Bones of a Witch

by Dana Donovan

  “Leaving so soon, ladies?”

  I turned sharply, half expecting to find the magistrate standing there with that confounded raven sitting upon his shoulder. Instead, I found the devil himself.

  “Putnam,” I said. “I thought I killed you.”

  He grinned smugly. “Well, you didn’t.” I guessed his smug attitude came compliments of the gun in his hand and the witch’s stone around his neck. “I want you both to step away from the car now.” He motioning with the muzzle of his gun toward a black van parked behind my car.

  “And if we don’t?” I said.

  “Then you can run and I’ll shoot the two of you in the back. It’s your call.”

  “But you don’t want to shoot us, do you?”

  He shook his head faintly. “Not particularly. I’d much rather see you hang on Gallows Hill tonight.”

  “Why is that?”

  “It is my calling: to root out witches wherever I find them and to banish them from the planet by the means of our forefathers.”

  “I see.” I looked to Ursula. Her eyes seemed fixed on the witch’s stone. “I`m sorry. I can’t do anything,” I said to her. “You?”

  “Nay.” She lifted her head, as to nod at the stone. “For what his charm hath taketh from thee, it doth also taketh twice.”

  “Yeah, I was afraid of that. So, what do you think, go with him or make a run for it?”

  “Run if ye must, for I shall follow and let his musket strike not thee but me.”

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t work that way, Ursula. He’s got more than one shot in his musket. He could drop us both.”

  “Aye then, to fall presently is bested by the latter of two. I shall sooner wait till moonlight’s watch than forfeit now if that is thy choice.”

  “Right, then I suppose we’re going for a ride.” I turned to Putnam and gestured toward the van. “After you?”

  I think it’s safe to say he seemed none too amused. He herded us to the back of the van where he instructed Ursula to duct tape my hands behind my back. Next, he bound her hands similarly and pushed us into the van. He slammed the door and came around to the driver’s side. As he was getting in, I heard another vehicle pulling up beside us. Putnam turned in his seat, took aim at us and warned, “Not a word, ladies, or I’ll kill you both here and now. Understand?”

  I nodded yes and Ursula mirrored my response. The car next to us shut off its motor. Immediately, three doors open and then three doors close, and that’s when I heard Tony saying, “Yup, that’s hers all right. They must still be inside.”

  To which Carlos answered, “Let’s hope we’re not too late.”

  “Look….” This from Tony again; I imagined him pointing to Spinelli. “Carlos and I will go this way. You take the back. The first one of us to see either of them needs to holler out. I want whoever the girls are after to know that we’re here too. You got it?”

  “Got it,” said Carlos, and Spinelli echoed it.

  Footfalls in the dirt told me that Carlos and Tony took off around the front of the church and Dominic went to cover the back. Putnam waited until they were out of sight before starting the van and backing away. I guess that was when my gut really began to turn. I gave Ursula a look like we had better do something; and although we couldn’t see out the front of the van for the curtain dividing the cabin from the cargo end, we hoped that one of the guys was still within earshot. So like a couple of mules we began kicking in the side of the van as hard as we could. Spinelli, apparently unable to gain entrance through the locked back door, had turned the corner just in time to hear the racket. He pulled his weapon and ordered Putnam to stop the van.

  What happened next is partly conjecture based on what we felt, saw and heard, but I think it’s how things went down. Putnam dropped the van into drive after backing up some and then hit the gas. Ursula and I tumbled backwards through the van and ended up packed into a corner in a twisted knot. Spinelli, having jumped out of the way to keep from getting run over, began firing his .38 at the van, with one round hitting the windshield and several more punching holes in the canvas-thin wall just behind the driver’s door. Putnam returned fire with his .45, carving out a new porthole window in the church above Dominic’s head. I tried to sit up then, but the van again lurched as he hit the gas, crossing the lot in a crabwalk on spinning tires and plowing into the back of my car, sending both of us forward into the passenger compartment beyond the curtain. From there I could see Spinelli. He had emptied his revolver and was reaching for his backup tucked in his ankle holster. Now on a better angle, Putnam took aim at Dominic and squeezed off a round, but not before I managed to nudge his arm at the last second to force his shot wide. Putnam tried again to take aim and so I threw myself on him, pinning his gun hand between me and the steering wheel and momentarily disarming him.

  “Dominic, GET DOWN!” I yelled; my head now out the window in the thick of gun smoke.

  But Putnam was not finished. He grabbed my hair by the fistful and yanked me off him. Then he shoved me aside with an elbow to the gut, and squeezed off a second round. That one exploded in the dirt by Dominic’s foot. A third and a forth blast sent Dominic into a spill, rolling across the lot for cover behind a parked car. Putnam’s last two shots peeled back the sheet metal on the trunk lid above Dominic’s head like two curly fries. At that point I expected Dominic to return fire with his back-up, having counted Putnam’s shots and knowing he was out of rounds. But to my surprise, the bullets this time came from behind us in quick succession, blasting four new holes in the back doors and popping out both glass windows.

  That’s when I heard Tony holler at Carlos to stop firing, citing Ursula’s safety and mine. Putnam, not missing the opportunity, dropped the van into reverse and floored it. The van hesitated for only a second as the tires and loose gravel quarreled over traction. But the van found its grip, driving Tony and Carols back, as it rocketed on by them. Then, as a last measure of defiance, Putnam stopped the van at the edge of the lot; pulled a shotgun out from behind his seat, took aim out the window and flattened the rear tire on Carlos’ car. Minutes later Ursula and I found ourselves on the floor of the van, sailing down route 107 with one of Salem’s most notorious witch hunters, our butts bruised, our egos deflated and our hopes for Tony and the boys saving us fading fast.

  Tony Marcella:

  Jesus, I don’t know where to start. My head was in a damn tailspin about then. Something told me when Lilith and I got back from Salem the night before that we had not heard the last of Lemas Winterhutch or James Putnam, or whatever the hell his name is. Lilith told me she had killed him up on Gallows Hill, but I was suspicious after we got there and found the body had disappeared.

  So there I was the next morning, sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, reading the paper and wondering what the hell was keeping Spinelli. The phone rang. It was Carlos telling me that Spinelli had followed Lilith from the apartment to some remote field in the outskirts of town. And there—though I was sure that Carlos had gotten the story wrong at this point—there Lilith spun her magic and brought Ursula Bishop back from the dead. I mean, I’ve seen Lilith do some amazing shit before, but reanimating a pile of old bones? I could hardly believe it.

  You know, if there’s one thing I can say about Carlos it’s that he knows me well and hardly needs to ask me what I want to do or when I need to do it. That’s more than I can say about Spinelli. Sometimes I think the kid doesn’t look before he leaps. Why he didn’t call me when he put the tail on Lilith in the first place, I’ll never know. Had he done so, I doubt we would have had to drive to Salem, which means that what happened next might have never happened at all. But it did.

  Carlos was waiting out front for me by the time I grabbed my jacket and ran out to the curb. I hopped into the passenger seat and started in right away with the questions. He put up with it for all of two seconds before handing me his phone.

  “What?” I asked, looking at it oddly.

  “It’s ringing,�
�� he said. “Say hello.”

  I put the phone to my ear and heard Spinelli answer with, “Hey, Carlos. `Sup? Djew call Tony yet? Bet he’s pissed, huh?”

  Till then I didn’t realize just how pissed I was. “You’re damn right I am,” I said. “What the hell’s going on Spinelli?”

  “Tony? I…I….”

  “Forget it. Listen, where are you now?”

  “I’m on Highland Ave., just outside Salem.”

  “You still have them in sight?”

  “Yes, I have…uh-oh.”

  “Uh-oh, what uh-oh?”

  “Shit.”

  “Dominic, tell me what’s going on.”

  “I just ran out gas. I’m pulling over to the side of the road.”

  “What? Oh, great.”

  “I’m sorry, Tony.”

  “Forget it. Stay there. We’ll get you.”

  I guess that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I couldn’t believe he had lost the girls. I was so pissed at him that I couldn’t even talk to him after we picked him up on the side of the road. I felt bad for Carlos because of it. Without meaning to, I had put him right in the middle of mine and Spinelli’s petty differences. But he’s all right like that. Sometimes I really underestimate his depth of human understanding. After all these years I am only now just beginning to appreciate it.

  After we arrived in Salem, I figured the only place Lilith could have gone was to the church, and sure enough, as we pulled into the gravel lot we spotted her car parked by an old van.

  “There” I said, pointing out the windshield. “Pull up alongside that van.” We hopped out and crowded around Lilith’s car for a closer look. “That’s hers all right. They must still be inside.”

  Carlos cast his gaze out over the parking lot. Noticing how sparse it looked he commented, “Let’s hope we’re not too late.”

  I turned to Spinelli and pitched a glance back over my shoulder towards the front of the church. “Look, Carlos and I will go this way. You take the back. The first one of us to see either of them needs to holler out. I want whoever the girls are after to know that we’re here, too. You got it?”

  “Got it,” they said, and we split off to make our way into the church. As Carlos had surmised, Mass was over, and most definitely so for the old man we found up front by the altar. In our long careers, Carlos and I had seen some nasty things, but none nastier than this poor old bastard, who had been beaten to a bloody pulp. I looked at Carlos, and he at me.

  “This was no ordinary whoop-ass,” he said.

  I nodded. “Looks more like a lynching. It’s crazy how they just left him here.” I took a look around the church and felt uneasiness about its vacancy, almost as if someone were watching us. “Wonder where Lilith is?”

  Carlos shook his head and started to offer his opinion on the matter. But the words had yet parted his lips when gunfire erupted out in the parking lot, voiding any need for further guessing. “That’s Dominic,” he said, instinctively reaching for his weapon. We started in a run toward the front doors, and before reaching them, heard another series of shots; this time from a second shooter.

  “That’s a .45,” I said, now with my own weapon drawn and cradled in a classic two-fisted grip. “Does Dominic have a .45?”

  We held up at the doors, flanking each side for a second to make sure we were not stepping into an ambush. “Just his .38`s,” Carlos answered, “his primary and a snub-nose.”

  I gave him a nod when I saw that the front of the building was clear. “`Kay-then, let’s go.”

  We tore off around the corner in time to see someone (I later learned was Putnam) taking shots from a van at Spinelli, who had hunkered down behind a parked car. Immediately, Carlos crouched into a shooter’s stance and pounded out five or six shots at the back of the van, taking out its back windows and drilling several holes into the back doors. At that instant I realized Lilith and Ursula were probably inside. I hollered for Carlos to hold his fire and commanded Spinelli to do the same.

  I don’t know, in hind sight maybe that was a mistake. I know that Carlos and Spinelli believed it was. I mean, it gave Putnam the opportunity to pull the van away. In fact he nearly ran us down with it. Then, to add insult to injury, he took out a shotgun and flattened one of our tires so that we couldn’t go after him. Man, I don’t mind telling you that I felt mighty stupid at that point. Naturally, I couldn’t let Carlos or Spinelli know it. So, instead I masked my chagrin with anger, feeling somewhat justified for getting on Spinelli’s case, claiming he should have taken Putnam out with a clear shot when he had the chance.

  “It wasn’t actually a clear shot,” he protested. “Everything happened so fast.”

  “Yeah, like the train at Jefferson Station? I pushed past him and Carlos on my way to find a seat beneath a sprawling oak at the edge of the lot. “And stop wasting our time,” I added. “Get that friggin` tire fixed.”

  It took only a minute to cross the parking lot and find a shady spot in the grass below the branches of that tree, but already Carlos had given Spinelli his pep talk; set him to work on the flat tire, and then headed out to see me. I watched him cross the lot with this serious-Joe look on his face; even smiled up at him politely when he clicked his heels together upon reaching me. But I didn’t say a word to him, not even after he sat down beside me and nudged his shoulder to mine. But if he knew how much that meant to me he would have known that he really didn’t need to say anything at all. Truth was; he probably would have been more successful in getting me to lighten up had he just sat there and let me stew in self-guilt. Eventually I would have come around. But Carlos doesn’t always see the forest for the trees, and I guess he thought I needed a reality check. So instead of easing in with something incidental, he dumped the mother-load of criticism on me, setting my mood from aggravated to terminally pissed for the next six hours.

  “Tony,” he started, “that was harsh. You know it wasn’t Dominic’s fault that Putnam got away.”

  “Hmm.”

  “And you know what it’s like in a shootout. You said yourself it’s the most scared you’ve ever been in all your years on the force.”

  “Carlos, Lilith was in that van. You saw it: holes all over the place. The kid’s shots were wild. All he had to do was hit Putnam once. It’s like he was firing with his eyes closed. What if he hit her?”

  “Well, what did you expect him do, stand there and take fire without returning it?”

  “I expected him not to put civilians in his crossfire. And you, blasting away like that at the back of the van. You’re no better.”

  “Tony, he was shooting at a fellow officer.”

  “Was shooting, you’re right, but he was out of shots. Didn’t you count them?”

  “He could have had a semi-auto.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do, Carlos. I know it because I can hear the difference, and so can you.”

  “All right, maybe you’re right, but that doesn’t change anything. Dominic reacted exactly the way he was trained to react. You just can’t stand that Putnam slipped from our fingers and you want to take it out on Dominic. If fact, you’ve been on his case ever since the boardwalk incident. If you ask me you should be thanking God he’s not dead right now.”

  “I’ll thank God if Lilith isn’t dead right now.”

  “Tony, we’ll get her back. I promise.”

  It’s funny, but that’s exactly what I would have said to him if the shoe were on the other foot. The truth was that I knew we would get her back; but dead or alive, that was another matter.

  I turned my gaze out past the church yard, toward the nearly barren slope they called Gallows Hill. It seemed unlikely that the lone tree there was the same one used by the hysteria-driven villagers of seventeenth-century Salem, but I could imagine it was. Tall as a barn and half as wide, its limbs grew heaviest on the eastern side, crowded lopsided in perverted proportion, as if purposely giving room to the singl
e alpha branch on the west. That limb unfolded from the trunk like a mighty arm stretched in perpetual reach of vigilante justice, a counterbalance in weight to the spectator branches gathered opposite.

  It was there I imagined the accused hanging stiffly, their bodies silhouetted by the setting sun; long dresses romancing the gentle breeze that only evenings bring at the end of a hot summer’s day in Salem. I imagined the dead disappearing under a twilight fog, forgotten, but for the undertaker who cut them down in the morning mist and buried them in soft shallow graves. Later, after he’d gone, and with accusing eyes numb to distractions, the bereaved would come along and distinguish the graves with granite markers, or simple wooden crosses, or sometimes nothing more than footprints and tears. It’s true, I thought, that dust turns to dust, and ashes to ashes, for in death we are all equal. I had to ask myself: what in God’s name happened here. Did they think we would forget, or did they want us to remember?

  Dominic was just bringing the car down off the jack when my cell phone rang, snapping me out of an exiled state of mind. Only then did I realize that I had indeed slipped off to someplace much further than my conscious surroundings. Carlos, who I thought was still sitting beside me, ran back from the car to find out who was calling. I flipped the phone open and said hello, hoping and praying it was Lilith. I think Putnam even heard it in my voice, for he seemed smug about it.