that’s exactly what I would
have said to him if the shoe were on the other foot. The truth was
that I knew we would get her back; but dead or alive, that was
another matter.

I turned my gaze out past the church yard,
toward the nearly barren slope they called Gallows Hill. It seemed
unlikely that the lone tree there was the same one used by the
hysteria-driven villagers of seventeenth-century Salem, but I could
imagine it was. Tall as a barn and half as wide, its limbs grew
heaviest on the eastern side, crowded lopsided in perverted
proportion, as if purposely giving room to the single alpha branch
on the west. That limb unfolded from the trunk like a mighty arm
stretched in perpetual reach of vigilante justice, a counterbalance
in weight to the spectator branches gathered opposite.

It was there I imagined the accused hanging
stiffly, their bodies silhouetted by the setting sun; long dresses
romancing the gentle breeze that only evenings bring at the end of
a hot summer’s day in Salem. I imagined the dead disappearing under
a twilight fog, forgotten, but for the undertaker who cut them down
in the morning mist and buried them in soft shallow graves. Later,
after he’d gone, and with accusing eyes numb to distractions, the
bereaved would come along and distinguish the graves with granite
markers, or simple wooden crosses, or sometimes nothing more than
footprints and tears. It’s true, I thought, that dust turns to
dust, and ashes to ashes, for in death we are all equal. I had to
ask myself: what in God’s name happened here. Did they think we
would forget, or did they want us to remember?