Witch Water (10 page)

What had she called it? A viewing ball? A
gazing ball?

He stepped closer, leaned down, and was able
to see markings on the pedestal: swaths of geometric shapes, such
as stars, circles, crescents, as well as fairly tiny lines of
writing in some language other than English. He took a wild guess
and thought Hebrew. But some of the geometric shapes reminded him
straightaway of Jacob Wraxall’s brooding portrait and the features
of his pendant. To the touch, the pedestal itself must be
marble.

But then he rose to inspect the sphere.

Beneath the pallid green tarnish and
webworks of crust he thought he noticed outlines of shapes, however
faintly. At first he thought the sphere must be a geographic globe
depicting the continents, but then he realized that the shapes
didn’t correspond at all to anything global.

Fanshawe touched the encrusted orb and found
it cold—strangely so, for brass or any similar metal would’ve
surely conducted heat from the sun beating down on it all day…

Weird.
He stepped back for another
more distanced look, tried to figure what purpose lay behind the
object, then could only draw blanks. But Abbie had promised to tell
him about it, hadn’t she?
Tomorrow,
he thought with a
pleasant twinge,
when I take her to dinner.
Just then, he
allowed himself the luxury of letting Abbie’s image enter his head:
her trim shapeliness, the incandescent dove-gray eyes, the exotic
alliance of her hair color: auburn with blond. He stood dreamily,
musing over the
normalness
of it all; just a simple dinner
date, true, but simplicity and normality were elements that had
always eluded him, either that or had been rendered moot by the
involutions of his secrets. Just then, the brilliant blue sky
seemed to welcome him to a new state of mind…

Then the moment shattered.

Fanshawe twirled in place at an adrenalin
dump. It had been the unmistakable sound of a growling dog that had
invaded his muse.
Not this again!
He stood still, eyes
darting left and right, poised to flee. It had been much louder
this time, as if the animal lurked distressingly close. He’d
thought he heard the same sound on this hill already, then he’d
even
dreamed
the sound, hadn’t he? He knew that he could
not
be mistaken this time.

Careful. Don’t look at its eyes…

His vision pored over the high weeds and
tangles of bushes, but in just a few moments, again, he could
discern that there was no dog. Next, he walked around the brush for
a closer inspection, then found what he’d found previously:
nothing. No dog.

What the hell?

Was he hearing things? There had to be some
reasonable explanation. Perhaps some other hotel guest was walking
their dog, and it happened to snarl along another trail. The idea
seemed like an absurd excuse, given the snarl’s tonality but—

All right. Enough. There’s no dog this time,
either.

Fanshawe took a final glance at the
senseless pedestal and globe, chuckled at this next mishap of
hearing a dog that wasn’t there, then turned to continue through
the trails, when—

The skin of his face seemed to tighten like
shrink wrap, while every tendon and muscle in his body turned taut
as stretched wires. This fright doubled that of the imaginary
dog-snarl, and he broke into a sprint at this next sound that had
caught him so unawares.

There could be no mistake, nor any idle
explanation.

What he’d heard was this: a long, high,
blood-curdling scream, indisputably that of a woman…

(III)

Fanshawe thought of a plum with its skin
chewed off.

A half hour after he’d heard the scream, the
manic scene that he’d rushed into became a circumstance that could
only be described as funereal. The ambience here seemed to leech
power from multiple sets of throbbing red and blue lights. A crowd
had formed quickly; the scream had been so shrill it was heard even
by those even at the fringe of town. Blanch-faced EMTs were
preparing the gurney, while an equally blanched coroner stood
aside, signing papers on a clipboard. Several county police
officers kept the crowd back; others were cordoning the perimeter,
and in the center of all the activity stood a tall, fiftyish county
captain who was trying but not quite succeeding in looking stoic.
Silence, and a semi-tangible
grimness,
had settled over
everything. Clearly, events such as this never occurred in an area
such as Haver-Towne.

Fanshawe’s knees still wobbled from the
sight.

“Well, jumpin’ Jesus, I just can’t believe
this,” Mr. Baxter muttered next to Fanshawe. “Of all the
crazy
things to happen.”

“I still can’t quite believe it myself,”
Fanshawe said. The aftermath left his throat dry as old leaves. “It
seemed more like a dream.”

“So it was you who stumbled onto him?”

Fanshawe shook his head and pointed to the
pair of joggers who now looked winded not from exertion but shock.
One stood by wide-eyed while the other nervously recited details to
a scribbling police officer. “Those two, they were jogging the
trails.”

“Aw, yeah. They been here for the convention
last couple of years—associate professors I think they are. And
what a thing for a couple of gals to run into…”

And run into it they had, literally.
Fanshawe had followed the scream to a lower hillock. Evidently the
woman in the lead, the bustier of the two, had tripped over some
object just protruding from the high grasses that walled the trail.
It was her friend who’d seen it and screamed. Fanshawe had arrived
just as the first woman’s eyes were rolling back in her head—then
she’d fainted.

The obstruction had been a man’s head and
shoulders, the rest of the body still concealed in the brush.

Fanshawe had called 911, then helped revive
the unconscious jogger. But the image of that victim lying in the
brush seemed to sink into his brain like a stone in watery silt,
that man…

No details could be made of the man’s face,
for he no longer
had
a face. What sat instead upon those
shoulders was little more than a skull stripped raggedly of most of
its flesh. The majority of neck muscles were gone as well, as if
torn away. Only mere scraps of blood-mucked skin remained. Ears,
nose, lips?

Gone.

The eyeballs were intact, but lidless,
transforming what had once been the man’s visage into a grinning,
staring mask.

Upon seeing this, Fanshawe’s mind swam in a
hot panic, fragments of thoughts bursting through. Murder? He
doubted it. An animal attack seemed most likely. But if it were the
former, couldn’t the perpetrator still be near? The jogger’s
ceaseless, whistle-like screams only shattered more of Fanshawe’s
concentration. What kind of an accident could account for
this?
And if the victim had indeed been savaged by a wild
animal, why was his coffee-brown suit untorn, and his hands
untouched? These and other questions only had time to half-solidify
in Fanshawe’s mind. When the second woman had finally stopped
screaming, the three of them could only stare open-mouthed at one
another. Several police cars and an ambulance showed up sometime
later, using the GPS on Fanshawe’s cellphone.

Fanshawe shuffled his feet as he stood with
Mr. Baxter. Baxter seemed disconcerted by something more than the
presence of the corpse.
What’s he got cooking in his head?
Fanshawe wondered but didn’t feel he knew the man well enough to
ask. Eventually, the police had finished questioning the joggers;
they walked shakily back toward town.
My turn,
 Fanshawe
realized. The questioning officer approached, his eyes hidden
behind mirrored sunglasses in which Fanshawe saw his own face. The
county captain came over, too.

Fanshawe felt interrogated. He explained his
presence on the trails along with his chronological observations
once he’d heard the scream, and answered rather typical if not
irrelevant questions. Then came questions like: “Can you remember
seeing anyone here or in town who struck you as suspicious?” and
“Do you recall seeing a man dressed similarly to the decedent at
any time today?” and “Did you notice any
things—
articles of
clothing, for instance, disturbances in the brush, money, credit
cards—while you were out here today?” to which Fanshawe answered in
the negative. But then the captain, who seemed self-reflective,
interrupted, “Oh, so
that’s
why your name’s ringing a bell.
You’re one of those finance geniuses I’ve seen on TV.”

Fanshawe knew the comment was incidental yet
still his paranoia construed something smart-alecky about it. “I’m
semi-retired now,” was all he said, but was surprised a particular
question hadn’t been asked. “I did happen to
hear
something
out of place—I mean, I
think
I heard something.”

“What’s that, sir?” asked the cop with the
clipboard.

“A dog growling, a large one by the sound of
it. I suppose it could have been a wolf.”

The captain shrugged. Was he repressing a
smile? “There’s been no wolves here in ages,” and with that the man
didn’t seem interested in the least.

“I just thought I’d mention it; this does
look like it could be a wild animal attack.”

“A wild animal wouldn’t likely snatch a
man’s wallet,” the captain enlightened, then the cop added, “No
change in the victim’s pockets, either, no pens, no handkerchief,
no keys…”

Fanshawe contemplated the surprising
information.

As if to change the subject, “In town long,
Mr. Fanshawe?” the captain asked. It seemed intimidating the way he
crossed his arms.

“I’ve been here two days but may be staying
several weeks or even months. Not sure yet. I’m kind of …on
vacation.”

The captain’s brow jigged. “Kind of?” but
then the officer caught himself. “I’m sorry, Mr. Fanshawe. Vacation
or not, it’s none of my business—”

Good, because you don’t WANT to know why
I’m really here,
Fanshawe thought.

“—but it’s our conclusion that this man
here”—he took a grim glance to the now covered corpse—”is a
homicide victim.”

“It would seem so. No wallet, no keys,”
Fanshawe said, confused.

“Just want you to know it’s a pleasure to
have someone of your influence staying here in Haver-Towne,” came
the captain’s next odd remark. Now he seemed not to be aware that a
dead man was in proximity. “Sorry a nasty thing like this had to
happen. What I hope you can understand, sir, is there hasn’t been a
murder here in, well, since way back when. Right, Mr. B?”

“Not since Colonial times,” Baxter
accentuated, but then that discreetly troubled look grew more
pronounced.

“Something wrong, Mr. B? Looks like you got
something on your mind.”

“Aw, yeah…” Baxter glanced again to the
covered corpse—the facial region of which was revealing blood spots
through the white fabric. “Aw, damn, captain. I guess I could be
wrong here, but I don’t think so. See, I think I know who this man
is…”

—
| — | —

CHAPTER FIVE

(I)

Fanshawe heard the entire speculation twice,
first as Baxter recited it to the police, then again when he walked
back to town with the man.

“Eldred Karswell,” Fanshawe repeated.
That’s some name.
“So
he’s
the man who booked my room
before I arrived?”

“Yeah. That was
definitely
the same
suit he was wearing last time I saw him. Don’t see many brown suits
nowadays, do you?”

“No, I guess not.”

“Don’t know anything about the guy ’cept
that he had money and seemed like a nice fella. A bit stiff,
but…nice.”

“How old do you think he was?”

“Sixty, sixty-five, he looked. Always
dressed good too, kind of like you.”

Fanshawe didn’t like the portent of being
compared to a dead man. “Retired?”

Baxter looked up. “Didn’t say, but he struck
me as a history buff. Asked to look at some old books at the
inn.”

Well,
Fanshawe thought.
The
history buff is now history himself.

But Baxter seemed agitated, as though he’d
done something wrong. “Damn, I guess I should’ve notified the cops
when Karswell never came back to the hotel that night, but,
hell…”

“You couldn’t have known. He was a guest,
that’s all. How could you know that he didn’t go to visit a nearby
town, or maybe had some friends stop by and go somewhere else. He’d
already booked the room.”

“Right, for seven days, and six of ’em were
already up when he disappeared.” Baxter’s face crinkled. “Just
don’t like the sound of that.
Disappeared.
”

Now, he’s RE-appeared…
“If you’d
reported him as missing, the police wouldn’t have done anything
about it anyway. Enough time hadn’t passed.”

“Right. And what else could I do? He doesn’t
show up on the last day he’s booked, and then you arrive for an
indefinite time, so…I moved Karswell’s stuff out and gave you the
room ’cos it’s the one you wanted in the first place.”

It was
between
Baxter’s words that
Fanshawe got the gist.
Now matter how much money this Karswell
man is worth, I’m worth more. He bumped Karswell for a more
lucrative customer, just like airlines bump discount passengers for
people who’ll pay more. Happens every day.

“Like you said,” Baxter continued, wringing
his hands. “I thought he went someplace else for his last night,
with a friend or something. He left his car, left his belongings
and his suitcase, even left his keys.”

“Oh, the Cadillac I noticed parked behind
the inn— That’s his, I suppose.”

“Right. I moved it myself, then put his
suitcase in the trunk. The cops probably think I’m some kind of a
dunderhead. Man leaves his car, his keys, and I don’t do a
thing…”