09 - Return Of The Witch Read online

  He backed up in equal steps to my approach. “You stay away. I mean it. I’m not afraid of you, witch.”

  “Witch?”

  “Yes, witch. You’re all witches. I know that. I see the pagan rituals you all perform, those strange going-ons and whatnot all hours of the night. But you’ve gone too far this time. I told them about you. Yes sir, that’s what I’ve done.”

  “Wait, are you telling me you’ve seen me here at this house before?”

  I took a step closer and he took another step back. “You stay away, hear?” He held the crucifix up to ward me off. I humored him and cowered briefly under his threat, sinking to my knees and holding my hands up in futile defense.

  Encouraged by that, he held the crucifix higher and edged closer. “That’s right, witch. You see the power of Jesus.”

  He was back up at the fence when I stood again and dismissed his silliness with a wave. “Nah, I’m just messin` witcha, old man. That shit don’t work on witches.”

  He wound his hand back and pitched the crucifix at me, missing my head by mere inches. “Damn you to hell! I’m calling the police!” he cried, two-stepping backward as he dialed. “I’m calling them now. I mean it!”

  “You old shit! You almost hit me with that. How would you like it if I….”

  The words were still on my lips when I felt the ground begin rumbling beneath my feet. I turned to Ursula who was standing bent-knee, arms out as if walking a tightrope.

  “Ursula? What’s happening?”

  “I know not, Sister, only that I might ask thee the same.”

  I stepped back, just as the earth opened up before me, swallowing the fence, a shed and a couple of trees in a massive sinkhole twenty feet wide and thirty feet long.

  The old man barely escaped the crumbling ledge dropping away at his feet. He fell on his ass and crab-walked backward all the way to his house. Seeing good sense in that, I followed his lead and ran back to the porch with Ursula.

  “You know, Urs….” I took her hand and led her to the side of the house from which we came. “I think we’re done here. We might want to move on now.”

  While Crucifix Krueger was busy dragging his sorry butt home and calling 911, Ursula and I high-tailed out of the yard, into the car and down the street as fast as we could.

  “Unbelievable!” I said, giggling at the excitement of the moment. “Did you see that? The ground just opened up and swallowed that shit like it was nothing.”

  “Aye, `twas a chasm, to be sure.”

  “Exactly. I’ve never seen one just open up like that. You know, that old man’s going to think I caused that.”

  “Did thee?”

  “No. Of course not. That’s not in my repertoire of magick.”

  “Ooh. Methinks we might return then.”

  “Why would we want to do that?”

  She turned her bottom lip up in a pout.

  “Ursula?”

  “Please. Be it so bad that we go back and fetch what gnome I wish for mine.”

  “The gnome? You want to go back for that stupid gnome. No. Absolutely not.”

  “Oh, but Sister, it doth please me so to think I might save him from a wretched end.”

  “Ursula, you can’t be serious.”

  “Pleeease.”

  “No. That’s crazy. The cops are on their way there right now. We’d never make it.”

  “I see then, thou art frightened.”

  “No. Thou art not frightened. I’m just saying, the cops are on their way and we don’t….”

  I made the mistake of looking at her again, her doubtful eyes casting a most disappointing glare my way. I knew what she was doing. She was calling me out, holding me to a standard I had set for myself and tried to set for her. A standard that said to hell with anyone who ever doubted that we could do anything we ever wanted to do.

  I shook my head and smiled, feeling more than just a hint of pride for my foxy little rebel.

  “All right, fine. We’ll do a quick drive-by. You hop out, grab the gnome and hop right back in. I’m not even going to stop the car. You got it?”

  “Oh, Sister, thanks be thee thy blessed heart. On my word, I shall be quick as lightning.”

  “You better,” I warned, “or you’ll have some serious explaining to do to Dominic.”

  We circled the block and approached the house from the other end of the street, hoping to find that the old geezer from next door had gone inside. He hadn’t. Worse still, he had come around to the front of his house, probably to try to get our license plate number when we pulled away.

  I edged the car to the curb and threw it into park. The old man hadn’t noticed us returning, but I didn’t put a lot of stock into believing he wouldn’t see us eventually.

  I turned to Ursula. “Okay, listen. You’re about to commit a crime. Are you sure you want to do this?”

  She blinked back innocently. “Aye, `tis a cute one, that gnome. `E should have a nice home with a good witch, do you not think?”

  “Sure I think, but don’t you think Terri’s a good witch?”

  “Was, mayhap. I fear now she is gone, her dust scattered here and yon.”

  “All right then. Go. Make it quick.”

  She hopped out, leaving the car door open and started up the walk in a quick but purposeful pace. The old man hadn’t noticed the car sitting out by the curb, but it didn’t take him long to notice Ursula. He started across the yard, holding his index finger up to stop her.

  “See here! What are you doing? The police are on their way, you know. I called them. They’re on their way!”

  I hollered out the window, “Move it, Ursula! Run!”

  She snatched up the little gnome, tucked it under her arm like a football and sprinted back to the car, all the while giggling like a schoolgirl.

  Just as she was about to hop in, a police cruiser rounded the corner, lights on, siren chirping.

  “Get in!” I shouted. She had stopped to look at the approaching cop car. “Ursula!”

  Whoop-whoop, the sirens chirped again, this time, ending in a drawn out whirl. I dropped the car into gear. “Move your ass, girl. Let’s go!”

  She pitched the gnome into the back seat, but before getting in, I saw her pump her fist in the air and then splayed her fingers wide. “Stop!” she ordered, as if they might. Incredibly, though, the breaks on the cruiser locked up immediately. The car squealed to a stop just ten yards from my back bumper.

  “Get in!” I yelled.

  She did, and before she could close her door, I hit the gas hard, laying down a patch of rubber fifteen feet long. We rounded the corner at the end of the street and kept the pedal to the metal until we reached Route 128.

  Comfortable enough then that the cops weren’t following us, I settled in with the flow of traffic and asked Ursula, “What was that back there?”

  “What was what?”

  “Did you stop that cop car?”

  “I think not. I only wished they would and they did.”

  “But you pitched a zip ball at them, right?”

  “I do not know.”

  “You had to. You probably didn’t realize it, but that’s the only thing you could have done. A zip ball would have fried their ignition.” I nodded, more so to convince myself than to convince her. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

  We headed south on 128 and then north on the interstate. Ursula didn’t need to guess where we were going next.

  “Georgetown,” she surmised.

  “Yup, Georgetown. We’ll see if we have better luck at Amber Burns’ home.”

  “I like Georgetown.”

  “Do ya?”

  “Aye. `Twas rowdy in my day, but fair and decent were its people.”

  “Good. We’ll need fair and decent if we’re going to learn anything about this case.”

  Chapter 9

  Traffic on I-95 was lighter than expected, and with the roads completely dried from the rains earlier, we were able to get to Georgetown in just outside of twent
y minutes.

  Like most of the houses in her heavily wooded neighborhood, Amber’s was difficult to spot from the road. The GPS satellite image I pulled up on my phone looked like broccoli patches with tiny rooftops peppered throughout. We zeroed in on one of those rooftops and navigated up Amber’s graveled driveway.

  “Well?” I said to Ursula. “What do you think?”

  She pursed her lips and made a tic sound through her teeth. “`Tis the house of a witch to be sure.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  She pointed at a lawn ornament painted up to look like a goofy dwarf holding a lantern. I pointed at her and wagged my finger. “No, Ursula. It stays. You understand me?”

  “On my honor.” She crossed her heart, turned in her seat to look at the one she had stolen from Terri Cotta’s yard. “I have Harry. I need no other.”

  “Harry? You named him already?”

  “Aye. He is family now, this grand old soul. What hath thee against it?”

  “It’s not a soul, Ursula. It’s a chunk of ceramic.”

  “Still.” She turned around and plopped back against her seat. “He is mine now. I want for naught in this vein.”

  “All right, remember that.”

  “I shall.”

  “So, why Harry?”

  “Why Harry what?”

  “Why name him Harry?”

  “He is a potter, is he not?”

  “Uh, of course.”

  I directed my attention to the house, looking at it through the windshield and wondering how it was that I knew the place better than I should have.

  “This is getting strange. I know this house, too. You can’t see it, but around back there’s a brick walkway that leads to a little stream in the woods.” I pointed to an upstairs window. “That’s the master bath. A toilet there runs all the time if you don’t jiggle the handle just right.”

  “Thou hath been here?”

  I shook my head. “Not that I remember.”

  Ursula smiled. “Mayhap it is true then. Thou hath acquired the quintessential.”

  “No, thou hath not acquired the quintessential.” I took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. “I’m beginning to think it’s more likely I came here in my sleep and maybe did something I shouldn’t have.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah, ouch. Come on. Let’s go knock on the door, see what breaks.”

  As we approached the house, we noticed the blinds on one window peel away and then snap back again. Someone was home. I said to Ursula, “Better let me do the talking.”

  I knocked, waited a bit and then knocked again. When it seemed obvious no one would answer, I hollered out, “Hello! We know you’re in there.”

  A man’s voice came back through the door. “What do you want?”

  “We just want to talk.”

  “Go away!”

  “Please, Mister Burns. Just a minute of your time. I promise.”

  After getting no response, I looked to Ursula, who must have felt we had nothing else to lose. She cupped her hand to the side of her mouth and yelled, “We have news of your Amber.”

  “Ursula,” I whispered. “What are you doing? We don’t—”

  The lock clicked and the door opened, but only as far as the safety chain would allow. A bloodshot eye peeked out through the crack.

  “You have news about Amber?”

  The sliver of a face looking out appeared younger than the voice that went with it. Ursula said, “Kind sir. May we enter?”

  I watched his eye rake our bodies up and down, head to toe and back again. “You cops?”

  “Cops?” I stepped back and splayed my arms so that he could get a better look. “You want to try again?”

  He gave a nod with his stubbly chin, which suggested to me that he hadn’t shaved in a week. “If you ain’t cops, then who are you?”

  “We’re friends of Amber’s. I’m Lilith, this here is Ursula.”

  “Friends, eh?”

  He wasn’t buying it. Then Ursula blurted out, “We be witches, she and I.”

  He pulled back from the door as if we had both spontaneously burst into flames. “Witches?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “Witches. Don’t tell me you’re surprised. We know Amber was a witch.”

  “What do you mean was?”

  Ursula nudged me aside and leaned in closer. “Please, kind sir. Blessed be. Forgive us our timing that we not call upon thee first by phone. We wish thee only solace and naught more in these dark times.”

  “Are you…you telling me Amber’s dead?”

  “Let us not confer upon bad tidings here with fences up and wounds too deep to mend. Have us in, that we may set your mind at ease if only slight.”

  He shut the door, unlatched the chain and let us in. I could tell he still didn’t trust us, his suspicions evident in the way he led us into the den without ever taking his eyes off us.

  There, as in Paige Turner’s house, the blinds were pulled down to the sills. A lone floor lamp provided the only light in the room. That is, until the fireplace ignited.

  “Wow. Nice touch,” I said.

  He looked at it strangely, but offered no comment other than to introduce himself.

  “I’m Russell Burns.” He extended his hand to Ursula first. After shaking hers, he shook mine, pointed to an old mahogany desk in the corner and said, “It happened there.”

  We stepped closer to the desk. “What did?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I was hoping you might tell me?” He pointed to the papers, computer monitor, books and coffee mug on the desktop now plowed up against the back wall.

  “You don’t know how that happened?”

  “No. I came home late the other night and found it like this. I went into the bedroom to see if Amber was all right, but she was gone.”

  “Did she leave a note?”

  “No.”

  “Did she take anything, clothes, money?”

  “You mean did she leave me.”

  “Just asking what she took.”

  “She took nothing. Left her purse, eyeglasses, keys, medications…everything’s still here.”

  I nodded at the desk. “You think Amber could have done this?”

  “What, pick the front of it up high enough to push all that stuff against the wall like that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No way.” He shook his head firmly. “This desk is solid mahogany. Weighs a ton. Amber’s barely a hundred pounds soaking wet. She could never lift it high enough to do this.”

  I crossed my arms to my chest and thumbed my lower lip. “You know, this has all the telltale signs of a shockwave.” I gestured a push from an epicenter at front of the desk back.

  “You mean like a bomb?”

  “Yeah, except it’s unidirectional, obviously aimed at the person sitting here.” I swept my hand over an area of the desk that appeared slightly scorched. “Did you see this?”

  “I did, but you know it’s an old desk. I couldn’t be sure if it wasn’t already there.”

  “Did you show it to the police?”

  “Of course.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Nothing. Instead, they asked me if Amber and I had argued. Said she probably left me to go to her mother’s.”

  “Why would they think that?”

  “Because I told them we had argued, that I got angry. I said things. She said things. That’s when I grabbed my coat and stormed out the door. I didn’t know what to do, so I went to a bar downtown and drank until closing. Got so plastered I had to take a cab home. You can check it out. Georgetown taxi. I returned home late and found the desk like this and Amber gone. No note. No nothing. Hell, her car was still in the driveway. How could the cops think she went to her mother’s?”

  “Was the door locked?”

  “Hmm…you know the cops asked me that, too. I’ll tell you the same thing I told them. I don’t remember. Like I said, I was drunk.”

  “Mister Burns, d
oes Amber have any friends we can call? Maybe you have some phone numbers?”

  “No. I don’t know any of her friends. Don’t want to. They’re all too weird for me.”

  “Do you have her phone? Maybe we could get some numbers from her contacts and—”

  “No. Amber left everything behind, except that. I can’t find her phone. That’s strange, isn’t it?”

  “A little.” I glanced down at the floor and noticed a dusting of red powder gathered along the sides of the desk. “What’s that?”

  Russell Burns shook his head. “I don’t know. It wasn’t there before Amber disappeared. I didn’t notice it until I picked her clothes up off the chair.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s like I told the police, her clothes, everything she wore that night; I found them on the chair. When I went to pick them up, this red dust fell out all over the place. The police collected some of it. I thought I swept up the rest.”

  I looked at Ursula and gestured toward the door. “Urs. Tony kept a little zippered case in the car’s glove box. It had an evidence collection kit inside. Be a dear, would you? See if it’s still there? If it is, fetch it for me, please?”

  “Aye,” she said, and headed out without question.

  I said to Russell, “Do you know if there’s more dust like this around the house anywhere?”

  “No, there’s not. At first I thought it looked like brick dust from the old barbeque around back, but I checked. The bricks there are more orange.”

  “I see. None of the bricks are missing?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t notice any. You think somebody hit her with a brick?”

  I shook my head. “Just asking.”

  Ursula returned with Tony’s case and handed it to me. I thanked her and removed a handful of small evidence baggies from it before handing it back.

  “Mr. Burns.” I held up one of the baggies and pointed to the dust. “Do you mind?”

  He granted his permission with a nod. I knelt down and brushed a few grams into the bag. Upon standing, I said, “Sir, earlier we mentioned that we were witches. Now I don’t expect you—”

  “Listen, you don’t have to explain.”

  “Oh?”

  “No. I mean, I knew about Amber’s fantasy online games, the dungeons, dragons, witches and what have you. I’m sure it’s all very entertaining. And you know I didn’t see any harm in it until she let it get so out of hand.”