“And now we know for sure that most of us did have ancestors here,” Devin said.
“Yes. What we don’t know is where they stood regarding the trials—and whether they had a connection with the Nottingham family.” Rocky smiled grimly and said, “I did learn that Gayle’s family was nearly banished. They pretended to be religious so they weren’t thrown into the wilderness. But, according to her, they were never good Puritans.”
“So...more research,” Jane said.
“Better than finding more bodies,” Rocky countered.
* * *
Devin couldn’t understand why the evening—which had actually ended up feeling like a real get-together—had left her so wrung out. But once they reached the hotel, she didn’t want to think about it.
And neither did Rocky.
He didn’t even speak once they got to his room. He quickly shed his jacket and holster, and then she was in his arms. They kissed and stripped until their clothing was strewn along a path to the bed. She pushed him down on the bed, then straddled him and began to ease down his body, her hair fluttering over his skin, her lips teasing his flesh and every erotic zone. He rose against her, pulling her into his arms, pulling her down and locking them together. They stared into each other’s eyes and began to move, until sheer physical pleasure swept away the events of the day and everything that had ever come between them.
He lay against her and whispered in her ear―teasing, sexual things―and his breath was hot and damp and it felt as if they had barely finished before they began again. She caressed his face as they moved together, loving its lines and planes. She writhed against him and wondered if it was possible to hang on to this world where they were one, or if the best she could do was to cling tightly to this feeling while it lasted. His body was slick and hard, and the way he whispered to her was arousing all by itself, and when they climaxed together in an explosion of heat, it was as if they were the only two people in the world.
After that they just lay together. She heard the beat of his heart and reveled in the security she felt as he held her and she held him in return.
She had never in her life slept so well as she did that night.
* * *
In the morning Devin found a note on the table next to a large pot of coffee. It told her to come to the suite next door. “Went into your room already—no new ‘gifts’ today. Cameras are working in the elevators and hallways. No visitors during the night—oh, and the maids are around, so dress to be seen.”
She smiled, but she didn’t need to go to her room. Rocky had brought back her things; she just had to shower and dress.
Before she did so, to be safe, she dead-bolted the door.
* * *
When she knocked on the door of the Krewe suite, a cup of coffee in hand, she was let in by Angela. Rocky was bent over a computer, watching as Jane worked. A printer was busily spewing out pictures.
They were, she realized, of everyone who had attended their party the night before.
Rocky looked up at her. “Good morning.”
“Good morning,” she said.
“Are you any good at research?” Angela asked her.
“Not too bad,” Devin said. “I used to be a reporter.”
Rocky straightened. “Jenna and I are heading out. I want to stop by the bar to speak with the staff again. They should be around even if they don’t open till lunch. She’s going to join Sam at the courthouse, where he’s checking on Vince’s records and activities over the past few years, especially in relation to his work as an attorney. On his way he dropped off the glasses at the lab for fingerprint analysis. I want the three of you to do some genealogical research, see what you can find online, check out some of the local archives.”
Devin nodded and took a sip of her coffee. “Sure.” She turned to Angela. “So what are we researching exactly?”
“We’re going to find out who might have been related to Margaret Nottingham, the Myles family, and who the someone might have been who killed her. Then, we’re going to try and figure out if she was killed because someone loved her, was afraid because of her—or, perhaps, afraid of her.”
“Big order for the day!” Devin said.
“Yes,” Angela agreed. “So....” She stood up. “Jane?”
“Last of the pictures coming off now,” Jane said.
“Okay, Jenna and I are out of here, then,” Rocky said, collecting the pictures.
Rocky waved to Devin and then they were gone. She noticed that he hadn’t specifically warned her to stay with Angela and Jane.
Trained agents.
Who carried guns.
He seemed to have faith in her intelligence.
That or her natural instinct to survive.
Because she had no intention of going anywhere alone.
* * *
The bar staff were indeed getting ready for lunch, but the same crew wasn’t on and Rocky could have kicked himself. He should have known that.
But the day manager, Tilda Merton, was a pleasant and cooperative woman who immediately understood his need. She was clearly rattled that the last victim had been in the bar shortly before her death, and that her phone had disappeared there.
She had taken Rocky back to the office to obtain the phone numbers he needed of the employees who had been on the night of Barbara Benton’s death, so he could call and make arrangements to show them his stack of photographs.
“It must have been planned, don’t you think?” Tilda asked. “I mean...someone must have taken her phone so she’d have to come back for it. It’s scary, knowing that guy—that killer—is still out there. It’s still daylight when I get off, but my husband comes to get me.”
“That’s good. Keep it up until we get the guy,” Rocky told her.
When he left the bar, he made a quick call, looked down Essex in the direction he needed to go, then started walking.
Things changed, and yet they didn’t. In some parts of Salem, as the clouds roiled overhead, you could narrow your eyes and think you’d gone back hundreds of years.
But then you looked again and the world was filled with cars and tourists, and the concept of hanging anyone as a witch was so foreign it was difficult to imagine that anyone could ever have done so.
And yet, some men still found a way to indulge the need to kill.
Instinct? he wondered, not at all proud of his species at that moment.
Or an aberration? The latter. Had to be.
Most people lived to protect the ones they loved, enjoy their friends and even make the world a better place.
He thought about Devin and realized that for the first time in thirteen years—since he’d found Melissa’s body, in fact—he felt that there was light at the end of the tunnel. He hadn’t realized that he was going through life without the least expectation of ever finding anything—anyone—permanent in his life.
But Devin somehow changed the world. She was life at its best, its most vivid, its most passionate. Though to all intents and purposes they’d just met, she knew him, understood him. In the midst of all this horror and tragedy, there seemed to be something bright in his soul again. He’d just been waiting, he thought. Marking time. And now the time was here.
And this killer wasn’t going to get away with murder, not any longer. Not with Devin in his life and very possibly in the crosshairs.
He quickened his steps. Judah Baker, the bartender who’d been on duty the night of the murder, didn’t live far, just down on Derby Street.
He reached the address quickly. His thoughts hadn’t kept him from walking like a man with a purpose.
The bartender lived in a duplex with a little yard. The building looked to have been built around 1850 and updated over the years.
Judah was at the door, waiting for him. “Hey,” he said.
“Thanks for seeing me,” Rocky said.
Baker grinned. “I’m not sure I have a choice, but not a problem. I want to help— Hell, anyone would want to help. Come
on in.”
He opened the door wider for Rocky to enter. The living room had been furnished cheaply, and there were posters all over the walls of swimsuit models and rock bands. It was pretty much the perfect low-rent bachelor pad.
Rocky sat on the sofa and pulled out the sheaf of pictures, then spread them out on the coffee table.
“I realize you’re behind the bar and Holly and Brenda are on the floor, but you were closest to me, so I came here first,” Rocky told him.
Judah nodded, staring at the pictures. He pointed at the picture of Beth—Rocky had managed to get a phone shot of her just before she popped a cracker in her mouth. “That’s Beth—she owns a shop, but I already told you I know her and the people she works with. That’s the guy—Theo something or other. And Gayle. I think her last name is Alden.”
“Right,” Rocky said. “But you said they didn’t see that Brent was there, too?”
“Not that I could tell. People were piled up at the bar, like I told you. I think they had a drink and left,” Judah said, taking a seat next to Rocky and looking at the other pictures.
He went through them all, a serious expression on his face. “This is a cop—I know him, too. He was in to ask questions afterward,” Judah said. “After the murder, I mean.”
Rocky nodded. “Jack Grail.”
Judah picked up the picture of Renee and put it back down. “Tiny little thing?” he asked.
“Very.”
Judah grinned. “If she was there, I didn’t see her. But she looks like she’s barely taller than the bar.”
“What about this woman?” Rocky asked, showing him a picture of Haley.
“Oh, I’ve see her, too.”
“That night?”
“No...several weeks back, I think. Early. Like when I first came on shift. It looked like she’d been doing some shopping.”
“But not that night?” Rocky asked.
Judah shook his head, but he stared at another picture and then tapped it, looking at Rocky. “This guy. I think I saw this guy that night.”
Rocky picked up the picture of Vince Steward and asked Judah, “That night—the night Barbara Benton was killed.”
“Yeah, I mean, I’ve seen him before. I think he’s an attorney or something. I don’t know his name—but, yeah, I’ve seen him before.”
“And you saw him that night?”
“Yes,” Judah said firmly. “Scotch on the rocks. Same drink he always gets. He was definitely there.”
* * *
Devin had been to most of the local museums before in the course of her life, but she had never been in the room she found herself in now with Angela and Jane.
When she asked Angela why they’d been allowed to enter this inner sanctum of records and learning without so much as a question, Angela had just waved a hand in the air. “Adam Harrison can make one phone call and open doors you would never believe could be opened.”
“I would love to meet him somewhere along the line,” Devin said. “He sounds amazing.”
“Who knows? You might. You never know when Adam will show up,” Angela said, then went back to work.
The room they were in was climate controlled and filled with municipal records, ledgers, diaries, family Bibles and assorted other materials from the area’s earliest days.
A scholarly woman with a slightly stooped back and horn-rimmed glasses—exactly the kind of woman you would expect to find holding sway over such a valuable trove—helped them at first. But then an assistant—a beautiful young blonde—came in to help, as well.
A lot of information had been programmed into computer files, so they were able to get a good start without going to the primary sources. But still, going back generation after generation wasn’t easy.
Devin had been assigned to look up her own genealogy. Since both her parents had come from Salem, it was time-consuming and complicated. Then she got back to 1668 and discovered her parents had a mutual many-many-times-great set of grandparents.
“I am inbred,” she said.
Angela laughed. “Well, at least no one married a first cousin, right?”
“No, it’s about a fiftieth cousin or something like that.” But even as she spoke, she gasped. She’d just discovered something a lot more crucial than a distant relationship between her parents.
“What?” Angela asked.
“Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised,” Devin murmured.
“What? Spit it out.”
“I’m related to Margaret Nottingham!” Devin said. “Through my mom. Her however-many-greats-grandmother married Archer Myles, father of Margaret Myles Nottingham. Apparently the baby she had just before she died was a woman named Mary Elizabeth Nottingham who in turn married Andrew Barclay and had a daughter named Anne who married a Douglass—and the long line of Douglasses my mom comes from sprang from that marriage.”
“Ah,” Angela murmured. “That explains why Margaret comes to you.”
“She’s probably worried about you,” Jane said.
“She should be careful,” Angela said. “Twice, she’s led Devin to a body, and that could actually be putting her into danger.”
“I’m not sure she had a choice,” Jane argued. “She wanted those bodies found, and she wanted Devin to know how she herself had died.”
“Why didn’t she just tell me what she wanted me to know?” Devin asked.
“She seems to be very shy and not all that good at communicating. We’ve seen ghosts like that before,” Jane said.
“And,” Angela said, “she may not know what happened. There’s no reason to believe she was there when the women were killed. And since none of us has seen the murdered women, they were probably able to move on, so they weren’t able to tell her.”
“Maybe, or maybe they just haven’t found one of us yet,” Jane said, leafing through the old family Bible she was studying. “Hmm. Here’s a name I wasn’t expecting.”
“Oh? What is it?” Devin asked.
“Hastings,” Jane said, brushing back a lock of dark hair. “Theodore Hastings.”
“There must be hundreds of thousands of people named Hastings in the United States,” Devin said. “Well, a lot, at any rate.” She grimaced. “Math isn’t my forte.”
“Yes, it’s a common enough name,” Angela said, getting up to look over Jane’s shoulder. “But Theodore Hastings? At the very least, it’s an interesting coincidence. When is the entry from?”
“Theodore Hastings was born to John and Mildred Hastings in 1677 in Salem Village,” Jane said.
“Let’s trace him and see where that takes us,” Angela said.
Jane looked over at Devin. “I didn’t think your friend Theo was from Salem?”
“He isn’t—at least, not as far as I know. I sure as heck didn’t know him until he showed up a few years ago and started working for Beth,” Devin said. “Theo might not be any relation to those Hastings.”
“True—but then again, he might be related and not even know it. We’re talking about three hundred years and at least fifteen generations,” Angela said.
Jane leaned back, stretching. “With everyone we’re researching, this could take hours.”
“At least there are three of us,” Angela said.
They went back to work.
An hour later Angela sighed. “This could take days. Going back over three hundred years is beyond time-consuming.”
“Yes,” Devin agreed. “And you’ve got to figure that in three hundred years, someone must have fooled around and had an illegitimate child or two, or passed off her lover’s child as her husband’s. I mean, back then, there was no DNA.”
Jane laughed softly. “You mean we don’t know who was messing around with who when, and getting away with it.”
“More or less,” Devin said.
“But,” Jane pointed out, “I’m not sure that matters. Perception and belief are what count.”
A few minutes later, Jane let out a little cry. “Aha!”
“What?” Devi
n and Angela asked together.
“Actually, this one is kind of sweet,” Jane said. “Two of your friends can trace their ancestry back to one of your long-ago relations, in a roundabout way.”
“Who? And how?” Devin asked.
“Your old teacher, Gayle Alden, maker of pentagrams, can trace her mother’s lineage back to Mary Nottingham Beckett—sister of Margaret’s husband. And your BFF, Beth, can trace her ancestry back to Rebecca Beckett Masters, sister-in-law of Mary.”
“Hey! My turn for an ‘aha,’” Angela said.
“What did you find?” Jane asked.
Angela looked up. “I found another connection—and you’ll never guess who.”
“Who is it?” Jane asked.
“Brent Corbin and Vince Steward.”
“They didn’t even know each other until recently,” Devin said. “What’s the connection?”
“I can trace them back to a woman named Elizabeth Blackmire,” Angela said.
Devin and Jane looked at each other, and then back at Angela.
“And she was...?” Jane asked.
“She would have been the first accuser of a young woman named Margaret Myles Nottingham. Devin, the two of them had an ancestor who cried ‘Witch!’ against your ancestor. After she accused Margaret, the ‘afflicted’ girls started screaming her name, too. Elizabeth Blackmire would have sent Margaret Nottingham to Gallows Hill—if she’d lived long enough to get there.”
16
Rocky finished showing the photos to the bar staff, though he didn’t learn anything from the two waitresses that Judah hadn’t already told him, and headed to the station to meet up with Jack Grail.
“What do you think?” Rocky asked, leaning back in his chair in front of Jack’s desk. “I keep remembering the night Melissa died. He came to my house, and he was being Vince—you know, kind of a teenage jerk. But I don’t know where he was before he showed up.”
“I showed up at your house, too,” Jack reminded him.
“Yeah, you did,” Rocky agreed, meeting his eyes with a level stare.
“You were there alone till we got there,” Jack said.
“Yeah, I was.”
“I was having dinner with my parents. You can ask them,” Jack said.