Seeing Darkness

by Heather Graham

  Jackson was back quickly with a book in his hands. He looked exceptionally pleased.

  “This is an oddball you’d be lucky to find just about anywhere, even online,” he said, showing them his purchase.

  It was titled Graveyards and Cemeteries of Olde New England.

  “Nice,” Devin said.

  “It’s perfect. I’m going to find that damned cemetery.”

  “Just remember, Salem was more than the current city way back when,” Kylie told him. “Salem Village is now Danvers, and Peabody was part of Salem Towne.”

  “Right,” Jackson said. He was studying his book. “And back then, Salem Village was a parish of Salem Towne...” He paused in the midst of flipping pages. Without looking up, he told them, “Talked to Jon. He’s on his way here.”

  Before they could ask him the outcome of Jon’s visits, Jackson led out a triumphant cry. “Aha!” He pointed his finger on a photograph on the page. “That’s it!”

  Kylie reached for the book. “Not where Annie Hampton was murdered,” she said quietly.

  “Don’t keep us waiting!” Devin said.

  “It’s in Danvers, old Salem Village,” Kylie said, studying the cemetery. Many old local cemeteries were similar. This one had a stone wall about three feet high around it. Parts of the cemetery seemed to be filled with nothing but slate gravestones, weathered to a point they were probably unreadable. There were a few aboveground tombs, something that appeared to be a caretaker’s shed, and the shell of what might have once been a chapel.

  There was what looked like a marble arch at the entry to the cemetery, with iron lettering that read, The Resting Place.

  Devin looked over Kylie’s shoulder. “Nice name—it’s rather gentle for the Puritans. They didn’t say Place to Rot, or whatever. They did kind of belie the name by adding those death’s-heads at either end, though.” She peered closer. “I’m pretty sure I’ve been there. Auntie Mina used to belong to a group that preserved old cemeteries. I think I pulled weeds with her there once.”

  “It’s not more than a twenty-minute drive from the heart of Salem,” Rocky said.

  “Curious,” Jackson said, looking at Kylie. He smiled. “Maybe I’m filtering something of...you.”

  “Because that’s it?” Kylie said, looking at him. “That’s the cemetery I’m going to visit?”

  She was startled when Jon spoke up; she hadn’t realized he’d come to the café.

  “It’s as good as any,” he said. “After we’ve checked it out thoroughly and made sure we can put our plan into action.”

  “Detective Miller has agreed to the plan?” Kylie asked. “And Matt?”

  Jon nodded, taking a seat at the table and smiling at her. “You were right. All I have to say is we’d better catch Westerly and make damned sure Matt Hudson, actor, gets some great publicity when this is all over.” He glanced at Jackson. “I think we’re going to have to be careful doing this as well. I think someone keeps tabs on us in this city. Or at least, they’re keeping tabs on Kylie.”

  “So, you two need to stay here and do touristy things and keep busy,” Jackson said.

  “And we need to head out to Danvers,” Rocky agreed softly.

  Kylie found they were all looking at her.

  Jon reached across the table, taking her hand. “Kylie, this is still dangerous. It’s your call. Nothing has been set into motion yet,” he told her quietly.

  She looked back at them one by one. She’d have been a liar to say a certain amount of fear wasn’t burning in her heart. But she was equally sure she’d never be the same if they didn’t stop Michael Westerly. Especially before he made his final political play.

  She forced a smile. “I trust you all,” she said sincerely. Then, determined, “We have to do this. Let’s catch Michael Westerly.”

  * * *

  “You really think that someone is aware of what we’re doing—or I’m doing—all the time?” Kylie asked Jon. They had wandered back to the Witch Trials Memorial and were sitting on a patch of stone wall between the benches dedicated to the victims of the trials.

  Jackson, Rocky, and Devin had gone to scope out the cemetery in Danvers. Rocky had slipped away first to get the car and swept around on a side street to pick up Jackson and Devin. Jon and Kylie had split with them at the last minute, hoping anyone following or watching would give up on the others in their determination to keep an eye on Kylie.

  The day was beautiful. Kylie told Jon it made her think of Jackson when he had been hypnotized and he’d been talking about the blue of the sky and the green of the grass.

  When Jon looked to his left, he saw the crooked stones of the Old Burying Point, shaded by the trees. Beyond was the Grimshawe House, for a story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, published posthumously. The house looked as if it fit right in with the cemetery, old and faded, but it had a great history: Nathaniel Hawthorne had spent many a day there, when it was a warm and loving home owned by a man named Peabody with three daughters, one of whom would become Hawthorne’s wife.

  “Are you doing all right?” Jon asked Kylie. He wasn’t sure how she could be, but he’d discovered—which he should have known from the get-go—she was extremely stubborn.

  She smiled and nodded. “I’m fine. And by the way, I love the concern in your eyes, and the fact you can be watching everything and everyone around us and still have that care so intensely focused on me as well. Impressive.”

  “I aim to please,” he said lightly.

  “I was thinking there were good things that happened here, too. A horrible past could help forge such a fine author as Hawthorne.”

  “Hawthorne was brilliant. He used the power of stories to right the wrongs of the world, particularly his own ancestry.” Jon lowered his voice. “And at this very minute, your friend, the excellent tour guide Mr. Carl Fisher, is doing a bit on that house.”

  Kylie hadn’t seen him. She turned her head to note that Carl was in fact in the alley, about to bring a daytime group into the cemetery. They listened as he told the tale of the house and how Hawthorne courted his future wife there.

  “Do you think Carl is watching us?” she asked Jon.

  “Possibly,” he said softly. “But I’m also pretty sure I know who drove to Devin’s and stopped to check out the house on foot—trying to determine if we were there or not.”

  “Who?”

  “Sandra Westerly. No solid proof. Many people own SUVs, but she does own a vehicle with tires like the tracks found at Devin’s place. Well, she and Michael own it, but both drive it—they switch cars a lot. We could try to get casts of her tires when she parks in soft earth somewhere, but even then, it would prove she stopped at the cottage and nothing more.”

  “Do you really think she helped her husband?” Kylie asked.

  He shrugged. “I think she might have even demanded he do something. At this point in his career, just breaking it off with a mistress wouldn’t be good enough to salvage his reputation.”

  “Politicians have proven to be philanderers time and time again. Was that enough to kill?”

  “For a woman like Sandra Westerly? Yes, I think so. Most of the time, a man or a woman rises to power before what they’ve been up to comes to light. And there’s still a core group to whom decency matters, so...”

  “That’s horrible,” Kylie murmured. “How can people be so horrible? Want something so badly that they ignore anything resembling human decency...and the law!”

  “I still believe human beings are mostly good,” Jon told her. “That’s why it became so important for me to work on finding the ones who would hurt those who are decent,” he added softly.

  She reached out and squeezed his hand briefly.

  He slipped off the wall, glancing toward Carl and his group. “Come on. Let’s head to the Cauldron. The media has been informed that Matt Hudson has been arrested for the murde
r of Annie Hampton. I want to see what happens and who shows up—the bar will have to have the news on their TVs. I particularly want to see how soon Carl comes in once we’re there.”

  “He can’t abandon a tour group.”

  “No, but he can talk fast and end it quickly. Let’s see if I’m right.”

  He offered her his hand; she smiled and took it and they wandered the block or so back to the Essex Street pedestrian mall and past various shops until they reached the restaurant.

  Cindy was behind the bar with another young woman. It was evident she was trying to smile and be a good bartender—and equally evident she was having a hard time.

  Especially since the conversation at the bar was all about Matt.

  The man’s arrest hadn’t sent clientele flying away in horror. Indeed, it seemed to have drawn in every local Jon and Kylie had ever seen in the place.

  And everyone had an opinion.

  There was only standing room by the bar. Cindy and the other young woman—one they’d seen working with her there before, Mariah, Jon thought—were racing around. Jon was finally able to catch Cindy and order two soda waters with lime.

  Cindy looked at him, accepting the order, but as she did so, her eyes filled with tears.

  “Help Matt,” she said urgently. “Help him!”

  As she spoke, he heard a newscaster on the TV over the bar describing the murder—and showing Detective Ben Miller and the police as they arrived at Matt Hudson’s house to arrest him.

  “There you go,” one man said at the bar. “I watch the crime shows all the time. We should have known it was the charming bartender.”

  “I can’t believe it,” whispered the woman on the stool next to his. She stared wide-eyed at the screen.

  “You don’t want to believe it because Hudson was so good-looking. Women fall for a good-looking face every time,” the man said.

  “I don’t want to believe it, but there’s no surprise he might have been the mystery lover,” another man said.

  “Well, everyone will be relieved,” a young woman commented. She was probably right around Annie Hampton’s age. She happened to glance Jon’s way. “I’ll be able to walk the streets here again without being terrified.”

  The conversations went on. Jon listened, giving his attention to the television screen and to those coming and going.

  As he expected, Carl arrived shortly. He wedged his way up to the bar to stand beside Jon. He shook his head. “They’re wrong,” he said at once. “Matt may be under arrest, but when he goes to trial—and thank God we have laws and lawyers, and this can’t be turned into a witch hunt—his innocence will be proven.”

  “You know he’s innocent?” Jon asked Carl.

  He thought the man hesitated.

  Do you know he’s innocent of this, Jon wondered, because you’re guilty yourself?

  Carl traveled to the same cities as Matt—the same cities where victims had been found. Angela had verified it, and now Carl seemed a bit more suspicious to Jon all the time.

  It also seemed to Jon, now that he was right beside him, that Carl smelled like cigarette smoke. He might have been imagining it, looking for some reason for having found the matchboxes. Then again, he’d had an aunt who collected matchbooks and matchboxes everywhere she went as cheap souvenirs—and she’d never smoked a cigarette in her life.

  His suspects didn’t seem like the souvenir-collecting types.

  There was another question. Did Carl know Matt Hudson was innocent because he knew Michael Westerly was guilty? Perhaps Carl had been the one following them, trying to turn the tables. He had been in the Cauldron the night Jimmy Marino had his accident.

  “Apparently the local police have something that’s real evidence,” Jon said.

  “They can’t,” Carl said, and then looked at Jon, a new hostility in him. “But then you would know, wouldn’t you?”

  “At the moment, it’s the police. We’ll see if there’s anything for the Bureau to do later. I’ll be down at the station tomorrow,” he said.

  A table for two emptied in the center of the restaurant area, and Jon and Kylie leaped on it before it was even fully cleared of dirty dishes.

  Jon pulled out the book on cemeteries Jackson had purchased. They spoke loudly to one another—easy enough to pull off because there was so much chatter in the bar and restaurant.

  “I never knew about some of these, can you believe it?” Kylie asked. “So fascinating. Especially when the engraving is deep and you can really read the old stones. In some of the well-documented cemeteries, the older engravings have been re-chiseled or redone...repaired? I’m not sure what they call it. But some of the not-so-well-known places are amazing, too.”

  “I know. I love the old stones that tell stories like, ‘Here lies Peter Stone, a mammoth fall did crush his bone.’”

  Kylie laughed. “I never saw one exactly like that. But I did read one about a Charles Allen, and the headstone listed all his wives, all his children, and talked about his voyage from England, how he became a farmer and then a Revolutionary War hero.”

  “Speaking of Charles,” Jon said, “there’s a great story about Dickens. He was visiting a cemetery in Edinburgh, and he misread a tombstone. The fellow who died had sold various food products, and it was on his stone that he was a ‘meal’ man. Dickens read it as ‘mean’ man. When he wrote A Christmas Carol, he even used part of the name of the man on the stone—Ebenezer Lennox Scroggie. Of course, there was more to it. Dickens was appalled by some of the conditions around him at the time, but he did visit the Canongate Cemetery. It’s presumed that Ebenezer Scrooge’s creation was influenced by the misreading of meal as mean.”

  “This one,” Kylie said, and she pointed at the book. “It’s called the Resting Place. Well, yes, I’m going to guess it’s restful. I have to visit this one—it’s not far, just in Danvers. I’m going first thing tomorrow. Would you be able to come with me?”

  “I’m afraid not.” He made a show of looking disappointed. “We’ll be at the station being briefed by the police. Matt Hudson has already demanded an attorney, but maybe he’ll speak with me. Even with an attorney present, I believe it will help me.”

  Kylie kept the book out, studying pictures of old, broken, and decaying gravestones, the trees and the tombs, and information on those who were buried there. “Oh, Jon, this is so sad! Behind this big vault there’s a group of graves. Several of the people buried there were accused of witchcraft and languished in jail for months before it was all ended. Many died from illnesses they contracted there.” She looked up at him. “I can’t wait to see this place. I can’t believe I’ve never visited it before.”

  He caught her hand, smiling at her across the table.

  They could all be wrong on this. They could plant themselves and more police officers in and around the cemetery, Kylie could walk all over it, and nothing could happen.

  But it wouldn’t be for lack of trying if the Cauldron did have ears. His smile deepened. Adam Harrison ran a theater and many of Jon’s coworkers had spouses who were renowned thespians.

  Kylie’s performance here could rival any.

  He was still holding her hand when the restaurant’s door opened and Sandra Westerly swept in, her head high, her manner triumphant.

  She spoke to a few people as she entered and made her way through the tables. Her pasted-on smile deepened into something real when she saw Jon and Kylie. She strode straight to their table and leaned on it.

  “You see, you horrid witch. My husband is innocent! Trust me, you’ll be hearing from my lawyer. You will pay for your lies and your harassment.”

  They both just stared at her.

  She didn’t expect an answer. Her smile was terrifying in its malicious pleasure. She looked down, as if she were too delighted to look straight at them while she relished the moment.

  The
book on cemeteries was on the table, open to the page that showed the Resting Place and its address in Danvers.

  Sandra looked up again. “You should have never messed with us, little girl,” she told Kylie. “What, were you hoping to sleep with him? There will be consequences. And you—” she turned to Jon “—big, strong agent man. You wait. Your superiors will have you writing traffic tickets.”

  Jon did reply then. “Sorry, Mrs. Westerly, agents don’t work traffic. That would be the police.”

  “Fine. I believe having you fired will work just as well.”

  Apparently, Kylie was unable to keep quiet a minute longer. “Good lord, why on earth would I want to sleep with your creepy husband when I’m with a ‘big, strong agent man’?” she asked.

  Sandra looked as if she could explode. She pointed a finger at Kylie. “You’ll pay,” she whispered. Her hands fell on the book. “You will pay,” she repeated, her words almost a growl. She spun around, leaving them.

  Jon realized some of the talk in the room had quieted—others had heard her. They were staring at Jon and Kylie. He was glad to see most of them looked surprised and uncomfortable.

  Sandra had allowed her politician’s-perfect-wife mask to slip. And while people might know she wore a mask, they were nonetheless stunned by what they had seen.

  “I think you really pissed her off,” Jon told Kylie quietly.

  “If we’re doing this, we might as well go all out,” Kylie said. She let out a shaky breath. Then she said, a little too loudly for regular conversation, enough to be heard by anyone near her, “Annie Hampton was nothing but happy and excited—nothing that would make anyone angry at all. Westerly didn’t have to be angry, but he tore into her as viciously as his strength could allow.”

  Jon nodded, feeling tension grip his gut. No plan was foolproof. He knew Kylie was unwavering and the machinations had been set into motion. But that didn’t matter. “We can still stop this,” he said softly.