Deadly Harvest

  It was a long process. The deceased had been X-rayed when she arrived, her clothing taken away to be analyzed, and blood samples were already being processed. Jeremy learned all that by listening to Dr. Albright speaking into the microphone that was hanging down above the body, so he could describe the process as he worked. He identified the body as that of a young woman between the age of seventeen and thirty-three, standing approximately five foot three and weighing one hundred and twenty pounds. Her neck had been broken, probably postmortem, perhaps even by the weight of her skull as it fell forward due to the staging of the corpse in the fields. Death appeared to be the result of strangulation; heavy bruising was clearly visible around the neck and throat. Trace evidence taken from the body thus far included organic matter, such as dirt and vegetation, insect matter and other undetermined substances.

  The stench of decomposition was strong, even in the cold autopsy room. Joe gestured toward a stainless-steel table along one wall, silently suggesting that Jeremy take a mask.

  Jeremy was happy to do so.

  He found it almost impossible not to distance himself a bit—to stand, like Joe, a few feet back, arms crossed over his chest, and try not to imagine that the rotting flesh and protruding bone on the table had once lived, breathed, laughed.

  More photographs were being taken, but Jeremy was certain they were not for identification purposes.

  Her face was too badly disfigured for that.

  Not, he soon discovered, by the murderer. The damage done to the flesh of her face—other than the red slash across her mouth—had been caused by the birds of prey and insects who had fed upon her while she had reigned atop the stake in the field.

  She had had sex shortly before death, and the bruising over her genitalia strongly indicated that it had been rape. Dr. Albright estimated the time of death at about a week prior to the discovery of the body. She did not appear to have been in a state of malnutrition or dehydration prior to death.

  The M.E.’s voice became a drone in Jeremy’s head.

  The doctor made the Y incision so he could begin examining the internal organs, and the corpse became even less recognizable as human.

  Heart a normal weight, two hundred and seventy grams; brain, normal, thirteen hundred grams; lungs, also normal, the left, three hundred and seventy grams, the right, four hundred.

  Kidneys, both normal, left, one hundred and thirty grams…

  Pancreas, spleen, liver…

  Tissue samples were taken for later analysis. The assistant removed larvae found in the flesh, and Jeremy knew they would be important in establishing the exact time of death.

  He became aware of a soft humming, just below the sound of the water that ran continually to keep the autopsy table clear, and he turned and noticed a computer running nearby. The screen held the image of a sightless skull covered in rotting flesh—the skull belonging to the woman on the table. Alongside it, an automated program ran a series of graphs, and as he watched, the computer began to rebuild her face, even as she lay dead ten feet away. Robbed of life, she was yet given it back.

  By the time the doctor stepped aside and his assistant began stitching up the body, a human being was appearing on the screen. Statistics and math were putting her back together, just as the surgical thread was.

  She had been pretty.

  Young, and pretty.

  But not as pretty as Mary.

  Or as flat-out beautiful as Rowenna.

  But the dead woman was certainly attractive enough to have drawn attention. He was surprised by how relieved he felt to know that he hadn’t been mistaken, that death hadn’t worked so cruelly on the body that he had been wrong to swear that it wasn’t Mary. This woman was indeed shorter. Dark haired, curvy, probably quick to laugh and flirt. To live.

  He hadn’t felt queasy during the cutting, or even while listening to the description of her wounded flesh, which could be even worse.

  But seeing her face, seeing what she had been in life…

  “It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Joe said grimly.

  Jeremy was grateful that he hadn’t jumped when the policeman’s voice startled him out of his thoughts.

  “This will be in the papers and on the news by tonight, correct?” Jeremy asked him.

  Joe nodded grimly. “I hope you’re aware that we’re holding back a great deal.”

  “I would never discuss a case with the press.”

  “We’ve held back any mention of the slashed face. I’d asked my men not to mention that the body had been found fixed up like a scarecrow, but that got out somehow anyway.”

  Jeremy stared at him evenly. “Not through me.”

  Joe shrugged. “I didn’t say you had anything to do with it. Too many emergency personnel on site. Someone was going to squeal. But I’m hoping we can keep it quiet about what he did to the mouth. That’s got to be symbolic of something, don’t you agree?”

  “I would imagine, yes.”

  “Come on, let’s get out of here,” Joe said. “Harold—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll call you faster than I can think if I get anything,” the M.E. promised.

  He nodded to Jeremy, who inclined his head in return. “Thanks for letting me sit in.”

  Harold Albright, his eyes huge behind the magnifying glasses he was wearing, said, “Glad to have you here. You ask me, it’s good to have an outsider with the right credentials in as a witness.”

  Joe actually set a friendly hand on Jeremy’s shoulder as they headed out, saying goodbye to Miss Cheerful on the way.

  Outside in the parking lot, Joe Brentwood inhaled a deep breath and shook his head. “I’ll never get used to the smell of death.”

  “No man ever should,” Jeremy told him.

  Joe studied him, then nodded. “Harold won’t wear a mask. Says he can smell cyanide and other stuff. He doesn’t mind what he does—he just minds when he can’t get an answer. We’re all going to die, he says. We just deserve to die as human beings. Well, most of us do, anyway.” He paused and scratched his chin, then asked, “So, you have any ideas?”

  “You know this place better than I do.”

  “And you know your friend Brad better than I do,” Joe countered.

  “You can’t really believe that Brad did anything to Mary,” Jeremy said.

  Joe smiled grimly. “That’s the difference between us. I can believe it. I’m not the guy’s friend.”

  Jeremy shook his head. “He’s convinced that the fortune-teller they went to that afternoon, that Damien guy nobody can find, is guilty. It’s as good a theory as any other at this point. Brad says he saw cornfields in the guy’s crystal ball. He says he felt threatened, like the guy was trying to tell him that he was all-powerful, that he could kill people, and that it all had something to do with the cornfields.”

  Joe studied him again. “What do you think?”

  “I think the guy could be guilty. I think he needs to be found, at the very least.”

  “Do you think he really showed Brad the cornfields in a crystal ball?”

  Jeremy studied Brentwood, wondering if the man was trying to trick him in some way.

  “I’m sure there are all kinds of tricks someone could play to make someone else think they’re seeing something specific in a crystal ball, sure.”

  Brentwood looked away and shook his head. “Johnstone must be scared to death we’re going to find his wife in the same…position.”

  “Rowenna told him she’s convinced that Mary is all right. He seems to believe her.”

  “And you don’t?” Joe asked.

  Jeremy lifted his hands. “How can she know?” he asked.

  Joe shrugged. “I don’t know. But the thing about Rowenna is, somehow or other she generally does know. Anyway, tell your buddy to stick around. Not to leave town, anything like that. Not that he probably needs to be told. He’s certainly determined not to go anywhere until he finds his wife.”

  “He loves her.”

  Brentwood looked skep
tical. “That’s not what the parents think.” He shook his head. “I’m going to have to call them when I get back to the office before they show up on my doorstep again. Having the parents around seldom helps.”

  “I can call if you want. I know them,” Jeremy offered.

  Joe looked up at the sky. It was pewter, the rays of the sun streaking through the occasional breaks in the clouds. “Thanks, but I’d better handle it. They seem to think your friend is a no-good cheating bastard.”

  “They’d had some problems.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “They’d solved them. That’s why they were here, taking a vacation to put things back together.”

  “There’s one sure way to fix a problem marriage—kill your partner,” Joe said.

  Jeremy felt himself springing to Brad’s defense, but he forced himself to speak calmly and rationally. “A husband out to rid himself of his wife doesn’t usually go out and find another woman to butcher first.”

  “Why not? Make it look like a serial killing,” Joe suggested.

  “The M.E. said she’s been dead about a week,” Jeremy pointed out.

  “I figure she died a couple of days before Mary Johnstone disappeared,” Joe said.

  “And Brad wasn’t even in the area before that day,” Jeremy argued.

  “I can see where the timing gives him the better side of doubt,” Joe agreed.

  “You’re looking for someone local, someone who knows the roads and the fields, even the people, around here. You have no idea who your Jane Doe might be, but I’m willing to bet she wasn’t local, and Mary would have been a stranger, too. You have an incredibly clever, organized killer on your hands.”

  “A psycho,” Joe muttered.

  “A sociopath,” Jeremy corrected him. “A smart one. Granted, the cornfield was contaminated as a crime scene because of the way the body was discovered, but this guy knew what he was doing. He took that body out there at a time when the cornstalks were high and he knew it was unlikely anyone was going to find her until she had begun to decompose and would be a lot harder to identify.”

  “You think I’m looking for psychopathic farmer?” Joe asked, clearly only half-serious.

  “Maybe.”

  As they talked, Jeremy glanced across the street at the village green, across the busy street from where they stood.

  An older couple, hand in hand, came walking along, smiling at one another in a way that tugged at his heart. Hell, they might have just met in a bar last night, for all he knew. But the way they looked at one another, he would have bet his soul that they’d been together for years, through good times and bad. They’d probably raised children together, and now had grandkids who turned their lives upside down whenever they came for a visit, but they were clearly happy on their own, as well, taking the time during their golden years to enjoy the waning sun of autumn and the colors of the turning leaves.

  He envied them. The peace with which they moved. The smiles they gave one another. The pleasure they took in enjoying the day, and in the fact that their lives had no doubt been good and well spent.

  Cars rushed by as the light at the corner changed, and when he looked again, the couple was gone.

  Someone else was standing there.

  A boy.

  A boy of about ten, with flyaway dark hair and grave eyes.

  Billy.

  He stared at Jeremy solemnly and lifted a hand, as if in friendship, even comfort.

  A car rushed by.

  Jeremy blinked.

  The boy was gone.

  9

  As a local, Rowenna knew plenty of places to go for breakfast, even if the main tourist attractions didn’t open until nine or ten.

  She opted to go to Red’s for breakfast, and while she was there, Adam and Eve came in. She smiled when she saw them. Lots of people expected wiccans to go out every day wearing long black cloaks—which, admittedly, they sometimes did—but it wasn’t as if there was a dress code. Today Eve was wearing a lot of silver—silver bangles on her wrists, silver cornucopias on her ears, her good pentagram and several delicate strands of silver around her neck. She wore a long wool skirt in a rich green, and a soft sweater to match.

  Adam was clad in ordinary jeans and a flannel shirt.

  Rowenna started to call out to them, then hesitated.

  The two of them seemed to be embroiled in an argument.

  She watched as Adam managed to clamp his lips tightly shut when the hostess seated them, and then, when he picked up his menu, she thought it might be safe to go over to say hi. But just then Eve leaned toward her husband and said something in a low, but—judging from her expression—clearly heated voice. He responded with quiet vehemence, his body language betraying his anger.

  Rowenna sat back and picked up the magazine she had grabbed on the way in, a local publication about events in the greater Salem area. Not that it mattered; she was only pretending to read, pretending she couldn’t see two of her good friends engaged in a heated argument. They were trying to appear civil—since Salem was actually a pretty small town in a lot of ways, and no one liked being the topic of gossip—but she knew them well enough to know they were upset with each other about something.

  When her waitress arrived she ordered coffee, juice and an omelet. As she drank her coffee she found herself caught up in an article on Hammond Castle, in nearby Gloucester, and the man who had built it, John Hays Hammond, Jr. Local legend said the castle was haunted by the spirits of the corpses Hammond—just like the fictional Dr. Frankenstein—had supposedly experimented on. He’d been an inventor, second only to Thomas Edison in the number of patents he held, and was known as “the father of remote control.” Whether or not he had actually experimented on corpses was an unanswered question, at least according to the author of the article.

  “Good morning.”

  Rowenna had grown so interested in the article that she was startled to look up and see Eve standing by her table, smiling pleasantly, as if nothing in the world was wrong.

  “Good morning, yourself.”

  “When did you get here?” Eve asked her.

  “Ten minutes ago, maybe. I’m not really sure. I was reading.”

  “Didn’t you see us come in?”

  Rowenna didn’t lie…exactly. She just said, “I was really into this article.”

  “Well, how about joining us? Grab your coffee, alert your waitress and come on over.”

  “Sure, I’d love to join you,” Rowenna said, not that she really had any choice.

  She tried to hide her discomfort at having witnessed their argument as she followed her friend over to the other table.

  “Hi, Ro,” Adam said, rising.

  “Adam,” she said, accepting his kiss on her cheek as the waitress came over with their food.

  “What are you reading?” he asked, noticing the magazine tucked under her arm.

  “An article on Hammond Castle. Did you know it was haunted?” she asked.

  “Of course it’s haunted,” Eve said.

  “He experimented with human corpses, you know,” Adam added.

  “Forget that,” Eve said grimly. “We have our own local corpse to worry about now.”

  “She’s not our corpse,” Adam said irritably.

  Eve stared at Rowenna. “I can’t believe you found her,” she said in a horrified tone.

  Great. News had traveled. Rowenna wondered if that was all anyone would think about when they looked at her now: there goes that woman who found the body in the cornfield.

  “How did you know I found her?” she asked.

  “Don’t you watch television?” Eve responded.

  “Or read the papers?” Adam queried.

  “Or a little thing called the Internet?” Eve told her.

  “Oh,” Rowenna said simply.

  “It must have been horrible,” Eve said.

  “It was,” Rowenna agreed.

  Adam leaned closer to her and asked softly, “Did he really stick her
up on a stake in a cornfield and leave her there?”

  Rowenna looked at her omelet and pushed the plate away, her appetite gone.

  “Yes,” she said flatly.

  “Do you think it was some kind of ritual killing?” Adam asked.

  Rowenna shook her head. “It looked like some sick psycho viciously killed a woman,” she said. “Listen, guys, it wasn’t a great experience, so if you don’t mind…”

  “Sorry,” Adam said quickly.

  “I just hope that maniac doesn’t have Mary Johnstone,” Eve said darkly, staring straight at Rowenna.

  Had there been an edge to her friend’s voice? Rowenna wondered. Or was she just imagining things because she was still upset from yesterday?

  Adam’s hands were on the table, knotted and tense. “Let’s hope,” he agreed quietly. But he was upset. There was a pulse beating hard at his throat.

  “Is anything wrong?” Rowenna asked.

  “Wrong?” Adam repeated blankly then asked, “Where’s your friend?”

  “Jeremy?” Rowenna returned.

  “Did you bring another friend home?” Eve asked lightly.

  “He’s…out. He’s here trying to help Brad. They used to be partners,” Rowenna said.

  “Brad is still a diver with the Jax police,” Adam said. “We talked a bit,” he told Rowenna. “I liked him.”

  “And his wife,” Eve said, her tone slightly acidic.

  “I hope they find her. She was beautiful, and really sweet. You could tell she was a dancer with every step she took,” Adam said, ignoring what seemed to be a surprising jealousy that his wife was barely concealing.

  “Is a dancer,” Rowenna said.

  “Is,” Adam said, correcting himself. “Of course.”

  “Do you really think there’s any hope she’s alive?” Eve asked, and her concern sounded genuine.

  Eve might be jealous of the woman, Rowenna thought, but she would never wish her harm.

  “I believe with my whole heart that she is,” Rowenna said.

  “Intuition?” Adam asked.

  Rowenna shrugged.

  “Your intuitions are good,” Eve said.