Seeing Darkness

by Heather Graham

  “I really, really don’t want strippers,” Corrine protested.

  “And we really, really haven’t hired any,” Jenny said. “Our wild time is trying out the beer flights down at the brewery.”

  “The brewery tonight—Aww, too bad, in a way. There will be no Matt, the cute bartender, or Cindy, his speedy cohort,” Nancy said regretfully. She grinned. “But we can take the ghost tour with that cute tour guide!”

  “I’ll bet he is a good guide. Outgoing. And dramatic, probably,” Corrine said.

  “Not as good as...” Jenny’s voice trailed.

  “Not as good as what?” Nancy asked. “Oh, oh, oh! I know who you’re talking about. Tall, dark, authoritative, and mysterious. If Kylie hadn’t been in shock last night, I’d have been tempted to...well, not defend him, but add him to the group!”

  “Too bad he doesn’t give ghost tours,” Jenny said. “Because that’s what we’re doing tonight.”

  No, he certainly doesn’t give ghost tours, Kylie thought.

  “I truly do love a good ghost tour,” Corrine said, “and just doing all these things we’ve done dozens of times is—maybe sadly and boringly—just what I want. Thank you all for understanding that I may be weird. Derrick will just be enjoying his Magic: The Gathering tournament, and we’re both going to be happy as little larks, doing our own particular geeky brand of celebrating.”

  She had been smiling, but now she frowned, looking at Kylie. “Are you really...all right this morning?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Did you see any news? Do they have any idea yet of what happened to that poor woman who was murdered in the graveyard?” Corrine asked.

  “I don’t think there’s anything new,” Kylie replied. She hesitated just a minute. “Um, speaking of that agent, I’m going to duck out for a bit this afternoon. I’m going to go with him to the graveyard.”

  “You’re going to what?” Nancy demanded.

  “The graveyard? Where that poor woman was killed?” Jenny asked, horrified.

  “Oh!” Corrine exclaimed. “Is that a good idea? Won’t that make you even more...confused and miserable?”

  “I think I need to go,” Kylie said.

  “And I think you should invite him to dinner with us,” Nancy suggested thoughtfully.

  “Sure, invite him to dinner,” Jenny agreed. “But...the graveyard? Kylie, after you were so upset yesterday? Corrine, tell her she can’t do that, she’ll ruin your day. Not that we want to hurt you in any way, Kylie, but...you didn’t see how scary you were when you were still under. Whatever you saw—”

  “It’s unbelievable, I know, but if I somehow saw something in my mind, I need to tell Special Agent Dickson what it was. What if it can help stop a serial killer? Please. I need to do this.”

  Kylie thought she was incredibly lucky then; her friends surrounded her, and each one of them gave her an encouraging hug.

  “We’re all on your speed dial, right?” Corrine asked.

  “Of course.”

  “And 911, of course.”

  “I’m going to be with an FBI agent. I should be fine no matter what,” Kylie said. “But I’m a big girl, I know how to dial 911, my phone is charged...and as for this killer, I don’t think I’m in any danger. I don’t think he’s ready to go up against anyone strong. I mean, he took a young woman completely by surprise when she was alone. I know that. And if he’s the same guy who has killed others, it’s always been the same. He gets them alone. He has a knife—they’re defenseless.”

  “Ah!” Nancy said. “Hang on!” She disappeared into the bedroom and then reappeared holding something that looked like a super-large lighter. “Pepper spray. Take it.”

  “I’ll be with an agent. You guys—”

  “Let’s order breakfast. I’ve another plan—just a cautionary plan,” Nancy said. She hesitated. “I’m calling my cousin, Andrea. She’s dating a Peabody cop. She’ll find out if this too-good-to-be true agent is really an agent. I mean, if he’s not undercover or anything. Someone must know something.”

  Nancy disappeared into the bedroom again. Corrine called room service for breakfast and they all decided they needed to start with a giant pot of coffee. They’d have eggs and bacon and pancakes and fruit—a nice mix for a good start to the day.

  When Nancy reappeared, she looked a little surprised.

  “No. Don’t tell me there’s something wrong with him,” Kylie said.

  Nancy shook her head. “Quite the contrary. Jonathan Wolf Dickson was born right here in Salem. He went to Yale after a stint in the military. He’s been with the Bureau almost ten years, and he was selected for an elite unit. He’s also good friends with an Essex County cop, a guy named Ben Miller, who is friends with Andrea’s boyfriend, Ernie. So, yeah, he’s the real deal.”

  Kylie was grateful for the information. “So, he’s a local?” she asked.

  Nancy nodded. “He’s been elsewhere since he was eighteen, but yeah, he’s from right here. And... Corrine, she should invite him to our dinner at the brewery tonight, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, she should invite him!” Corrine said. “It will be wonderful.”

  “To our girls’ night out?” Kylie asked.

  Corrine laughed softly. “In my mind, he’s way better than any stripper. But back to me being basically boring and strange, let’s get going to the Salem Witch Museum. While you’re on your graveyard trek, we’ll head to the wax museum and the New England Pirate Museum—gotta love me some pirates, too—and we’ll probably be into dinnertime by then. Keep in touch, okay?”

  “Of course,” Kylie said. They were all still staring at her. “Yes, yes, I will,” she promised again, and she turned quickly to answer the door to the suite; their breakfast had arrived.

  * * *

  Lizzie Borden took an ax

  and gave her mother forty whacks

  When she saw what she had done

  She gave her father forty-one.

  Jon couldn’t keep the old rhyme from rushing through his head as the medical examiner spoke to him and Ben about his findings regarding the death of Annie Hampton.

  Lizzie Borden hadn’t really given her mother forty whacks—she had given her nineteen. And she had hacked up her father with ten or eleven—assuming she had done the deed, despite the fact she’d been acquitted. Just about any kid who had grown up in Massachusetts had heard the facts regarding the murders.

  As for Annie Hampton...

  The killer never touched her face, a fact Jon had noted at the crime scene the day before.

  She had been twenty-eight years old, with a round face and soft blond hair. The damage done to her appeared to have been done in fury as well. Both methodical and determined.

  She’d received exactly twenty-two blows from the knife that had killed her. It had pierced her heart—causing the pools of blood—and also ripped into her abdomen, tearing apart her liver, stomach, and pancreas.

  This was the first time the killer had completely missed the victim’s face. It had never appeared before that he had purposely destroyed the face, but a person being murdered usually tried to stop the knife from piercing their chest area or vital organs; there would be slashes on the arms as the victim tried to avoid the blows. In every case, including this one, there were slashes on the arms.

  But there had also been at least one wound on the faces of the previous victims. Was his aim getting better? Was he improving his method of killing?

  There would be tests on her blood and stomach contents; the results from the lab wouldn’t be back immediately.

  The medical examiner, Dr. Custis Margolin, shook his head when he left his assistant to sew up the body. He looked at Jon and Ben and said, “This is truly sad. I know the family. This was a lovely young woman.” He studied them both and added, “Please, get this bastard.” He stared at Jon, and he cl
early attempted to keep his tone bland, but there was something of an accusation in it as he asked, “You were here on the trail of this man, or so I understand. There should have been warnings out. This is a serial killer, and he’s been heading up the coast.”

  “Dr. Margolin, we’re still trying to ascertain if we’re looking for one man or not,” Jon told him.

  “Seems to me you might as well move on,” Dr. Margolin said. He had a hangdog face, heavy in the jowls, thinning white hair. “Doesn’t he make one kill each place, and then move north?”

  Whether he should or shouldn’t feel it, Jon felt a rush of guilt. Could he have stopped this? “I’ve got no excuse to offer,” he told Margolin flatly. “I arrived yesterday, just hours before...hours before Annie met her death.”

  “My office had been informed,” Ben pointed out. “We were trying to arrange our facts and sort them from rumor before having a press conference.”

  Dr. Margolin studied them both and turned away. “I’ll be in touch,” he said.

  Jon and Ben were both silent as they walked back to the car; it was a good twenty-five miles back to Salem from the morgue and they’d have plenty of time to talk.

  “That’s not on you, you know,” Ben said at last. “You came to me. I’m the county detective here. I should have had a press conference. Thing is—”

  “All we had was a matchbox,” Jon finished for him. “I know you had to notify the family and you interviewed some of her friends. Was there any suggestion at all she’d been to the Cauldron?”

  Ben shook his head.

  They drove in comfortable silence for a while. After several minutes, Ben glanced over at him, barely taking his eyes off the road. “How do you like DC? Are you ever coming back?”

  “I’m here now, aren’t I?” Jon said lightly.

  “To stay?”

  Jon grimaced. “I love my unit. We’re based in northern Virginia. I have a great director and I find incredible satisfaction in thinking that, at least sometimes, I can make a difference.”

  “And it’s eating you alive that you feel you failed Annie Hampton. You didn’t. I did.”

  “I don’t think either of us failed her,” Jon said. “We did, and we didn’t. I can’t touch it, but...there’s something different here.”

  “How? Women knifed to death in old graveyards or cemeteries. No sexual assault. Left where they lay, in remote areas.”

  “She wasn’t his usual target,” Jon said. “And her face...he didn’t touch her face.”

  Ben glanced at him. “The faces on the other victims were injured?”

  “I don’t think the killer was trying for the faces. But in the stabbing, they wound up with at least one slash.”

  “What about the number of wounds?”

  “The most on a previous victim? Eight. And that included two defensive wounds on the arms. I’m not sure there is a difference between being killed with eight or twelve slashes, but... I don’t know. It just bothers me. Something has changed. As you mentioned, the victimology. I’m waiting on your crime scene folks to let me know if they have anything, anything at all, to suggest where he might strike next.” Jon was quiet a minute. “If this was him. The same killer.”

  Kylie had seen state Senator Westerly in her...well, it couldn’t have been a regression, not if it had been happening when she’d been under. He really needed the exact timing on what had happened at the graveyard, and when Kylie had been “under.” It seemed to jive, but could mean exactly nothing. Was he grasping at straws?

  But that’s what his unit often did.

  “I’m going back out to the graveyard this afternoon,” Jon told Ben.

  “Our forensics people are good. If there’s something to find, Jon, I swear they’ll find it,” Ben told him. He sighed. “I’m arranging interviews. According to friends and family, Annie was seeing a mystery man. But if this is a serial killer at work, one who has moved up the coast, I’m not sure how her mystery man might be involved.”

  “Hopefully the boyfriend will come forward,” Jon said. “If you find anyone you think has useful information—”

  “I’ll bring you in on it right away, my friend, I promise. But what do you think you’re going to gain by going out to the cemetery?”

  “I don’t know. I’m going with a new acquaintance.”

  “Are you holding out on me?” Ben asked, frowning.

  “You know I wouldn’t do that. No, this is a bizarre circumstance. She was in Salem all day—plenty of witnesses. But...” He hesitated, and Ben groaned.

  “You’re going out there with some kind of psychic? Jon, you believe a kook—”

  “She isn’t a kook, Ben, and I don’t know if she can or can’t help. That’s why I’ll explore this avenue alone, and you let me know about friends and family.”

  “Fine. Have fun. I hope you’re not dragging along a crystal ball.”

  “We’re not dragging along a crystal ball,” Jon said, but he looked at Ben. “But if I thought we might get anywhere with a crystal ball, I’d damned sure give it a shot.”

  Ben let Jon out on the street near the office space he had rented. He saw Kylie approaching the office; she moved with a slightly hurried grace, as if she was afraid she’d be late.

  He couldn’t help but notice that movement; she had a slim build, and yet was curvy enough. She was, no doubt, an exceptionally attractive woman, and hard as he tried, it was almost impossible not to notice her in that way. She simply called out to just about everything primal in him.

  He’d felt the softness of her chestnut hair on his arms when he caught her falling the night before. It had been a brush of velvety silk.

  Jon watched as a child of about ten, bored and running in circles as his mother looked in a shop window, ran into Kylie. She laughed and straightened him, and he smiled, and his mother smiled, and Kylie moved on.

  She had a way about her.

  He quickened his walk, as if he could reinforce his resolve to stay completely professional. He thought of Annie Hampton. And the others...so many lives, so sadly lost before they could ever really live.

  “Kylie!” he called out to her.

  She turned, saw him coming, and changed direction.

  “My car is in the garage,” he said. “We’ll go straight to it and head out.” He paused, looking at her. “You’re sure you’re still willing to do this?”

  “Willing,” she said, “and wanting. Let’s hope...”

  “For something,” he finished.

  She kept step with him, and despite his resolve, he couldn’t help noting the scent of her perfume was just as compelling as her eyes, her movement...

  Every single little thing about her.

  Four

  The graveyard was exactly as Kylie remembered it, having been there a few times over the years...and from her experience when she had been hypnotized. The abandoned church and burial ground surrounding it belonged to the county, but there were no signs warning against trespassing. There were signs that warned the area wasn’t safe after dark. Kylie figured it was left for curiosity seekers. No one had been buried there for well over a hundred years, so family members wouldn’t be bringing flowers to a recently lost loved one.

  The cemetery wasn’t in the center of town, and there were no known participants in the witch trials buried there. It was notable in the amount of Revolutionary and Civil War soldiers it housed. But Salem was a town where one history ruled over all others, and many visitors never ventured out of the old section of town.

  As if reading her mind, Jon said, “No recent burials. No real reason to be here. Except there are records for this church that date back centuries, and there are online sites where you can find a grave. With the trend of finding about their ancestry through DNA, you have more people than ever searching out their family’s past. Plenty of people around here can date their ancest
ry way back, so they might well have family here, and you have those from other places who just discovered that great-great-great-granddad is buried here. And then there are people who study the American Revolution and there are also a few Union soldiers buried here. Still...”

  “It’s not a heavily traveled tourist destination,” Kylie said.

  The road, almost empty, stretched out in both directions with only a few distant homes dotting the landscape. She could see a farm up a hill; cows were out in the surrounding paddocks.

  They paused at the entry. It was much like any of the very old cemeteries in the area. Stones were crooked and broken, weeds hugging many of them. In places, trees had simply joined with the stones so that roots broke out jaggedly from them, eerie as new life crept over the death’s-heads, reapers, and skeletons that had been the iconography prevalent in the graveyard’s heyday. There were a few aboveground tombs, worn and grayed, but no mausoleums or vaults—just the occasional one-person tomb, big enough for one coffin and stark in the center of broken stones.

  A path that had nearly disappeared led to a shell of a building that had once been a church. It had been built for a small Puritan flock, and it was simple in the extreme. Just a building with slanted roof, once white-washed.

  There was nothing inside but fading graffiti. On weekends, the civic organization that tried to keep up the church and graveyard sold T-shirts and water from the little church. People likely came to take advantage of the solitude, high schoolers and drifters, but though the nearly abandoned building might have been filled with debris or garbage, it wasn’t; court-ordered community service brought petty offenders through semiregularly and kept the place clean enough to be safe.

  Safe.

  It hadn’t been safe for Annie Hampton.

  As they stood there, Kylie thought the day—sunny so far—was becoming gray. She closed her eyes for a minute, clenching her teeth hard. “Now that we’re here...” she murmured.

  “Tell me what you remember from the beginning. You were walking...”