CHAPTER I
She picks her way through Salem, slowly and carefully. She’s been doing this for the last two days. The Salem that she knew is still there somewhere, buried, hidden around corners. Occulted. She walks the almost-familiar streets, feeling her way as she goes.
She returns to the place where her name is carved in stone, memory drawing her back to this place again and again. She traces the carvings with her fingers. The lines are sharp and the stone is cold and rough. Someone has left flowers and pennies, small tokens and remembrances; the flowers weren’t here yesterday, but the pennies were. She reaches into the front pocket of her bright, red hoodie for a poppet and places the little figure there, brushing some of the coins out of the way as she does so. The poppet, made of coarse green cloth, with twine around its neck and waist and limbs, has no face; it falls over and she has to stand it back up twice.
Shadows slant across the low granite walls as the sun sets, falling on the stones dedicated to twenty souls, condemned centuries ago. She runs her fingers across her stone again. The stone is still cold.
She’s not sure how long she’s been there when she hears a voice next to her, and she half-turns, half-gasps, eyes snapping wide. A fat man in a black t-shirt stands a few feet away, sipping iced coffee from a Styrofoam cup. A skinny blonde woman is with him, looking bored, checking her phone.
“Bridget Bishop,” the man is standing near and look past her to read the stone. “Hanged, June 10, 1692. Lookit the shit people leave here.” He slurps his coffee loudly and adds, “Shit. There’s what – ten-eleven cents there?” He looks around at the other stones jutting from the granite walls. “Probably a couple bucks here altogether, then.”
“I’m hungry,” the blonde woman complains. “My feet hurt.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“And I hafta pee.”
Another deep breath. She flips up her bright red hood and turns away, eyes to the ground, not looking at the two newcomers, the only other people she has seen in this place.
She starts to feel the noose again. The noose that’s been haunting her for so long, the noose that tightens and loosens, only to tighten again. Sometimes she forgets it’s there, but it never lets her forget for long. Deep breaths, closed eyes.
She glances back to make sure the fat man and the skinny woman aren’t following her. The man is moving from stone to stone, picking up the coins.
“Stop it,” the woman shrills. “That’s probably bad luck or something. They’re probably fucking cursed!”
***
The restaurant looms on her old land, a seafood place called Turner’s, the name emblazoned on the broad windows. Her old tavern used to be here, with the apple orchard out back. Her tap room was always loud and smoky as the menfolk drank and laughed and played at shuffle-board. Occasionally, some outraged goodwife would storm in to drag her errant man home. More laughter as he was hauled out the door, as the goodwife gave her a hard look, standing behind the bar in her scandalous red paragon bodice.
It had been crowded last night and she hadn’t gone in, but tonight it looks quieter. A couple of guys stand outside on the sidewalk, sleeves rolled up, ties pulled loose, smoking and looking up and down the street. She slips by them, hiding under her red hood, willing them not to see her. They don’t seem to notice her pass, but she can never be too sure.
Inside, low lighting, dim but not dark. Tin ceilings and a waiter reciting the specials. Couples at tables, and the velvet murmur of quiet conversation. Glasses and plates clink and soft music plays from somewhere. It’s cooler in here than out in the street. She can just faintly smell the apples, the smallest little whiff. She wonders briefly how many others can smell them. Maybe just her.
She crosses the room and shakes her hood back down, lets her dark hair fall around her face. She eases into a tall chair at the end of the nearly-empty bar, runs her fingers along the smooth surface. She scans the menu. There’s mac-and-cheese, and she smiles. Comfort food for an uncomfortable time. She orders a bowl, and she orders a Coke. She’ll won’t be twenty-one for another few days. Another six days. The bartender sets the glass down and smiles and seems to forget she’s even there.
“Well hello there.” Suddenly there’s a guy standing next to her, beer in his hand and beer on his breath. One of the guys who was outside smoking a few minutes ago. “You from around here? I don’t think I remember seeing you before.”
She shakes her head and whispers, “No ….”
“Well, maybe I can show you around,” he says. He puts his hand on the back of her chair, hemming her in, and gestures to her drink on the bar. “That a rum and Coke? You want another?”
She knows he can’t smell the apples here.
“No.”
“Okay, well … what’s your name?”
She hesitates for just a second, trying to decide the best thing to do. Then he slides off the barstool and pushes past him, pushes past the waitress bringing her the steaming bowl of mac-and-cheese. She half-runs for the door. She hears the guy mutter “Whoa. Bitch,” as she goes.
Out the door and onto the sidewalk. Deep breaths in the warm night. It’s getting dark. It’s quiet and she’s alone out here.
She has to be careful. She needs to pay attention. She can still feel the noose. She can’t let it happen a second time. Can’t let them get her again.
She puts a faceless green poppet in the potted plant outside the door. She tucks the little figure deep down into the branches where it won’t be seen, but she’ll know it’s there, outside her old tavern. On her old land.
She crosses the big flat parking lot, threading her way through the rows of cars, leaving her old tavern behind her. She can’t take her eyes from the building looming opposite, the implacably modern building, all brick and beige, drawing her. All she can hear is her own footsteps, her own breath.
It’s not the same building, but she remembers what was here before, within sight of her old tavern. It was the old gaol. Long days here, red paragon bodice gray with sweat and dirt, days in the dark, kept awake by the cries of the accused and the abandoned … I am innocent, God knows. Telling them what they want to hear. Telling them anything to keep from being dragged out to a rocky hill on the edge of town in a cart.
She shakes the thoughts away. Deep breaths, closed eyes. She takes out another poppet. She only has a few more days to get through.
She slowly approaches the building, mesmerized by its bulk rising in the bright summer night. It’s not the old gaol but it’s still strangely threatening,
There are people in the parking lot, a couple of shadows in the gloom. She doesn’t want them to see her.
She hears a voice. A shocked, angry voice, trying to shout but unable to.
She freezes, stuck. She can’t let them see get her. Can’t let them get her. Not again. But she can’t find her legs. All she can do is see two people struggling, two men, not far away. One falling now, one watching him fall.
But even from here, she can see the blood.
CHAPTER II
Andrew Lennox had two heads sitting on his desk in the back room, and now, taking a good look at them both he couldn’t decide which one he liked better.
Most cops had a second source of income. Two of them owned a bar together, another was silent partner in a pizza place. Some of them just worked as much overtime or picked up as many private details as they could. Shortly after moving to Salem with his family nine years ago, Lennox had decided to open a tourist attraction. The Black Museum was the only true crime museum in town, standing out among the haunted houses and witch-kitsch places around downtown. There were dozens of life-sized displays depicting infamous culprits and their crimes, assembled piece by piece on nights and weekends and days off. The displays had gotten more elaborate and more expensive as time went on, and there was always something to do, there were always repairs and upgrades and little changes.
Like swapping out one of the heads in the front window display for a new one.
The old head had been up for years, glowering at passers-by with a cruel, lopsided expression. He had never quite made up his mind who it was supposed to be, it was just another face in the rogues’ gallery of the front window. But the sun had bleached the hair and discolored the cheeks and it was past time for a new one, even if part of him thought the sun damage made the head look even more interesting.
The new head had arrived today, a custom order, 3D printed by a special effects company in Philadelphia. A long, thin face with hollow cheeks and an unforgiving sneer. The polyester hair was straight and black and swept back over the high, pale forehead; according to the company’s website, the hair on their figures was placed one strand at a time.
It was a really nice piece, he thought. Damn well should be, given how much he had spent on it.
Almost too nice. He had found out over the years that the displays had to be good, but not too good. Tourists expected an attraction to be a little cheap, a little dusty and unkempt. If the figures were too high-quality, too polished and perfect, people were somehow strangely disappointed. He could never figure out why it worked that way, but it did.
He tucked the new head under one arm and walked through the main museum space, past Jack the Ripper and Lizzie Borden and Richard Crowninshield.
Outside the month of October, there was usually no need to have a full three-shift rotation in the Criminal Investigation Division at the station, ready to go out on a call. Most crimes could wait until eight o’clock in the morning. But even on a cloudy June night like this, things could happen overnight, and so he was on call until midnight. Three more hours. Enough time to change the heads and then move onto the next thing on his to-do list.
The Black Museum always seemed quieter to him than anywhere else. There was a stillness he only found here. The only sound was his radio quietly squawking in the lobby. In his first few months on the job, he had slowly learned to tune out whatever chatter there was on the radio that he didn’t need to pay attention to, that didn’t involve him. But part of him always listened for his name to be called, whatever else he might be doing.
He stepped over the low railing behind the ticket counter and up into the front window. The half-dozen figures arranged here were washed in bright red and green lighting, showing a pair of old time cops arresting a couple of unsavory characters while concerned citizens looked on. It didn’t depict a particular crime. Maybe, he thought, it just represented crime in general. There was one headless figure, in back. He clicked the head into place, squaring it on the padded shoulders. He nudged it a few inches, making sure it was facing the right direction. He’d need to check it from the sidewalk. He carefully swung his legs back over the railing and went outside.
It was warm out, and fairly quiet, but it was only Monday. A young couple walking arm-in-arm dodged around him, laughing as they went. Someone else was walking a dog, another person was arguing on a cell phone. He could hear laughter and music coming from the bar across the street. An easy night. And a quiet night in June was better than a busy night in October.
He stepped back to look at his window. Yes, he could definitely use both heads. He just had to move the older one further back. He knew he had an extra threadbare coat and a dummy form in the back room.
A couple walking slowly by stopped to look at the window and smile. Two women. One was tall and a little heavy with short blonde hair, in jeans and a sweatshirt. The other was short and dark and slight, boots and a denim skirt. The taller woman had her arm around the other’s waist
“Are you open?” the taller woman asked.
“What?”
“Are you open?”
“No. No, we’re closed.” And he wondered for a moment who the “We” was supposed to be.
“We saw you in the window. Didn’t know what it was.”
“It’s a museum.”
“Museum?”
“Yeah. True crime museum.”
The shorter woman’s face brightened and she said, “Ooh! I love true crime stuff!”
“So, wait, like, no witch stuff?” the tall, blonde woman asked.
“Well, there’s a section about the witch trials, yeah, but only a little bit.” He hadn’t wanted to open just another attraction devoted to the witch trials, but that’s what people came to Salem for. And nineteen cases of judicial murder, he had reasoned, definitely counted as a crime, so he had set up a triptych of displays – accusation, trial, and execution. “It’s really all historic crimes.”
“So nothing moves?” He couldn’t tell is she was disappointed or not. “Nobody, like, jumps out or anything?”
“No, nothing moves. Nothing animatronic,” Lennox said. But the first October he had been open, one of his seasonal help ticket takers had insisted that the displays moved when she wasn’t looking. She only lasted a week.
“We went into this one place and somebody jumped out at her and I almost clocked the dude,” the tall woman said. “Just a kid in a rubber mask, you know, but still.”
“You don’t want to go punching people,” Lennox said. “Then the police have to get involved and nobody wants that.”
“You got Dahmer in there?” the dark-haired woman asked eagerly. “Like a mannequin of Dahmer? That’d be so cool.”
“No, sorry. He’s too recent. It’s all older cases.” He smiled. “Classics.”
She smiled and looked up at her girlfriend. The top of her head came to below the other woman’s shoulder. She squeezed her arm.
“Can we go in?” she asked, then turned back to Lennox. “Can we come in?”
“Um,” he began. “Well, we’re closed. We open tomorrow at nine.”
“Oh.” She looked down at the sidewalk.
Why not? he thought. It was just him and it was quiet and there was no harm in letting them in to look around for a few minutes. He still had plenty of time to kill.
“Well,” he said, “Okay. Maybe just for a few minutes. But I’m on call, so I might have to kick you out.”
“On call? You’re a doctor?”
“No, I’m a cop.”
He watched for their reaction. They just smiled.
“You’re a cop and you run a true crime museum?” the short woman gushed. “That’s so cool!”
He returned her smile, and didn’t tell her that his apartment was in a converted jail.
He led them into the lobby, through the entryway decorated with prop guns and knives and poison bottles, past the figure dressed in wrinkled prison stripes standing just inside the door. The women looked around and smiled. The dim red lighting in the lobby threw shadows across the resin walls painted to resemble blocks of stone. There was a skeleton shackled to the wall behind the ticket counter.
“Who’s that guy?”
The short woman smiled and pointed to a figure in the lobby, a tall man in a seventeenth-century ruff, brandishing a blunderbuss.
“That’s John Billington. Came over on the Mayflower in 1620, then in 1630 he shot and killed one of his neighbors. So … he’s the first murderer we have on record in the New World. They hanged him.” He shrugged. “Made sense to have him be the first display you see when you come in.”
“Wow,” she giggled. “Wow, this is really cool. But you said you don’t have Dahmer?”
“No. No Dahmer. Sorry.”
“How long did all this take?”
“Took a while,” he shrugged.
The shorter woman moved across the lobby, boots clicking on the floor as she went. The other woman looked over to Lennox and smiled.
“Thanks. She loves this kind of shit.”
“No problem.”
She had stopped to look at the stack of t-shirts when the radio, sitting on the ticket counter next to a cup of coffee that had gone cold half an hour ago, squawked and split the hush in the front lobby.
“Detective Lennox respond.”
He grabbed the radio. “Go for Lennox.”
“Respond
to a body at Church Street parking lot.”
The Church Street
lot was five minutes away at most. He could walk there as fast as he
could drive. And it was around the corner from his apartment
building. Literally around the corner.
“Sergeant Ouellette and support personnel already on scene,” the dispatcher added.
A body in a parking lot. That sounded like an overdose. Like yet another overdose. Opioids had hit Salem at least as hard as anywhere else, and sometimes it didn’t seem to matter how many doses of Narcan you carried.
“I gotta … take this.”
“Oh, shit. Okay, um, yeah.” The two women looked at each other awkwardly, not sure what else to say. “Yeah. Yeah, we can go.”
“Sorry.”
“Come back tomorrow,” he called as the women went out the door. Then he turned back to the radio.
“On my way. ETA, five minutes.”
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