The Fifth Petal

by Brunonia Barry

  Rafferty had gotten May’s call this morning. His suspicions had been right. They were trying to move someone, but it hadn’t happened. There had been a tip, something that led May to believe the woman was in danger, and the tip had been right.

  Rafferty still didn’t know the extent of May’s network. It was better that way, she said, and on that point he agreed. If he were ever questioned, ever called to help in a missing person search for a woman who’d escaped an abuser, he could only tell them what he knew. The less he knew about their network, this New Underground Railroad, the better for all concerned.

  Still, Towner knew a lot. Right now, she was on her way to a safe house with the woman, who had only escaped because May had held off her ex with her six-gauge until Rafferty arrived and took him into custody.

  He wanted to call Towner but knew better. He couldn’t ask any questions, and she wouldn’t give him any answers. He only hoped the transfer had occurred without incident. They couldn’t hold the guy. Not for long. And even though he knew it wasn’t logical, that the man didn’t know where Towner had taken the woman, Rafferty still wouldn’t relax until his wife called in.

  He had gone straight from Pride’s Heart to Yellow Dog, and then immediately into meetings, one right after the other. The first was the one he attended every morning before work: In all his years of sobriety, the single thing he’d learned for certain was to “keep coming back.” The second had been an awareness meeting over at the Methodist church to which he’d taken Jay-Jay, though, in Rafferty’s opinion, Jay-Jay was far from ready; he wasn’t close to hitting bottom yet. He’d been drunk on the job a few weeks back—that was why he’d ended up on the desk, a punishment Jay-Jay hated. Even so, he’d kept drinking, and most mornings he was so hungover, he didn’t want to talk, which was unusual for Jay-Jay, who generally talked too much. He was skinnier than usual, which meant he wasn’t eating right, and he was more disheveled, though that was harder to tell since Jay-Jay had never been particularly well groomed. He had all the classic signs. And he had the family history. Both his father and his brother were drunks.

  So today Rafferty had told Jay-Jay his story, or at least part of it. How guilt had kept him from sobriety for a long time: guilt about what his drinking had done to his daughter and his first marriage. How he still struggled with it every day. “Guilt is the enemy of sobriety. One reason you don’t get better is because you don’t think you deserve to,” he’d told him.

  Jay-Jay had listened but said nothing.

  Rafferty’s cell rang, and he breathed a sigh of relief when he saw who it was.

  “You okay?”

  Towner said she was, thank God. “I’m just heading back now.”

  They wouldn’t discuss it further.

  Rafferty was so lost in his thoughts as he walked down his driveway that he almost bumped into Callie and Paul Whiting. “What’s wrong?” he asked, reading their faces. The look on Callie’s was fear.

  “Nothing,” she said, walking past him and into the house.

  “Something you did?” Rafferty asked Paul.

  “Evidently, though I have no idea what.”

  Paul looked guilty and even a little bit angry. Rafferty had always thought of Paul Whiting as a good kid. Still, Paul was male and appeared interested in Callie. Anything could have happened between them. Maybe it was just the day’s events that had triggered the suspicion. But there was something…

  Callie’s words, or rather Rose’s words, spoken by Callie at the Thanksgiving dinner yesterday, had gnawed at him all day. “Do you think, inside, every one of us is a killer?” Had Rose said those words to Callie? Had she told Callie what she knew to be true about him? Rafferty doubted it. What troubled Rafferty was that he had been thinking about Rose’s words just before Callie uttered them. Callie hadn’t seemed to direct the words at him, and when he’d looked to her for some sign that she knew what she was saying, he hadn’t seen any. Still, it was odd. Could she read him the same way Towner sometimes could?

  “What happened?” Rafferty asked.

  “I took her to see Hammond Castle,” Paul said. “The grounds and Norman’s Woe. I had reason to believe she’d like to see it.”

  That’s probably the last place she’d like to see, Rafferty thought. He’d read the files. He knew the Goddesses had attended a party at Hammond Castle just before the murders and that Callie had been with them. He’d asked her about the party, though he’d never said where it had been held, but she’d just looked at him blankly. “I don’t remember any party.”

  Three of the tearoom waitresses walked up the steps, talking quietly among themselves. Rafferty and Paul exchanged a glance and moved out of the way to let them pass.

  “I should probably go,” Paul said.

  “Sounds like a good plan,” Rafferty agreed.

  He watched Paul drive away. He fought the urge to find Callie now and question her, but he made a mental note to do it soon. Whatever she had seen or remembered had obviously been rough on her.

  It had been a rough day all around. As Rafferty and Jay-Jay had exited the meeting, Helen Barnes from the McIntire District had blocked their way. She was out walking her springer spaniel. As upstanding and traditional as Helen appeared in public, Rafferty was aware of another side of her: Helen was the president of a secret sewing circle. He knew of at least two of these groups; the first was formed after the witch trials. For a number of years after the hysteria, women hadn’t been allowed to gather in groups in Salem. If they’d wanted to get together, they’d done so in secret, and, though no longer necessary, that tradition had continued until this day. Not that there was anything necessarily illicit about these groups. Towner said they funded several charitable organizations, Yellow Dog Island included. But the secrecy still made people nervous. They were so secretive that if Towner hadn’t told him about the circles, he never would have known they existed.

  Despite Helen’s clandestine gatherings, from what the ADA had told him the other day, she had no qualms about urging the commonwealth to exhume the bodies of the Goddesses. “Rose Whelan is a damned Satanist,” Helen had declared this morning, refusing to let Rafferty and Jay-Jay pass. “She was one back then, and she’s one now. You don’t want to do anything about it, but there are plenty of people around here who will.”

  “Watch what you say, Helen,” Rafferty said.

  “The so-called Goddesses were all related to Salem witches,” Helen replied.

  “There were no Salem witches,” he reminded her. “There were innocent people who became the victims of unfounded hysteria.” Rafferty hoped Helen would catch his subtext.

  “Well, witches are everywhere now!” She gestured to the Witch House across the street, one of the town’s last remaining buildings with direct ties to the trials. As she spoke, two costumed neowitches walked past the historic house. “You can blame Rose Whelan for them all!” Helen said. Her dog picked that moment to squat.

  “She’s not a witch, she’s a banshee,” Jay-Jay said, trying to help.

  Rafferty shot him a look.

  Helen started to move along. “Pick it up,” he said, pointing to the pile.

  She glared at him.

  “If you’d rather a fifty-dollar fine, I’ll be more than happy to give you one,” he said, patting the dog’s head. He watched as she searched her jacket pocket for a plastic bag and bent over to pick up the mess, frowning.

  “We’re going to dig them up. Every last one of them,” she promised. “It’s going to happen, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”

  Callie tried to make sense of the vision she’d had at Norman’s Woe. Walls didn’t bleed, for God’s sake. And logically, she knew that the man she’d seen could not have been Paul, and that she owed him an apology for her rude behavior. But his eyes had been terrifying.

  The sun was blindingly bright off the water as she walked from the tearoom to Derby Street, taking a left at the harbor. At Daniels Street, she turned right, looking for the grey-shingled bui
lding.

  The hippie house where they had all lived together was boarded up now, a huge contrast to the row of 1700s restorations that were its neighbors. A bright orange Condemned sign was posted on the door. The front steps had collapsed, and graffiti covered the shingles: Words that looked like Latin and the number 666 were scrawled across the base of the front door and repeated every so often along the clapboards.

  Callie walked around to the side of the house that faced the harbor, ignoring the No Trespassing signs. There was trash in the overgrown yard. The porch she’d once played on hung crazily off the side of the building. She looked around to make sure no one was watching, then grabbed hold of the only support post that looked substantial and climbed up. She moved tentatively along the porch, fearful of causing its collapse, and carefully made her way to the windowed door that led to the front room where she had always slept. She peered through: It was messy, either with remnants of the last tenant or from squatters. She looked for the mural, which was what she’d come to see. An older man, Henry, had painted a portrait of the Goddesses; he was a friend of Rose’s, and she had given him permission to paint the mural. Callie remembered how upset Rose was at what Henry had painted on the wall, even though Callie remembered it as a beautiful picture.

  Callie was hoping to see Leah’s image, hoping the image would help her remember more about the woman who she thought had probably become Rafferty’s main suspect, the fifth petal of the rose. But the entire portrait was gone. Someone had painted the wall white, though it was an old job and starting to yellow. Had it been Rose? She’d certainly been upset enough at the girls to repaint that wall herself. The tension between Rose and the Goddesses had been building all that summer and into the fall. Rose hadn’t approved of their behavior; Callie remembered that. She’d thought they were setting a bad example for Callie. Once, Rose had lost her temper so badly, yelling and calling the young women out for all sorts of offenses, that a neighbor had called the police.

  Callie now remembered that the police had also been called to the house before the party at Hammond Castle. Rose had screamed as they left in Halloween costumes, telling them they were being “cheap and disgusting,” and reminding them they had committed to other plans for the evening. Rose had followed them out to Cheryl’s car, yelling as they loaded up. “Pack your things. I want you out of my house tomorrow!” When they’d pulled away, Olivia had shouted, “We’ll meet you at the hill, Auntie.” The police cruiser had arrived just as they were turning the corner.

  Callie climbed back down from the decrepit porch, in time to see a neighbor coming out of one of the nearby houses to get her mail.

  “I’d keep away from that house if I were you,” the woman said.

  Callie didn’t recognize her; the woman hadn’t lived on Daniels Street back then. “I’m just looking around,” Callie said.

  “That house is cursed. A Satanic cult once lived there.”

  Callie stared at her in disbelief.

  “It’s true,” the woman said. “The cult’s leader was just arrested. They call her the Salem Banshee. My neighbors tell me she murdered everyone in that house. Even a little girl.” The woman grabbed her mail. “The whole place is evil,” she said and walked back into her own house, a historically perfect saltbox restoration that fronted the harbor.

  Shaken, Callie cut through the side lot to the street behind. As she passed the back of the house, she saw more graffiti on the rear facade: the image of a black rose, its petals withered and drooping, leaves curled and dried. The thorns had life and color, though: Their tips were red and dripping with blood. Callie recognized it as the image that Towner had been trying to erase from Rose’s tree in the courtyard. The rose contained a written message. Along its stem someone had scrawled the words Death to the Banshee!

  Callie dialed Rafferty’s cell twice. He didn’t pick up.

  She marched down Daniels Street to Derby, turning left, walking fast, rage and disbelief alternating with each step. She almost knocked over an old woman with a cane. The woman turned, gave her a quick look of recognition, then stepped out of the way. Callie wasn’t quite certain where she was going until she found herself on Orange Street.

  She pounded on Ann’s heavy front door. There was no answer, so she walked back down Derby Street to the Shop of Shadows on Pickering Wharf. Ann Chase was on a ladder arranging a flying display of Christmas stockings filled with candy, the image of a witch on a broomstick embroidered on each one. A sign proclaimed: BEFANA DELIVERING GIFTS TO THE CHILDREN OF ITALY, THEIR TRADITIONAL EPIPHANY CELEBRATION.

  Ann turned as soon as the door opened. “Callie.”

  “You told Paul Whiting to take me to Norman’s Woe.” Callie couldn’t calm herself, and now a group of young witches, who’d been decorating the front of the store, looked at her with concern. “Why the hell would you do something like that?”

  “It’s all right,” Ann said to her staff. “Get back to work.” She motioned for Callie to follow her, passing several reading rooms adorned with heavy curtains, and heading to the office.

  “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “People think Rose killed every one of the Goddesses…including the little girl who lived with them.”

  Ann looked surprised. “Who thinks that?”

  “Probably everyone!” Callie said, entering Ann’s office.

  Ann looked doubtful. “That’s not true.”

  Callie’s phone rang then; she checked the number and picked up when she saw Rafferty’s name.

  “Hi, Callie. What’s up?”

  “You have to do something.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Callie said, trying to hold back tears. “I don’t know what’s going on. They think it was some kind of Satanic cult.”

  Hearing Rafferty’s voice, Ann took the phone from Callie’s hand. “Can you please come over here?”

  “Ann?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know. Can you just get over to my shop, please?”

  All the imagery Callie had seen at Norman’s Woe swirled in her brain, and the Wicked Queen’s words echoed in her ears. “Why did you make him take me there?” she asked Ann, sounding childlike.

  “I thought—I had a vision when I was looking at the lace—it told me there was something there you had to see,” Ann said. “My intent was not malicious.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Ann did not tell Callie that—in this moment—she looked every bit the child that Ann had seen in the vision: a young girl in a blue pinafore, blood dripping from her palm as she stood staring over the edge of a deep ravine.

  “Rose didn’t kill anyone,” Callie insisted. She sipped the tea Ann had made to calm her down, and sat in the sling chair next to Ann’s desk.

  Rafferty sat behind the desk in Ann’s usual spot. Ann lingered in the doorway, not quite certain whether to stay or go.

  “Tell me again why you wanted Callie to go to Hammond Castle,” he asked Ann, calling her in.

  “I didn’t actually send her to the castle, I sent her to see Norman’s Woe.”

  “Why Norman’s Woe specifically?”

  “I thought there was something there she needed to remember.”

  “And was there?” Rafferty turned to Callie.

  It was clear Callie didn’t want to talk in front of Ann.

  “I’ll be in the shop,” Ann said, exiting through the beaded curtains.

  “There was a costume party at Hammond Castle the night of the murders,” Callie said. “I guess that’s the party you asked me about.”

  Rafferty had read about the party in the files and knew the Goddesses had been guests. Witnesses had documented that there was some kind of altercation between the girls and some other woman that night, someone wearing a red dress. But from what he could tell, the police hadn’t taken that account seriously and hadn’t investigated further. Which shocked him. The more he learned, the
more it seemed like the cops would have been perfectly happy to blame the murder on Rose and move on.

  “There was a woman in a red costume,” Callie said. “Two women, actually. One of them was dressed as the Wicked Queen from ‘Snow White.’ The other one was Leah.”

  Rafferty looked at her. “Leah.”

  She nodded.

  The files had, not surprisingly as he was discovering, made no mention of a Leah anywhere.

  “I remember her now. She was at the party.” Then, recalling it only as she spoke, she said the name. “Leah Kormos.”

  “That’s her last name, Kormos?”

  “Yes,” Callie said, as it came back to her. “That’s the name. She was one of the Goddesses. But they had some kind of falling-out.”

  Rafferty had left the folded-up yellow paper back in the office. He’d already penciled in the other names of the Goddesses on the petals with their corresponding ancestors: Olivia/Callie, Rose, Cheryl, and Susan. Leah’s first name was penciled in above. Now he typed her surname, Kormos, into his phone.

  That Leah shared her first name with Rafferty’s only daughter had been something that had been difficult for him to reconcile. He felt better knowing her last name. From now on, he could say her full name and remove any mental connection.

  “I think so.” Callie struggled to remember. “I remember she was around for a while, and then we didn’t see her anymore. They had some kind of argument.”

  “Over that man?”

  “Maybe, I don’t know.”

  “What about at Norman’s Woe?” he asked again.

  Callie looked at him blankly.

  “Was there something about Norman’s Woe that was important to what happened that night?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did something happen on those rocks?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing I remember.”

  “Think about it. Is there any connection?”

  “I don’t know,” Callie said, exasperated. “The only connection I can think of is that Rose made me learn the poem about it when I was little,” she offered, trying to make sense of all that had happened. “ ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus.’ That’s all I can think of. She used to make me memorize poems. But that wasn’t the night of the party, that was before.”