The Fifth Petal

by Brunonia Barry

  It might be a dead end, but it was worth following. One of the Goddesses had to be related to Sarah Good. But which one?

  He sat with all the reports, testimonies, and crime scene photos spread out in front of him, sifting through them piece by piece, trying to find anything he might have missed.

  He erased the penciled-in names of the Goddesses from the sketch of the five-petaled rose, listing them, instead, to the right side of the image. Now he tried a different approach, inking the names of the five executed that he had penciled in before: Rebecca Nurse, Sarah Wildes, Elizabeth Howe, Susannah Martin, and Sarah Good. Those names he was sure of. He’d checked the spelling of each name online, then double-checked with Salem’s records, mentally noting which towns they were from—all of which had once been part of Salem—and their ages. With the exception of Sarah Good, who was thirty-nine, the women executed on July 19, 1692, were much older, ranging in age from fifty-seven to seventy-one. Some were homeless or nuisances to the community: indebted, outspoken, or otherwise troublesome. It made him think of Rose.

  He inked in the Goddesses’ names under each of the corresponding ancestors he was certain of, crossing out the names from the list below as he went. Under Rebecca Nurse, he inked Callie, Olivia, and Rose. Assuming Callie’s recollections of the night, and who’d spoken which name, were correct, he continued, inking the name Susan Symms on Susannah Martin’s petal and Cheryl Cassella under Sarah Wildes. Callie had recalled Rose telling her that she was related to more than one of Salem’s executed, and since she had recited the name of Elizabeth Howe that night, he’d initially assumed she was Rose’s other relative. But Callie had told him that, after determining that Leah Kormos wasn’t coming to the ceremony, Rose had also reluctantly recited the name of Sarah Good. Callie had assumed that was the name meant to be spoken by the absent girl. Maybe, but not necessarily. Rafferty penciled Leah Kormos’s name under Good’s, placing a question mark after it. Then, looking at it again, and knowing Rose had also recited that name, he went back and penciled in Rose’s name as well, also followed by a question mark. Sarah Good could be Rose’s second ancestor, after all. With Elizabeth Howe’s name, he penciled in the names of both Rose and Leah, both followed by question marks. Finally, with his pencil, he crossed both Leah’s and Rose’s names off the list.

  He held up the sketch and looked at it. The ink had a good psychological effect, as if he’d actually figured something out, though he didn’t really know any more than he’d known before. The drawing was still as confusing as this case had become.

  Despite Callie’s recollection that the police were there “all the time,” he could find only three times on record when the police had been summoned. Twice when Rose and the girls had loud arguments, including the night of the murders, and once when an anonymous female caller complained about underage boys coming and going “at all hours.”

  He contacted the archives, once again requesting the missing box of evidence, number 9. If there were more police reports, more records of officers being called to Rose’s house, that’s probably where they were.

  He flipped through some of the pages of handwritten comments about the women. The town gossip was so profuse it bordered on obsession. They had made a lot of enemies, breaking up marriages, threatening the moral code of a city already infamous for its rigid Puritan standards. The speculation of Satanism was brought up several times in the witness statements, though, when questioned further, none of the witnesses had any basis for their claims or any evidence to back up the accusations.

  The victims: Olivia Cahill, Susan Symms, and Cheryl Cassella. He had backgrounds on all of them, along with lists of living relatives. None had come from a stable family, and each had left home at an early age. Cheryl had come to Salem in 1987 at seventeen because her mother, a bitter divorcée, told her there was a real Salem witch on her father’s side of the family. She met Rose at the Center for Salem Witch Trials Research, where Rose helped her find her ancestor who was executed on July 19, 1692. She moved into Rose’s house on Daniels Street a few days later. Though Ann had claimed otherwise, rumor had it Cheryl had been briefly involved with one coven, studying the Craft, or at least learning a few spells.

  Susan was an albino originally from Miami, teased and bullied all of her life, until her family moved to Marblehead, and she discovered her connection to the accused witches (again at the center). When her father was transferred, Susan stayed behind, moving into Rose’s house. According to witness statements, it was Susan who first became fixated on the idea that Salem’s accused really were witches—with supernatural powers—a belief that certainly alienated her from Rose. Hers was the body that the trophies were taken from the night of the killings; Rafferty looked at the photos of her missing skin and hair.

  Callie’s mother, Olivia, was the most unusual. According to Rose’s account, Callie and Olivia had arrived from New Orleans on Halloween when Callie was three. Olivia had been drawn to Salem because she knew she was related to one of its accused and had always felt as if she had magical powers herself. Almost out of money, she and Callie had been sleeping on the common until Eva Whitney had taken pity on mother and child, giving Olivia a job waiting tables in her tearoom. When she heard that Olivia was related to Rebecca Nurse, Eva introduced her to Rose and the center. “You three are long-lost family,” Eva told Rose. Rose asked Olivia and Callie to call her Auntie Rose, and a connection in blood and spirit was made. Within a week, Olivia and Callie moved into Rose’s house.

  In the short time Rafferty had known Callie, they’d never really talked about her mother. He knew she had visited Olivia’s grave, but beyond that he hadn’t known how much Callie remembered about her mother. Not her behavior, certainly. He’d seen the shock on Callie’s face when their provocative encounters were described by Ann. According to the files, Olivia had been involved with many men in Salem. And possibly some underage boys, or so some of the witness statements had suggested. Rose had evidently argued vehemently to get her to stop this—she’d argued that with them all. That was not just witness hearsay, it was public record. Rafferty thought Rose was probably the only voice of parental reason any of them had.

  According to all accounts, the girls, who’d started to call themselves the Goddesses, began to see that they had power over the men in Salem. They believed their powers had been passed down through the generations—from their witch ancestors.

  He wished he’d known Rose back when she was in her prime. She’d taken in these young women who had no place else to go. She had obviously helped raise Callie. Though her cause on behalf of Salem’s accused had taken some quirky turns, it seemed a noble one. She had devoted her life to seeing justice done for the victims of the trials, and he gave her credit for her fortitude. As life’s purposes went, it was certainly better than the more selfish drives most people followed, himself included.

  There was nothing in the Goddess files about Leah Kormos, the one he and Callie had conjectured was the fifth petal. He needed to know more about Leah. The one who had broken the so-called rules. She had possibly been seen arguing with the Goddesses, accusing them of betraying her. She should have been a suspect. But the trail ended there.

  Rafferty searched the local phone directories for the name Kormos, trying several different spellings, since Callie had likely never seen the name written out. He found a few listings and called. No one had heard of Leah.

  Then he called Barry Marcus. “I need to talk to Rose.”

  “What about?”

  “I’m looking for someone. A suspect. Someone who might actually take the focus off of Rose for a change.”

  They met at the hospital. Barry was fifteen minutes late, so Rafferty waited in the corridor. When they entered, Rose was sitting in a chair writing in her journal.

  “Well, isn’t this a surprise?” she said, closing the journal and standing to greet them as if they were houseguests.

  “Rafferty has some questions for you,” Barry said.

  “Ok
ay,” Rose said, slightly more tentative at the thought of interrogation.

  Rafferty gestured for Rose to sit back down and took a seat himself on the heater in front of the window. “Did you know a girl named Leah Kormos?”

  Rose stared at him for a long time but said nothing.

  “Callie told me she was one of the Goddesses.”

  “Yes,” Rose said.

  “You remember her?”

  “Yes,” Rose said.

  “Did she live with you?”

  “No,” Rose said.

  “Not on Daniels Street with the others?”

  “No.”

  “Wasn’t she one of the Goddesses?” he asked again.

  Rose shifted in her seat. The word made her uncomfortable.

  “Isn’t that what they called them?”

  “I’ve told you already, the goddess was diminished. The goddess turned.” Rose was starting to hyperventilate.

  “I think that’s enough,” Barry said.

  “Okay,” Rafferty said. “I’m sorry, Rose. I didn’t mean to upset you. I just need to find this girl. This Leah.”

  Rose turned away.

  Barry held the door for Rafferty, when Rose called after him.

  “I think she lived in the dorms.”

  Rafferty waited for Rose to add more details, but she had gone silent.

  He searched the 1989 records of the local colleges and universities, Salem State first, then Endicott, and other local schools. He was about to start searching prep school rosters when he found her registered at Montserrat, an art school. On scholarship and living in a dorm, she was there for the spring semester in early 1989. Her grades were good. She’d evidently registered for the fall semester but never came back after summer vacation. Looking for her home address, Rafferty requested more information, marking the request as official police business. It was against the school’s policy to give out home addresses, they said.

  “Get permission, or I’ll get a court order,” he told them.

  Rafferty stopped at Mickey Doherty’s pirate shop on his way to Ann’s. Mickey was in full costume and holding court with a group of middle-aged women.

  “I need to talk to you,” Rafferty said, too abruptly.

  “Never a good sign for a pirate when the chief of police wants to talk to you,” Mickey said with a laugh.

  The women scattered.

  “This better be good,” Mickey said. “Those were paying customers.”

  “I’ll just bet,” Rafferty said.

  Now Mickey looked worried.

  “Relax. I’m not here to talk about your side business,” Rafferty said. “It’s your new business I’m interested in.”

  “You want me to look up your family tree? You’re more likely related to one of the accusers than one of the accused.” Mickey managed a laugh.

  Rafferty ignored the comment, handing Mickey a list of names he’d written on a legal pad.

  “What’s all this?”

  “Names I want you to look up.”

  The information Rafferty handed Mickey was spotty at best. But it included the Goddesses’ full names as well as the names of their parents. And, of course, Rose. The only one he didn’t have full information for was Leah Kormos. “I want you to tell me which one of these women was related to Sarah Good.”

  “Sarah Good, huh?” Mickey looked over the paper, then up at Rafferty.

  “Can you do that?”

  “For a price.”

  “How about I don’t become one of the accusers and arrest you?”

  “Sounds like fair market value.” Mickey nodded.

  “Start with that one,” Rafferty said, pointing to Leah Kormos.

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” Mickey said. “But you’re going to have to get me more information than just a name.”

  “I’m working on it,” Rafferty said.

  Rafferty walked out of Mickey’s store and across the wharf to Ann’s Shop of Shadows. It was just 7:00 P.M., and Ann was locking up. “I sense this isn’t a social call,” she said when she saw his expression.

  “I need you to tell me everything you know about the Goddesses,” he said, ignoring her comment. He didn’t do social calls with Ann. Not since that night a few years back. It had been a mistake, and it had clearly been his fault. When he’d tried to apologize, she’d shrugged it off. “It never happened,” she’d said. They hadn’t talked about it again.

  “Didn’t we just do this? I didn’t really know them. Everything I know is hearsay.”

  “I want to hear what you say without Callie Cahill around.”

  She held the door open, and Rafferty walked inside.

  “They weren’t Satanists, were they?”

  “Of course not. They called all witches Satanists back then. Though I don’t think they were witches, either, not exactly. As I said before, they weren’t solitaries, and they weren’t studying with any of the covens in town.”

  “Where did they learn things, then?”

  “If the rumors are true, maybe at the Left Hand Path. That store had a big selection of books on every kind of spell imaginable. The best around. We all bought books there. I thought it was a shame when they closed, but that’s just me. It was a great resource. As I said before, magic was getting popular here back in the eighties. Everybody had a bit of leftover hippie in them, especially in this city. We all believed in magical powers: We conducted séances, read tarot, believed in astrology. My Wiccan friends and I worshiped the Goddess. But those women…they believed they were the Goddess.”

  “Wasn’t that a nickname someone gave them?”

  “I always heard it was one they gave themselves.”

  “From what I’ve read, they were pushing a lot of boundaries.”

  “That’s an understatement. Sex is power, and they knew it. Men followed them around like puppies. The girls seduced them, and some would say they took advantage of them. Sometimes separately, often all together. It was a game.”

  “Do you know about the ‘rules’?”

  “What rules?”

  “Callie said they had a set of rules. Evidently for seduction.”

  “If there were rules”—Ann shrugged—“I never heard about them. I heard a lot of other fascinating things; they were very open about what they were doing. You could ask the ‘victims’ if they knew about rules.”

  “The victims?”

  “That’s what the locals called the men: victims. That’s not in the files? Every once in a while, the girls would ‘take’ a man, someone having trouble at home. He’d be gone for days, ignoring his work, his family. Eventually he would drag himself home to his wife, sick and exhausted. I know the Goddesses swore it gave them energy. Maybe that was a rule?”

  “Do you know the names of any of these so-called victims?”

  “I don’t,” Ann said. “And even if I did, I’m not sure I’d tell you.” She looked at him for a long time. “I believe in discretion.”

  An awkward moment passed.

  Rafferty regrouped. “The sexual revolution was long over in ’eighty-nine, and yet some of the accounts I’ve read, the condemnation of these girls, it reads as an overreaction, as if it happened in the 1600s.”

  “It’s the same overreaction it was back in the 1600s…fear.”

  “Fear of infidelity? Of the devil?”

  “Yes, both maybe. And something else. A number of cases of heterosexual HIV were diagnosed on the North Shore right about that time. The sexual revolution might have brought sex out of the proverbial closet, but AIDS made it lethal. Someone started a rumor that the Goddesses were spreading it.”

  Rafferty ran his hand through his hair. “Were they?”

  “I doubt it, but it was easy for people to believe, and that’s all that mattered. They needed someone to blame. It certainly didn’t help with their reputation around town.” Ann looked at him curiously. “I thought this case was closed.”

  “Cold, not closed.”

  “Are you pursuing something new? Sin
ce this thing with Rose?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “The trouble with those girls started the minute they decided they’d inherited special powers from their ancestors, the women who were all hanged on the same day.”

  “Why?”

  “Think about it. It’s a short step from believing the accused had supernatural powers to justifying their hangings and the atrocities they suffered while awaiting execution. Those condemned women were not witches in any sense of the word. They certainly never ‘signed the devil’s book.’ Which—for the record—has nothing to do whatsoever with any witch I’ve ever known. The Salem accused were Puritans.”

  “And subject to Puritan laws.”

  “Exactly. Thank God those laws changed, but, in some ways, not much else has. The accused were usually women, sometimes elderly. There’s speculation that some were mentally ill. Or homeless.”

  “Like Sarah Good.”

  “Yes.”

  “And Rose.”

  “And once you start demonizing groups of people, when you make them the other, you can justify doing just about anything you want to them, can’t you? Look at history if you don’t believe me.”

  Rafferty got the call as he was driving back to the station.

  “There’s been a break-in at that condemned house on Daniels Street,” Jay-Jay said, explaining who’d called it in. “Do you want me to send a car, or are you still down in that neck of the woods?”

  “I’m here,” Rafferty said, U-turning as he spoke.

  “You need backup?”

  “Nope. I got it.”

  Rafferty didn’t climb the decrepit porch to get in; instead he jimmied the front door. Callie looked more surprised to see him there than he was to see her. “I figure we’ve got about ten minutes until our friend across the street calls 911 again and Jay-Jay sends the backup I told him I didn’t need,” he said. “You still want to look around?”