“That whole patch was resodded, just before I got this job,” the caretaker explained.
“When was that?” Rafferty asked. It couldn’t have been that long ago. The kid looked as if he was right out of high school.
“The second week of December,” he said. “The guy who had it before decided to retire that week, so I got his job.”
“Isn’t December a little late for resodding?” Rafferty asked.
The kid shrugged.
Rafferty had just resodded the front yard at the rental house he owned in the Willows. Fall was the best time for planting new grass, he’d learned. Going through a winter gave the grass a chance to properly root itself. Even so, it was usually early and not late fall that was good for grass planting.
“Was there a reason they sodded this whole patch?” Rafferty asked.
The kid shrugged again. “I have no idea.”
Rafferty walked back to Towner.
“It’s going to be okay,” she said, reading his frustration.
“I wish that were true.” He was no longer certain that Leah Kormos was the killer. He’d already told Callie that, but now he was even more doubtful. Leah Kormos had been gone a long time, and whoever took the bodies had done so fairly recently, definitely before the first snow fell. Even so, something told him that, if he could find Leah, he’d find the key to unlock the whole mystery.
Tell me what you want, and I’ll tell you who you think you are. Tell me what you fear, and I’ll tell you who you really are.
—ROSE’S Book of Trees
The day after the exhumation, they surprised Rafferty with an anniversary cake. The cake thing was a relatively new AA phenomenon, something someone who’d been in the program in L.A. had suggested. That’s what they did out west, he said. But the Salem meeting was full of newbies, and they hadn’t had a cake for so long Rafferty had forgotten it was even a possibility. What he hadn’t forgotten for a moment was what day it was or, rather, what day it should have been but wasn’t.
When the moderator brought it in, twenty-five candles blazing, Rafferty bolted. Ignoring their protests and looks of surprise, he walked out the back door and down the steps, leaving Jay-Jay without a word of explanation, not even looking back.
He hadn’t taken a chip since the night he picked up, and he hadn’t had another drink since then either, but he had never spoken about his slip in any meeting, or even told his sponsor, which he knew was wrong on so many levels. He rationalized his silence: He was chief of police; he couldn’t have people knowing he’d broken his sobriety. That’s what he told himself, but it wasn’t true. If this had happened to someone he’d been sponsoring, he would have called bullshit on the guy.
“Hey, boss, wait up!” Jay-Jay said, snapping Rafferty back into the present. Jay-Jay was out of breath as he caught up with him. “What the heck was that about? You don’t like cake or something? Who doesn’t like cake?”
Rafferty grunted.
“HALT!” Jay-Jay commanded, and Rafferty stopped, annoyed.
“Hungry, angry, lonely, tired,” Jay-Jay intoned, plunging his hands into the pockets of his pants, which were a size too big, and falling into step beside Rafferty. “We’re not supposed to let ourselves feel any of those things, and you’re all four. If you’d had the cake, you could have at least eliminated one of them.”
Jay-Jay had taken to AA with an enthusiasm that was so strong it was almost overpowering. It was the last thing Rafferty would have expected.
“I’m not lonely.”
“If you think I’m leaving you in this condition, you don’t know me very well.”
The truth was, Rafferty knew Jay-Jay LaLibertie a lot better than he’d ever wanted to. “Go back to the meeting.”
“You’re only as sick as your secrets, you know,” Jay-Jay said, quoting another AA mantra.
If you only knew the secret I was hiding, Rafferty thought. He felt sicker about it with each passing day.
His slip had lasted only one day. One night, actually. It had started at a restaurant down on Pickering Wharf at a fund-raiser for Salem’s Witches Educational Council, the antidefamation league meant to educate the public about the Wiccan religion and the good works witches do for the community. As chief, Rafferty always had public relations things he had to do, events he was required to attend. He pretty much hated this part of his job. “Just make an appearance,” the mayor had told him. “After that, you can sneak away.”
It had been the last place he should have gone. But he’d been so distraught after he and Towner had made their separation legally official earlier that day that he wasn’t thinking straight. As if it weren’t enough that he’d already moved out, she’d felt the need to leave town, relocating to Yellow Dog Island, as if putting the water between them would somehow make the separation final. That night he was expected, and, not knowing what else to do with himself, he’d shown up, realizing the minute he walked in that it had been a huge mistake.
Ann had known something was wrong the minute she saw his face. “What’s ailing you?” she’d asked.
“Nothing,” he’d said. He couldn’t talk about it with Ann. Not without losing it altogether. He walked to the other side of the restaurant, away from the one person he knew could see through him.
When Finn had handed him the green liquid, he’d thought it was punch. Ann was always serving some witchy thing with herbs and something she called fairy dust. He’d questioned her about it the first time she tried to serve it to him.
“It’s powdered sugar, for God’s sake,” she’d told him, laughing. “I know enough not to give you anything stronger.”
He’d never told her he was a drunk; she’d always just known. It was one of the many things she knew without ever being told; that ability had freaked him out more than a few times.
“It shouldn’t surprise you,” Towner had said to him, early in their relationship. “Ann’s not only a witch, she’s a reader.”
“A mind reader?”
“Minds, lace, palms, the bumps on your head. There isn’t much that gets by her.”
The closest Rafferty had ever come to believing anything paranormal had been the day his mother died, that time he’d heard and seen the banshee. He did believe that some people had intuitive gifts, and Ann was definitely one of them, as was Towner. But he preferred to think of such gifts as scientific, the product of some as yet unmapped part of the brain. Or maybe the nonlinear time theory Ann was always espousing as science. But he’d always flatly rejected the existence of ghosts and specters, though that day he couldn’t imagine a time when he wouldn’t be haunted by Towner.
He hadn’t wanted to think about Towner that night. He’d fall apart if he did. He’d tried to push her from his mind, knowing what a ridiculous task that was. She’d been in his head since the day he met her, and he had no idea what he was going to do now.
He’d taken the drink from Finn and raised it to his mouth. It tasted like licorice only a little bitter.
“What the hell?” He’d realized it was absinthe the moment he tasted it. The Green Fairy. He shoved the glass back at Finn.
“Drink it, for God’s sake,” Finn said. “She’s not worth your pain.”
Later, he’d think he’d been staring into the face of the devil himself. He’d taken the drink.
That night Marta had waved to Rafferty from a far corner of the restaurant. He’d nodded but hadn’t approached.
“What’s Marta doing here?” he’d asked Finn.
“Ann’s paying her to raise money for the Witches Educational Council,” Finn had said.
That was one of the oddest things Rafferty had heard in a long time: Marta raising money for witches. It was no secret that she hated them and resented it when those living in Salem drew a parallel between themselves and the accused of 1692. “A similarity that didn’t exist then and should not exist now,” she’d often been quoted as saying.
Still, since Marta had moved back to the North Shore, she’d become the be
st fund-raiser around. Beyond that, she had some kind of connection with Ann, one Rafferty couldn’t figure out. Ann had told him once, “I get most of my herbs from her gardens.”
“And what does she get from you in return?”
“I’ll never tell.”
“I’m guessing it’s some kind of love potion,” Rafferty had said to Ann. “And we all know who she’s slipping it to.”
He’d been on his second glass of absinthe before he recognized the falling feeling, the slackening of muscles that had always been so welcome. It was like an old friend, the kind you knew wasn’t good for you. There was something comforting about the familiarity, yet something unfamiliar, too, like a stranger hiding in the shadows, someone you didn’t want to look at directly for fear of what you might see.
“My family made a fortune from this stuff,” he’d heard Finn explaining to another guest. “This is the real thing. Wormwood and all. Thujone intact. Bootlegged from Spain when it was outlawed in France.”
Rafferty could have stopped then, but he hadn’t wanted to. The blessed blankness had descended, creating the emotional void he’d been craving. More than anything, he’d wanted to be erased. Finn had poured him another glass.
But this glass had brought the opposite effect. With each sip, his senses had heightened. The first was taste. Not only could he taste the blending of herbs but he was able to separate those tastes into component parts: the slight bitterness that faded quickly to reveal the anise and fennel that lay beneath.
Next, his vision had improved, and everything seemed sharper. The colors on Ann’s velvet robe had begun to strobe. Finn’s face had sparkled in the beam from the light above him.
When Ann touched his arm, the sensation had vibrated his body as if it were a stringed instrument. He’d stepped backward, knocking into a waiter with a tray of hors d’oeuvres. “What the hell is wrong with you?” she’d asked.
He’d seen Marta and her group of friends approaching, and had taken another step backward, almost tripping over another guest standing behind him.
“Let’s get you some air,” Ann had said. She’d taken his glass and handed it to a waiter, then taken his arm and led him toward the door.
The summer air had only made things worse. As they stepped out of the restaurant, Rafferty had caught the rush of salt breeze from the harbor, and the scent of the sea had flooded his nostrils. It smelled of childhood, of old beach houses on Long Island Sound, and of the ships that had once sailed out of these northern waters. And, whether it was association or delusion, Rafferty could have sworn he smelled the pepper that had once come in on the old ships. The sensation was so strong he’d had to work hard to keep from sneezing.
He’d looked toward Yellow Dog Island but seen only darkness. He was filled with dread, remembering what had happened with Towner only hours before, realizing again what it would mean.
Ann had steered him toward her store, taking him in through the back door to her office, making sure the young witches working in the front wouldn’t see him. Behind her office was a room he’d heard about but had never seen, and that’s where she’d taken him that night. It looked like a Wiccan bordello, he thought, with its beaded curtains, brass bed, red velvet pillows on the floor, and nature symbols. In the corner was a table with a crystal ball, and around the perimeter hung the lace that Ann used to tell the future. She called this a meditation room, but the men called it something else. Until tonight, he’d never believed this hidden room was real.
“Drink this,” she’d said, handing him a cup of herbal tea.
He’d sat shakily on the edge of the bed. “What is it?” he’d asked.
“Consider it an antidote.”
He’d thought she meant to the absinthe, and so he’d drunk. For a guy who didn’t believe in magic, it was beginning to seem a possibility. His head had spun. He’d felt far too warm, aware of every sensation. The softness of the bed, the brush of Ann’s velvet robe as she handed him the tea.
She’d taken a seat across from him, looking at him carefully as if trying to figure something out. “What happened today?”
He’d shaken his head, waving her off. He couldn’t talk about it.
She’d watched him for a few minutes longer, and he could tell she was reading him. Seeing what it was he would not say.
“You think your life has ended,” she’d said.
“It has,” he’d said, meaning it. She’d stared through him, seeing all of it, her expression changing as she took it in.
She’d come over then, and sat next to him on the bed, taking his hand. “I see your future. This is not over.”
“The hell it isn’t.”
“You need to believe,” she’d said.
“In what? Magic?”
“If you like.”
The idea had filled him with rage. The same violent frustration that had caused him to punch his fist through a wall in the house he’d recently moved back to, bloodying the knuckles of his right hand, now surfaced again, but, instead of striking out, he’d done something that surprised him even more. He’d reached for Ann, pulling her close, his hand slipping under her robe.
She’d stood quickly. “Keep drinking.”
He’d obeyed, finishing every drop. His thirst had seemed endless. Putting down the cup, he’d reached for her again, his senses heightened. Just the touch of her skin had sent waves of heat to every pore of his. It was the last thing he would have imagined, yet, at that moment, Ann Chase had been the only thing he wanted.
“Yes,” she’d said. “Yes, of course. But you have to wait.”
She’d left the room and was gone for a long time. Eventually the lights had dimmed, then went out in the front of the store, and he’d heard her locking up. He’d heard the young witches chatting outside on the way to their cars. And then, when the store was finally quiet, he’d heard something else. It was Ann’s voice. Chanting an incantation, a kind of music he’d never heard before, calling in the sounds of wind and water, melding them together until they achieved a kind of low pulsing that beat with the rhythm of his own heart. Hypnotic, it had lulled him. He’d lain back on the bed and waited.
When Ann had come back to him, she’d been wearing a different robe, one that looked like a black silk kimono. Standing before him, she’d let the robe fall and was naked. For an instant, she’d looked just like Towner or, rather, the way he’d always imagined Towner would look before they’d finally gotten together, the prolonged time when she had been only his fantasy. As soon as he’d recognized the vision, it had faded, and pure sensation had swept over him, pulling him into its vortex; he’d let himself go with it, aware that he was not leading, was simply reacting, present and in the moment with whatever spell Ann had just conjured.
It was sex, and yet it had been nothing like sex.
And he’d followed it again and again each time it took him.
Time had shifted. He couldn’t tell if it had been a moment or an eternity. It had circled and repeated over and over again, until they’d both collapsed, too exhausted to move, and had finally slipped out of consciousness together on the bed.
Morning had come too early, and Rafferty had awakened as if from a coma. He’d sat up, holding his head, feeling the guilt of everything that had happened.
“Don’t do that to yourself,” Ann had said. She was already up and dressed, looking fresh and ready for the day. She’d handed him a bottle of water. “Go home. She’s waiting for you. And, whatever you do, resist the urge to confess.”
To Towner, he’d thought, but had not said. There wasn’t much chance he’d ever see her again. Let alone confess.
“To anyone,” Ann had said aloud, reading him.
Soon after, the young witches had begun to arrive in the front of the store. Ann had yelled out, said she’d be with them in a minute. “Go!” she’d said, pushing Rafferty out the side door, the way she’d brought him in the night before.
As he’d left, he’d come face-to-face with Helen Barnes, emergi
ng from Peter Barter’s flower shop with an armful of snapdragons, carrying the flowers as if they were an infant. She’d met his eyes, then glanced back toward Ann’s shop. Rafferty had understood that she knew. Her flowers had suddenly smelled overpowering and funereal.
He’d walked all the way to the Willows, in no hurry to get back to his empty house. He’d sell it, he thought. He’d leave this ridiculous place, and he’d never look back. Go someplace Towner would never be. South maybe. Inland. Away from the cold winters and the smell of the sea. As he’d turned the corner onto Bay View Avenue, he’d spotted Towner sitting on the porch of his Victorian fixer-upper, her long legs folded under her, arms across her chest as if she were cold. How in the world had Ann known that Towner would be there? Towner had looked as exhausted as he felt. She hadn’t said anything to him as he climbed the stairs. Instead, she’d stood as he opened the door, walking through ahead of him, not looking back at the sea or the island.
I firmly believe that the curse of Salem’s guilt will persist until the true site of the hangings is finally memorialized, a proper blessing is bestowed, and the remains of those executed in 1692 are finally laid to rest.
—ROSE WHELAN, The Witches of Salem
“How do you hide a woman if she doesn’t want to be found?” Rafferty had once asked May. “How do you keep her from sticking out like a sore thumb?”
May hadn’t answered him, but Towner had. “You hide them in plain sight.”
“What does that mean?”
“To quote May directly: Hide like with like.”
Rafferty still firmly believed that Leah Kormos was, if not the killer, certainly the person he needed to talk to, if only he could find her. But everything he’d tried had been a dead end. He reviewed what he knew about Leah. She was dark, Mediterranean looking. Greek. Through coordinated police servers and crime databases, he’d been searching records not just in New England but all over the country, calling all the Kormos listings he could find in an effort to locate either Leah or her sister, Rebecca. Most of the Kormos listings were in Massachusetts or New Jersey. He’d talked to a lot of people, but so far he’d had no luck.
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