Witch House

by Dana Donovan

  The doors opened. We stepped out and there was Spinelli. He seemed surprised to see us. “Oh, there you are. I wasn’t expecting you back so quickly. Listen, I was just going downstairs to get some coffee. You want some?”

  “No.” I palmed his shoulder and walked him backward, away from the elevator. “Tell me you got a ballistics match on Powell’s .38 first.”

  He shook his head. “It came up negative.”

  “Damn.”

  “You’re disappointed?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know. I guess I’m surprised, that’s all. My gut told me that Powell…forget it.”

  Carlos said, “He still may have. We never asked him for his back up piece.”

  I knew better, but said anyway, “Uniforms don’t carry a back up piece.”

  He shot me that look. “Not officially.”

  I said to Dominic, “Does Powell carry a snub-nosed .38 on him.”

  “I don’t know. Should I ask him?”

  “No.” I brushed past him and headed for my desk. “Can’t ask him that now. I am sure he’ll tell us he doesn’t have one.”

  The two followed me. Carlos said, “We can ask around. Someone downstairs will know if he carries a back up or not.”

  “I don’t think it will help,” said Dominic. “If Powell had a non-issued back up, one he did not have to account for, he would have certainly disposed of it the night of the murder.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “No, Dominic’s right,” I said. “Powell is too smart to get caught with the proverbial smoking gun. We have to move on. Dominic, where are we with the warrants for the other guns?”

  “Got`em. I have two uniforms at the casino now, obtaining all of Chief Running Bear’s guns; two more serving Kemper and I am working on getting someone out to Walpole to see DeAngelo. As fast as we get`em in, we will rush the guns down to ballistics for test firing.”

  “Great,” I said, feeling better about that. “Who did you use?”

  “You mean for judge?”

  “Yes.”

  “McPherson.”

  “Judge Fredrick McPherson? Why him?”

  “Why not?”

  “His subpoenas usually restrict us to the narrowest of search parameters.”

  “I didn’t know that, not that it mattered. I had to use McPherson. The captain said the D.A`s office wants to keep close tabs on this investigation. McPherson is their go-to judge for subpoenas of a sensitive nature.”

  “The D.A`s office considers this a sensitive case?”

  “Of course.”

  “In what respect?”

  “In respect to its potential to embarrass M.C.I. and to further strain the relationship between the State of Massachusetts and the Wampanoag Indian tribe.”

  “All right then, we’ll let it go, but listen, I want you to secure subpoenas for all cell phone records between Powell, Stiles, Kemper, DeAngelo and Chief Running Bear. Dig back about a month, and do not let the D.A’s office know unless they ask. Go to Judge LaHaye if you can, and see if he will let us tap those same phones. If a conspiracy exists between any of them, that might tell us.”

  “Got it. Hey, did things go okay with Stiles?”

  Carlos answered, “She wasn’t helpful.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “She had someone hiding in her bedroom. I told Tony we should stay and see who it was. He said no.”

  Dominic turned to me. “You didn’t want to know?”

  “It doesn’t matter. We don’t have time for that. Your concern now should be those subpoenas, that and your date with Ursula tonight at the séance.”

  “Date?” He laughed doubtfully. “I don’t have….” Carlos and I shifted glances around him. “Did she say it was a date?”

  “Sure,” said Carlos, grinning like a serpent. “That’s what she told us. Right, Tony?”

  I turned back and headed down the hall. “I’ll see you both at seven thirty. Don’t keep me waiting.”

  “Oh, I won’t,” said Dominic. “I’ll be ready.”

  I called back. “I know you will. I meant Carlos.”

  SEVENTEEN

  In the few short years that I have known Lilith, I have witnessed by her hand a myriad of paranormal manifestations, the breadth of which I can scarcely summons upon reflective rumination. Yet, each time I reconcile the impossible with the improbable, I remember that the world around us is constantly shifting its physical boundaries, swapping the intangible limits of time and space with measurable elements of perception. Such instances challenge me to suspend my instincts and deny my propensity to dispel that which offers no collectable evidence supporting its existence.

  Lilith maintains that the human mind, through paranoia and religious fabrications, has conditioned itself to believe that the Otherworld, the sphere beyond physical touch, is a distinct and separate reality from our own, and that the keepers of that world are righteous, pious and inviolable. The truth, she contends, is the exact opposite, explaining how Native culture and Wiccans alike express the coexistence between all realms of intelligent matter, regardless their physical tendencies. Comingling between the sub-spheres is as natural as rain and wind. Such is the belief among most of the world’s oldest religions, assuming Christianity, Islam and Judaism are still in their infancy. These, the oldest of theologians, believe that for an entity to pass through the keyhole of abstraction, one needs only the mutual subordination of another in a parallel domain as its conduit. In Hindu practice, they call this abstract exchange between a causal agent and a spirit soul, transmigration. Lilith calls it a séance.

  I met Carlos and Spinelli at the Justice Center at seven thirty and, as expected, had to wait on Carlos who insisted on running back upstairs to collect money from his desk for the candy machine. I offered him what spare change I had and even made Spinelli turn his pockets inside out for the cause, but Carlos refused, insisting he did not want to take advantage of our good nature. Later, we learned that declining our offer had nothing to do with our good nature and everything to do with the call of nature. The delicate discrimination of the matter became abundantly apparent after I sent Spinelli up in the elevator to see what was taking Carlos so long to run down a few quarters. The poor boy came back down in a pale fright, suggesting appropriately that we wait outside in the car.

  “Carlos is texturing a constitution at the moment,” he said, and then shuddered. I had never heard it put quite that way before, but I knew what he meant. Experience has taught me that with Carlos, some things are better not rushed.

  We found Lilith and Ursula out front of the old house as we drove up. We were not late. The thirty minutes I allowed for the ride there was twenty minutes more than necessary under normal circumstances, and five more than what Carlos needed to…texture his masterpiece. Still, that did not keep Lilith from voicing her displeasure over our timing.

  “Did you get lost?” she asked, sarcastically, of course. By contrast, Ursula turned away shyly. And though her lips thinned, I could not tell if it was out of amusement or embarrassment that they did. I came around the car, stopping to get into the trunk before stepping up onto the curb.

  “Nice to see you, too,” I said, and I checked my watch. “Are we late?” I knew we were not.

  “Yes.”

  I checked it again. “No. You said eight o’clock.”

  “Ursula and I have been waiting here ten minutes. You couldn’t arrive early to assure you would not keep two vulnerable women standing out in the cold by themselves?”

  “Vulnerable? Lilith, please.”

  “It was my fault,” said Carlos. “I held the guys up. I had something I had to finish back at work.”

  “You?”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry. Hey.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a Snickers Bar. “How `bout a peace offering?”

  She reached out and swatted the candy bar from his hand. “I don’t want it. I want you to get your ass here a little quicker next time.”

  I stepped between th
em and picked up the Snickers. “There isn’t going to be a next time,” I said. I handed the candy bar back to Carlos. “But just for reference, whenever you want someone to meet you somewhere at a quarter to eight, tell him a quarter to eight, not eight o’clock, and maybe he will be there.” I handed Carlos and Dominic two of three flashlights I had gathered from the trunk and pushed past them, heading for the house. “Now come on. Let’s get this over with.”

  On the way up the walk, Carlos leaned into Dominic and uttered, “See what I mean.” I turned and looked at them, but let it go.

  Once inside the house, I could feel the friction between Lilith and me melting away. I stepped over the threshold and stopped just a few feet into the room, causing the others to check up behind me single-file. Lilith came around my right side, stroking my arm softly. I had just turned to kiss her cheek when she reached around me and ripped the drawstring off the curtain in the front window. “Whoa!” I said. “What’s that for? You gonna tie me up?”

  She laughed teasingly. “Oh, wouldn’t you like that?”

  “I might.”

  She took my hand. “Come. There is nothing to worry about.”

  I followed her lead, stepping over chunks of plaster and bits of debris as we worked our way toward the dining room. Gone were the candles that lit our way the last time like so many airport runway lights. In their place lay blobs of hardened wax, sprawled flat in petrified flows resembling cooled lava. I said to Lilith, almost as an afterthought, “I’m not worried.”

  Spinelli said under his breath, “Neither am I,” though I was not convinced. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that he had taken Ursula’s hand, or she had taken his; I do not know which. I looked back further at Carlos. He had fallen behind a few steps, his attention directed on the ceiling, raking it over corner to corner. When I first came through the doorway, I thought I heard creaking noises above us, as if someone was walking the floor upstairs in stocking feet. There were no footsteps, per se, only the sound of shifting weight along the floorboards. I suspected Carlos heard it, too. I let go of Lilith’s hand and mentioned to him and Dominic that we should sweep the building for intruders.

  “Aren’t we intruders?” asked Carlos.

  Dominic said, “I’ll take upstairs,” and he headed down the hall with a flashlight in one hand and his .38 in the other. Ursula called to him, her arms extended. “Take care of thee,” she begged. “Thou art so brave.”

  He turned and replied, “I shall,” and then he blew her a kiss that she snagged from the air with her still outstretched hand.

  I looked to Carlos. “I’ll take the kitchen.”

  “Oh,” he moaned, “I was going to take the kitchen.”

  “Okay, fine. I’ll look downstairs.”

  “In the basement?”

  “Yes.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes.”

  He dismissed it with a tisk sound through his teeth. “All right, it’s your funeral.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Come on, the cellar? A haunted house?” He dropped his voice a full octave. “Need I say more?”

  “You think it’s too scary to go down there?”

  He laughed faintly and shook his head. “No, it’s okay. You’ll be fine.”

  “You sure?”

  “Sure.”

  “You mean you wouldn’t be scared to go down there by yourself.”

  “Me?” He waved dismissively. “`Course not.” Then he snapped his fingers in front of my face. “I would go down just like that. It wouldn’t faze me a bit.”

  “Great.” I pointed to the cellar door. “Then why don’t you go and check it out? I’ll stay up here and keep an eye on the girls.”

  “What?” His jaw slackened. “No. I was going to check out the kitchen.”

  “I know, but now I can do that. You can go down into the basement.”

  “Tony!” said Lilith, knuckling my arm hard with her ring hand. “Stop screwing around and get your ass downstairs. I would like to do this séance sometime before the sun comes up tomorrow.”

  Carlos smiled, relieved, I am sure. I grabbed the larger of the two remaining flashlights and headed downstairs. Once there, it did not take me long to determine that the basement was void of human life, which is not to say that it was void of life altogether. The scratching and scurrying noises I heard convinced me that a colony of rats populated the cellar in numbers impressive enough that I felt more vulnerable there than at any time since my return to prime. All around me, beady red eyes glowed in the reflected beam of my flashlight, suggesting my moves were under strict scrutiny. I trained my light off into the corner and spotted what looked like a large bank bag, one that buckled at the top. On it was stenciled the words, Wampanoag Indian Casino. My first reaction was one of disbelief. I went over and picked it up.

  “Tony!” It was Lilith, hollering for me to get a move on. I tossed the sack over my shoulder and ascended the stairs two by two. Carlos, who had hung out in the kitchen the entire time, caught me at the top. He commented on how quickly I made the sweep, suggesting that maybe I could have stayed down there longer, doing a more thorough job. I held the cellar door open and pointed downstairs.

  “You think you can do better?”

  He cast an unconcerned gaze into the darkness beyond the first few steps. “No,” he answered. “I think you got it.”

  “Yeah, I thought so.”

  “Hey,” he pointed to the sack. “Whatchaya got there?”

  I rolled it off my back so that he could read the stenciled writing on the side. “I’m guessing it’s money.”

  “Money! No way!” Dominic returned from his sweep of the second floor. “Dom, check out what Tony found.”

  “What is it?”

  “A bag of money.”

  “No,” I said, “I’m only guessing it’s money.”

  “Where’d you it?”

  “Down in the cellar.”

  “Is there any more?”

  “No, just this one.”

  “What’s that?” This from Lilith, who had now joined us at the top of the steps.

  “Tony found a bag of money.”

  “You found money?”

  “No, we don’t know that.”

  Carlos pointed at the stenciling. “It’s from the casino. What else can it be?”

  “Open it. We might all be rich!”

  “No, Lilith. We are not all rich.” I dropped the sack to the floor and jerked it tight against my leg. “If there is money in here, we are entering it into evidence, and that’s that.”

  Lilith grabbed the top strap and unbuckled it hastily. “Fine, rain on our parade, but let’s have a look already, shall we?”

  The five of us gather around, stooped over the bag in a tight huddle, our breaths bated in anticipation of what we expected would be the most money any of us had ever seen in one place at one time.

  “Damn!” said Spinelli, after Lilith finished opening the bag. “I don’t believe it.”

  Carlos cried, “Look, there’s a small fortune here!”

  I laughed. “No, Carlos, there’s a large fortune here.”

  Lilith shook her head, unconvinced. “I don’t think so,” and she began reaching into the sack.

  I slapped her hand. “Yes, it is, Lilith. Now leave it.”

  “No,” she insisted. “It is not.” She reached in again and I let her go. We watched in dismay as she plunged her hand deep into the sack and pulled out a fistful of blank paper. “This is what you call a decoy.”

  Carlos fell to his knees and began digging into the sack, pulling out handful after handful of worthless bricks of bundled paper. “This doesn’t make sense. Why is there real money on top and paper below?”

  I palmed his shoulder and eased him away from the bag. “I don’t know,” I said. “Clearly, something is amiss here.” I said to Lilith. “Do you know whose house this was?”

  She crowded her brows and thought. “I don’t think the realtor told us.” />
  “Aye, `tis Allis,” said Ursula. “Of that I am certain.”

  “How can you know for sure?” I asked.

  She pointed out the window. “`Tis the name on the box out front.”

  “The mailbox?” I looked at Carlos. “You think it’s him?”

  “Johnny Buck? Could be. He did live around here.”

  Lilith asked, “Who is Johnny Buck?”

  “The trigger man in the armored truck robbery that sent René Landau to prison.”

  “Is that his real name?”

  “No, his real name is John Allis. They called him Johnny Buck because of his teeth.”

  “His teeth?”

  “Yeah,” said Carlos. “They were all bucky.” He curled his upper lip back and began making gnawing gestures like a rat. “Like this.”

  I slapped him. “Carlos!” I must admit, the visual was funny.

  “Sorry, Tony.”

  “Forget it. So you think this house is his?”

  “Of course,” said Dominic. “Who else named Allis would have a bank sack in his cellar with Wampanoag Indian Casino stenciled on the side?”

  “No one else,” Carlos replied. “That’s who. This money has to be from the robbery.”

  “But there is only a few thousand dollars here, at best. Where is the rest, and why is this sack made up to look like a sack full of cash?”

  “I told you,” said Lilith, “it’s a classic decoy. This sack was meant to fool someone into thinking it was full of casino money.”

  “Fool who?” This from Carlos.

  “Good question.” I knelt down and began scooping up the money and the paper and stuffing it back into the bag. “But that is something we can discuss later.”

  “He’s right,” said Lilith. “We are not going to solve this mystery tonight. Why don’t we get this séance started and you boys can worry about your money afterwards.”

  “It’s not our money,” I said. “First thing tomorrow it goes downtown where we book it into evidence.”

  “Fine, whatever. Come on into the dining room. Ursula and I have everything ready.”

  We all filed into the dining room where, as Lilith mentioned, she and Ursula had completed their pre-séance preparations. The candles were set just so, the chairs aligned and incense burning, making the room smell like jasmine. According to Lilith, jasmine makes a ghost feel welcome and invited. Personally, I think she used it to disguise the musty odor permeating from the wallpaper and spongy floors. If she thought we would not notice the living mold, she was mistaken, as we had our own canary in a coalmine in Dominic Spinelli, whose hypersensitive allergies can detect a plethora of environmental contaminates, ranging from atomized dust particulates to the more obnoxious molds, mildew and decomposing organics. Fortunately, Dominic had something for it. Throughout the evening, I spotted him tipping a prescription bottle and popping some pills that appeared to make him feel better. Funny, I thought, how his allergies seemed to worsen after his recent hospital stay. It made me wonder if he did not catch something while there. Carlos says I am always over thinking things. I suppose in that way I am.