by Todd Ohl
Once back in his office, he started completing the paperwork for the phone company, when a fresh drop of blood fell out of his nose and splattered on the form. With a roll of his eyes, he tossed the soiled paper in the trash. He grabbed the last napkin on his desk and pressed it to his nose.
While he waited for his nose to stop bleeding, he thought about sticking Hallman’s papers in evidence. As Murphy mentioned, a dirty cop could easily penetrate the security of the evidence locker. Though Murphy’s offer to keep a copy was nice, saving these things in the Roundhouse might be as good as handing them over to whoever wanted them. Playing by the book might mean playing into someone’s hands.
John tucked the items back into his coat. There was no sense in bleeding all over them right now. He would read them tonight, after he stopped for a few sundries on the way home.
He dialed the office number of Amy Ritter and left a message saying that he would not make it back to Penn Commonwealth today. Once he had a few hours to leaf through Hallman’s papers tonight, he thought that he might have better questions for her tomorrow.
Chapter 9:
Tea Time
“I’ll have a medium chai,” Kim said to the girl behind the counter.
The girl nodded and repeated Kim’s order to the young man making the drinks. After pressing a few buttons and looking at the register as if she had never seen it before, the girl said, “That will be three-seventy?”
The girl’s voice lilted up at the end of her sentence in a way that caused Kim to wonder whether the girl was telling her the price or asking her.
Kim handed the girl a five and held out her hand for the change. The girl laid the dollar bill in Kim’s hand and then dropped the change on top. The quarter and nickel rolled off the bill in opposite directions. Kim gathered them off the bar.
The girl lilted her voice again to half-ask and half-say, “Uh, sorry?” The girl then proceeded to look back to the register, at which she frowned and poked as if she were again experimenting with a newly found device.
“No problem,” Kim assured the girl. She sighed heavily, gathered the change, and stuck it in the back pocket of her teal scrubs.
While the girl behind the register took the next order, Kim walked over to where the young man was making the drinks and leaned against the chest-high counter. A warm cup of chai always reminded her of the autumn in Madison, when her mother would make pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. She needed the soul-warming effect of the spiced tea while she figured out whether she should take John’s advice and tone down her report.
After pondering the issue for a few moments, she noticed a tall, dark-haired man approaching the drink counter with an exasperated look on his face. He shot Kim a look that fully communicated his frustration with the girl behind the register.
“Makes you wonder if Darwin was right, doesn’t it?” Kim whispered.
“Yeah, it does,” he said with a laugh. “Is she always like that?”
“Only when she remembers to breathe.”
He laughed again. “Well, I guess we can’t all be doctors.”
“Ah, you noticed my scrubs,” Kim said, feigning shock. “Well, I’m an ME.”
“Pretty gruesome job,” he cringed.
“Some days, yes.”
The young man making the drinks set a medium sized cup on the counter. “Medium chai!” he beckoned in a flamboyant tone.
Kim almost expected trumpets to sound at the end of each drink announcement. She looked at the kid, smiled, and picked up the tea.
The dark-haired man murmured, “He makes an order-up sound like the second coming of the messiah.”
She laughed and took a sip of chai.
“So why’d you become an ME?” the man asked.
“On days like today, I’m not sure. Sometimes, I wonder if I should just go back to Wisconsin and become a housewife.”
“Large latté!” the clerk heralded across the counter.
“Having a rough day?” the dark-haired man asked her as he reached across the counter for his cup.
“Yeah, it’s been a nasty one, unfortunately, but we all have things at work to deal with.”
“I know exactly what you mean.” He took a sip of his latté and extended his hand. “Forgive me, I’m Marco, Marco Vinzetti.”
“Kim Wohlford. Nice to meet you.” She could feel herself blush.
“Likewise, Kim.” He smiled for a second. “I’m in sales, in a company right down the street. Maybe we’ll see each other again soon.”
“I’d like that.” Kim realized that she was involuntarily playing with her hair. She put the hand onto her cup of tea and smiled.
He looked at his watch. “I better get back to work. I have a conference call in five minutes. See you later, hopefully, if you don’t run back to Wisconsin anytime soon.”
“Sure,” she said with a smile. As she watched him walk away, her smile grew wider.
When Marco finally left her sight, Kim plopped herself down at a small table outside the coffee shop and watched the people passing by on the bustling street. It seemed that plenty of folks made a fine living, dressed in nice clothes, and had no worries about whether anyone at work might try to kill them if they filed the wrong report. She tried to identify the single event that caused her life to go down such a wrong path.
After a few minutes, she decided that the larger questions about her life path could wait—she had issues that were more pressing. The end of the day was getting close, and she needed to figure out what to do about the report. She could leave the file as it was, or she could alter it until John figured out whether a cop was up to something. As she sat staring at the street, her mind danced between the pros and cons of each option, until she finally blurted out, “You’re an asshole, McDonough.”
Chapter 10:
Home, Sweet Home
John stepped into his small one-bedroom apartment. The place was not beautiful. A beige couch sat in the middle of his living room, facing his TV. He piled his computer equipment onto a small desk in the corner and then piled papers and impending bills on top of that. When he moved in, his budget forced a decision between a new TV, a decent desk, or a dining room table; he chose the TV, overcame the less-than-adequate desk, and never missed the table. He flung his coat onto the couch and carried his brown paper bag of sundries into the kitchen.
There, he filled a glass with ice and then pulled a bottle of good bourbon from his bag. As he poured, he looked at the clock.
“Four forty-five,” he sighed.
He refrained from drinking before five, even on holidays, but decided to give himself a pass on this particular pour, for the analgesic properties. After all, his nose still ached, and it was close enough to five o’clock to overlook the slip. After taking a sip of bourbon, he went into the living room and hit the power button on his computer.
While the PC labored away at its startup sequence, he attached the power adapter to his new smartphone and plugged it in to charge. The thing was sleek, pretty, and something that the department’s communications allowance would not fully cover. The clerk at the store had been able to port his address book over from his old mangled phone. All he had to do now, was figure out how the thing worked.
He tapped a button on the phone, and it chimed once to let him know there were messages waiting for him. He slid a couple of items on the miniature screen and the device automatically began to play his voicemail. The first two messages were from Kim. Their time stamp demonstrated she left them prior to his midday visit to the morgue, and on each message Kim simply said, “John, call me.” He deleted them, and the phone began to play the last message; it was from Amy Ritter.
“Hi, Detective,” her message began. “I won’t be in the office tomorrow. I was planning a trip out of town with some friends to hit the outlets in Lancaster. I could talk to you tomorrow night, or I will be at Eligio’s in Rittenhouse around five-thirty or six to take advantage of their happy hour prices if you would like to talk tonight. Hope to talk t
o you again, soon.” Amy then proceeded to leave both her home and cell numbers.
John knew Eligio’s. It was nice enough to attract the snobby young professionals who wanted a taste of some authentic Italian food, and practical enough to bring in those on a budget who wanted a good deal for their money. He guessed that Amy was in the latter group. Based on what the university paid teaching assistants, she probably needed to take advantage of the extra cheap happy hour prices whenever she could.
Meeting this soon might not be worthwhile, but then again, waiting until tomorrow night might slow things down. He could always tell her she was a suspect and that she needed to stay in town, but the justification for that would be weak. Once he had a chance to review the papers, he could make the call on whether she might be able to tell him anything, and if he thought she could, he would head out to Eligio’s.
He fiddled with the phone for a bit longer. The thing had just about every application or utility he would need. He just wished he could find the command to make the thing vibrate instead of ring.
The computer beeped at him once, capturing his attention and letting him know it had successfully booted up. Digging Dunglison’s disk out of his coat, he used a pair of tweezers to remove it from the bag and stick the disk into the drive slot.
He decided to open the .rtf file, since it might be easier to read than the unformatted text. The title page came up on the screen: “Paranormal Pennsylvania: Folk Tales of Witchcraft and Hauntings in Southeastern Colonial Pennsylvania.” Instead of presenting Spartan double-spaced text, the document looked as if it was digital copy of a fancy book.
John scrolled down to the introduction and started to read:
While many scholars have taken time to study the folklore around Salem witchcraft (Jones, 1956; Mendelson, 1966; Pierre, 1967; Scholworth, 1971; Smith, 1972; Tauperson, 1976; White, 1982), only Johnerson (1985) has sought out the folklore and tales around witchcraft in southeastern Pennsylvania during the same period. In the folklore of Johnerson’s book, one can find tales relating to several groups in southeastern Pennsylvania. However, Tutbridge (1992) has claimed that Johnerson’s work is at best a good start to the field…
At this point, the words on the page turned into, “Blah, blah, blah.” John rubbed his eyes, and thought, “Who cares?” He scrolled down until he saw the first group that Dunglison mentioned in his death note.
The Brethren of Roxborough were one of Johnerson’s (1985) primary groups of interest. In his account, they were a group that quietly lived near the Wissahickon Creek and met at a waterfall along that body of water. Several folk tales of this group meeting late at night populated Johnerson’s work. Johnerson also made the strong assertion that the council of fourteen, which led the group, guarded a book. Johnerson referred to this book as The Book of 21, or Le Coeur Codex. None of Johnerson’s claims were corroborated by this researcher, since the original documents he cited as sources could not be found.
John rolled his eyes. “So he made the crap up to get published: big deal. Shut up about him and get on with it.”
He scanned the rest of the article. Apparently, an elderly woman had donated a bunch of old papers to Penn Commonwealth. One of the papers was a letter from William Penn to a man named Jan Hanstitch. In Penn’s letter, he stated that Hanstitch’s group was welcome to worship as they pleased in the Commonwealth. Penn also had made a request of the group, as “remuneration” for their freedom, that they help him on a certain matter. It seemed that William Penn wanted to keep Salem’s witchcraft frenzy out of Philadelphia. He asked for their help as “learned and educated gentlemen” in examining claims of witchcraft in the colony. Dunglison referred the reader to “Appendix K” for a full copy of the letter. Hanstitch’s group later became known as the Brethren of Roxborough.
John wondered how many appendices the book had. He scrolled back to “Appendix K” and found the letter. Dunglison’s interpretation seemed faithful to the message of the original letter. Of course, the letter in the manuscript was a typed reproduction and not a photocopy, so John wondered if Dunglison had made simply the stuff up.
John returned to the section on the Brethren, and found that they ceased to be visible to the public around 1706, when Hanstitch was killed by his wife’s lover. Dunglison then discussed several poems and folktales about the “Brethren of the Rocks.” These seemed boring and verbose ghost stories. John decided to move on to the next item in Dunglison’s letter.
He scrolled down to the section on the Jonas Farm. The farm burned to the ground during the American Revolution; patriots set it ablaze because it sheltered munitions for the British. Before that, according to Dunglison, it was rumored that Jonas practiced the black arts. Dunglison then presented folktales about ghosts, goblins, and cloaked old witches in the woods around the farm. It looked like a bunch of worthless fairy tales.
The tale “Goblin of Jonas’ Woods,” however, was particularly interesting to John. In a tale reportedly told to Dunglison by a sixty-eight-year-old Sarah Klingle, the goblin would eat unwary nighttime travelers that passed through the wood around the farm. The next morning, Jonas would unlock his door to find the traveler’s wagon and horses, but nothing else.
John wondered about this a bit. He was previously unaware that goblins held such distaste for horsemeat. He thought it more likely that Jonas ambushed the poor travelers, stole their cargo, and buried them somewhere.
He scrolled down to the section on Krumpmeyer Wood. A group of witches named the Manaseura supposedly met there, again until 1706. Dunglison spoke of the group being “convinced” by the Brethren of Roxborough to “relocate” to other pastures where they would not frighten the local folk. Dunglison recounted two tales of ritualistic sacrifice that local farmers reported to the authorities in the area. He followed those tales with a letter from Hanstitch to William Penn, in which Hanstitch explained that the allegations were “exaggerations.”
John let out a sigh; this was taking a while. He wondered if Dunglison’s murder resulted from the fact that the man seemed to be incredibly boring. Filtering through all the references to other works made the reading tedious. He rubbed his drooping eyes. The manuscript was scholarly and benign enough, so it was a prime candidate for the “read later” pile.
While indulging in a sip of bourbon, John moved to the couch with Hallman’s papers. He hoped they held more insight than the manuscript. John unfolded Hallman’s papers and, below Hallman’s sticky note, found a photocopy of a handwritten letter, dated September 2, 1684.
After squinting to read the opulent writing, John realized that it was the letter William Penn had sent to Hanstitch. This brought a smile to John’s face. While not the original document, it at least showed that Dunglison was not inventing the story. If the need arose, John could give it to the handwriting analysis team to see if it really was Penn’s handwriting, or if someone was screwing with Dunglison.
The next paper in Hallman’s stack was an original, and quite old based on the brittle paper and lavish handwriting in faded ink. Hallman had attached a sticky note to it. The note read:
After discovering I had inadvertently left this letter in my stack of notes, I went to return it to the archives the next day. I found the rest of the old documents were gone. We decided it best to keep this paper until the rest of the documents could be located. Please be careful with it: it is three hundred years old.
The document was now folded and crumpled from being stuffed in the false book and then in John’s coat. It looked like it might rip apart at any minute. John tried to straighten it, but that just seemed to make the paper weaker.
Looking again at Hallman’s note, John wondered who really used the word “inadvertently.” Further, he wondered who just happens to discover they left a three-hundred-year-old document in their stack of notes. The stereotypical picture of the absent-minded professor came to John’s mind, but the vision ended with John pondering whether Hallman was aiming to add one more trophy to his bookshelf.
The words “September 17, 1706,” sat at the top of the letter. It read:
My dearest Jan,
I hope this letter finds you in good health and high spirits. Unfortunately, I write to bear sad news. I fear that our efforts over the past fortnight, the relocation efforts with the M_______, may have been incomplete. There are several reasons for my suspicions, some of which may seem like the infirm mind of an elderly gentleman playing tricks on him. I hope that is the worst of our fears, but I felt compelled to warn you of my situation.
Last week, my young boy Toby found me in my library and spoke of a man in the wood outside our home. While gathering firewood, Toby said he saw a man in a black cloak watching him. The man slipped off into the trees.
Toby spoke of seeing the man on two other occasions. Both times the man was in the wood, watching the home. Both times, the man slipped away quietly into the trees. Since then, I have forbade Toby from gathering wood, deciding it better to risk the life of an old man rather than a child, should the man mean us harm.
What compels me to write, at this time, are the events of this morning. I saw the man myself though the window of my study. He was quite a distance off. At first, I feared that I was growing infirm and gullible to the wild imagination of a young boy. I waved to the man, and he simply turned and slipped away into the trees, just as Toby described. It was when he turned and revealed his profile that I began to dread more seriously. I believe he was the tall dark man who escaped us at the ferry and created the tragic accident that is causing us to lay Evan Fields to rest.