She’d left the room and was gone for a long time. Eventually the lights had dimmed, then went out in the front of the store, and he’d heard her locking up. He’d heard the young witches chatting outside on the way to their cars. And then, when the store was finally quiet, he’d heard something else. It was Ann’s voice. Chanting an incantation, a kind of music he’d never heard before, calling in the sounds of wind and water, melding them together until they achieved a kind of low pulsing that beat with the rhythm of his own heart. Hypnotic, it had lulled him. He’d lain back on the bed and waited.
When Ann had come back to him, she’d been wearing a different robe, one that looked like a black silk kimono. Standing before him, she’d let the robe fall and was naked. For an instant, she’d looked just like Towner or, rather, the way he’d always imagined Towner would look before they’d finally gotten together, the prolonged time when she had been only his fantasy. As soon as he’d recognized the vision, it had faded, and pure sensation had swept over him, pulling him into its vortex; he’d let himself go with it, aware that he was not leading, was simply reacting, present and in the moment with whatever spell Ann had just conjured.
It was sex, and yet it had been nothing like sex.
And he’d followed it again and again each time it took him.
Time had shifted. He couldn’t tell if it had been a moment or an eternity. It had circled and repeated over and over again, until they’d both collapsed, too exhausted to move, and had finally slipped out of consciousness together on the bed.
Morning had come too early, and Rafferty had awakened as if from a coma. He’d sat up, holding his head, feeling the guilt of everything that had happened.
“Don’t do that to yourself,” Ann had said. She was already up and dressed, looking fresh and ready for the day. She’d handed him a bottle of water. “Go home. She’s waiting for you. And, whatever you do, resist the urge to confess.”
To Towner, he’d thought, but had not said. There wasn’t much chance he’d ever see her again. Let alone confess.
“To anyone,” Ann had said aloud, reading him.
Soon after, the young witches had begun to arrive in the front of the store. Ann had yelled out, said she’d be with them in a minute. “Go!” she’d said, pushing Rafferty out the side door, the way she’d brought him in the night before.
As he’d left, he’d come face-to-face with Helen Barnes, emerging from Peter Barter’s flower shop with an armful of snapdragons, carrying the flowers as if they were an infant. She’d met his eyes, then glanced back toward Ann’s shop. Rafferty had understood that she knew. Her flowers had suddenly smelled overpowering and funereal.
He’d walked all the way to the Willows, in no hurry to get back to his empty house. He’d sell it, he thought. He’d leave this ridiculous place, and he’d never look back. Go someplace Towner would never be. South maybe. Inland. Away from the cold winters and the smell of the sea. As he’d turned the corner onto Bay View Avenue, he’d spotted Towner sitting on the porch of his Victorian fixer-upper, her long legs folded under her, arms across her chest as if she were cold. How in the world had Ann known that Towner would be there? Towner had looked as exhausted as he felt. She hadn’t said anything to him as he climbed the stairs. Instead, she’d stood as he opened the door, walking through ahead of him, not looking back at the sea or the island.
I firmly believe that the curse of Salem’s guilt will persist until the true site of the hangings is finally memorialized, a proper blessing is bestowed, and the remains of those executed in 1692 are finally laid to rest.
—ROSE WHELAN, The Witches of Salem
“How do you hide a woman if she doesn’t want to be found?” Rafferty had once asked May. “How do you keep her from sticking out like a sore thumb?”
May hadn’t answered him, but Towner had. “You hide them in plain sight.”
“What does that mean?”
“To quote May directly: Hide like with like.”
Rafferty still firmly believed that Leah Kormos was, if not the killer, certainly the person he needed to talk to, if only he could find her. But everything he’d tried had been a dead end. He reviewed what he knew about Leah. She was dark, Mediterranean looking. Greek. Through coordinated police servers and crime databases, he’d been searching records not just in New England but all over the country, calling all the Kormos listings he could find in an effort to locate either Leah or her sister, Rebecca. Most of the Kormos listings were in Massachusetts or New Jersey. He’d talked to a lot of people, but so far he’d had no luck.
Where would you hide if you really didn’t want to be found? he asked himself now. May’s words came back to him.
He’d tried every Kormos in bordering Massachusetts towns, but there was no one with the name Leah. Or Becky or Rebecca. And searching on first names was too unwieldy. Then he thought about how his daughter had said Leah was a Jewish name. It was true: Leah and Rebecca weren’t traditional Greek names, but they were definitely Old Testament. Maybe their mother, whose name he hadn’t been able to decipher on their birth certificates, had been Jewish?
He’d already looked for the father’s marriage certificates. There was nothing in Beverly. Now he widened his search, checking neighboring towns. Trying different spellings of the father’s last name, he finally found a match in Peabody listed under the misspelled surname Courmos. The mother’s maiden name was Rosenfeld, and she’d married Leah’s father in Peabody in 1969.
Rafferty searched the name Leah Rosenfeld, first in Peabody and then in all surrounding North Shore towns. He found two matches: The first was a widow in her eighties, and the second was a two-year-old. Neither had any connection to Leah Kormos or to her mother or sister.
He widened his search, looking once again at the Massachusetts border towns, remembering Towner’s words: “Hide like with like.” Leah may have been part Jewish, but she’d grown up in a Greek community. He didn’t find Leah. But, in searching the records for Lowell, he finally found Becky.
First he called Mickey and finally gave him the name he’d been waiting for, and then he headed to Lowell.
She was living in the Greek community under the name Becky Rosenfeld, working in a diner and living in a three-decker that was almost identical to the one they’d torn down in Beverly.
She didn’t want to talk to him. She knew what he wanted as soon as he introduced himself.
“She didn’t do it,” Becky said, putting the cup of regular coffee he’d ordered on the counter in front of him.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re a cop. I’ve been all through this with the cops. My sister didn’t kill those girls.”
“I’m not accusing her,” Rafferty said, taking a sip. Too much cream and too much sugar. “I’m just trying to find her, that’s all.”
“I’ve been trying to find her for twenty-five years,” Becky said. “No help from any of you.”
Rafferty knew Becky had hounded the Beverly Police, who had essentially ignored the girl’s efforts.
“Your father didn’t try very hard to find her,” Rafferty said.
“No big surprise there,” she said. “Leah and my father never got along.”
“Why is that?”
“I’m not doing this,” Becky said, starting to turn away.
“This is difficult for you,” Rafferty said.
“Hell, yeah, this is difficult. I lost my sister!”