09 - Return Of The Witch (9 page)

“Get in!” I yelled.

She did, and before she could close her door, I hit the gas hard, laying down a patch of rubber fifteen feet long. We rounded the corner at the end of the street and kept the pedal to the metal until we reached Route 128.

Comfortable enough then that the cops weren’t following us, I settled in with the flow of traffic and asked Ursula, “What was that back there?”

“What was what?”

“Did you stop that cop car?”

“I think not. I only wished they would and they did.”

“But you pitched a zip ball at them, right?”

“I do not know.”

“You had to. You probably didn’t realize it
, but that’s the only thing you could have done. A zip ball would have fried their ignition.” I nodded, more so to convince myself than to convince her. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

We headed south
on 128 and then north on the interstate. Ursula didn’t need to guess where we were going next.

“Georgetown
,” she surmised.

“Y
up, Georgetown. We’ll see if we have better luck at Amber Burns’ home.”

“I like Georgetown.
”

“Do ya?”

“Aye. `Twas rowdy in my day, but fair and decent were its people.”

“Good. We’ll need fair and decent if we’re going to learn anything about
this case.”

Chapter 9

T
raffic on I-95 was lighter than expected, and with the roads completely dried from the rains earlier, we were able to get to Georgetown in just outside of twenty minutes.

L
ike most of the houses in her heavily wooded neighborhood, Amber’s was difficult to spot from the road. The GPS satellite image I pulled up on my phone looked like broccoli patches with tiny rooftops peppered throughout. We zeroed in on one of those rooftops and navigated up Amber’s graveled driveway.

“Well?”
I said to Ursula. “What do you think?”

She pursed her lips and made a tic sound through her teeth. “`Tis the house of a witch to be sure.”

“Why do you say that?”

She pointed at a lawn ornament painted up to look like a
goofy dwarf holding a lantern. I pointed at her and wagged my finger. “No, Ursula. It stays. You understand me?”

“
On my honor.” She crossed her heart, turned in her seat to look at the one she had stolen from Terri Cotta’s yard. “I have Harry. I need no other.”

“Harry
? You named him already?”

“Aye.
He is family now, this grand old soul. What hath thee against it?”

“It’s not a soul, Ursula. It’s a chunk of
ceramic.”

“Still.” She turned around and plopped
back against her seat. “He is mine now. I want for naught in this vein.”

“All right, remember that.”

“I shall.”

“So, why Harry?
”

“Why Harry what?”

“Why name him Harry?”

“He is a potter, is he not?”

“Uh, of course.”

I
directed my attention to the house, looking at it through the windshield and wondering how it was that I knew the place better than I should have.

“This is getting strange
. I know this house, too. You can’t see it, but around back there’s a brick walkway that leads to a little stream in the woods.” I pointed to an upstairs window. “That’s the master bath. A toilet there runs all the time if you don’t jiggle the handle just right.”

“Th
ou hath been here?”

I shook my head. “
Not that I remember.”

Ursula
smiled. “Mayhap it is true then. Thou hath acquired the quintessential.”

“No, thou hath not acquired the quintessential.” I took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. “I’m beginning to think it’s more likely I came here in my sleep and
maybe did something I shouldn’t have.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah, ouch. Come on. Let’s go knock on the door, see what breaks.”

As we approached the house, we noticed
the blinds on one window peel away and then snap back again. Someone was home. I said to Ursula, “Better let me do the talking.”

I knocked, waited a bit and then knocked again. When it seemed obvious no one would answer, I hollered
out, “Hello! We know you’re in there.”

A man’s voice came back through the door. “What do you want?”

“We just want to talk.”

“Go away
!”

“Please,
Mister Burns. Just a minute of your time. I promise.”

After getting no
response, I looked to Ursula, who must have felt we had nothing else to lose. She cupped her hand to the side of her mouth and yelled, “We have news of your Amber.”

“
Ursula,” I whispered. “What are you doing? We don’t—”

The
lock clicked and the door opened, but only as far as the safety chain would allow. A bloodshot eye peeked out through the crack.

“You have news
about Amber?”

The sliver of a face
looking out appeared younger than the voice that went with it. Ursula said, “Kind sir. May we enter?”

I watched his eye rake our bodies
up and down, head to toe and back again. “You cops?”

“Cops?” I stepped back and splayed my arms so that he could get a better look. “You want to try again?”

He gave a nod with his stubbly chin, which suggested to me that he hadn’t shaved in a week. “If you ain’t cops, then who are you?”

“We’re friends of Amber’s. I’m Lilith, this here is Ursula.”

“Friends, eh?”

H
e wasn’t buying it. Then Ursula blurted out, “We be witches, she and I.”

H
e pulled back from the door as if we had both spontaneously burst into flames. “Witches?”

“That’s right,” I said. “Witches. Don’t tell me you’re surprised. We know Amber was a witch.”

“What do you mean was?”

Ursula nudged me aside and
leaned in closer. “Please, kind sir. Blessed be. Forgive us our timing that we not call upon thee first by phone. We wish thee only solace and naught more in these dark times.”

“Are you
…you telling me Amber’s dead?”

“
Let us not confer upon bad tidings here with fences up and wounds too deep to mend. Have us in, that we may set your mind at ease if only slight.”

He shut the door, unlatched the chain and let us in. I could tell he still didn’t trust us, his suspicions evident in the way he led us into the den witho
ut ever taking his eyes off us.

There, as in Paige Turner’s house, the blinds were pulled down to the sills. A
lone floor lamp provided the only light in the room. That is, until the fireplace ignited.

“Wow
. Nice touch,” I said.

He looked at it strangely, but offered no comment other than to introduce himself.

“I’m Russell Burns.” He extended his hand to Ursula first. After shaking hers, he shook mine, pointed to an old mahogany desk in the corner and said, “It happened there.”

We
stepped closer to the desk. “What did?” I asked.

“I don’t know.
I was hoping you might tell me?” He pointed to the papers, computer monitor, books and coffee mug on the desktop now plowed up against the back wall.

“You don’t know how that happened?”

“No. I came home late the other night and found it like this. I went into the bedroom to see if Amber was all right, but she was gone.”

“Did she leave a note?”

“No.”

“Did sh
e take anything, clothes, money?”

“You mean did she leave me.”

“Just asking what she took.”

“
She took nothing. Left her purse, eyeglasses, keys, medications…everything’s still here.”

I
nodded at the desk. “You think Amber could have done this?”

“What, pick the front of
it up high enough to push all that stuff against the wall like that?”

“Yeah.”

“No way.” He shook his head firmly. “This desk is solid mahogany. Weighs a ton. Amber’s barely a hundred pounds soaking wet. She could never lift it high enough to do this.”

I crossed my arms to my chest and
thumbed my lower lip. “You know, this has all the telltale signs of a shockwave.” I gestured a push from an epicenter at front of the desk back.

“
You mean like a bomb?”

“Yeah, except it’s unidirectional, obviously aimed at the person sitting
here.” I swept my hand over an area of the desk that appeared slightly scorched. “Did you see this?”

“I did, but you know it’s an old desk. I couldn’t be sure if it was
n’t already there.”

“
Did you show it to the police?”

“Of course.”

“What did they say?”

“
Nothing. Instead, they asked me if Amber and I had argued. Said she probably left me to go to her mother’s.”

“Why would they
think that?”

“Because I told them we
had argued, that I got angry. I said things. She said things. That’s when I grabbed my coat and stormed out the door. I didn’t know what to do, so I went to a bar downtown and drank until closing. Got so plastered I had to take a cab home. You can check it out. Georgetown taxi. I returned home late and found the desk like this and Amber gone. No note. No nothing. Hell, her car was still in the driveway. How could the cops think she went to her mother’s?”

“Was the door locked?”

“Hmm…you know the cops asked me that, too. I’ll tell you the same thing I told them. I don’t remember. Like I said, I was drunk.”

“
Mister Burns, does Amber have any friends we can call? Maybe you have some phone numbers?”

“No. I don’t know any of her friends. Don’t want to. They’re all t
oo weird for me.”

“
Do you have her phone? Maybe we could get some numbers from her contacts and—”

“
No. Amber left everything behind, except that. I can’t find her phone. That’s strange, isn’t it?”

“A little.”
I glanced down at the floor and noticed a dusting of red powder gathered along the sides of the desk. “What’s that?”

Russell Burns shook his head. “I don’t know. It wasn’t there before Amber disappeared. I didn’t notice it until I picked her clothes up off the chair.”

“What do you mean?”

“
It’s like I told the police, her clothes, everything she wore that night; I found them on the chair. When I went to pick them up, this red dust fell out all over the place. The police collected some of it. I thought I swept up the rest.”

I
looked at Ursula and gestured toward the door. “Urs. Tony kept a little zippered case in the car’s glove box. It had an evidence collection kit inside. Be a dear, would you? See if it’s still there? If it is, fetch it for me, please?”

“Aye,” she said, and
headed out without question.

I said to Russell, “Do you know if
there’s more dust like this around the house anywhere?”

“No, there’s not. At first I thought it looked like brick dust from the old barbeque around back
, but I checked. The bricks there are more orange.”

“I see.
None of the bricks are missing?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t notice any. You think somebody hit her with a brick?”

I shook my head. “Just asking.”

Ursula returned with Tony’s case and handed it to me. I thanked her and removed a handful of
small evidence baggies from it before handing it back.

“Mr. Burns.” I held up one of the baggies and pointed to the dust.
“Do you mind?”

He granted his permission with a
nod. I knelt down and brushed a few grams into the bag. Upon standing, I said, “Sir, earlier we mentioned that we were witches. Now I don’t expect you—”

“Listen, you don’t have to explain.”

“Oh?”

“No. I mean, I kn
ew about Amber’s fantasy online games, the dungeons, dragons, witches and what have you. I’m sure it’s all very entertaining. And you know I didn’t see any harm in it until she let it get so out of hand.”

“
How so?”

“
She got crazy with it all of a sudden. One minute she’s telling me about some bizarre trans-dimensional journey one of her online witch friends made, and the next, she’s freaking out about this mystic battle between good and evil and…I don’t know, some shit or another. Anyway, that’s what we argued about that night, some stupid game. Can you believe it?”

He
looked up and made sure he made eye contact with me when he added, “And now she’s dead, isn’t she? She crossed the line into a dark place. I told her it would happen. I told her….” He walked to the window and pulled back the blinds. “He’s after me now. I know it. The police don’t believe me, but I know the truth. The truth is out there.”

I looked at Ursula.
She seemed equally puzzled. What could we say to him? Yeah, your wife is dead, but don’t worry, they don’t want you. Hell, I didn’t even know if there was a they. Maybe there was. Maybe they did want him. Maybe they wanted us, too.

“Mister Burns, did your wife ever tell you that she was a guardian of some sort? In the game I mean.”

“Guardian of what?”

“I don’t know. She claimed to be a witch, didn’t she?
Did she ever tell you what her role was?”

“Oh, don’t tell me you believe i
n that shit, too.”

“Mister Burns, I
’m just saying—”

“See, that’s the problem with people these days. They can’t separate reality from fantasy. They get wrapped up in their paranoia. Well not me, sister. I have my finger on the pulse of reality.” He pulled the blinds back again and stole another peek outside.
“I have a surprise for anyone who thinks he’s going to come in here and screw with me.”