The Witching Hours, page 8
“How can anyone identify someone who is that well disguised?” Skye asked.
“Maybe Mike Bolton knew someone who already had the costume. Or maybe, even more seriously, he might have suspected someone of having an agenda—although exactly what that agenda is, we can’t begin to fathom.”
“It’s almost as if someone wants to go back in history—start the Salem Witch Trials all over again.”
“Precisely.”
“But that’s insane!”
“Yes, insane, unless it’s behind something else,” Zach said. “I have no idea what, but either someone is certifiably insane, or they’re planning something else. We cross the stream?”
“Right. But we really need help on this. We need to find something!”
“We will. Ready for a swim?”
“I’m always ready for a swim. But it’s not that deep!” Skye said.
“Nope. But we will get wet.”
“Lead the way, o great trailblazer!”
He grinned and did so. They could follow a trail of large rocks for the main part, but as he had said, they did get wet.
She felt the water creep into her boots as they hurried along, and it was cold and very uncomfortable. But that was half the job—she’d been uncomfortable before. And she figured, she would be again. Criminals worried about getting away with their deeds, not about being comfortable during a heist, a scam …
Or a murder.
They reached the other side.
“Did you see which way they went?” Zach asked her.
She paused, frowning, trying again.
And she was back. Little help. There was nothing but darkness.
She looked at Zach. “I’m sorry. Night fell hard. No moon, no stars. I can’t see beyond the stream. It was almost as if the world went black at once. It had been getting dark, but the true darkness fell right here.”
“Damn!”
“What?”
“The ground is ridiculously hard by the stream. If there were footprints here at all, I can’t see any now.”
“All right. So, where?”
“Okay, hang tight for a minute. Let me see where—”
“Branches are broken. I can help! I’ll go to the left, you take the right, and we’ll meet in the middle!”
He grinned. “West and east,” he told her. “Okay. If you’re sure—”
“Oh, come on, please! I’ve got it!”
“Right.”
He nodded and headed off in his direction, leaving her to head off in her direction. West. She should know that. Except, of course, that now, the sun was directly overhead, and she was not sure if she could figure out just where it had risen or where it was going to fall. It all seemed natural for him.
But she could tell if branches had been broken, if little feet had traveled through the areas where the dirt seemed to be a little softer, perhaps touched by splashes from the stream.
She couldn’t find anything that resembled a footprint.
She studied the branches in the area farthest to the west, before the trees and brush became so thick, only little forest animals might have gotten through.
Nothing at the first break that might resemble a trail.
She moved on.
And again, nothing. And she believed she had learned what the subtle breaks in little branches looked like if someone had passed by recently.
Of course, knowing Zach, if he didn’t find anything, he might well be doubtful and start to search here himself.
But I had seen them; they’d had to have gone somewhere.
Then she heard his call to her.
“Here! Skye, I’ve got something!”
CHAPTER 6
Just exactly what he had … Zach didn’t know.
But he did know that someone had passed through the extremely narrow path, through rows of oak trees that appeared to dominate in this area. Thick, rich, and lush—winter was not far away.
Then again, he thought, autumn is on the way.
Soon they would be at the end of September—and even in the next few days, all the major-league prep for Halloween would be underway.
That would be all that they would need!
More and more costumes would be sold. And those who didn’t know that a green wicked witch was attacking children might find such a costume amusing for the Salem area, and then law enforcement would be hunting in a bigger field.
They had to move fast—before the fall season was against them.
“Oh, wow!” Skye exclaimed suddenly.
She had hurried over to the area as soon as he’d called her. Now she was hunkered down at the base of a massive old oak.
Holding something.
He walked swiftly to her side, hunkering down as well.
“Look!” she said, staring at him with pleased wonder.
And he looked at what she had found.
It was small, really small. About the size of two quarters, end to end. And it was green and he quickly realized what it was.
A tiny soldier that might go to a kid’s army set.
“You were right!” Skye said. “Kids! Kids have toys on them. I have a little niece, Katie, and she loves to stick her little toys into her pockets. Maybe Jeremy is like Katie—he just needs something to have on him, some little toy to have wherever he might wind up!”
“Either that, or …”
“Or?”
“Patricia. She knew they were in trouble. These might have been by Jeremy where he was sitting on the sofa, doing his homework.”
“Possibly.”
“Did you see anything like that when you were in the house—looking back?” he asked Skye.
“I saw her scoop him up. If we go back to the house, I could try to see the particulars of what was going on.”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter now who grabbed it or dropped it—but I think it was done on purpose. And it’s what we needed,” Zach told her.
“What we needed to get help out here, searching the forest,” Skye said.
“Exactly. Except …” Zach paused, wincing as he looked at her.
“Except you want to go a little farther before we turn back,” Skye said.
“You are a mind reader.”
“Nope. I’m just beginning to be able to read you.”
He grinned at that. “Well?”
“Sure. What’s another hour of walking around in soggy boots!”
He laughed and said, “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden,” referencing the title of Joanne Greenberg’s book. Or the Lynn Anderson lyric from Rose Garden.
She went with the first.
She groaned. “Well, at least you read.”
“Cereal boxes when there’s nothing else,” he assured her.
“Lots of biographies and histories and such?” she asked him.
“Yeah. And you?”
“Sure. Which means that between us, we should know what’s going on!” Skye said, obviously frustrated.
“History repeats itself—and creates new foibles within humanity,” Zach assured her. “Skye, we will figure it out.”
Well, he hoped to hell that they did—and that they did so soon.
“Why do you want to keep going now?” she asked him. “You see something, feel something through the kids?”
He shook his head. “Gut? Just a sense that something is close ahead.”
“All right. Let’s go.”
They did.
“Hey, guess what? I think that my feet are drying out. Hm. But then again to get back, we must go through the stream again!”
“You only have one pair of boots?” Zach asked.
“I travel light.”
“So do I,” he admitted.
But then he paused so abruptly, she walked into him, quickly drawing back and by his side to see what he was seeing.
Something larger than a single tree, yet …
Brown, the color of tree trunks, of wood.
“There’s a structure ahead,” Skye whispered.
“Right. Let’s get close, observe, plan.”
“You got it.”
They moved in silence until they could stand behind the closest tree to a tiny clearing that was just a stretch of overgrown grass and brush before a small wooden cabinlike structure. One that was old and dilapidated, falling apart. There were spaces for windows, but there were no windows.
But there was a door.
He looked at her and nodded.
“Front window,” he told her.
She nodded. “I’ll crawl around the back and see what—if anything—is back there, a back door, anything.”
He nodded, wishing they had coms on them, so that they could communicate through whispers once they had parted.
Too late.
They watched for a minute. Nothing. They looked at one another and nodded simultaneously. Then he broke from the trees first. Taking a roundabout path, Skye moved out to head around the back of the old shack.
He kept hunching low, coming to the window, carefully looking in.
There was a bare mattress on the floor. The place was empty. But …
He was certain that the derelict cabin had been used recently. Perhaps it had been a halfway stop for the witch bringing Jeremy and who knew how many others through the woods.
Rising, he headed to the door and opened it; it was empty, as he had seen through the window. There was a back door, as aged and crumbling as the rest of the place.
Calling out to Skye, he opened the door.
She came in and looked around.
One old mattress on the floor, no sheets … and nothing else much, but …
There was a counter to the left of the place with the remnants of cabinets under it. Skye hurried to the cabinets and opened the first.
“Nothing?” Zach asked.
“Nothing. But there was something. Look. There’s dust all around, except for right here. It looks as if …”
“As if, maybe, there had been a twelve-pack of water, or some such thing stashed here until recently. And that could make sense. If you’re stealing children that you intend to keep alive—at least for a while—you might make sure they were hydrated for going on a hike through the woods.”
“Perfect sense,” Skye said. She was thoughtful.
“What?”
“I’m just wondering … what if this is all that there is in the forest? What if they try to take the kids somewhere else, but don’t want to be obvious. Bring them here, keep us hunting and hunting through the trees …”
“And take off via a road on the other side?”
“Or worse. Make it to the water and disappear on a boat.”
He weighed her words for several seconds. “All real possibilities,” he agreed. “Except for the whole witch thing and the devil in the darkness.”
“You think that whatever is going on is supposed to go on here, right?” Skye asked.
“I do think so. But what the ultimate plan might be, I have no idea. But I do think we have enough to head back in. Even with what we may be able to see, the forest now stretches out forever; and you may be right—we can search the entire thing ourselves, which might take forever, or we can get help,” Zach said.
She nodded. “Okay, we hike back. And while there are areas that aren’t state or federal forest, I’m betting the rangers are better than even you—or at least as good!” she amended quickly.
He laughed. “Let’s head back. Also, I really want to speak with Patricia’s college friends. I believe someone knew she looked after the Bolton kids, and that was maybe why they were targeted.”
“Patricia might be a crazy fanatic?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No. We have both seen her do her best to keep Jeremy from being terrified. She’s as much a captive as he is. And I want to find out what other children may have disappeared from surrounding areas.”
“I’m thinking the police might have mentioned it if kids were missing from Peabody, Danvers … or any other surrounding areas.”
“As I said, as far down as Boston and maybe beyond.”
“All right, then! Hiking time again.”
They left the derelict structure and started back through the woods. Skye was ahead of him.
This time, she stopped so abruptly, he almost plowed into her.
“Shh!” she whispered.
He came around her and saw what she had seen.
No evil of the human race.
There was a wolf in front of her. A large animal, beautiful with thick black, white, and gray fur. The animal just stared at them.
They just stared back.
Then the wolf ambled on into the trees, leaving them to the trail.
“What a gorgeous animal!”
“Yeah, I could have thought about that all the while that he was eating me,” Skye said, wincing.
“Two of us in an area where he has a zillion other things to munch on,” Zach told her. “Sure, any animal can attack. But most of the time, they go after what’s natural. You don’t mess with a nest, little creatures … and you’re okay as long as you don’t present a threat.”
“Most of the time.”
He grinned. “Yeah. Most of the time. Bad things do happen, but that’s life in the wild. And life when you’re not in the wild, too.”
“Well, I agree on that!” she responded. “Forward!”
It took them less time to get back than it had to reach the strange derelict cabin, or shack, in the woods.
Naturally, Skye had cast him a weary glance as they’d made their way back over the stream.
But it didn’t seem quite so bad, and soon enough they were back at the Bolton house and the car.
“Do you think we stink to high heaven?” Skye asked him, once they were on the road and moving.
“You smell okay.”
She laughed. “I ‘smell okay’ and I’m ‘commendable.’ But if you stink as bad as I do, then you won’t know that I stink.”
“You want to go shower?”
“No! We need to get this whole thing started while there’s still some daylight left!” she said.
“I concur,” he assured her. “Hey, if anything, we smell like a forest. It wasn’t hot enough in the woods for much sweat. We should be okay. Besides, we just need to return the key and get people out while we can.”
“But I want to talk to Patricia’s roommates,” Skye reminded him.
“Then they’ll need to put up with our smell, whatever it may be.”
She nodded.
At the police station, Zach was glad to find that Detectives Cason and Berkley were there.
“Anything?” Skye asked anxiously as they approached the group.
“Nothing new, I’m afraid. We’ve come up to speed. We’ve assured the Bolton couple we’re doing everything in our power to find Jeremy; and, of course, they’ve heard about what happened at the Howell costume shop, about the kidnapping of Mrs. Howell and Sophie, and …” Connie was the one who had spoken, and her voice trailed off as she looked miserably at her partner. “We must find those kids.” She spun suddenly on Zach and Skye. “Did you find out anything, anything at all?”
“We did, not the kids—but we know how Jeremy and Patricia were taken from the Bolton house. But we need help,” Skye explained.
Vince stared at them skeptically. “How on earth can you know—”
“Zach thought it possible that whoever had taken Patricia and Jeremy might have headed off through the woods. A massive forest starts right behind the house. Anyway,” she said, pausing to offer Zach a nod of admiration, “we took a look at the woods, found breakage in the branches that suggested someone had been through recently, and we decided to take a long walk. Along the way, we found this!”
She produced the little army character that she’d found in the brush.
“Uh, what exactly is it, and why exactly do you think it means something important?” Connie asked doubtfully.
“It’s a character from a kid’s army play set, one you’ll discover Jeremy Bolton possesses,” Zach explained. “We found that and then a really tumbledown shack in the woods, but it looks as if someone had water or something in there. Whether they’re still there or not, Jeremy and Patricia were taken through the woods. But the area is huge, and quite frankly, by the time we covered it all, someone in Jeremy’s generation could be president of the United States.”
“Right, so … a bunch of detectives wasting time in the woods—” Vince began.
“No,” Zach told him.
“Then you speak with Bruns and get him to get some people out there,” Vince said flatly.
“No problem,” Zach assured him. With a nod, he strode toward Bruns’s office and knocked on the door.
Skye followed him.
Bruns immediately offered a hand, welcoming them in.
Zach explained the situation again.
“Our detectives don’t need to worry. I’ll call it in to the big brass, and we’ll get off-duty officers and forest rangers on it,” Lieutenant Bruns said. “I’ll see that we’ll get the right people out there. Skye, if you’ll give me the army man, I’ll make sure that his parents see it and verify that it’s something he owns.”
Skye handed him the little character, but asked, “Could I hang on to this for now, Lieutenant?”
“Oh? Oh, sure, of course.”
“Thanks.”
“If it helps,” Bruns said, looking at the two of them.
They explained that it did.
“Okay, then, go. Keep in contact with the detectives.”
“Will do.” Zach glanced at Skye and shrugged. They headed back out to assure the detectives that Lieutenant Bruns would handle the searching through the woods.
“We’re heading back to the house to see if we can find something there,” Vince said. “We have a forensic expert headed back with us—Jeannette Crane is the best. Maybe she can find something in the house or in the in-law quarters, where Mike Bolton was killed. There has to be a clue somewhere; every crook makes a mistake somewhere.”
Zach wasn’t sure that he believed that was true.
There were too many unsolved homicides among other crimes across the country.
But it was true that human beings made mistakes. The mistakes needed to be discovered for them to matter.
