“So, how many strays have you taken in so far?” he asked.
Every Halloween, Towner kept an eye out for girls who were too drunk to get home after the fireworks. She knew only too well the kind of trouble young girls can get into, and she made it her business to help. “Strays” were always welcome in their home. Rafferty liked this about his wife. Truth be told, he liked just about everything about her. He’d almost lost her once, and it was something he couldn’t bear to think about. “How many?” he asked again, aware that she was avoiding his question.
She just laughed.
“Be careful,” he said. “I don’t want to find one of them in bed with us.”
“Oh God, I’d forgotten that! Remember her—”
Jay-Jay rushed in without knocking. “We’ve got a murder! Over on Gallows Hill!”
“You sure you haven’t been drinking?” Rafferty said before he could stop himself.
“What’s going on?” Towner’s voice over the phone sounded worried. “Is that Jay-Jay?”
Rafferty took her off speaker.
“I swear! It’s true. A kid is dead. Porter was over on Pope Street, and he took the suspect into custody,” Jay-Jay insisted. “The kid’s friends are saying the old lady killed him—”
“I’ll call you back.” Rafferty hung up, turning to Jay-Jay. “Slow down. Tell me what happened. Who’s dead?”
“Billy Barnes! And his two friends are saying she killed him.”
“Who is she?”
“That old homeless woman—the one who calls herself a banshee.”
“Rose Whelan?” What the hell? He’d just been thinking about Rose. Now Rafferty could hear the chaos erupting out in the hallway.
“Porter arrested her?”
“Yup. Mirandized her and everything. They’re putting the old lady in the holding cell right now. She’s flailing around, looks like she’s fighting with something none of us can see. You have to go look. It’s spooky.”
Rafferty was out the door and down the corridor before Jay-Jay had a chance to catch up.
“What the hell’s going on?” Rafferty demanded of Porter, a heavyset man in his midforties. This is all happening too fast. “You know you don’t just go ahead and arrest someone.”
“She wrote a confession,” Porter said. “Signed it and everything.” He handed Rafferty a piece of paper. It said: Tell Rafferty I killed the kid. I had to do it. He was turning.
Rafferty recognized the writing. And he was pretty sure the confession was written on a page ripped from Rose’s journal. He’d seen the journal a few times, leather-bound with unusual handmade paper. The only things he’d seen in the book before were random drawings of trees.
“What the hell does that mean? Did she say anything?”
Porter shrugged. “She kept mumbling something in the car,” he said. “It was kind of hard to make out what she was saying.”
“Tell me,” Rafferty said.
“Something about the lesser of two evils.”
Rafferty stared at Porter. “She said that?”
“That’s what it sounded like.”
“She has a nasty cut,” Jay-Jay said to Rafferty. “We need to get someone in there to clean it up.”
Two of the other officers who’d been watching the scene in the holding cell stepped back.
Rafferty looked inside: Rose was seated on the cot, and she seemed calm. She had a bloody gash on her cheek. Jay-Jay, who’d made the suggestion, took a step back. “I’m not going near her.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Rafferty took the first aid kit down from where it hung on the wall by the exit door and let himself into the cell. “Rose,” he said, kneeling next to her. “You’re okay. We’ve got you now.” He reached out to touch her arm, and Rose pulled back as if stung. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s just me, Rose. It’s Rafferty. You know me.”
The sound started as a low growl. It was so soft that Rafferty wasn’t certain he was really hearing it until the pitch raised and grew in volume. All at once it was a shrieking that bounced off the cinder-block walls and caused the officers on the other side of the bars to cover their ears.
“Jesus Christ,” said Jay-Jay. “Get out of there!”
Rafferty backed out of the cell quickly, unnerved. “Okay, Rose,” he said, once he was outside. “I’ll leave you alone for now.”
“Stay outside,” Rafferty instructed one of the officers. He assigned a guard to the cell. “Don’t get too close,” he warned, but he needn’t have bothered. The officer stood as far from the cell as he could while still remaining in the corridor.
“Where are the witnesses?” Rafferty asked.
Porter spoke up. “They’re down the hall. They had plenty to say on Gallows Hill, but now they insist they won’t talk without a lawyer.”
“Of course they won’t.” Rafferty sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “Back to the desk, Jay-Jay.” Rafferty headed quickly to his office and closed the door. He picked up the phone and dialed Zee Finch, the psychiatrist who had been treating Rose on and off for years. He hated to call her at home.
“This is Zee,” she answered, sounding groggy.
“Sorry to bother you this late,” Rafferty said. “We’ve got a problem.”
Zee listened as Rafferty explained what he knew so far.
“Oh God, here we go again,” she said, when he was finished. “Let me get dressed. I’ll be right down.”
“Thank you.” Rafferty hung up, then dialed again, this time calling Barry Marcus, a defense attorney who he knew did pro-bono work.
“Rose Whelan, huh?” Barry said. He hadn’t been asleep. “What’s she accused of this time?”
“Killing Billy Barnes.”
“Billy Barnes?” repeated Barry. “Well, that’s unfortunate…”
“Depends on how you look at it,” Rafferty said. He knew Barry well enough to be honest. No one in Salem thought Billy Barnes was anything but trouble. But he was connected. His great-aunt, Helen, was one of Salem’s most influential citizens.
“Are you the arresting officer?” Barry asked.
“What do you think?”
“I’m guessing no. So who was it?”
“Porter.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
Porter had a habit of arresting first and asking questions later, something that had gotten him into trouble more than once.
“What did the witnesses say?”
“I haven’t questioned them yet. They’ve asked for a lawyer. Which means they think they’re going to be charged with something.”
“Are they?”
“I don’t know yet.”