Towner, Ann, and Mickey arrived at Pride’s Heart together. Glancing into the library, they saw the coroner bagging Finn’s body.
“What the hell happened here tonight?” one of the Beverly officers said to the EMT as the paramedics took Paul and Callie away on stretchers.
Intuiting both the origin and the cure for their illness, Ann climbed into the ambulance and accompanied them to the hospital. Mickey followed in Ann’s car.
Towner waited for Rafferty.
Beverly wasn’t his jurisdiction, but he was on the scene, and, given all the possible connections to Salem, the local cops wanted him in the loop. So Rafferty joined the Beverly police when they looked through Marta’s office in the speakeasy. They found several books on poisons, including one that had been written by Ann Chase, indexing common plants and herbs, detailing their beneficial medicinal purposes as well as their dangers. They also found a small volume of Longfellow’s poems with a romantic inscription from Finn on the occasion of Marta’s twenty-fifth birthday, To Morrigan from Dag. This was significant to no one but Rafferty; he paged through the book of poetry until he found “The Wreck of the Hesperus” and the reference to Norman’s Woe.
He joined Towner in the front hall of Pride’s Heart.
“Oh God,” she said, burying her head in Rafferty’s chest, hugging him tightly. “Oh my God.”
The call came in from Ann just as they were crossing the Beverly Bridge. Rafferty switched to speaker so Towner could hear.
“Callie will be fine. She’s being treated at Salem,” Ann said.
“What about Paul?” Towner asked.
“Paul was airlifted to Mass General. His heart is severely damaged.”
Turns out it wasn’t the crazy homeless woman, it was the rich bitch all along. No big surprise there.
—LIKESTOSAIL
The bones started to surface after Marta’s death. The root hole was uncovered so the grounds crew could complete their job, and when the tide went out the bones clung to the dark earth. A skeletal hand appeared, and the Beverly Police were called. They, in turn, called Rafferty.
The discovery caused a sensation. The Goddesses had been found. And so had the partial skeleton of Leah Kormos, her bones miraculously preserved, the result, according to forensic speculation, of high levels of calcium carbonate in the seawater. The cliffs around Pride’s Heart evidently contained large deposits of limestone that had leached into the sea well as the cliffs eroded every year.
Rafferty speculated that Finn and Marta had relocated the bodies from the graves to the sea well sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The dinner conversation about DNA and how easily it could be transmitted must have scared Finn, who had been intimate with at least one if not more of the victims the night of the murders. Callie subsequently had a vision that Marta had talked Finn into having the bodies moved to avoid being implicated in the murders he didn’t commit. In all likelihood, Finn never suspected Marta was the murderer. He had likely paid off Patch Willis, the caretaker of Greenlawn Cemetery. Willis had recently retired from his position and left town, leaving no forwarding address.
Leah’s remains had been in the sea well for much longer.
It was Callie’s vision in the sea well that filled in the details of Marta’s terrible history, but it had been Ann and Mickey’s call the night of the reception that had made Rafferty realize she was the Goddess murderer. On Ann’s vision alone he would have gone to Pride’s Heart, just to assure himself that everyone was all right. But it was what Mickey said that had chilled him to his core. After the celebration, Mickey had been working on his belated wedding present for Finn and Marta, a merging of their family trees. When he traced Marta’s back, he discovered her connection to Sarah Good.
Still, many questions remained unanswered. “The truth is we’ll never know it all,” Rafferty told Callie.
“For me, it’s enough to know that Marta killed the Goddesses,” Callie said. “And to know that my mother and the others are truly laid to rest. And I’m happy to see that not only was Rose vindicated but she was right all along.”
“How so?”
“She was right about the oak. She was right that remains were hidden on the Whitings’ property, though they belonged to the Goddesses, not to the original accused.”
Callie told Rafferty about Rose’s vision of the hanging tree, cut and floating down the North River to the Whitings’ property. She didn’t mention her own visions, ones that had become clearer since that night in the well: the Whitings’ oak, the one Rose claimed talked to her, had spread its roots so wide it had become entangled with the far older oak body. And as the tidal water rose and fell in one it was mirrored by the other, creating a waterway that had moved back and forth for generations.
All this was only speculation, something she’d never share for fear of being perceived as every bit as crazy as Rose. But, in Callie’s mind, Rose was right. The trees had communicated their centuries-old message. They had done their job.
They gathered around the oak tree that Eva Whitney had willed to Rose. Archbishop McCauley was performing a blessing to consecrate the ground. It was just as Rose would have wanted, Rafferty thought.
September 27, 2015. Ann had told Rafferty that tonight marked the end of the tetrad lunar eclipses. It was a supermoon as well as the blood moon, and people around here were expecting weird energy and odd behavior; both the ER and the police force had put on extra staff. But, according to Ann, tonight marked the end of the weird energy that had begun last year with the first of the eclipses. He hoped she was right. Still, Halloween was right around the corner, and weird energy was a given. He’d have to reserve judgment until he saw what October brought this year.
Callie looked different to him; she had aged in the last few months. Maybe not aged, exactly. More likely he could see that something had shifted. While Paul was recuperating in the hospital, she’d taken charge, arranging Finn’s and Marta’s burials, dealing with Paul’s doctors, and meeting with the Whiting Foundation to make sure their work continued.
Towner had confided in him that Callie and Paul were planning their wedding for next summer, after Paul had fully recovered. Rafferty said a prayer that this would indeed happen, and that they would have happiness in their life together. They both deserved it.
As if in answer, the oak moved in the sea breeze, and through its leaves he heard the words:
Sometimes the only healing is death.