Seeing Darkness

by Heather Graham

  The young women were all from Massachusetts. He could beat that; he’d been born and raised right here in Salem, and he still had friends and family here.

  The first call to the Krewe’s office had been when Deanna Clark had been found. The body had lain in a cemetery outside Richmond, an hour and a half drive for the Krewe. Her sister had told the police that Deanna’s ghost had come to her, which had prompted one police officer who had heard rumors about a special FBI unit to reach out.

  While they’d been asked for help and advice, the lead in the case had remained in the hands of the local police.

  Then they’d been alerted about a similar murder on the outskirts of New Haven, Connecticut. Willow Cannon’s body had been in the morgue by the time he arrived, and the local police had been handling the case as well, allowing for FBI assistance.

  Then Angela Hawkins—Jackson’s wife, and the agent in charge of deciding which cases should be handed to the Krewe and which ones would best be left to local authorities or the main offices of the Bureau—had discovered that a year earlier a woman had been found murdered in a similar fashion in Macon, Georgia. The year before that, one had been left in a small family graveyard near Raleigh, North Carolina. And a little more than a year before that, a slightly different scenario—a victim had been found near a graveyard in St. Augustine, Florida.

  The geographical differences and the time gaps might have suggested different killers, but Angela had a theory that their killer had started out slowly. Perhaps honing his ability to kill and disappear, or perhaps discovering his need to kill had gripped him ever more tightly.

  When the third victim in the latest rash of murders had been found in Rhode Island, the case had fallen under Federal jurisdiction. Jon never forgot any of the victims—he had studied each of them.

  Deanna Clark was the first. Tragically, her death might have gone unnoticed if it hadn’t been for the dogged determination of a second cousin to find the truth; Deanna had been lost to most of her family for a long time. A musician, she had stumbled upon heroin along the way, and then prostitution, and her murder had been chalked up to a very bad trip—surely some other junkie had committed the deed.

  He had seen pictures of her in life, and he had heard her recordings. Whatever need for alcohol and drugs had taken control, she had once possessed a beautiful smile. She’d been kind to children, and she’d been known to rescue abandoned pets. He’d quickly become determined to find justice for her, and had meant to search around Richmond until he found the truth.

  Then, Willow Cannon had been found outside of New Haven. Her history had been similar. In Willow’s case, she had fallen in love and followed the object of her desire to Connecticut. He, however, found love elsewhere. Willow then fell into the vices far too easy to embrace, especially for the down-and-out, in certain areas of New Haven. She’d had a record; petty theft. She’d started off young and sweet and trusting...and wound up with twenty-one stab wounds.

  Thankfully, a local detective had resolved that her death would not go into the cold-case files. Even now, he was still working the case, keeping in touch with Jon, sharing info, letting him know any little step forward—and every frustration as well. That was all right.

  Then there was Cecily Bryant, a student at a small college in Rhode Island, young and naive—and tripping into the excesses available in a college town.

  She had been killed in an abandoned cemetery just at the border of Rhode Island and Massachusetts—and that was where they had found their first real lead: a matchbox underneath the body.

  A matchbox that advertised the Cauldron, in downtown Salem.

  So, Jon had come here to set up his office just yesterday, with the help of Jackson Crow, who’d worked through all the red tape and arranged for governmental rental of the shop. Then Jackson had hopped on a flight back to the main offices.

  But to Jon’s dismay, he still hadn’t acted quickly enough, or with enough knowledge, to stop the murder of Annie Hampton. He was willing to accept any help in apprehending the murderer—no matter how bizarre it might seem to others. He had long ago discovered many things in the world were not apparent to everyone.

  If Kylie Connolly had somehow seen this murder, he had to know everything she knew.

  He had seen Annie Hampton when she’d been found in the old churchyard. He had seen her bright colors against the gray of the stones and the graves and the sky. And he’d seen her blood.

  She had been found by a tourist wanting to do a stone rubbing of the grave of a soldier killed at Yorktown. She’d hysterically called police. Jon’s old friend, Detective Ben Miller, had been called, and Ben had called Jon right away. The two of them had held a quick meeting when Jon first arrived.

  “You really think he’s going to strike here next because of a matchbox advertising a restaurant?” Ben had asked.

  “Yes,” Jon said.

  Sadly, he’d been proven right, and tragically, he’d been proven right with a terrible speed.

  Jon kept his gaze steady on Kylie. “I am not seeing anything foolish or silly in any of this. I need to know what you know.”

  “You can’t seriously think Kylie channeled a murder!” Jenny said.

  “I don’t know what I think,” he said, leaning forward on the desk and looking at each of them one by one. “I know a woman is dead, and Miss Connelly saw the image of Michael Westerly on a TV and said he’d killed her. She’d seen it.”

  “Obviously not true! I am here,” Kylie announced. “I’m right here.”

  “But you know something.”

  Kylie stood. “All right.” She took a deep breath and started pacing. She crossed the narrow room and back before she went on. “Under hypnosis, I felt that I was walking by a graveyard and a church, and I knew the church wasn’t open. Then, he was there—and he dragged me into the cemetery. I could feel the stone scratching my legs as we went over the wall. I was crying and begging and screaming and it didn’t mean a thing. He was enraged, but almost methodical. Then he pulled out a knife. He stabbed me and stabbed me. I could feel it. The man I saw was Michael Westerly.”

  She paused. “It’s all about the power of suggestion. I’m sure I’ve seen his picture before. Maybe I don’t like something he’s done as a politician, and while I didn’t recognize him in my regression dream, I might have held his image in my subconscious. I have no idea. I majored in history and minored in hospitality, not psychology. So I don’t really know what that experience was all about. But it was just a weird bit of fun. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’re here on a special weekend to celebrate Corrine’s upcoming wedding, and we’d very much like to make it a nice occasion for her. If there’s nothing else we can do for you, please, you’ll understand we have to go.”

  Corrine, Nancy, and Jenny stood as well. He rose.

  He was about to thank them for their time—and to ask them to contact him if they thought of anything else—when Nancy snapped, “Check out our alibis! Just call Dr. Sayers. We were here all day!”

  “I never doubted that, though I will reach out to Dr. Sayers,” he said. He looked at Kylie then, and reached to a pile of cards on the desk. He handed her one, hoping she would take it. “Please, be aware there is a very dangerous killer out there. Be careful. And, again, if you see anything, hear anything, anything even remotely suspicious, I will be grateful if you call me.”

  “Sure,” she murmured.

  He walked them to the door and watched as they headed out to the street—still somewhat busy. A few of the shops stayed open late, and the ghost tours were still going about the historic district.

  He was worried for the group.

  Yes, he thought dryly, they’d gone to Harvard. But they were four women, alone... They might be successful at their chosen fields, but he felt certain they had never known brutality or experienced any of the factors that might have led them to suspect the worst in others
.

  At least none of them would be wandering around alone. The killer—thus far—was taking only one vulnerable woman at a time, and until today, he had chosen women on the fringes of society, those who had become lost to loved ones, who might be gone days before their absence was even noted.

  Today’s murder was different. Jon had left the cemetery—and the medical examiner and the forensics crew and his friend, Deputy Ben Miller—just before heading to the Cauldron. There’d been no mystery as to the victim’s identity. Even Ben had known all about her.

  Annie Hampton had been a school teacher, loved by her coworkers and students. A starry-eyed idealist, fighting the good fight. She’d had a good education, been cherished by a good family, and she had also enjoyed the camaraderie of many close friends.

  The killer was upping his game.

  And the women Jon had just met seemed to be very much like the most recent victim. Lambs, he thought. He could only pray they would not be easily led to slaughter.

  He hesitated a minute before letting himself out and locking the door behind him. There was one friend he hadn’t met up with yet in Salem.

  He’d told the girls he’d accept any help.

  And his old friend—his dead friend—Obadiah Jones was out there somewhere. Maybe, just maybe, he could help.

  * * *

  “The nerve of the man!” Corrine exclaimed as they headed back down the street.

  “Well...” Nancy started, apparently ready to come to Jon Dickson’s defense. Special Agent Jon Dickson’s defense. “To be fair, I mean, it’s so horrible—that poor woman. And Kylie did walk up to the bar and say the politician had killed her. You can’t blame him. It’s like having a fit over something on an airplane today. You just can’t do it. The whole world is jumpy.”

  “Let’s try looking him up, see if we can find him. We’ll make sure he’s totally legitimate,” Corrine said.

  “That’s a plan,” Jenny said. “What if he’s just...whoa. What if he’s a killer himself? He’s tall, dark, wickedly sexy... Isn’t that what some serial killers have supposedly been like, gorgeous on the outside? They’re just all twisted up inside. Oh! And if that politician did kill you—or someone else and you saw him killing you—then he’s kind of like that, the same thing. Michael Westerly is a very charismatic politician. You just don’t know that, Kylie, because you’ve been living in New York. If you’d hung around Boston, you’d have recognized him instantly. Not that there’s anything wrong with living and working in NYC, you just haven’t been here.”

  Kylie stared at her friend, acutely uncomfortable, and yet trying very, very hard to smile. Jenny had just put into words a deep-seated dread that had been growing in her.

  What if she had somehow experienced not a past life, but the present life of someone else? The life and death of someone else?

  If she had, Michael Westerly wasn’t a man dedicated to bettering the world for everyone. He was worse than a man just out to better his own world. He was a stone-cold killer.

  “We’ll head to the room and whip out our computers,” Corrine said.

  “We never ate,” Nancy said. “And this may be wrong—I mean, a woman was killed—but I’m hungry as hell.”

  “Room service,” Jenny suggested.

  “We can get all comfy and order food and it will be great,” Corrine said.

  “We’re supposed to be celebrating,” Kylie reminded her. “We’re supposed to be going out and imbibing at least one silly cocktail. I’m ruining this party. We’re supposed to be having a great time.”

  Corrine looped an arm through hers. “This is going to be fun. We were all but dragged out of a bar by a mysterious dark-haired hunk of a man. Now we’re going to go and find out just who the hell he really is.”

  “Do they list FBI agents online?” Jenny wondered, frowning. “I mean, wouldn’t that kind of put a whammy on the whole thing, if people know who you are? Oh, maybe that’s just if you’re undercover. This dude isn’t undercover.”

  “Let’s just head up,” Corrine said. She gave Kylie a heartfelt smile. “This is fine, it’s cool. My one big wish was to visit Dr. Sayers. I had no desire to have a wild party. Us spending time together is my idea of a great way to head into marriage. Really. So, let’s go up and put on comfortable T-shirts and sweatpants, order up food, eat whatever, and see what we can find out about this guy.”

  “Jon Dickson,” Nancy said gravely.

  “Okay,” Kylie said. She hated to admit that if she could actually do what would make her happy, she’d lock herself in a room alone and try to sort through her feelings.

  Fear.

  Empathy for the stranger who had been murdered.

  Guilt for ruining Corrine’s party.

  Horror at what had been done.

  Confusion that an FBI agent seemed to give credence to her words, even though she’d been miles away when the murder had occurred.

  Once they got up to the semi-luxurious suite they’d taken, Jenny read through the room service menu. “Steak!” she declared.

  It was an old hotel; it could only be so luxurious. But their suite did have two rooms, a dining area, and a newly installed whirlpool tub.

  “You know I’m a vegetarian,” Nancy reminded her.

  “Only because you’re dating a vegetarian,” Corrine said. “And you’re a pescatarian. You wolfed down a lobster grinder at lunch.”

  “Pescatarian. Because fish are cannibalistic little monsters,” Nancy said. “Have you ever seen a cow eat a cow? Nope. But fish... Trust me. I’ve been diving. Those little suckers are ready to turn on each other at a moment’s notice.”

  Kylie was only halfway paying attention to her friends. She already had her computer out.

  “Kylie, what do you want to eat?” Corrine asked.

  “Anything. Just order two of whatever you’re getting,” Kylie told her. She logged in to the hotel’s internet as she spoke, starting a search for FBI Special Agent Jon Dickson.

  Nothing came up on the FBI website. Then again, she hadn’t really expected it would. She wasn’t sure how to do a further search; she tried a few social media sites and came up with a dozen men with the name Jon Dickson—none of whom seemed to be the Jon Dickson they had met. Putting his name into a general search engine yielded tens of thousands of hits; too many to start scrolling through.

  Nancy, leaning over her shoulder, murmured, “That might not even be his real name.”

  “He might not be for real at all,” Jenny suggested. “I mean, he met us in a bar and then dragged us out to a weird, obviously temporary office in a place that’s supposed to be a candy shop soon.”

  “He’s real,” Corrine said decisively. “You can tell.”

  “How?” Kylie demanded, looking up at her friend.

  “Confidence, authority. He’s polite, but he behaves in a way that defies...defiance. I believe he’s for real. He was definitely mysterious, though...” She broke off, staring at Kylie. “Come on, Kylie. You must admit the whole thing is very weird. I mean, the way you behaved under hypnosis and the things you were saying... The way you were screaming. It was terrifying just to watch. I thought something terrible had happened to you in a previous life. But now, seeing what happened... Except you’re talking about Michael Westerly. That’s impossible. But then, what is an FBI agent doing here? So, what is going on?”

  Kylie stood, feeling guilty again. “Something terrible happened. But as horrible as it may be, happens every day. That’s life—good and bad. And bad will happen...okay, this isn’t coming out the way I intended it to. I’ll try again. Yes, something terrible happened but we’re here to celebrate your marriage to a great guy. A guy you love. So, let’s get going with champagne and dinner and forget all this for now.”

  “Hear, hear! To Corrine and Derrick,” Nancy said, and the others echoed her.

  As if on cue, t
here was a knock at the door.

  Dinner had arrived, and with it, a bottle of champagne. Jenny did the uncorking. Nancy was ready with the glasses. They all toasted Corrine and Derrick, and then, as they had planned, they grouped in one of the bedrooms and ate and talked and ordered more champagne and talked some more, about the men they had dated, their trials and tribulations through college, and how Corrine was lucky, the wedding would be amazing, and she and Derrick would certainly live happily-ever-after.

  Much, much, later, Corrine fell asleep, Nancy and Jenny retired to the second bedroom, and Kylie lay wide-awake for an hour before she got up and tiptoed back out to the little parlor/dining room of the suite to open her computer again.

  She found a news story on the recent murder; that was no surprise. The police had barely managed to cordon off the area where the body had been found before the media descended. Kylie swirled around in the desk chair, the remote control in her hand, and turned on the television.

  Annie Hampton had been beloved in her community. She had lived just ten minutes south of the Rebecca Nurse Homestead. She had taught grade school in Swampscott. Local residents were devastated and anxious that whoever had perpetrated such a deed be brought to justice immediately.

  They interviewed friends of the victim—a cruel thing to do, Kylie thought. Reporters played sympathetic, but they still filmed people fresh in their grief, with tears in their eyes and streaming down their faces.

  Some suggested a horrible monster had come to Essex County. Others speculated about a mystery man in Annie’s life. Someone she had talked to friends about, a man who was wonderful. Rumor had it they were just waiting for the right time to announce their love to the world. No one thus far seemed to know who the mystery man might be. Not even her closest friend, a woman who was crying her eyes out as she spoke to a reporter.

  Kylie flicked channels; almost every local station was covering the murder.