“I was finding it interesting,” Jeremy admitted.
He was even more interested by how surprisingly different the house was inside. It was neat and clean, with a typical parlor to one side of the entry, and a long hallway that branched off to the right and led to the rest of the rooms. The parlor had new leather furnishings, modern end tables and an overall appearance of being well kept. Far more livable than the exterior had led him to expect.
“I picked up some new stuff when I came back,” Eric explained. “I hadn’t been home in maybe five years. My father died, and my mother moved to Florida. I have a sister in Las Vegas. No pressing need to come back, except that it’s home, you know? I always loved the fall. Anyway, when you don’t come around in five years, things kind of go to hell, especially in New England. The weather takes its toll.” He moved on through the house. Jeremy noted that he was lean, but fit. His hands were powerful, calloused from the work he did. Papers strewn on the dining room table were evidence of his expertise in design and electronics, but it seemed evident that he was a hands-on man, that he enjoyed bringing his visions to life—sometimes literally.
“Light or full-bodied?” he asked Jeremy.
“Whichever,” Jeremy said.
Rolfe took two cans of beer from the refrigerator. He handed one to Jeremy, then popped the top on his own. “So you’re here with Ro, huh?” He grinned.
“I met Rowenna in New Orleans, and I happened to be coming up here right when she was coming home,” Jeremy said.
Rolfe studied Jeremy. “Well, it’s good to see her with someone, and from what I’ve been hearing, you’re a stand-up kind of guy. Half the guys in high school had a thing for her, but she was in love with Jon Brentwood from the get-go. It was hard to hate him for it, though a lot of us tried. Strange thing, him becoming a soldier. He was always the kid who broke up everyone else’s fights. The kind who never felt he had to prove anything to anyone. He got teased to death in school, his dad being a cop and all. When we were smoking in the boys’ room, or sneaking off to try pot, we’d all rag him, saying he was likely to turn us in to his dad.” He took a long swig of beer and shook his head. “He never ratted on anyone, though. Of all the guys who shouldn’t have left this world too soon, Jon Brentwood was at the top of the list.”
“His father must have taken it hard,” Jeremy said. “And Rowenna.”
“Yeah. Yeah. I wasn’t here—didn’t make it back for the funeral. But it must have been tough. Joe kind of adopted Rowenna after Jon’s death. Her folks were gone, his only child was gone, she would have been his daughter-in-law anyway. I guess it was natural.” He made no effort to hide the fact that he was staring at Jeremy, studying him. “So what does Joe think of you?”
“We seem to be getting along.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear Ro’s moving on finally. You can’t dig up the dead, and that’s a fact. Strange, though, coming back here. This place is still the same in so many ways. Pretty different from…”
“From…?”
Eric Rolfe laughed. “Hollywood. Coming home to Salem…it’s like taking a giant step back into the past. You just get swept right up into all the old stuff, the same routine, the same ‘witches are silly’ or ‘don’t show witches on broomsticks, it’s such a stereotype.’ Personally, I’ll take the witches, past or present, over those Puritan Fathers any day. Man, those guys were messed up.” He shrugged and gave a dry grin. “But they left some great stuff for an artist to work from.”
“Like your masks? Where did you get the pictures you modeled them on?” Jeremy asked.
“The Internet. I’ve got a bunch of them printed off, if you’d like to have them, if you think it will help you in any way.”
“Sure. Thanks.” Jeremy wondered if the guy really was innocent or just ingenuously pretending he had nothing to hide.
Rolfe went to the bookcase in the living room, behind the leather recliner that faced the state-of-the-art television. He dug around in a folder, then handed the whole thing to Jeremy. “Take it. I’m done with the masks. I’m working on a Christmas monster for a film that’s supposed to start shooting in Vancouver in January.”
“So you’re not staying in town?”
“It’s home. I guess I’ll always come back. Strange thing about New Englanders—we leave, we come back. I think it’s the draw of the autumn colors,” he said.
“When did you get back to town?” Jeremy asked him.
Eric Rolfe thought about that a moment. “I drove cross-country. All by my lonesome, with my audiobooks and CDs. Stopped here and there…I think I got in on the seventeenth.” He smiled slowly. “Just in time to commit murder, right?”
“The timing fits,” Jeremy agreed equably.
Eric shook his head. “I’m clearly your man, then. I must’ve done it.”
“Did you spend Halloween in town?”
“Yes, I did. And please, for the love of God, don’t ask me if I saw anything strange,” Rolfe said, rolling his eyes. “It was Halloween in Salem. It would have been a miracle if I didn’t see something strange.”
“I was about to ask you if you happened to meet a fortune-teller called Damien.”
He had.
Jeremy was sure of it.
Something had briefly flickered in the other man’s eyes.
Eric Rolfe hadn’t just seen the man. Jeremy had somehow hit a nerve.
“Yeah, I saw him.”
“Had you seen him before?”
“No….” Rolfe answered slowly. “No…I don’t think so.”
“Okay, that’s a leading answer,” Jeremy told him.
“Well, the guy was out shilling for customers when I walked by. I was on my way to see Eve and Adam, and I was just kind of looking around, watching the kids in their costumes, catching the displays—looking down my nose, if you must know, at some of the cheesy effects some of those people use—when I almost bumped into the guy.”
“And then?”
“Then I backed up and said excuse me or something like that. But the guy was staring at me as if…”
Rolfe stopped talking. He appeared to be deep in thought, as if he were trying to remember exactly what had happened. He stared at Jeremy suddenly. “He looked at me as if he knew me. For just a split second it was as if he thought I might know him. You know, I wouldn’t even have remembered that—except that you just asked me. He laughed and said he could tell me the future. He said—”
Rolfe broke off abruptly.
“What?” Jeremy prompted.
“He said he could show me the mysteries of the cornfields. The cornfields.”
He stared at Jeremy as if puzzled himself.
“And then?”
“Then I said something about having an appointment and kept moving, because to tell you the truth, he kind of creeped me out.”
“What did he do? Anything—”
“He just laughed and said I was going to be sorry,” Rolfe said. He looked pensive for a moment, then shrugged—almost as if he were shaking off uncomfortable memories. “Who knows? Could have been coincidence. Or maybe he did know me and knew I used to make scarecrows. What do you think? Do you think he knew me?”
“Probably,” Jeremy said. Eric Rolfe was either telling the truth or he’d learned a hell of a lot about acting out in Hollywood.
“Do you think that guy is the killer?” Rolfe asked suddenly.
“I don’t know what to think. No one can find him.”
Rolfe shook his head thoughtfully, his features scrunched into a frown. “I swear, I didn’t recognize him, but then again…he had on a turban. And makeup. Facial hair—fake facial hair, I can assure you of that. It’s like trying to recognize Santa Claus, you know?”
Jeremy pulled a card from his pocket. “If you come up with anything concrete…”
“Yeah, yeah, call you.”
Jeremy laughed. “If you come up with solid facts, call the cops. But if anything occurs to you that you’re not a hundred percent sure about, then yes
, call me.”
“A pleasure. How’s Ro, by the way?”
“Good.”
“Good?” Rolfe echoed doubtfully.
“Beautiful,” Jeremy said.
Rolfe’s grin deepened. “Give her my regards. I can’t wait to see her.”
“I’m sure you’ll see her soon. And you know, I really am here to help out a friend.”
“Brad Johnstone,” Eric said.
“You’ve met him?” Jeremy asked.
Rolfe shook his head. “No, I haven’t met him. But I read the papers, and it’s all the talk around town. Or it was.” He sighed. “The way of the world. A corpse beats a missing woman.” Eric paused. “I did see him on Halloween, though. Him and his wife.”
“Where?”
“They were holding hands, walking into the cemetery.”
“You saw them go in, but you never saw Mary come out?”
“I was walking down the street, not hanging around spying on them,” Rolfe said, sounding tired and impatient. “You couldn’t miss them, because they were beautiful. I admit it. I was thinking they would have made the perfect opening for a horror movie. The beautiful couple, dusk coming, the ancient tombstones. I saw them go in. I walked on by.”
“No one saw anything,” Jeremy muttered, disgusted.
“Hell, it was Halloween. Pretty much anything could have happened and no one would have thought a thing about it,” Rolfe said.
He stood and walked out of the kitchen, and Jeremy had no choice but to follow him back toward the front door.
But on the way, Eric paused in the living room and stared at his bookcase.
“You know, I’ve done some macabre makeup in my day. I’ve made a gorgeous woman look like a crone and the heartthrob of the month look like a three-thousand-year-old mummy. I’ve made people look like trees, goats, dogs, bears, you name it. And yet…”
“And yet?”
Eric Rolfe turned and stared at Jeremy. “And yet, no matter what you do—even with contact lenses—there’s still something about the eyes. I can always recognize anyone in makeup, because of the eyes.” He hesitated for a second. “And that’s what’s bugging the shit out of me now. It was his eyes. That Damien guy. He stared at me…and I felt like I knew him and didn’t like what I knew. There was something in the way he looked at me.”
“What about his voice?” Jeremy asked.
Eric seemed startled by the question.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, what did he sound like?”
Rolfe thought about it. “He didn’t have a heavy accent, but…he sounded a bit English, maybe. He definitely didn’t have a Boston accent. He was kind of formal, proper. I don’t know. I’m a visual guy. Sorry.”
“But voices are telling, too. If you heard him again, would you know him?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Well, do me a favor. Keep thinking about it,” Jeremy told him.
“Sure. Does that mean I’m off the hook?” Rolfe asked. He spoke with dry amusement; clearly he already knew the answer.
“Not yet,” Jeremy assured him.
They kept walking then, and Jeremy headed out. He was almost to the car when Rolfe called to him and he turned back.
“If I could see him, maybe. I’m telling you, even with the contact lenses…there was something about his eyes. Something I knew. And I really do think—I’m actually afraid—he knew me.”
12
It was daylight, and still relatively early. The darkness wouldn’t come for another hour, at least.
Besides, Rowenna thought, she wasn’t alone. She was with Joe.
And the corpse was gone. The corn, just days away from harvest, rose high into the sky, even after being trampled by so many people, Mother Nature protecting her own. The earth might not be eternal, but she would go on for millions of years, even if man didn’t. Life sprang from her, organisms tinier than the eye could see and as huge as elephants and whales—and as egotistical as man.
But all her creations returned to her, became part of her, in the end.
And she accepted them all back, just as she had accepted the blood that had dripped from Dinah Green.
Rowenna felt the strength of the ground itself, and the whispering, growing corn.
Maybe even the corn could sense that its time was coming.
She tried to shake the feeling of dread and finality that had seized her there in the vast field. She tried to tell herself that the rich scent of nature was sweet, and that the breeze was like a caress.
It didn’t matter. Nothing could change her mind.
She didn’t want to be there.
Joe was standing a short distance away from her. “Well?” he said softly.
She shook her head. “I’m not sure what you think I can do. The crime-scene unit has already been through here. What do you expect me to find that they didn’t?”
“What do you feel?” he asked her.
“Joe, I’ve told you, all I do is put myself in the victim’s place and try to think logically.”
“Okay, think logically.”
“Do you think she was killed here?”
He nodded.
“Where was she found? Exactly?” Rowenna asked.
He pointed next to her. She felt like an idiot. Nature was taking back her own, but there was a numbered marker right by where she was standing, and if she’d looked down, she would have seen the stake thrust deeply into the ground.
He walked over to her and handed her a color photocopy of Dinah Green’s driver’s license.
The woman had been pretty. Hair: dark brown, almost black. Eyes: brown. Height: five-three. She’d managed a shy smile for the photographer at the driver’s license bureau. She looked like a woman who had a lot of living to do, and was eager to get out and do it.
The breeze began to blow harder, or so it seemed. Rowenna looked up as it whipped her hair. The sun looked strange, with an opaque haze haloing it. And it was dropping. All too soon, darkness would come.
Rowenna closed her eyes and lost herself in that place where the intuitions came.
She thought she could hear someone pleading. A feminine voice, fraught with terror and, amazingly, hope…The human heart lived on hope, even against all odds.
Rowenna winced as, somewhere far away, as if in the memory of another time in this very place, she heard a scream.
And then laughter. A man’s cruel laughter.
There was a struggle, and then the woman’s voice again.
“I’ll be good, I swear.”
And a man talking. A deep voice, with a note of implacability in it.
“It’s too late.”
And then a struggle. Moaning.
Another scream. This one of choking agony.
And then…
Then she understood everything—what he did, where he did it, even, to a degree, why. And she was terrified.
Suddenly Rowenna found herself fighting for breath, her hands clutching her throat as if to fend off an attacker. She fell to her knees in the cornfield, knowing his hands were around the woman’s throat, feeling them around her throat, his strength…brutal and impossible to combat.
She heard a snap as a tiny bone at the back of the throat broke….
“Ro!”
Joe was at her side, shaking her, dragging her back to her feet.
She blinked rapidly.
That eerie haze no longer obscured the sun, whose rays shone down gently on her.
“Ro, are you all right?”
Joe was anxious, she thought, but at the same time, he didn’t appear to be the least bit sorry for what he had just put her through.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said. And she was. The sun was warm. The breeze was gentle. Life was normal.
“What did you see?”
“I don’t see things,” she whispered, and she didn’t know if she was protesting to him, or to herself. Because this time what she’d felt had gone way beyond imagining the victim’s final moment
s and had taken her straight into the twisted mind of a killer.
“What did you feel?” Joe pursued.
“Okay, looking at it logically, this is my theory. He kidnaps his victim. He has someplace where he takes her, a place where he can keep her a prisoner without being afraid of being caught or seen. I doubt this place is in the city, unless he had a soundproof room built. And I have a feeling of darkness. As if he uses darkness itself as one of his tactics for terrorizing his victim. He keeps her alive, he makes her his plaything, except…”
“Except?” Joe’s hands were on her shoulders, and he was staring at her intently.
She looked up at him. His hold was so strong that she almost protested, because in another second he would probably cause bruises. He was a strong guy and still spent a lot of time in the gym, and she was feeling the results. But he was so intent, and he seemed so desperate, that she held her tongue.
“Except that she has to play his way. She has to be afraid, but…she has to understand that he’s all-powerful. She has to worship him. And if she goes against him, if she tries to escape, then she has to pay the price.”
His fingers tightened again, twitched.
“Ro, can you see him? Think, Rowenna. Concentrate. Can you see his face?”
There was an image in her mind. Something…
“Ro?”
She shook her head. “No, I can’t see his face. You know what I am seeing? One of those ugly devil masks Adam and Eve are selling.” She winced as his hold tightened painfully. “Joe, let go. You’re hurting me.”
The sudden blaring of a horn startled them both. Joe released her, a look of apology on his face, and stepped back. They heard a car door slam, and seconds later Jeremy came striding through the corn, heedless of the stalks, crashing through them as he raced toward them.
His face was tight with anxiety as he came to a dead stop five feet away and stared at her. She saw that his hands were knotted into fists as his sides.
“Jeremy,” she said. “Hi.”
“What the hell are you doing out here?” he demanded.
“She’s with me,” Joe said.
“You’re supposed to be at the museum,” Jeremy told her accusingly, completely ignoring the older man. “I couldn’t believe it when Dan said you’d come out here.”