“Sarah Wildes,” Cheryl said as Rose touched the third petal of her rosary and then moved onto the fourth as Olivia and her daughter, still holding hands, spoke in unison, with Rose joining the chorus. “Rebecca Nurse.”
Rose moved her fingers to the fifth and final petal. Hearing a whisper of words on the wind, Callie spun around, but there was no one there. Rose looked around as if she had heard something as well. Then, the wind stilled and the world went silent as Rose spoke the name of the final ancestor: “And Sarah Good.”
“Amen,” the women chorused. Rose began to chant, an old Irish prayer with a Celtic melody. It hung in the air and moved among the knotted trees that surrounded the clearing, seeming to untangle their branches as it passed. For a moment, everything was suspended in time and ether. Callie looked up and saw a vision of the hanging tree that had not been there just moments before, the one Rose had told her stories about. She saw the victims left dangling from the limbs where they were executed, displayed for all to see, a gruesome warning, the wages of sin. She stared as, one by one, their bodies were finally cut down and dropped into the pit below, each falling slowly, as if through water. She closed her eyes tight to block out the vivid image her imagination had conjured.
“Let us say the Lord’s Prayer now,” intoned Rose.
“Our Father…” they began in unison.
What happened next happened quickly. The prayer stopped, and the world fell silent. Callie opened her eyes, but the moon had passed behind a cloud, leaving only the stars as dim illumination. Rose was standing in the same place, directly across from her, still clutching the rosary beads, but she was no longer reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Her mouth was open, yet no speech came out. The only sound was a loud and desperate sucking. In shock, Rose stared at Susan, who was on the ground, facedown, a pool of crimson spreading on the dead grass that surrounded her.
Cheryl rushed forward, turning her friend over, revealing a deep, ugly gash on her neck.
Olivia screamed as she was seized from behind, torn away, and dragged toward the crevasse, letting go of her daughter’s hand forever.
Before Callie had a chance to protest, someone grabbed her by the arm.
“Run!” Rose screamed. Callie felt herself pulled backward, her legs responding only in an effort to stay on her feet.
It was Auntie Rose who had spun her around and was now pushing her forward on the path. “That way!” Rose said, and the two of them ran together as fast as they could until they found a clump of dense undergrowth. Rose shoved Callie into the thicket, scratching her skin on the thorny branches until she was in the middle of a nest of twining vines.
“Stay here. I’ll come back for you!”
“But Mommy—”
“Don’t make a sound!” Rose hissed.
Callie’s eyes were wide with terror. “Don’t leave me!” she begged in a whisper.
Rose pressed the wooden rosary into the child’s hand. “Here. Hold this! Close your eyes and keep them closed until I come back for you! And pray!”
In an instant, Rose was gone.
Callie closed her eyes and clutched the rosary as tightly as she could until her palm was stinging, and she could feel the blood running down her fingers from where the carved edges of the rose petals pressed into her flesh. She tried to remember the rosary prayers Rose had been teaching her, but they had vanished into the darkness along with her mother and the other women she called family. She heard a wailing sound, low at first, then growing louder and more shrill, pitching higher and higher until it sounded like the screams of a wild animal. It was unearthly, a sound of both agony and power.
She waited for what seemed like forever, until the sound faded to silence and the darkness finally gave way to morning light. Feeling the warmth of the sun filtering through the branches, Callie opened her eyes.
No one ever came back.
A few influential Salemites are calling for DNA evidence to be gathered, not from the body of William Barnes, who died on October 31, but from the three women nicknamed the Goddesses, murdered in 1989, a case in which Rose Whelan was once considered the primary suspect.
—The Salem Journal
He’d been looking at the photos of the Goddesses all morning. Six boxes of evidence had arrived from the archives, and he was expecting seven more. He hadn’t officially reopened the case, but he’d already opened the boxes and pored over their contents, staring at a Polaroid of Olivia that was curling at the edges.
Callie looked just like her mother: black curly hair, blunt cut and shoulder length. Brown eyes so dark you almost couldn’t distinguish the iris from the pupil, the only feature that played against the angelic porcelain of her skin. Olivia’s beauty had been legendary, as was her reputation and those of the other “Goddesses.”
The resemblance between them was profound. Good thing Towner had told her not to use her last name, he thought. Though Callie’s name hadn’t been published in the newspaper accounts of the murders, a lot of the locals remembered the Cahill surname.
The files said Callie’s father was a musician Olivia had met in New Orleans, but no name was listed, and Callie said she had never known who her father was. Olivia had come to Salem to trace her family tree, which dated back to the witch trials. There had been gossip that she’d practiced a little witchcraft herself down in New Orleans, though there had never been anything to back that up. Her behavior in Salem, as well as that of the rest of the girls, had certainly been bewitching, though more for seduction than for spells. Just one example, he thought, of why the women dubbed the Goddesses were so hated here. They were all beautiful girls, but they behaved more like men than like respectable young ladies.
He’d spent most of the morning watching and rewatching the tape of Callie’s questioning sessions. They were remarkable, really. She was so young, and she had so clearly loved Rose. She told the same story no matter how the investigators tried to poke holes in it: Rose had tried to save them all, she said over and over. Her answers never wavered. If he’d been harboring any suspicion at all that Rose was guilty, Callie’s testimony had convinced him of her innocence.
The evidence backed him up. Yes, Rose had been at the scene of the murders. Yes, she had been covered in the victims’ blood. But she had no defensive wounds on her, and the final victim, Cheryl Cassella, had put up quite a fight. Rose had no weapon. She didn’t have the “trophies” that were taken from Susan Symms’s body: a slice of skin from her forearm and a shock of white hair, skin still attached, cut from her scalp. Whatever Rose had seen that night had permanently unstrung her. It was no wonder she’d concocted a crazy story. She’d definitely dissociated. He’d seen other victims of severe trauma cope in similar ways.
When Jay-Jay called to tell him Callie was on her way in, Rafferty stashed the evidence box behind his desk. She had told him about the vision at the library, and she’d come by almost every day this week, telling him random things she remembered. Asking questions. Today, he had a question for her.
“What about this Leah you mentioned yesterday, the one you were waiting for who was supposed to be part of the blessing? Was she one of the Goddesses?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you remember her last name yet?”
She shook her head. “Sorry.”
“She didn’t live with you?”
“Not that I remember…I do remember how tense Rose was that night waiting for her to show up. I told you she’d been threatening to kick us out of her house.”
“Yes.” He’d heard it before, and Callie had confirmed it yesterday. She’d told him everything she remembered, and her memories were quite detailed, but there were definitely gaps.
“This time I don’t think it was a threat. She made us pack. I remember her telling my mother we had to move out the day after Halloween. Which was why we had to do the blessing that night. I think she really meant to throw us out.”
“Why that time and not the others?”
“I don’t know. The
y had parties sometimes, when Rose was at work. I told you that.”
He nodded.
“I think it might have had something to do with the parties. I know she didn’t like it, that people at work were telling her about it. The neighbors, too. They kept calling the police. The cops were there all the time. ‘Enough is enough.’ That’s what Rose kept saying. It was really getting to her. And then this thing with Leah. Whatever that was.”
“Do you think Leah was the fifth petal, Callie?”
“What do you mean, the fifth petal?”
As Rafferty asked the question, he’d been sketching a five-petaled rose on a legal pad. Now he turned it around so she could see it. It looked just like the scar on her left palm.
He’d told her yesterday about something he’d found in the files, something Rose had alluded to after the murders when she was finally lucid enough to be questioned. She’d said that the girls were all petals of the rose. She was referring to that rosary necklace she’d handed to Callie. She said each petal stood for one of the five who were executed in July 1692, and that the petals corresponded to their descendants as well.
“I know you and your mother were related to Rebecca Nurse.”
“So was Rose,” Callie said.
“Right. I knew that. And I’ve accounted for Cheryl and Susan. But then I go blank. According to your memory, Rose also spoke two other names that night: Elizabeth Howe and Sarah Good.”
Callie thought about it. “I’m pretty sure Rose was related to more than one of Salem’s executed.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Rose told me she was. She said that’s why she got interested in the witch trials in the first place. Because she found out she was related to more than one who was put to death.”
Rafferty remembered hearing that a number of people in this area had more than one accused or executed relative. Towner said it was why people here weren’t as interested in the whole history as the tourists seemed to be. They’d had enough of it. Their relatives had lived it. Evidently, it was the opposite for Rose.
“So Cheryl and Susan are two petals of the rose,” Callie said. “And my mother. And me. I would guess the other one is Rose.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But if you and your mother and Rose are all related to Rebecca Nurse, wouldn’t you all be on the same petal?”
“Maybe.”
“And if Rose was related to more than one of Salem’s executed, her name may be on another petal as well.”
“That makes sense.”
“Since she spoke two other names that night, I’m thinking one of them might have been for her other relative and the other for Leah, who was supposed to be there.”
“Okay,” Callie said, going along with his logic.
“If you remember her last name, let me know. Or if you come up with anything else.”
“That’s all?”
“Pretty much,” he said. “But I’m sure there will be more. I know where to find you.”
“As in don’t leave town?”
“Yeah.” Rafferty laughed. “One more thing…” He reached into his desk and pulled out an old Polaroid of her mother he’d found in the file, one taken before the murders. He slid it across the desk to her. “You look a lot like her,” he said.
“I know,” she said, still shocked by the resemblance.
“I don’t think not using your last name, as my wife suggested, is going to be enough. I think you’d better dye your hair as well.”
“Really?”
“The less familiar you seem to people, the better. If you’re right about Rose’s innocence, then there may still be a murderer out there. And now you’re back in town: the only eyewitness who’s even remotely reliable. You could be in danger.” He stood.
She handed the photo back to him.
After she left, Rafferty watched the tape again. She was a brave girl, especially for someone so young. Though she was upset—they kept asking the same questions over and over—she never cried. Instead, she stared blankly at the camera, clearly in shock, her hair disheveled and her bandaged hand placed carefully on her lap, palm oddly angled and facing up, as if it were disconnected from her body. Even in that early photo, Callie had looked remarkably like her mother.
He thought of his own daughter at that age and felt almost like crying himself. And from what he’d heard from Towner about Callie’s life since the murders, it hadn’t been an easy one.
He was almost relieved when Jay-Jay interrupted to tell him the assistant district attorney was on the phone. But any trace of relief disappeared when he heard the word exhumation.
“They’re going to exhume the Goddesses?” Towner gasped as she read the morning paper.
“They’re going to try.”
“You’re not going to let them do that, are you?”
Normally, Rafferty would have welcomed any shot at DNA evidence when he was trying to solve a crime. This was a triple murder. If it had happened today, there’d be no question about whether to do DNA testing. Hell, he would have insisted. Even twenty-five years later, it wasn’t a bad idea, although he knew that actually getting any clarity was a remote possibility. Testing was expensive and time consuming, and, in the case of exhumation, it required a judge’s order.
Still, in this case, the thought of testing made him very nervous. Rose had lived with the victims, and their blood was found all over her. If there was any DNA left after the bodies had been autopsied and prepared for burial, it was likely to be Rose’s. And the exhumation was being requested by people who wanted to see her charged. He hadn’t yet reopened the case, and already people were circulating a petition. This was a witch hunt.
But Rose’s words the night of the murders and the conversation he’d had earlier with her kept coming back to him. “Do you think, inside, every one of us is a killer?” And the line that followed, the one she’d repeated when Porter arrested her. “The lesser of two evils.” That was the one that bothered Rafferty the most. Had Rose thought about this? Was she talking about what had happened so many years ago on Proctor’s Ledge? Or was she talking about Billy Barnes? Had she considered hurting him, or was she, like Towner and Ann Chase and several other people he’d met since his arrival in Salem, able to get glimpses of events before they even happened?
He wanted to see the rest of the physical evidence before he determined his position on DNA testing. If the physical evidence was as complete as it should be, the testing might not be necessary. As soon as he got back to his office, he would place another call to the archives to hurry the process.
Rafferty put down the newspaper and ran his hand through his hair.
“A lot of people in town are calling for DNA testing. The boy’s death and Rose’s…involvement in it have incited all sorts of panic. People want answers.”
“Which people?” Towner asked, pouring him a second cup of the secret stash of coffee she kept in the tearoom just for him.
“Mainly Helen Barnes,” he admitted. “She’s already gotten a large number of signatures on a petition.”
Helen had persuaded some of her neighbors from the McIntire District to sign, as well as a few folks down in Washington Square. But it was the signatures from people in the less affluent neighborhoods that bothered Rafferty most, the ones from the Point and Boston Street. Many had recently emigrated from the Dominican Republic and Haiti, where black magic and witchcraft were something older people still feared. The fact that Helen’s petition had accused Rose of being a witch wasn’t helping. “This thing with Billy Barnes has reminded people too much of the past, and it’s unfortunate for Rose.”
“Do you think they’ll go ahead with it?”
“Too early to say. I wouldn’t. Not until we see all the other evidence. But a judge will make the final decision, not me.”
Towner kept glancing at the legal pad on which Rafferty had sketched the five-petaled rose. Each petal held the name of one of the women executed in July 1692. Sharing that same petal was t
he name of the descendant who had come to honor them that terrible night in 1989. Olivia, Callie, and Rose shared a petal with Rebecca Nurse, Susan with Susannah Martin, Cheryl with Sarah Wildes. The other two were not yet filled in.
Towner pointed. “Wouldn’t that one be Rose?” She pointed to Elizabeth Howe’s petal. “Didn’t Callie say Rose spoke a name that night?”
“Rose spoke three names that night: Elizabeth Howe, Rebecca Nurse, and Sarah Good. One of them presumably belonged to Leah, who didn’t show up.”
He penciled in Leah’s name, not on a petal but just above the sketch.
Rafferty looked at his watch, then stood and took his dishes to the sink.
“Have you told Callie about the petition?” Towner asked, following him.
“Not yet. Though she’ll probably read about it in this morning’s gossip rag just like everyone else in town.”
“That could be disturbing.”
He considered. “She’s tougher than you think.” Now Rafferty looked at his wife. “Actually, Callie reminds me a little of you.”
“Really? In what way?”
“She was traumatized. She only has pieces of a child’s memory, very vivid ones, but there are gaps. The history is different, of course. But, I think, like you, she’s a survivor.”
“Let’s hope she’s better at survival than I was.”
Rafferty shuddered to remember what Towner had been through. An abuse victim as a child, she had experienced a trauma lengthier than Callie’s, and it had taken her a long time to recover. But, in her recovery, she’d found her life’s purpose, to help those who’d suffered similarly. Rafferty was filled with admiration for his wife’s bravery. Her struggles and her determination to overcome them had turned her into a strong and confident woman.
Rafferty kissed Towner and headed for the door. “Let’s see what happens with Rose before we worry about the exhumation. There are a number of steps that have to be taken before any judge would order it. And even if Rose does come out of her trance, she isn’t getting out of the psych ward anytime soon. I’m hoping this whole petition thing will have blown over by then.”
The Fifth Petal Page 9