The Witch's Ladder (29 page)

I turned and faced the shack. The door, made of wood and sheet metal, was staunchly mounted to the structure by oversized hinges attached with heavy bolts. A large slide-pin latch substantial enough to secure a door twice its size held the marriage of door and structure with impeccable integrity. I slid the latch to one side and pulled on the handle. The door relented, creaking open with unusual ease against the rusty hinges and the high-tension spring designed to keep it shut in the persistent sea breeze. I looked around but saw nothing inside of imminent danger. The place appeared empty, save for a small wooden table with vacant shelves clinging to the otherwise bare walls. It seemed obvious that no one had used the shack in years. It stood void of windows and skylights, and except for the horizontal beam of sunshine pouring in through the open door, it remained dark, damp and uninviting.

In the middle of the floor, as Jean promised, stood a large fiberglass bait box measuring some five feet wide by three feet tall. A cluster of tiny air holes drilled into the lid proved much too small to allow me a peek inside. I searched for a suitable prop to hold the door open and found it in a wedge-shaped piece of glass among the broken bottles at my feet. I picked it up and jammed it under the door. Its sharp edges dug deep into the timbers of the boardwalk, proving ideal for the task.

With the door securely propped open, I took a deep breath, gathered my wits and stepped inside. Two tension-springs like the one used on the door flanked each side of the bait-box, holding the lid securely in place.

“
This is it,” I said to myself. I felt it in my bones, the missing link I needed to crack the Surgeon Stalker case wide open. I walked up to the box, placed two hands firmly on the cover and gave it a lift. The lid popped loose with greater ease than I thought. I leaned into it, looked and found the much-anticipated treasure: the mysterious brown paper bag. I removed a handkerchief from my pocket and covered the top of the bag before snatching it up. When I pulled my hands away, the springs snapped the lid shut in a cloud of chalky white dust.

At last, I had it. A nervous twitch gnawed in the pit of my stomach. I unfolded the bag gingerly but with great anticipation, careful to use only the handkerchief so as not to contaminate the evidence. My hands shook, and it was only when I looked inside did I realize what a fool I had been.

“
Stupid,” I said. “I’m so stupid.” I sifted through the contents in dismay. “Cookies, Chocolate Chip Cookies.”

It seemed almost too perfect to condemn, too comical. I knew then that I was not only dealing with a heartless killer, but someone with a twisted sense of humor. But why? The answer came to me like a cold slap in the face. It was a setup!

A crackle of glass raked across the floor behind me. I turned on my heels and drew my gun. Something outside flashed by the doorway, but the sun silhouetted its figure and so I didn’t take the shot. The door swung shut. I heard the heavy slide-pin locking into place.

“
No!” I stumbled forward and threw my weight against the door. Outside, someone began nailing spikes into its frame.

I riffled through my pockets, found a book of matches and lit one. A tiny flame sputtered to life. I held the match above my head. Familiar forms began to take shape as my eyes readjusted. When the match burned down to my fingers, I used the dying flame to ignite another. When that one burned down, I repeated the process until nearly all the matches in the book were gone.

People gathered outside. I heard them talking, but could not hear what they were saying. A man laughed; a woman shushed him, and then the talking stopped. I thought they had gone away, but then I heard it: a peculiar splashing, random and unnatural. I imagined the tide had come in and the waves were spraying up through the splintered planks of the boardwalk outside the shack. It seemed probable at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I doubted it, as the splashing sounded more like someone tossing liquid onto the building’s walls and roof. That is when it hit me. The realization sent shivers through my bones. I could smell it. Kerosene.

I blew the match out and stomped it to the floor. My sudden plunge into darkness proved short-lived when an abrupt whoosh of air pushed past me to feed a sudden blaze that engulfed the tiny structure from outside.

Red-hot flames reached through every knothole, nook and cranny the old fish house had to offer. I could feel the intense heat building, bringing with it a thick plume of choking black smoke. I threw my body against the door again, gaining little more for my efforts than a badly bruised shoulder.

Smoke gathered overhead, soothing over dry, bulky timbers in a ghostly cloud. It thickened quickly, forming a lid of swirling black soot that descended down on me with each passing second. I began to choke as the hot air cut into my lungs like bits of sand and glass. My options for escape were evaporating. I contemplated the only two choices for dying presented before me. I could burn to death, or face asphyxiation from inside the bait box. The latter, I imagined, would come less painfully.

Flames licked the walls inside the shack from all four sides as I prepared to climb into the box. I palmed the lid and lifted it when something incredible happened. At first glance I believed my imagination had played a trick on me. It’s the shadows, I thought, flickering shadows on the wall. Then from my periphery, I saw it again. I turned and looked over my shoulder, disbelieving my eyes. I was not alone. Leona Diaz stood before me as majestically as anything I had ever seen in my life. She looked like an angel, a vision of tranquility amidst a backdrop of smoke from Hell’s own fire.

“
Leona!”

She didn’t respond. I called to her again, offering outstretched hands. I thought she might join me, if only temporarily before the smoke and flames consumed us both.

“
Leona, give me your hand.”

In the corner, a beer bottle popped from the heat and a shard of glass sliced through Leona’s silhouette unimpeded. It caught my right cheek and cut me below my eye. I wiped my cheek with the back of my hand before reaching for her again.

“
Leona. What is it?” I supposed fear had paralyzed her to the point of immobility, but if so, I didn’t see it in her eyes. Instead of terror, I saw only empathy, a calm but passionate look of concern. I realized then her concern was only for me, as she was not there, at least not physically. I had never seen Leona, or anyone else for that matter, in the nonphysical state of bilocation, yet I knew that was how she came to me in my final hour—my final minutes.

She held something in her hand and offered it to me. I tried to take it, but could not unite a physical link between her world and mine. I could not take the object; I could only study it. I squinted through stinging eyes and concentrated. It looked like her rosary, and I had no doubt that the beads in her hand were the same as those Carlos found at the murder sites.

“
Why are you showing me this?” I asked her. “It’s self-incriminating.”

She held them higher, and I realized that another rosary already hung around her neck. I tried to ask her what it meant, but the thickening smoke choked me to the point I could no longer speak. The intense heat licked at my flesh. It singed the hairs on my arms and on the back of my neck. In the middle of it all, it came to me: the significance of the beads and the reason Leona was trying to help me. How obvious and ironic, I thought, that I should figure it out just in time to take my newfound discovery to my grave.

I imagined that the beads Carlos found came from the same strand Leona held in her hand. They were not rosary beads at all, but the beads of a witch’s ladder, as I remembered Lilith saying that a strand of forty beads, so designed by a witch, could serve as a witch’s ladder equal in power to that of forty knots on a rope. Somehow, a witch’s ladder had played an important role in all of the murders, beginning with Travis’ and including Doctor Lieberman’s. Leona had come to tell me that the beads, not the towels, were the key to the mystery.

But had she come too late? The intense heat and blinding smoke forced me back down. I struggled to breathe the last few morsels of clean air left hovering only inches off the floor. Many thoughts ran through my mind, the suspects, the motives, the witch’s ladders….

The witch’s ladder!

I looted my pockets and came across my last and best hope for salvation. Though my eyes were welded shut by the smoke, I knew I had untied enough knots under the table to undo one or two more without looking again.

As it happened, the first knot surrendered quickly, but time for tremors and warning gusts had long expired. I needed results immediately. I untied a second knot and then another until I felt the earth began to shake. I didn’t know what to expect, a tornado, an earthquake or tidal wave. Any one or all I would have gladly welcomed. I forced my eyes open in time to see Leona disappear into the swirling black smoke. The trembling structure rocked beyond all reasonable tolerances. Hot tar and bits of wood rained down on me in a hail of burning ash. I pulled my coat up over my head, sprang to my feet and jumped into the bait box. The tension springs made sure the lid came down hard and stayed there, and for that, I was grateful.

Seconds later, an explosion ripped through the fish house, annihilating the tiny structure and sending thousands of fragmented bits into obliteration.

Nineteen

Nightfall found Carlos Rodriguez at the police station frantically working the phones. No one had seen me since I left that afternoon, giving him sufficient cause to worry. First responders found my car at Suffolk’s Walk shortly after the explosion on Pier Four. The keys were in the ignition, the windows were down and a half-eaten hamburger sat on the front seat in a to-go box next to a watered down soft drink. Although they hadn’t recovered my body, all indications pointed to a sad and obvious conclusion. I was dead.

Carlos hung up the phone following a call from the New Castle Fire and Rescue Squadron. They called off the search for me due to nightfall, but promised to resume in the morning. That didn’t sit well with Carlos. He knew that in the morning it would be too late. In the morning, the gulls would have picked at my bloated corpse like the ocean vultures they were and left my face an unrecognizable mess.

He crossed the room, sat down at my desk and dropped his head upon it. I walked up to him and said, “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be out looking for your best friend?”

He rocked his forehead along the blotter. “Give it up, pal. I’ve had a bad day.”

“
You had a bad day? Ha!” I nudged him on the shoulder. “You should try getting blown up, why don’t you.”

“
What?” He raised his head, his red eyes blinking through tears. “Tony?”

“
You were expecting maybe a ghost?”

“
Yes!” he said, laughing. “Actually, I was.” He bounced out of the chair and sprinted around the desk. “I thought you were dead.” He grabbed me and pulled me in close, wrapping me up in a bear hug so tightly he almost squeezed the life right out of me—again.

“
Carlos, please, if you don’t mind.”

“
I’m sorry, Tony, man, I’m just so happy to see you.”

I smiled, knowing that I had looked death in the face and cheated it. I sidestepped Carlos, eased myself around the desk and dropped into my chair. “Carlos, my friend, I thought I was dead, too.”

“
So what the hell happened? I told you I should have gone with you. Did you find the bag with the towels? Who blew up the pier? What did you—”

“
Whoa, whoa. Slow down. Come on. Please, one question at a time.”

By then, others had gathered around to welcome me back and to share their relief. There were few in the group who had not already heard my wild stories concerning the case, and all were eager to hear the latest spin on that morning’s episode.

“
I don’t know if you’re going to believe this,” I began, “but after Jean lured me to the fish house, somebody shut and locked the door on me. Before I knew it, the whole damn place went up in a ball of fire.”

Carlos pushed the telephone aside and set his butt up on the corner of my desk. “You were inside it?”

“
I was, and it was awful. The smoke grew black and thick,” I said, squinting to simulate the trouble I had seeing. “It filled the room with sickening fumes. I knew my time had come. Then I saw something move in the corner of the shack. I looked up and saw somebody standing there.”

“
My God, who was it, Tony? Who?”

“
Leona Diaz. Sure as I’m sitting here now, she stood there. At first I thought I was crazy, but then I realized she wasn’t really there at all. She was astral-projecting.”

“
Astral what?”

“
Bilocating.”

“
No kidding? You saw her bilocating?”

“
Yes,” I answered, though I found it amusing how Carlos accepted without question such a phenomenon. The others were more skeptical, however. “She tried to tell me something,” I said, and I went on to explain about the beads. “I believe they are the key to this case. Although the bag with the towels is relevant, it was only a decoy to lure me to the fish house. The whole thing was a setup and I’m sorry to say, Jean Bradford is into this thing up to her neck.”