Not until Lucy was taken care of, though. Ruby knew that the medicine was helping her great-granddaughter, but at a cost—Lucy’s nightmares had slinked down the hall to take up residence in Ruby’s own bedroom. Now, no matter where or when Ruby dozed, she found herself reliving the phone call that had ruined her life.
It had come on a rainy Monday, eight years ago. She’d picked up the receiver, thinking it was the pharmacy saying her arthritis medicine was in; or maybe her daughter Luxe ringing from the market to let her know she’d be a few minutes late. But the voice on the other end belonged to a ghost.
She was still sitting with the phone in her hand, shaking, when Luxe came in with the groceries. “You wouldn’t believe how long it took me to get through the checkout,” Luxe said. “You’d think people were stocking up for bomb shelters.” Then she looked more carefully at Ruby’s face. “Ma? What’s the matter?”
Ruby had reached out her hand, touched Luxe’s skin, smooth and warm as a stone. How did you go about telling someone you were not who they thought you were?
Now, Ruby felt hands on her shoulders, shaking her gently. “Granny.
Granny
.”
Ruby could not answer, her mind was still full of Luxe, who had fallen down clutching her chest when Ruby told her who had called; who Luxe really was; who Ruby wasn’t. She could still see Luxe’s face, waxen and still, through the ER doorway as the doctor came out to say that the cardiac arrest had been fatal. How stupid Ruby had been. She’d held Luxe’s heart in safekeeping all those years; to give it back, in retrospect, seemed foolish and irresponsible.
On the day her mother died, Meredith had been a graduate student in Boston. She arrived wild at the hospital, demanding a miracle. Ruby had nearly expected her to get one, for all her fury. Imagine: Luxe throwing back the sheet that covered her on the examination table, sitting up. Wonders like that, they had happened before. Ruby had seen it herself.
Ruby had never told Meredith what she’d told Luxe in the moments before her heart gave out. Now, though . . . with Lucy suffering . . . well, Meredith might understand the way love for a child could make a woman go crazy. “Merry,” Ruby said suddenly, wanting to tell her all of it. “Do you remember when your mother died?”
“Oh, Granny,” Meredith sighed. “Is that what you were dreaming about?”
Her cool hand on Ruby’s cheek: that was all it took for Ruby to understand she could not make the same mistake twice. She decided to put a tourniquet on the past for once and for all, until it just desiccated and disappeared. This was her life, now. Spencer Pike had never called again, and as far as she was concerned, he could go to hell.
The dog made him nervous. It lay about four feet away from Ross’s boot, a big puddle of skin completely relaxed except for its dark eyes, which had pinned Ross the moment he entered the detective’s office and hadn’t blinked since. “Mr. Wakeman,” said Detective Rochert. “Put yourself in my shoes for a minute. Some guy, a
paranormal investigator
, comes in off the street and tells me to reexamine a seventy-year-old unsolved murder. Who am I supposed to get statements from—a ghost? And even if I do get a perp, chances are he’s either dead or in his nineties. No prosecutor in Vermont is going to touch that case.”
Ross glanced at the dog, which bared its teeth. The detective snapped his fingers and the hound flopped onto the floor, boneless. “I would think that, given the property dispute, you might find the case more timely than you think. All I’m saying is that there’s a big difference between a woman dying in childbirth, and a woman being murdered. Maybe Spencer Pike is senile; maybe the town death records in 1932 were less than accurate. But then again, maybe that’s the missing piece that explains why the Abenaki feel they have a claim to the land.”
Eli leaned forward, his dark eyes suddenly hard as flint. “You came to me specifically because you know I’m half-Abenaki, didn’t you? You think I’m going to reopen this file just because I
owe
it to them.”
Ross shook his head, surprised at this outburst. “I came to you because you’re the only detective on duty,” he said.
That shut Rochert up, but only briefly. “Mr. Wakeman, I think you and I operate a little differently. Your work is all about hunches; mine is rooted in hard evidence.”
Ross had learned long ago not to try to convert the skeptics. The fact was, there were plenty of people who believed in ghosts, and once you’d had a paranormal experience, you joined the ranks. The cynics were necessary; they limited the number of frauds. Ross wouldn’t try to convince Eli Rochert that spirits existed, but he wouldn’t stand here and let the man slander his investigation, either. “Actually, my work is closer to yours than you’d think. Isn’t crime-scene linkage based on the idea that people always leave a part of themselves behind?”
“Forensics can dust for fingerprints. They can’t dust for . . .” His voice trailed off, and Ross watched Rochert frown, deep in thought. After a moment, he spoke again. “Even if this murder is solved seventy years after the fact, it’s not going to change anything. Pike’s wife is still dead. He still legally owns the land. And he still has the right to sell it.”
“That depends,” Ross said.
“On?”
“Who actually committed a murder that night.”
It was not surprising to Eli that the Comtosook Police Department had kept the file on an unsolved homicide investigation from so long ago. This stemmed not from any particular diligence in keeping track of loose ends, but rather from absolute incompetence in record keeping. Frankly, no one had ever thought to clean out the archive closet. He brushed a cobweb out of his hair and pulled the bulky carton out of the haphazard stack.
Chief Follensbee wouldn’t care what Eli did in his downtime. As he walked upstairs to his desk, he told himself that the reason he was doing this had nothing to do with what he’d experienced a few nights ago at the Pike property. Nor was it related to the nagging doubt that the woman in his recurring dreams kept coming back for a reason. He was reviewing this case because it had never been solved, and crime-scene techniques available today might be able to answer questions that had been asked and left unanswered in 1932.
Watson looked up when Eli came into the office, then decided he wasn’t quite worth the trouble of getting to his feet. He watched with disinterest as Eli emptied the contents of the crate onto his cleared desk. A manila folder, a stack of crime-scene photographs, a paper lunch sack, a cigar box, and a noose.
Eli pulled a pair of rubber gloves out of his desk and picked up the rope. Nothing special about it; it looked like any industrial cable of twine you might find in the area even now. Whoever had investigated the case back then had been smart enough to leave the knot tied; after all these years it was still intact.
He picked up some of the crime-scene photos. One showed the young woman, lying down with the noose around her neck. Her chest and neck were scratched raw, not from the rope, but from the long rakes of fingernails—she’d tried to get free. Another was the porch of what seemed to be a shed. Eli squinted closer; there was a beam in the roof. Based on the puddle of what he assumed to be bodily fluids on the floorboards, that must have been where the body was hanged. A shot of the victim’s bare legs, badly bruised.
In the brown paper sack was a stained nightgown and a pair of women’s shoes. A small leather pouch, strung on a snapped rawhide lace, and a poplar pipe with a serpentine bowl rested in the cigar box. Eli picked the pipe up in his hands and turned it over. His grandfather had carved one like this. He sniffed, smelling the sweet tobacco he associated with his childhood.
Setting it aside, Eli opened the police investigation report.
CASE NUMBER: 32-01
INVESTIGATING OFFICER: Detective F. Olivette
VICTIM’S NAME: Cecelia Pike (aka Mrs. Spencer Pike)
DATE OF BIRTH: 11-09-13
AGE: 18
ADDRESS: Otter Creek Pass, Comtosook, VT
TIME/DATE OF INCIDENT: 12 AM–9 AM,
September 19, 1932
LOCATION OF INCIDENT: Pike Property, Otter Creek
Pass, Comtosook, VT
INCIDENT:
On September 19th, 1932, at 09:28 hrs Professor Spencer Pike (DOB 05-13-06) called the Comtosook Police Department and reported the murder of his wife, Cecelia “Cissy” Pike. Professor Pike reported that his wife’s death had occurred at their residence sometime between 12 AM–9 AM. Detective Duley Wiggs and I responded to the Pike property to investigate the incident.
Upon arrival at the residence we were met by Professor Pike. He was noticeably distraught. He directed us to the icehouse where his wife’s body was found. The victim was lying on her back in front of the ice shed. I checked the victim for a pulse and found none. The body was cold to the touch. I then called for the coroner.
The victim was wearing a flowered dress and boots. A rope noose was around the victim’s neck. The victim’s chest and neck were scored with deep, bloody scratches. Numerous bruises were visible on the victim’s lower legs. The roof to the porch was constructed using large support beams. Initial inspection suggests that the victim had been hanged from one of these beams. Photographs were taken of the body and the scene.
The area was examined for evidence. A leather pouch, strung on a length of rawhide, was found on the porch to the left rear of the body. Upon inspection it was noted that the rawhide thong was snapped. The pouch was found to contain some type of herbal matter. Underneath the porch a poplar-serpentine pipe was located. It was noted that no means by which the victim might have reached the beam herself was found at the scene.
Professor Pike reported that he married Cecelia in 1931. He confirmed his occupation as an instructor of anthropology at the University of Vermont. He stated that Mrs. Pike was nine months pregnant and had gone into labor on the evening of September 18th. According to Professor Pike, his wife was assisted by their house girl, and gave birth to a stillborn female infant at 11 PM. He stated that Mrs. Pike was both depressed and exhausted after giving birth. According to Professor Pike, his wife went to bed near midnight. Reportedly, this was the last time that Mrs. Pike was seen alive.
Professor Pike reported that after his wife retired for the evening he went to his study and had a few drinks. He estimated that he consumed six scotch on the rocks. He reported that he fell asleep in his chair in the study and did not awaken until approximately 9 AM. Reportedly at that time Professor Pike went to check on his wife and found her bedroom empty, and the window broken. Professor Pike stated that he then canvassed the property for his wife, before locating her hanging from the beam on the porch of the ice shed. Professor Pike reported that he used a knife to cut his wife down from the beam.
The recovered pipe and pouch were shown to Professor Pike. He recognized them as the property of an Abenaki man named Gray Wolf. He stated that he had to forcibly evict Gray Wolf from his property on September 18th at noon. Professor Pike stated that he had seen Gray Wolf in the company of his wife, harassing her. Professor Pike reported that he knew the man to be an itinerant who was recently released from prison after serving time for a murder conviction in Burlington. Professor Pike stated that he confronted Gray Wolf and insisted that he leave their property. Reportedly, Gray Wolf had to be thrown off the premises.
Professor Pike also could not account for the whereabouts of his house girl, who was not present when he woke up at 9 AM. Her possessions, however, were still in the house. Her room showed no signs of struggle. Professor Pike reported that the house girl, fourteen, could not have physically been strong enough to harm his wife. He reported that her weak constitution may have caused her to run off upon finding his wife hanging, and that he was not surprised.
The coroner, Dr. J. E. DuBois, arrived at 10 AM and inspected the victim’s body. His initial findings suggest death by asphyxiation, consistent with hanging.
Eli leafed through several other pages. Descriptions of the house, of various items in Cissy Pike’s bedroom. Signs of forced entry and struggle. The coroner’s report. A set of inked prints, taken postmortem from the victim. An interview with Pike, and another with Gray Wolf, who had voluntarily come to the station for questioning. A statement by the men who served as Gray Wolf’s alibi for the night. A warrant for the arrest of Gray Wolf, secured from a judge a day later, which had never been carried out because Gray Wolf had simply disappeared.
Eli glanced at the rope, at the nightgown, at the pipe. At the very least, he could send these out for DNA analysis, to see if Gray Wolf had left any record of his actions behind.
Eli absently stroked Watson’s head. It was possible that Gray Wolf had left town because he knew he was going to be convicted, again, of murder. But it was also possible that Gray Wolf had never been found because he’d been on the Otter Creek Pass property the whole time, six feet under—courtesy of Spencer Pike.
Which would mean, ironically, that it
was
an Indian burial ground.
As Ross watched heat lightning connect the stars like a dot-to-dot puzzle, he thought about the first time he’d died. He really could not remember much of it, except for that instant he’d looked up at the broken sky, seen his opportunity, and had spread his arms wide in welcome. If pressed, he could recall the burning smell that was his hair; the stiffness of his limbs as the current coursed through him. He would have liked to be able to tell of crossing to the other side, of that bright white light, but if these things had happened he knew nothing of it.
The sky ripped again, a jagged tear that stayed visible for moments after the strike of lightning was gone. This time, it was followed by the tumble of thunder. On his forehead, Ross felt the first drop.
There were certain universal rules to outdoor paranormal investigation, based on temperature and weather conditions. You didn’t want to find yourself taking spectral photos of what turned out to be the frost of your own breath; for the same reason, rain and falling snow were to be avoided at all costs. Ross had blatantly ignored these rules from time to time because electrical storms provided so much atmospheric energy that spirits could materialize much more easily than normal. The Warburtons had once been called down by the State of Connecticut after a lightning storm, because a municipal truck had struck a woman running across a highway. Although there had been six eyewitnesses to the accident, and a large dent remained in the fender of the truck, the lady who’d been hit had simply vanished. It was the energy in the air, Curtis had reasoned, that made this spirit so solid she could literally leave her mark.