Witch House (23 page)

“Really?”

He came around the front of the car and put
his arm around my shoulder. “Have you ever seen him drawing in that
sketchbook of his?”

“Sure, I see him doodling in it all the
time.”

“Do you know what he is doodling?”

“Don’t tell me, Ursula?”

He laughed, slapped my back and pushed me
away. “All Ursula, all the time. Tony, it borders on creepy,
especially when he draws page after page of just her feet.
Seriously, if you tell him that stuff about Lilith in the shower,
and I mean tell it just the way you told me, it will drive him
absolutely batty.”

We filed into the building, pass the security
desk and into the elevator. “Carlos, I’m not sure I feel
comfortable telling that to Dominic now. Don’t you think it’s
cruel?”

I watched his expression change from glad to
sad in the reflection of the elevator’s stainless steel doors.
“Well, sure, but what’s your point?”

The doors opened. We stepped out and there
was Spinelli. He seemed surprised to see us. “Oh, there you are. I
wasn’t expecting you back so quickly. Listen, I was just going
downstairs to get some coffee. You want some?”

“No.” I palmed his shoulder and walked him
backward, away from the elevator. “Tell me you got a ballistics
match on Powell’s .38 first.”

He shook his head. “It came up negative.”

“Damn.”

“You’re disappointed?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know. I guess I’m
surprised, that’s all. My gut told me that Powell…forget it.”

Carlos said, “He still may have. We never
asked him for his back up piece.”

I knew better, but said anyway, “Uniforms
don’t carry a back up piece.”

He shot me
that
look. “Not
officially.”

I said to Dominic, “Does Powell carry a
snub-nosed .38 on him.”

“I don’t know. Should I ask him?”

“No.” I brushed past him and headed for my
desk. “Can’t ask him that now. I am sure he’ll tell us he doesn’t
have one.”

The two followed me. Carlos said, “We can ask
around. Someone downstairs will know if he carries a back up or
not.”

“I don’t think it will help,” said Dominic.
“If Powell had a non-issued back up, one he did not have to account
for, he would have certainly disposed of it the night of the
murder.”

“Not necessarily.”

“No, Dominic’s right,” I said. “Powell is too
smart to get caught with the proverbial smoking gun. We have to
move on. Dominic, where are we with the warrants for the other
guns?”

“Got`em. I have two uniforms at the casino
now, obtaining all of Chief Running Bear’s guns; two more serving
Kemper and I am working on getting someone out to Walpole to see
DeAngelo. As fast as we get`em in, we will rush the guns down to
ballistics for test firing.”

“Great,” I said, feeling better about that.
“Who did you use?”

“You mean for judge?”

“Yes.”

“McPherson.”

“Judge Fredrick McPherson? Why him?”

“Why not?”

“His subpoenas usually restrict us to the
narrowest of search parameters.”

“I didn’t know that, not that it mattered. I
had to use McPherson. The captain said the D.A`s office wants to
keep close tabs on this investigation. McPherson is their go-to
judge for subpoenas of a sensitive nature.”

“The D.A`s office considers this a sensitive
case?”

“Of course.”

“In what respect?”

“In respect to its potential to embarrass
M.C.I. and to further strain the relationship between the State of
Massachusetts and the Wampanoag Indian tribe.”

“All right then, we’ll let it go, but listen,
I want you to secure subpoenas for all cell phone records between
Powell, Stiles, Kemper, DeAngelo and Chief Running Bear. Dig back
about a month, and do not let the D.A’s office know unless they
ask. Go to Judge LaHaye if you can, and see if he will let us tap
those same phones. If a conspiracy exists between any of them, that
might tell us.”

“Got it. Hey, did things go okay with
Stiles?”

Carlos answered, “She wasn’t helpful.”

“How do you mean?”

“She had someone hiding in her bedroom. I
told Tony we should stay and see who it was. He said no.”

Dominic turned to me. “You didn’t want to
know?”

“It doesn’t matter. We don’t have time for
that. Your concern now should be those subpoenas, that and your
date with Ursula tonight at the séance.”

“Date?” He laughed doubtfully. “I don’t
have….” Carlos and I shifted glances around him. “Did she say it
was a date?”

“Sure,” said Carlos, grinning like a serpent.
“That’s what she told us. Right, Tony?”

I turned back and headed down the hall. “I’ll
see you both at seven thirty. Don’t keep me waiting.”

“Oh, I won’t,” said Dominic. “I’ll be
ready.”

I called back. “I know you will. I meant
Carlos.”

In the few short years that I have known
Lilith, I have witnessed by her hand a myriad of paranormal
manifestations, the breadth of which I can scarcely summons upon
reflective rumination. Yet, each time I reconcile the impossible
with the improbable, I remember that the world around us is
constantly shifting its physical boundaries, swapping the
intangible limits of time and space with measurable elements of
perception. Such instances challenge me to suspend my instincts and
deny my propensity to dispel that which offers no collectable
evidence supporting its existence.

Lilith maintains that the human mind, through
paranoia and religious fabrications, has conditioned itself to
believe that the
Otherworld
, the sphere beyond physical
touch, is a distinct and separate reality from our own, and that
the keepers of that world are righteous, pious and inviolable. The
truth, she contends, is the exact opposite, explaining how Native
culture and Wiccans alike express the coexistence between all
realms of intelligent matter, regardless their physical tendencies.
Comingling between the sub-spheres is as natural as rain and wind.
Such is the belief among most of the world’s oldest religions,
assuming Christianity, Islam and Judaism are still in their
infancy. These, the oldest of theologians, believe that for an
entity to pass through the keyhole of abstraction, one needs only
the mutual subordination of another in a parallel domain as its
conduit. In Hindu practice, they call this abstract exchange
between a causal agent and a spirit soul, transmigration. Lilith
calls it a séance.

I met Carlos and Spinelli at the Justice
Center at seven thirty and, as expected, had to wait on Carlos who
insisted on running back upstairs to collect money from his desk
for the candy machine. I offered him what spare change I had and
even made Spinelli turn his pockets inside out for the cause, but
Carlos refused, insisting he did not want to take advantage of our
good nature. Later, we learned that declining our offer had nothing
to do with our good nature and everything to do with the call of
nature. The delicate discrimination of the matter became abundantly
apparent after I sent Spinelli up in the elevator to see what was
taking Carlos so long to run down a few quarters. The poor boy came
back down in a pale fright, suggesting appropriately that we wait
outside in the car.

“Carlos is texturing a constitution at the
moment,” he said, and then shuddered. I had never heard it put
quite that way before, but I knew what he meant. Experience has
taught me that with Carlos, some things are better not rushed.

We found Lilith and Ursula out front of the
old house as we drove up. We were not late. The thirty minutes I
allowed for the ride there was twenty minutes more than necessary
under normal circumstances, and five more than what Carlos needed
to…texture his masterpiece. Still, that did not keep Lilith from
voicing her displeasure over our timing.

“Did you get lost?” she asked, sarcastically,
of course. By contrast, Ursula turned away shyly. And though her
lips thinned, I could not tell if it was out of amusement or
embarrassment that they did. I came around the car, stopping to get
into the trunk before stepping up onto the curb.

“Nice to see you, too,” I said, and I checked
my watch. “Are we late?” I knew we were not.

“Yes.”

I checked it again. “No. You said eight
o’clock.”

“Ursula and I have been waiting here ten
minutes. You couldn’t arrive early to assure you would not keep two
vulnerable women standing out in the cold by themselves?”

“Vulnerable? Lilith, please.”

“It was my fault,” said Carlos. “I held the
guys up. I had something I had to finish back at work.”

“You?”

“Yeah, I’m sorry. Hey.” He reached into his
pocket and pulled out a Snickers Bar. “How `bout a peace
offering?”

She reached out and swatted the candy bar
from his hand. “I don’t want it. I want you to get your ass here a
little quicker next time.”

I stepped between them and picked up the
Snickers. “There isn’t going to be a next time,” I said. I handed
the candy bar back to Carlos. “But just for reference, whenever you
want someone to meet you somewhere at a quarter to eight, tell him
a quarter to eight, not eight o’clock, and maybe he will be there.”
I handed Carlos and Dominic two of three flashlights I had gathered
from the trunk and pushed past them, heading for the house. “Now
come on. Let’s get this over with.”

On the way up the walk, Carlos leaned into
Dominic and uttered, “See what I mean.” I turned and looked at
them, but let it go.

Once inside the house, I could feel the
friction between Lilith and me melting away. I stepped over the
threshold and stopped just a few feet into the room, causing the
others to check up behind me single-file. Lilith came around my
right side, stroking my arm softly. I had just turned to kiss her
cheek when she reached around me and ripped the drawstring off the
curtain in the front window. “Whoa!” I said. “What’s that for? You
gonna tie me up?”

She laughed teasingly. “Oh, wouldn’t you like
that?”

“I might.”

She took my hand. “Come. There is nothing to
worry about.”

I followed her lead, stepping over chunks of
plaster and bits of debris as we worked our way toward the dining
room. Gone were the candles that lit our way the last time like so
many airport runway lights. In their place lay blobs of hardened
wax, sprawled flat in petrified flows resembling cooled lava. I
said to Lilith, almost as an afterthought, “I’m not worried.”

Spinelli said under his breath, “Neither am
I,” though I was not convinced. I glanced over my shoulder and saw
that he had taken Ursula’s hand, or she had taken his; I do not
know which. I looked back further at Carlos. He had fallen behind a
few steps, his attention directed on the ceiling, raking it over
corner to corner. When I first came through the doorway, I thought
I heard creaking noises above us, as if someone was walking the
floor upstairs in stocking feet. There were no footsteps, per se,
only the sound of shifting weight along the floorboards. I
suspected Carlos heard it, too. I let go of Lilith’s hand and
mentioned to him and Dominic that we should sweep the building for
intruders.

“Aren’t we intruders?” asked Carlos.

Dominic said, “I’ll take upstairs,” and he
headed down the hall with a flashlight in one hand and his .38 in
the other. Ursula called to him, her arms extended. “Take care of
thee,” she begged. “Thou art so brave.”

He turned and replied, “I shall,” and then he
blew her a kiss that she snagged from the air with her still
outstretched hand.

I looked to Carlos. “I’ll take the
kitchen.”

“Oh,” he moaned, “I was going to take the
kitchen.”

“Okay, fine. I’ll look downstairs.”

“In the basement?”

“Yes.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

He dismissed it with a tisk sound through his
teeth. “All right, it’s your funeral.”

“What does that mean?”

“Come on, the cellar? A haunted house?” He
dropped his voice a full octave. “Need I say more?”

“You think it’s too scary to go down
there?”

He laughed faintly and shook his head. “No,
it’s okay. You’ll be fine.”

“You sure?”

“Sure.”

“You mean you wouldn’t be scared to go down
there by yourself.”

“Me?” He waved dismissively. “`Course not.”
Then he snapped his fingers in front of my face. “I would go down
just like that. It wouldn’t faze me a bit.”

“Great.” I pointed to the cellar door. “Then
why don’t you go and check it out? I’ll stay up here and keep an
eye on the girls.”

“What?” His jaw slackened. “No. I was going
to check out the kitchen.”

“I know, but now I can do that. You can go
down into the basement.”

“Tony!” said Lilith, knuckling my arm hard
with her ring hand. “Stop screwing around and get your ass
downstairs. I would like to do this séance sometime before the sun
comes up tomorrow.”

Carlos smiled, relieved, I am sure. I grabbed
the larger of the two remaining flashlights and headed downstairs.
Once there, it did not take me long to determine that the basement
was void of human life, which is not to say that it was void of
life altogether. The scratching and scurrying noises I heard
convinced me that a colony of rats populated the cellar in numbers
impressive enough that I felt more vulnerable there than at any
time since my return to prime. All around me, beady red eyes glowed
in the reflected beam of my flashlight, suggesting my moves were
under strict scrutiny. I trained my light off into the corner and
spotted what looked like a large bank bag, one that buckled at the
top. On it was stenciled the words,
Wampanoag Indian Casino
.
My first reaction was one of disbelief. I went over and picked it
up.

“Tony!” It was Lilith, hollering for me to
get a move on. I tossed the sack over my shoulder and ascended the
stairs two by two. Carlos, who had hung out in the kitchen the
entire time, caught me at the top. He commented on how quickly I
made the sweep, suggesting that maybe I could have stayed down
there longer, doing a more thorough job. I held the cellar door
open and pointed downstairs.