32 #2
“I’ve seen photos of the crime scene. Trust me, I would’ve noticed. For all I knew, the family had gone to the grocery store, or off to the diner for breakfast. Power had yet to be restored. Plenty of reasons for people to be out and about.”
Mandy frowned. Except if the Dixons had simply headed into town, where were the eyewitnesses? Let alone their vehicle had never been captured on any of the ensuing video camera searches.
Meaning they’d gone somewhere else? Maybe…up to the cave? Where whatever happened had happened. And then…
A female had run around the house with bloody feet. Or her father had stamped the floor with the imprint of a woman’s foot, transferring his own DNA in the process?
Nothing about this made any sense.
“You never found the journal.” Raquel spoke up, having been quiet thus far. “And Janet never mentioned anything about encoded messages?”
“Encoded messages? The missing chest of currency! I knew it!”
“No lost treasure,” Raquel stated flatly. “Just local women complaining of disturbing nightmares involving dancing demons and flickering flames. Five accounts, each belonging to a mother whose infant died within twenty-four hours. The same births we couldn’t match with existing records.”
“In each case,” Betty supplied, “the women claimed their babies weren’t their own, but children of Satan.”
“I don’t understand,” Mason began.
“Satanic cult,” Theo stated. “What if the men in the town, maybe, say, men of power and prestige, were drugging and raping these women? Except then the women started remembering and talking. Then something had to be done.”
“But…but…surely that’s preposterous!”
Mandy gave the historian a look. “Satanic cult might be a stretch. But organized sex trafficking? Among the elite? Sound familiar to anyone? Though I still don’t completely understand.
For starters, we’re really thinking men?
As in plural? Because that’s pretty involved.
And why target wives, versus, say, young women, who’d be more vulnerable? ”
“I think men,” Raquel spoke up, “because all the entries are plural. Demons. Devils. What the women report is consistent along those lines, plus the images they relate. Flames dancing upon walls, a dark stone. Sounds ritualistic in nature, maybe taking place in a basement, or a cave?”
“As for the choice of victims,” Betty offered, “young girls would be too risky. An unmarried woman who was suddenly pregnant would be subject to a great deal of scrutiny, and while one poor female could be shamed into silence, five unmarried daughters? That would create panic, not to mention a demand for justice, if not vengeance. Married women on the other hand wouldn’t call any attention.
And, well, based on other major cases we’ve seen in the news recently, it’s possible their husbands were in on it as well.
Apparently drugging one’s wife for another man’s pleasure can be a seriously disturbed fetish for some. ”
“And the babies?” Theo asked roughly.
No one had an immediate answer for that, though Mandy already had several ideas on the subject, from the distressed mothers seeking to distance themselves from the evidence of their victimization, to the knowing husbands not wanting to raise another man’s child.
Though Theo’s comment was also stuck uncomfortably in her head.
“In one of the last entries,” Raquel murmured now, “the midwife said she was going to consult with Samuel Dixon. She seemed to think he’d know what to do.”
Mason almost immediately harrumphed. “Please. If something that…distasteful…was happening, Samuel Dixon was almost certainly part of it. Based on all accounts, the man was quite ruthless. One doesn’t clear these lands and survive these winters without a great deal of merciless determination.
Add to that, the remains were found in a well on Dixon lands… ”
“Oh dear.” Betty appeared genuinely distressed. “That poor woman. She tried to seek help, and probably sealed her fate instead. Poor, poor Rita Louise Light.”
“But what does it all mean?” Mandy shook her head.
“Over two hundred years ago, something terrible happened. The perpetrators covered their tracks by accusing a young woman of witchcraft, then sealed her in a well with evidence of the crime and the bones of at least one infant. Which they happened to have lying around?”
“Satanic cult,” Theo repeated.
“Which brings us to…a record of a centuries-old crime leading to a decades-old family disappearance?” Mandy already didn’t buy it. Looking around the room, she could tell the others didn’t, either.
Betty put it most succinctly: “Who would still care after all this time? Even if one of my own great-greats was involved…shame on them, not shame on me. No one should be held accountable for horrors committed by their elders.” The older woman gave Raquel a sympathetic look.
“Let alone so many generations removed.”
“Can I see the journal?” Mason asked, his gaze going longingly to the mangled volume.
“The one you tried to steal last night?” Raquel asked him coldly.
“I would never…Oh, fine. But I never would’ve hurt anyone. I just wanted the diary. If that dog hadn’t been such a menace.” Mason had the audacity to glare at Mr. Man, who gave him the stink-eye in return. “Besides, you can hardly accuse me of stealing something that’s already stolen.”
“Breaking and entering. Assault and battery.” Mandy ticked them off. She gestured in Raquel’s direction. “She has grounds to press charges against you on both.”
“How about…you keep the journal till end of day, and we’ll consider this whole matter resolved?”
“She’ll keep the journal for as long as she pleases.” Theo already negotiating.
“One week,” Mason countered.
“One month.”
Raquel held up a hand to silence both men. “Two weeks. Then yes, we’ll consider the matter resolved.”
Mason relented with a terse nod, though he continued to eye the diary from across the room. “You’re sure, you’re absolutely certain there’s no mention of Continental currency, missing treasure, anything?”
“I’m positive.”
Betty patted the old man’s hand. “Face it, dear, the witch in the well nursery rhyme is actually about a witch in a well.”
Mason shook his head, as if who would’ve thought.
Mandy glanced outside, where the snow was now starting to fall in earnest. A quick check of her phone revealed a text from forensic anthro Debs saying they were packing it in for now.
All these years later, what was another afternoon or two’s delay, but Mandy was feeling hinky on the subject. Too much happening too fast, and none of it making sense.
On cue, her phone lit up with the first of probably many calls from one of her officers, now that the weather was hitting in earnest.
“Ah, Chief, we need you at the town hall briefing,” Sandford stated.
Shit. It was already two o’clock. Mason appeared equally jolted by the time.
“On my way. Good news, Mason’s here with me, so let’s face it, meeting’s not gonna start on time.”
“Actually…we have a bit of a situation.”
“Define.”
“Austin’s here.”
“Austin’s the fire chief. Of course he’s there.”
“He’s uh…He appears intoxicated. And, Chief, he’s armed with a shotgun.”