“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.