He was far more familiar with the dead boy, Billy Barnes. Billy had been a bad kid. There was no way around it. Last year on Halloween, he had started a knife fight with a kid from Lynn, someone rumored to be a member of the Latin Kings. Though he was not a gang member himself, his OG tattoo was there to tell everyone he liked violence, that he wouldn’t back down. “Original Gangster” like hell, Rafferty thought. Couldn’t have been further from the truth. Billy Barnes was about as far from gangster as you could get. He was a poseur, a wannabe, as entitled as they come. Even so, he was dangerous.
No one had pressed any charges then, nor had they done so any of the numerous times Barnes had been picked up before or since. Some fancy lawyer had always bailed him out, and no charge Rafferty had filed against him ever stuck. Rafferty didn’t think that did the kid any favors. If he’d been Rafferty’s son, he would have left him in jail overnight or even longer, to give him a taste of what the correctional facility in Middleton would feel like. Probably do the kid some good—hopefully straighten him out. If his own daughter ever acted like Billy Barnes had…
“We told you. Rose Whelan is the killer.”
“Right,” Rafferty said. They were getting nowhere fast. The boys had clearly been advised to say nothing beyond the simple statement “Rose Whelan is the killer.” He leaned across the table. “What about the cut on her cheek? Which one of you did that?”
The two boys looked at each other. Neither said a word.
“You two want to go home tonight, or do you want to share the cell across the hall from Rose Whelan?”
“You can’t hold us,” said the older one—whose last name was Monk.
Rafferty laughed. “Who told you that?”
When they didn’t offer any answer, Rafferty sent them to a holding cell, not across from Rose but near enough to shake them up a bit. He waited for a new pot of coffee to brew before he called them back in, this time separately. Monk came first, avoiding eye contact. “I know what I saw,” he said. Then he amended the statement. “What I heard.”
The younger boy, the one called James, was different. Once Rafferty got him alone he was less reticent. “She warned him she’d have to do it,” he said. “She thought he was going to kill her.”
“Was he?”
“I don’t know,” James said. He shrugged. “Maybe.” He looked like he was going to cry.
“What happened to the knife?” Rafferty asked. The knife that Billy Barnes had threatened Rose with had conveniently disappeared.
“Monk threw it into the woods.”
“If I send someone out to retrieve it, is it going to be there?” Rafferty said.
“I don’t know.”
Rafferty kept eye contact but didn’t speak.
“I don’t think so,” James said. “Not anymore.”
“Was that your phone call, one of your gangster friends? Someone who would get rid of the knife?”
James quieted. His whole body was shaking.
Rafferty looked at the kid for a long time. “Tell me again. Exactly what happened. Between Billy and Rose.”
“Monk told her to leave, but she wouldn’t.”
Rafferty wasn’t surprised. People often harassed Rose. She’d learned to hold her own. Over the years, the skills she needed to survive on the streets had developed into a defiance that others perceived as either craziness or arrogance, or both.
“She should have gone,” James said, starting to cry.
“What happened after that?”
“Billy threatened her. And then she threatened him.”
Rafferty raised an eyebrow. “How exactly did she threaten him? Wasn’t Billy the one with the knife?”
“Yes,” James said.
“So how could Rose threaten him if he had the weapon?”
“She—she told him to sit down. Said she’d have to kill him if he didn’t.” Now the kid was hyperventilating. “It’s the truth!” he said. “She said crazy things. About banshees and goddesses and bleeding trees that got hit by lightning.”
Rafferty was familiar with some of Rose’s musings. She was quite the storyteller, actually, though most of her yarns made little sense.
“Take a deep breath and hold it,” Rafferty suggested.
The kid obeyed. Then, at Rafferty’s direction, he exhaled slowly. Rafferty got up and got him a drink of water from the cooler. He sat back down and watched while the kid sipped.
“Okay?”
James nodded, wiping his eyes.
“Okay, then, tell me what happened next.”
“A huge wind. Like a howling sound and then screeching. Horrible screeching. I’ve never heard anything like it. It hurt, man! I couldn’t see, and everything went black—and then Billy was on the ground.” James started to cry again. “His eyes were all bugging, like he was still seeing the thing that killed him.”
“I thought you said Rose killed him?”
“It was her!”
“You said ‘the thing that killed him.’?”
The kid stopped crying. “She said she would do it, and she did.”
“Dr. Finch is here,” Jay-Jay announced when Rafferty came out of the interrogation room. “I put her in the cell with Rose.”
Rafferty doubted Jay-Jay’s judgment, and not for the first time. He hurried toward Rose’s cell. Before he started interviewing the witnesses, he had checked in on Rose again. She seemed calmer, thank God.
Zee Finch was sitting on the cot next to Rose when he arrived, dressing her wound. She looked up when she saw Rafferty and tucked an errant strand of auburn hair behind her ear. “She’s going to need stitches.”
Rafferty nodded.
Rose appeared to stare at something no one else in the room could see.
“How long has she been like this?” Zee asked, as she finished bandaging the cut. “Has she said what happened?”
“She hasn’t said anything to me,” Rafferty said. He was standing at the opposite wall, keeping an eye on the hallway to make sure no one interrupted them.
“Are you charging her?”
“With what?” Rafferty asked. “Killing a kid by screaming at him?”
“Jay-Jay said there is a written confession.”
“Yup,” Rafferty said.
“You’re not going to show it to me?”
“Not until I’ve shown it to her attorney,” he answered.
“That’s acceptable. But she needs to be in a hospital tonight. I’ll call Salem and secure a bed in the psych unit.”
Rafferty sighed. He hated the thought of Rose in a psych ward, but he couldn’t release her, nor could he charge her, confession or no confession. According to the paramedics, the boy’s body had been clean. No signs of violence or marks anywhere. “I think that’s the best option. I can’t do much of anything until I know what we’re dealing with. At this point, I don’t even know if a crime has been committed. We won’t know that until we get the kid’s autopsy results and tox screen. This isn’t CSI; this is Salem.”
They both knew that getting those results was going to take a while.
“Rose,” Zee said. “I’m calling the hospital, and I’m going to get you a bed. You can rest there until we figure this whole thing out.”
Rose made no response.
Zee took Rose’s hand. Rose hadn’t reacted at all when Zee cleaned her wound, but now, curling her fingers like a cat’s claws, she went for the eyes, scratching Zee’s face from temple to chin. Rafferty grabbed Zee by the arm, pulling her away from Rose.
“What the hell happened to her on that hill?” Zee asked, as she regained her composure.
“Tonight or twenty-five years ago?” Rafferty replied.