Tony Marcella 07 - Call of the Witch

by Dana E. Donovan

  “So what better way to get money from her husband now?”

  “Maybe.” I rocked back in my chair, crossed my arms and kicked my feet up on the table. “If that’s the case, then she most definitely has an accomplice. We know she didn’t make those phone calls because she was there with us when they came in.”

  “Agreed,” said Spinelli. “Amanda Brewbaker may have had motive and means, but without an accomplice, she couldn’t pull it off entirely. So if she’s guilty, the question is…. who’s helping her?”

  “Someone from her theater company,” Carlos suggested. “Probably a lover.”

  “We’ll need names.” I looked to Spinelli. “When we’re done here, will you call Detective Olson and ask her to talk to Lionel Brewbaker? We’ll need him to tell us the name of the club where Amanda’s theater company performs, but I don’t want Amanda knowing we’re asking. We don’t want her making calls, tipping anyone off.”

  “Got it.”

  I pointed to Spinelli’s flip chart. “What else you got?”

  “Acquaintances and strangers. These are two kidnapper profiles we need to worry about most.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because, statistically speaking, those two inflict the highest percentages of injuries on their victims, and in cases where the victim is female, the highest percentages of sexual assaults, as well. Unfortunately, even when a ransom is part of the initial demands for release, after a sexual assault takes place, the kidnapper often kills his victim anyway, and then disposes the body.”

  “To destroy any DNA evidence,” I said.

  “Yup.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “And the scary part is––”

  “Don’t tell me. Because the kidnapper still hasn’t named his price, you’re worried the ransom is just a smoke screen. He doesn’t want the money at all.”

  Spinelli nodded faintly. “He may just be milking it for the excitement, creating additional anxiety at arm’s reach to heighten his perverted fetish. If that’s the case, it’s our worst nightmare.”

  “Then we might as well prepare for the worst. We should contact Kelly Brewbaker’s physician, and her dentist. See about getting dentil records, X-rays…anything that may help us identify her remains.”

  “No. Let’s not,” said Dominic.

  “Excuse me?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t think about that, Tony. I have to believe she’s okay.”

  “I have to believe she’s okay, too. But let’s face it. We need to cover all the bases.”

  “Tony, she’s just a child.” I could hear his voice cracking again. “I don’t want to work this case assuming it’s a recovery mission.”

  “I don’t either, Dominic. I’m only saying––”

  “Tony!” I turned to Carlos. He drew a bead on me a sharp as glass. “We can do that later.”

  “Later?”

  He hooked his brow ever so slightly. “Yes. Later.”

  I gestured a weak shrug. “Sure. All right. We’ll do it later.”

  Carlos nodded at Spinelli. “What else, Dominic?”

  I could tell that Dominic had lost focus temporarily. His eyes drifted off again, down toward the floor and along an imaginary line. I looked at Carlos, my expression undoubtedly conveying my confusion. He shook his head faintly. I took that to mean I should let it go.

  “Dominic?” he said again.

  At last, he responded. “Yes?”

  “What else you got?”

  “Oh.” I could see him reeling his thoughts in and stowing them away somewhere deep in the back of his mind. He flipped to the next page on his chart. It was a crude outline of the tri-county area showing a red X at two locations roughly ten miles apart. In the center on the map was a blue square with an A-frame top. He pointed to the blue box first.

  “This is the Brewbaker home,” he said. “And these,” he pointed to the two red X`s, “are the cell towers that relayed the kidnappers first two phone calls.”

  “He’s bouncing the signals off different cell towers,” I said, “to keep us from knowing his fixed location.”

  “That’s right. He knows we’re able to trace the relay towers without difficulty. The phone records tell us that. In fact, the phone doesn’t even have to be in use for us to know which tower it’s closest to.”

  “So long as the battery is in the phone.”

  “Exactly. Unfortunately, the kidnapper is smart enough to know that, too. We have traces set up on all the phones in the Brewbaker’s house, landlines and cells. The problem is, we need time to trace a call if we’re going to triangulate and pinpoint the exact location of its origin.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to happen. The caller seems smart enough to know we’ll attempt to do that. He’s not going to stay on the line long enough, and if he does, it looks like he’s going to keep jumping around so that we can’t track him to any one place.”

  Carlos said, “We can only hope he slips up and forgets to remove the battery from the phone after placing his next call.”

  “In the meantime,” I said, “we can look at video from cameras around those two cell towers. Maybe we’ll get lucky and spot that van the neighbor kid mentioned.”

  “Already on it,” said Spinelli. “I got video coming in from three convenient stores, two banks and a gas station.”

  I smiled, pleased and just a little amazed at the kid’s efficiency. “Okay then, let’s assume for a moment it’s not the mother and that we’re looking at acquaintances. From talking to Lionel Brewbaker, it sounds like Kelly has a limited circle of contacts. Why don’t we see what information we can find on Kelly’s dance coach and her riding instructor?”

  “I’m working on that, too,” said Dominic.

  “Good. Are you also doing a full background check on Mr. and Mrs. Brewbaker?”

  “No. Should I?”

  “Sure, and run one on the house keeper, too. What’s her name?”

  “Karina Martinez” said Carlos.

  “Right, Karina Martinez. Her access to the kid is unquestionable. Let’s see if she has any skeletons in her closet. Is she here legally? Is she hurting for money? If nothing else, she may be the last one to have seen Kelly before she disappeared. Perhaps she can tell us what Kelly was wearing, what she had on her or with her. In fact….” I turned to Carlos. “We ought to go see her first.”

  Carlos nodded. “Ready when you are.”

  I checked my watch. “Six-fifteen. For all we know we’re ten hours into this already. I don’t like it that we still don’t have a specified ransom amount. That can’t be good.”

  “It’s not,” said Spinelli. The tone of his voice sounded certain.

  “All right then. Guess that’s it.” I picked myself up and started for the door. “Carlos?”

  “Wait,” Spinelli called back.

  Carlos and I both turned around. “What?”

  “I was thinking.”

  “Yes?”

  “Why don’t you try witchcraft?”

  “On what?”

  “This case. Use witchcraft to locate Kelly.”

  “I don’t know how to do that.”

  “Sure you do. You can scry for her. Like you did in Salem that time to find Lilith.”

  “Dominic, I’m not so sure that even worked.”

  “What do you mean? It worked. We went straight to her after that. You found her and Ursula.”

  “Yeah, Tony.” This from Carlos. “You were on your game that night. The witch was in you, man.”

  “Yes, and it was all around me, too. The town was swimming with residue energy from a thousand dead witches.”

  “That’s right, and now that you are one with the Coven, you’re swimming with the energy of a thousand dead witches. They’re inside you. They’re all around you.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know guys. After our last case, I don’t think I’m comfortable using witchcraft at work.”

  “Tony,” again, Carlos. “What do y
ou mean? Our last case you made a zip ball and blew the lockbox clean off that hotel room door to get to Howard Snow. That was beautiful!”

  “Yeah, and I also used witchcraft on J.P. Ferguson at the Biocrynetix Laboratories building and nearly killed the man.”

  “Pah-lease. Come on, Tony. He was a dead man walking anyway. Besides, we’re not suggesting you do magic on anyone. Just do a little scrying. You got nothing to lose.”

  “Yeah,” said Spinelli. “What do you have to lose?”

  I thought about it. They were right. What did I have to lose? Scrying is a victimless art of magic. Not like the zipball. I initially decided to stop using witchcraft at work partly because of what happened to J.P. Ferguson, but mostly because of what happened to me the last time I did. In blowing up a lockbox with a zipball at the motel, I took a chunk of shrapnel to the cheek and nearly lost an eye. I realized then how dangerous witchcraft was and decided never to use it around other people again. Of course, that was a promise I had yet to share with Lilith, as it is generally under her insistence that I participate in magic in front of others often.

  I threw my arms up. “Fine. I’ll try scrying. I’m going to need some sand or some rice or beans. Something like that.”

  Dominic said, “I’ll get you something.” Then he left the room in a sprint.

  I said to Carlos, “I’m not promising anything, you know that.”

  “I know, but it’s worth a try.”

  “Yes, it is,” I admitted. I opened the door of the media room and looked down the hall. Dominic was gone. I imagined he ran downstairs to the cafeteria for whatever it was he planned to get me. I let the door shut again and said, “Hey, what’s with him these days?”

  “Dominic?”

  “Did you notice how peculiar he was acting?”

  “About Kelly?”

  “Yeah. I mean I thought he was going to cry when I mentioned we should get her dental records.”

  Carlos dismissed my concerns with a shrug. “It’s nothing, Tony. He’s all right. It’s just with Ursula being pregnant and all, he’s a little freaked out. He’s trying to get used to the idea of becoming a dad.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Sure. I’m used to it now. You should have seen him last week when he was logging onto those Internet sites, you know the live puppy cam and kitty cam sites. A couple of days ago while watching chick cam, he got all gushed up and cried like a baby after seeing three hatchlings break out of their shells.”

  “Dominic did that?”

  “Yeah, so cut the kid some slack with this kidnapping case. It’s hitting a little close to home for him.”

  “Is he going to be all right? I mean we don’t need him getting distracted.”

  “He’ll be fine. In fact, I think this case is exactly the distraction he needs to do his work with some sense of focus.”

  “I hope so because––”

  “Wait. Here he is.”

  “Got it,” said Dominic, charging through the door, holding up a shaker of salt. “Fresh from the cafeteria, Mother Nature’s most abundant spice. Think this’ll work?”

  I took the saltshaker and weighed it in my hand as if judging its suitability for the task. “I suppose so. Let’s give this baby a go.”

  I heard Carlos make a sucking sound in through his teeth at the word baby. I shot him a look that said bite me. I wasn’t going to tiptoe around the proverbial nursery over reckless syntax and linguistic nuances.

  The two followed me back to the table. I grabbed a black marker off the easel’s ledge and drew a circle on the table roughly eighteen inches in diameter. I could tell that Dominic wanted to scold me for defacing government property, but it was his idea that I try scrying in the first place. For that reason, he bit his lip and let me proceed.

  “You remember how to do it?” Carlos asked.

  “There’s nothing to it,” I said. “You spill some salt on the table and read the signs.”

  “Yeah, but do you remember how to read the signs?”

  I stopped unscrewing the top off the shaker long enough to look him in the eye. “Carlos, there is no knowing how to do it. You spill the salt and look at it. You either see something or you don’t.”

  “You think you’ll see something?”

  “Damn it! I don’t know. Why don’t you just shut up a minute and we’ll see what happens?”

  He backed off some. “You don’t have to yell.”

  “I didn’t yell.”

  “You didn’t not yell.”

  “If I didn’t not yell, then that means I yelled.”

  “See. I told you. You yelled.”

  “Carlos. I didn’t––”

  “Guys! Please. Can we do this?”

  Now Carlos and I both worked up the bite me look for Dominic. It was getting contagious. He turned it around and served it back to us on a full-sized bite me platter. I found myself suddenly feeling much less sympathetic toward his baby anxiety syndrome. “Fine,” I said. “Let’s see what this baby can do.”

  I heard no teeth sucking sounds from Carlos that time.

  We all turned our attention to the circle. I finished unscrewing the top of the saltshaker and poured a generous amount of salt into the palm of my hand, about half the shaker’s contents. I don’t know how I knew the correct amount. I simply poured the salt out until it felt right, as if a bell in my head chimed when my inner scale tipped at the right weight. I even removed a pinch of salt and tossed it over my shoulder, lightening the load an infinitesimal amount. Yet I knew it was necessary to assure an accurate reading.

  “All right,” I said, not looking at either of them. “Here goes.”

  I held my hand over the circle some eighteen inches above the tabletop, closed my eyes and opened my fist. I felt the salt sift through my fingers like angel dust, causing a tingle in every neuron receptor in my hand, as if spun of electrically charged spider webs. When the last of the salt cleared my baby finger, I opened my eyes.

  “Hot damn! Look at that. It worked!”

  “What?” said Carlos. “You see something?”

  “Something? I see everything.”

  “Everything? I don’t see everything. I see nothing. You see anything, Dominic?”

  Spinelli shook his head. “I see a pile of salt.”

  “Are you kidding me?” I pointed to the obvious map that had presented itself in phenomenal clarity. “It’s a map. Look! There’s New Castle, Ipswich, Danvers. That’s Boxford. Up here, Portsmouth. Over here is Manchester. Don’t you see it?”

  They both answered. “No.”

  “Well I do.”

  “Then tell us where Kelly is.”

  I studied the map carefully. I could see the cell phone towers Spinelli had told us about earlier. I could see Brewbaker’s house, the Justice center, Kelly Brewbaker’s school. But I could not see Kelly Brewbaker.

  “Well?” said Carlos.

  I shook my head. “I don’t see her.”

  “You don’t know where she is?”

  “No.” I put my finger down on the Brewbaker house and dragged it through the salt. The map that I had seen so clearly began to distort, broken apart by ripples like a reflection in water. When I lifted my finger, it was gone. Only a scattering of salt remained on the table, marked by a meandering trail leading nowhere. I looked up at Carlos and Spinelli. I could tell they expected more. But I had nothing.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. They both exhaled as though they were holding their breaths the entire time. Perhaps they were.

  “What now?” Carlos asked.

  I checked my watch again. It was six-thirty. I couldn’t help but feel we had just wasted fifteen valuable minutes, minutes that Kelly Brewbaker didn’t have to lose.

  “We go and see Karina Martinez,” I said. “She might still be our best lead.”

  We left Spinelli with his to-do list. If Carlos thought work was what he needed to keep his mind off his baby worries, then he sure had his work cut out for him now.

 
On our drive to Martinez’s house, I asked Carlos about his girlfriend, if he called yet to let her know he’d be canceling his date. He seemed confused.

  “Who?”

  “Your girlfriend. Lauri?”

  “Lauri.”

  “Yes, without the E. Remember?”

  “Oh, Lauri. Yes, my girlfriend. Of course I remember.” He laughed and snorted at the same time. “It’s funny you don’t think I’d remember my own girlfriend.”

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Did you call her?”

  “No, but I will. Don’t worry.”

  I crossed my arms at chest-level, shook my head and mumbled something, but it was more a loud thought than a statement.

  Carlos had his hands on the wheel at the ten-and-two position, his eyes straight ahead. Still he saw my gesture through his periphery. “What was that?”

  “What was what?”

  “You have something to say?”

  “No.”

  He glanced over at me, his face soured with disgust. “Yes you do. You got something to say, then say it.”

  “Carlos, it’s none of my business. Forget it.”

  “No. You do this all the time. Dominic was right. You make unqualified judgmental remarks under your breath, insinuating God knows what, and then you say forget it. Well I’m not forgetting it.”

  “Dominic said that?”

  “Leave Dominic out of it.”

  “You brought him into it. Not me.”

  “Then I’m taking him out.” Carlos took his right hand off the wheel, grabbed a patch of air in his fist and tossed it out the window. “There,” he said, rolling the window back up to keep Dominic’s name from coming back in. “He’s out of it. Now tell me what you said that was so damn secretive you had to mumble it to yourself.”

  “Okay. Fine. You wanna know what I said?”

  “I’m asking, aren’t I?”

  “All right. I said you probably don’t even have a girlfriend. That’s what I said.”

  He made a face and gasped as though I had just poured ice water down his back. “I don’t believe it.” He took both hands off the wheel this time and turned his palms up empty. “After all these years, after all the women I’ve introduced you to, you think I have to invent a girlfriend?”

  “Look, Carlos. It was just a stupid remark. Forget I said it. I’m sure Lauri without the E is a wonderful, caring sensitive woman.”