“This time, it won’t take so long,” he said.
There was truth, conviction, and dead-set determination in his voice. And she felt something warm shoot through her.
He wouldn’t stop. He wouldn’t give up. They’d have to drag him away before he left here without finding the killer.
“What I did wasn’t smart,” she said. “But I won’t do it again. I promise. I was just so eager to talk to her that I forgot everything else. I won’t let it happen again.”
“You could have followed her,” Rocky said to Aunt Mina.
Aunt Mina was silent a minute. “No, I couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“I...can’t seem to leave the house.”
“But other ghosts—” Rocky began.
“I don’t know about other ghosts. I only know I can’t do it. I try to leave and I disappear in my own mind...or soul, or whatever it is that remains. I—I can’t leave the house.”
That puzzled Rocky, and Devin was glad. It took his mind off her idiotic behavior in the woods.
“It’s all right,” Rocky reassured Aunt Mina. “It’s not as if— Well, I don’t have answers. I don’t understand life and death any better than any man.” He smiled. “You’re here with Devin, and that’s a good thing.”
He was incredibly gentle with Aunt Mina, but when he turned to Devin again it was with a frown so fierce she was surprised she didn’t incinerate on the spot.
“Look, Devin, I know I’m just the fed you flagged down in the road, but—”
“I understand. I really do,” she said, exasperation growing in her voice. “I won’t let it happen again.”
“You had better not.”
Apparently he was going to drop it there. He turned and stared quietly into the fireplace for a moment. She saw his hands and realized that he was shaking slightly.
Because he’d been afraid.
For her.
Well, of course. He’d arrived to screams and shrieking in the woods and...
He knew what it was like to find the dead.
There was nothing personal in his concern.
He turned suddenly, his entire demeanor changed. “Why did you want that particular map?”
“Oh, I had a strange dream, that’s all,” she said. “I dreamed I was on Gallows Hill. I was watching the executions and listening to people talk—afraid to protest, afraid to say anything. If they protested, they’d wind up accused, too.”
“And the map?”
She laughed. “Well, no one knows the actual location of the historic Gallows Hill, but there’s a growing belief that a historian named Sydney Perley, back around 1921, came up with a pretty good idea of where the real hill was. Everyone knows the sheriff had been ordered to ensure that the executions were carried out beyond the boundaries of the town proper. And there are documents that tell us Benjamin Nurse rowed a boat to secretly retrieve his mother’s body after she had been hanged, so we know the real hill was near the water―and though it’s been filled in, there was a pond at the base of what Perley identified as Gallows Hill. Anyway, after the dream I started reading and I got curious. I wanted to see the Sydney Perley map.”
“May I see it?” Rocky asked her.
She unrolled the map.
“This is where he says it was. It’s actually a residential section now. This street here—Proctor Street—was just a cart path at one time. A cart path. They took the victims to be hanged by cart.”
“I’ve always thought Perley had it right,” Aunt Mina said. “In fact, I’ve been there. It’s just a little hill covered with a little patch of forest land, rather like the one that borders this house, and it has never been developed.”
“You’ve really been there?” Devin asked her.
“Of course. My coven and I went often to pray,” she told them.
“I know it’s real police work, but I’d like to go there,” Devin said to Rocky.
“Tomorrow,” he promised her, then glanced at his watch. “We should get going. We’re late.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not the end of the world. However, I did set this up, and it involves two groups of people who don’t know each other, so...”
“Let’s go,” Devin said.
Rocky said goodbye to Aunt Mina, who Devin thought was looking a little wistful.
“We’ll have a little dinner party here in a day or two, Auntie Mina,” Devin said. “Rocky can bring his coworkers.”
Aunt Mina seemed to perk up. “That would be lovely.”
Rocky looked thoughtful as they got into the car.
“What is it?” she asked him.
He smiled. “I was thinking that wouldn’t be a half-bad idea.”
“What?”
“Having a get-together at your house. Mina would be delighted and...”
“And?”
“And our Puritan might make an appearance when we’re all here and it’s safe to go into the woods.”
As they drove, she realized that they were heading to a residential section near the historic area favored by tourists.
She looked curiously at Rocky.