Fire Raiser Read online

  “Calvary was the pulpit,” she reminded him. “That’s psychologically suggestive, isn’t it?”

  He shook his head. “The whacko type can’t help it—they leave clues whether they want to or not. This isn’t even somebody trying to mess with our heads by pretending to be a psychopath. Significant dates, same day of the week, same phase of the moon, all that fun-and-games serial-killer stuff they love to do in the movies.”

  “Was there gas in the paint can?”

  “Wasn’t paint.” He took a long swig of coffee and looked startled. “Gerdie musta cleaned out the percolator—this is actually drinkable.”

  “Not paint?” she asked, to bring him back to the point.

  “Varnish. Jamey recognized what’s left of the logo—he spent most of last month sloshing the same stuff all over the bookshelves at his place. Before you ask, it’s a common brand, and we can trace the lot number punched onto the can but that only tells us where it was purchased, not when or by who.” He held up a finger. “Don’t say it. ‘By whom.’ ”

  “Hey, Evan!”

  They both turned to see Jamey approaching. He really was scandalously gorgeous, Holly reflected. If he had this effect on a woman insanely in love with her husband, what havoc did he wreak when he was actually trying to attract someone?

  Evan nudged her in the ribs. “Stick your eyes back in their sockets,” he murmured, laughter rippling through his voice. “You’re took.”

  “Looking isn’t against the law.”

  “Well, at least stop drooling. It’s undignified for a woman of your years, social standing, and reputation.”

  She was vastly tempted to stick out her tongue at him, but Jamey had reached the SUV by then. “Whatcha got?” she asked, passing over a turkey and swiss.

  “Thanks, Holly. I’ve got absolutely nothing. I was hoping more than that can of varnish would be lying around, waiting for us to find it.”

  Evan shook his head. “Nope. No footprints, no tire tracks, no torn fabric conveniently flapping on a tree branch.” He set aside the rest of the sandwich and scowled at the charred rubble of wood and brick that had been a church. “I’m not liking this, Jamey. Third church fire, no evidence at any of them.”

  Holly touched his arm lightly. “Gib pointed out that they’ve all been Baptist churches.”

  He shrugged. “More Baptists around here than any other denomination. We’ve got one each of Catholic, Episcopal, Mormon, AME, Lutheran, and Methodist, plus a synagogue that draws from the Tri-County area. And before you ask—none of these churches were exclusively white or black. It’s possible this is religious prejudice, but I think we can rule out racism.”

  “You’re forgetting where you live now,” Holly said quietly.

  “This is the South,” Jamey nodded. “Lacking a solid case contrariwise, racism can never be ruled out.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Evan admitted. “That was wishful thinking on my part. But now that you’ve mentioned it, there’s not a square mile in this whole country where bigotry of one kind or another can be ruled out. After all, it’s the Constitutional right of every American to hate.”

  “And the least American thing any American can do is tell another American to shut up.”

  Holly shifted impatiently. “Now that we’ve established our liberal credentials by reaffirming our belief that everyone in these United States has the right to be a moron, can we please get back to the point? You don’t have any evidence. You don’t even have any guesswork. The only thing remotely resembling a pattern is that all three churches were Baptist—but not even the same kind of Baptist. How am I doing so far?”

  “How would you write your way out of it?” Evan countered.

  “You know I’m hopeless at mysteries.”

  “Yeah,” he said with a smile, “but you make up for it in other ways.”

  Jamey grinned. “Am I about to be embarrassed by a PDA?”

  “Nothing so decorous,” Holly said sweetly. “With him, it’s always PDL.” When Jamey looked confused, she elaborated. “Public Display of Lust.”

  “You should be so lucky,” Evan shot back. “Go see if Louvena can find anything in the archives.” He bent and kissed her soundly on the lips. “Thanks for lunch.”

  By the time she got back to town, she had consulted via phone with Cousin Louvena Cox, and they had devised a plan. Louvena shut the Pocahontas County Record’s back office, told the front desk staffers she didn’t want to be disturbed, and locked herself and Holly in the archives room.

  “Y’all ready?”

  “Say the word,” Holly replied cheekily, and the old woman made a face.

  “Cute don’t get you nowhere with me,” she warned.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Holly answered, properly subdued. Cousin Louvena could do that to a person with one twitch of emphatic eyebrows. She belonged to what was discreetly termed a “collateral” branch of the Coxes—which meant she was a descendant of Ezekiel Cox and his slave mistress of thirty-two years, Jubilee. That he had insisted on acknowledging his children, giving them his surname, and teaching them to read and write in defiance of the law didn’t begin to compensate for the fact that he hadn’t freed a single one of them.

  Evan had a lot of trouble with local history, and especially Holly’s family’s role in it. That first spring at Woodhush, he’d returned from a long walk around the property completely unable to believe what he’d seen about a half mile from the main house: the splintered wooden markers of the slave cemetery and the bare river-rock foundations of the slave cabins. Holly hadn’t exactly forgotten that the evidence was there, but it wasn’t something she thought about much, either. Nobody ever understood anything about slavery until they stood looking at its physical remnants, the scars it had left on the land that attested to society’s still-open wound. That afternoon, watching her husband pace and seethe, Holly had realized she’d stopped seeing what had to be seen. And her parents would have been as ashamed of her as she was of herself.

  The extended McClure-Flynn-Cox-McNichol-Bellew-Goare-and-so-on clan had a blotchy record: most had owned slaves at one time or another, some had freed all or some of them in the decades before the Civil War. The only thing entirely in their favor, as far as Holly was concerned, was that not one of her ancestors had fought for the Confederacy. She supposed that was something, anyway. Not much, but something.

  It was surmised within the family that Louvena’s slave ancestor had bequeathed her progeny an African magic totally unlike the Celtic strain. Certainly no one not descended from Jubilee could do what her great-great-great-granddaughter now did with nothing more than a shell, a square of silk, two candles, and a pinch of what looked like plain grayish dust.

  A large abalone shell, its iridescence shimmering by candlelight, was balanced on a glass stand atop brown silk. Drops of light shone through the holes punctuating the shell, shifting as Louvena switched the candle slowly back and forth, left hand to right and back again. Holly watched, fascinated, chiding herself for the many years she had spent paying as little attention as possible to other people’s magic simply because she had so little of her own. There was beguilement and grace, and sometimes great beauty, in the act of magic—but even more in observing each individual practitioner. The particular tilt of the head, the sure gestures of the fingers, the melodies of whispered phrases, the eyes that might haze over with the intensity of concentration or burn with clear, fierce power—though she had never felt herself to be fully one of them, and probably never would, still she could appreciate and savor their gifts and their expertise, and watch with a smile the individual quirks and flairs.

  Louvena was not the sort of ostentatious Witch who not only enjoyed but positively cherished her own cleverness—and wanted everyone who witnessed it to be as enamored as she was. Deliberate, almost businesslike in her work, she went about her spellcasting in near silence until a snap of her fingers startled Holly.

  Her turn. She pricked her index finger, squeezed up a drop of blood, and painte
d it on the interior of the shell as Louvena directed: a slow five-pointed star. Stepping back, she watched the old woman sprinkle fine gray-brown dust across the inner curve of the abalone. Holly wondered distractedly how many hundreds of dead spiders had been ground up to produce this powder—then flinched again when Louvena turned the shell over and slammed it onto the brown silk, almost forcefully enough to break it.

  A tall, thin candle, colored gold outside and red at its heart, was lit from the wick of the first. A moment’s burning of its end melted enough wax to affix it to the overturned shell. Holly had never seen a candle burn so quickly, the wax sliding down in a steady stream. No impertinent drafts disturbed the flame or pushed the melting wax to one side or the other. Soon it had burned down to a mere inch or so, and the shell was swathed in red and gold wax.

  Louvena blew the candle out. Carefully, she lifted the abalone from the silk and set it aside. Then, with exquisite delicacy, she pinched one corner of the cloth between thumb and forefinger and peeled it from the table.

  Holly was amazed to see that the underside of the brown silk was printed with black letters and numbers—and that the heat from the melted wax had seeped through the shell to liquefy some of her own dust-thickened blood. This had left tiny marks on the silk: letters and numbers. Months and years.

  “Spider-crush,” Louvena remarked, “works different ways. What I was after here was the web between past and future. The pattern. The shell and the brown are good for finding things. Red and gold are Fire, of course.”

  Holly nodded mutely. No, she would never feel herself one of them—but she had at least developed enough wisdom to appreciate her fellow Witches.

  Now Louvena’s face creased in a shrewd, wonderfully youthful smile, and from a pocket of her skirt produced an unlikely implement. Holly felt her eyes go wide, and couldn’t help grinning as she asked, “You like doing that, don’t you?”

  “Oh, yes.” Louvena chuckled as she uncapped the Magic Marker. “Here—take that steno pad and start writing down what I tell you.”

  Four

  ON THE SUNDAY EVENING drive to Westmoreland, Evan checked in with his office, speaking briefly with the deputy on duty about the day’s events. Whenever he thought back to his days as a beat cop in New York, he wondered yet again how the hell his father had done it: year in, year out, robberies and rapes and assaults and murders, every single day. His old man had ended up with a worn-out heart, an alcoholic wife, and two kids who’d fled as soon as legally and financially possible. As Evan listened to Luther run through the list of towns and villages in the county—with nada, zip, nuthin’, or zilch after each one—he tried to imagine his father out here in rural Virginia. Something between a laugh and a cough thickened his throat for a moment.

  “Sheriff?”

  “Yeah, Luther. Gotcha. Anything comes up in the next few hours, I’m at Westmoreland for the thing.”

  “Have fun.”

  “Yeah. That’s gonna happen.” He pocketed his cell and drove through the open gates of the Westmoreland Inn, where a sign advised him in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, and Arabic that he was warmly welcomed and that to assure the serenity of the establishment, all guests will please to turn off their cell phones and other electronic devices. (The little hiccup in English grammar was, Evan assumed, deliberate—one of those “charming” mistakes Europeans made that would emphasize the international flavor of the place—for surely Bernhardt Weiss could afford a competent translator.) The sign went on to explain that should any calls be anticipated during his visit, all he need do was leave the phone at the front desk of the Inn or the Spa and messages would be taken. Naturally, in an emergency, he would be contacted at once. Thanking you for your cooperation and have a wonderful stay at The Westmoreland Inn.

  “Absolutely. Just wunderbar,” Evan muttered, braking gently as he caught up with the line of cars waiting to be parked. Something in him that persisted in finding this place creepy wanted to use his status to jump the line, swerve off the gravel, and park right in the middle of the pristine expanse of green lawn. He contented himself with the fact that valets did not park the sheriff’s car. Ever. They could point him a place to pull in—with easy access out—but they weren’t touching this vehicle any more than they would Holly’s BMW, even though the Beemer wasn’t the one with the shotgun under the front seat and the locked ammo box on the floor.

  As he waited, he wondered yet again what it was about this place that he just plain didn’t like. It was pretty enough, no different on the outside from a hundred other restored antebellum residences throughout the South, with its white columns, wraparound verandah, and grounds landscaped with flowers. Across half the south side of the main building was a ballroom with a thirty-foot oak bar displaying every variety of liquor in the known universe. This May the high schools of three counties had merged their proms into one huge party that was counted an awesome success—even if the bar had been denuded of everything but soft drinks and fruit juice.

  Out back, invisible from the driveway, were two other buildings that housed offices, a conference room, and dining and dorm rooms for the staff. These had been constructed from salvage of the old stable and barn. Remembering what it had taken to refurbish the house Lulah now lived in, Evan couldn’t help but be impressed by Westmoreland.

  But that still didn’t keep him from thinking it was a peculiar place.

  One of the boys on valet parking duty waved him to a spot that had been kept especially for him. He knew this because there were RESERVED signs on wooden stakes in the prime spots, and one of them had SHERIFF on it. Other dignitaries who rated good parking included the mayors or town managers of Flynton, Silver Rock, Azalea, and Prince Rupert. Lachlan slid the SUV into the space indicated, switched off the ignition, leaned his head back for a moment, and wished he could go home to a quiet evening with his wife and kids.

  And wondered suddenly if his father had ever wished for the same thing.

  “Sheriff Lachlan!”

  “Show time,” he muttered, and pasted a smile on his face as he opened the door and got out to greet Elliott Rausche, a local judge who had not appreciated his sheriff’s department being taken over by a former big-city United States deputy marshal. Jesse McNichol had been sheriff for so long that everyone in the county knew what got you ticketed, what got you a night in jail, and what got you prosecuted. Evan had a different perspective on, for instance, drunk driving. No warnings. Instantaneous arrest. Add this kind of adjustment to the hiring of a new district attorney who didn’t believe in plea bargains, and the criminal justice system of Pocahontas County got itself shaken up for the first time in approximately twenty-five years. What all this meant, of course, was that the two judges were at the bench eighteen days a month instead of nine. Judge Schaefer didn’t much mind; he was recently divorced and just as glad to throw himself even more single-mindedly into the work that had precipitated his marital problems in the first place. But Judge Rausche’s golf game had appreciably suffered. So whenever he could, he caused the sheriff and the district attorney to suffer accordingly.

  Evan knew exactly what lecture he was about to get. Last week Jamey Stirling had won a significant victory in Rausche’s courtroom, quite literally piling up enough damning evidence (gathered by Evan’s department) to make lengthy prison sentences inevitable. All thirty-six kilos of crystal meth were stacked on a table before the jury; all forty-nine padded envelopes, addressed and bearing proper postage, were heaped beside them; all one hundred and forty-two color glossy photographs of various members of the Burker clan cooking, packing, transporting, and/or distributing were displayed. Jamey brought in the receipts for purchased chemicals, the tubs where the meth was stored, the crates and shoeboxes neatly labeled with names and locations of deliveries, and if he could have gotten the rickety old Ford pickup used for distributing into the courtroom, he would have done it. “Overwhelming” had only started there. And it had pissed off Judge Rausche.

  As His
Honor approached across the driveway, leaving his wife and daughters to climb the portico steps, Evan figured he was about to be told exactly why Rausche wasn’t happy.

  He was right.

  “Y’all gotta understand somethin’, Sheriff,” began the judge without preamble. “That crystal stuff, it’s worse than moonshining, no argument on that. But it’s a principle we need to deal with here. We been lookin’ the other way on this kind of thing for at least three hundred years. Ain’t no big-city cop or prosecutor gonna come in and tell us what’s what.”

  “Look in any direction you want,” Evan replied. “Half that shit was labeled for delivery to middle schools in two counties.”

  Rausche stuck a finger into Lachlan’s face. “What you made me do, you with your evidence—which took days to process and inventory, by the way, and hours to present in court, and that’s not a productive use of county taxpayers’ time—you painted me into a corner. I don’t like that. It interferes with my judicial discretion. A little less evidence, fewer charges—that Stirling boy, he really knows how to pile on the counts, doesn’t he? Chargin’ for every piss they took off the side of the road onto some damned protected wildlife refuge! Your way, I had no choice in sentencing.”

  Lachlan gritted his teeth. “Let’s see if I’ve got this right. If I’d provided only a kilo of meth for evidence, and Jamey Stirling had prosecuted on only a few counts, you could have slapped their wrists, told them not to do it again, and sent ’em home to cook up more.”

  “I don’t much like your tone, boy.”

  Lachlan wondered if the man knew what a ludicrous cliché of a Southern judge he was, then remembered what Jesse had told him before his first time testifying in Rausche’s courtroom. “Short, sweet, to the point. Don’t use any big words, and remember that the judge he replaced was worse. We keep an eye on him.” The trouble was that Witchly ethics prohibited magical interference with the process of the law. Even if every Witch in the county kept an eye on him, when he sat his ass in his chair, as far as the judicial system was concerned he was one rung down from God.