here. He said that he wanted his son out of this horrible place. I helped him arrange for homeschooling.” A pencil suddenly snapped in her fingers. “Look, Mr. Hall, I did it as much for Malachi as I did for anyone. He was a sweet boy. I liked him, personally. But this is an understaffed facility, like most public venues of education. I couldn’t protect him all the time. He was going to get hurt. Like I said, children can be cruel. And, as we all know, they can be lethal, as well!”
“You just said that Malachi was a sweet boy. Do you really believe that he could have killed anyone?” Sam asked.
She looked away. He thought that she didn’t believe it herself.
But she was a woman without the strength of her own convictions. She’d never stand up for anyone if it was contrary to public opinion.
“What about Peter Andres?” Sam asked.
“What about him?” she asked nervously.
“He substituted here?”
She nodded. “And at other schools!” she said defensively.
“You know that Malachi is suspected of his murder?”
She waved a hand in the air. “Rumor, of course.”
“Rumor—of course. But rumor goes a long way. Did he ever teach Malachi Smith?”
“Well, yes, of course … he was a substitute and we often called him in.”
“Did they get along?”
She hesitated, and then apparently appeared to be truthful. “As a matter of fact, they got along quite well. Peter was strict, and Malachi didn’t mind strict. Peter liked the boy. He said that he was ‘special.’ He didn’t mean that in the mean way the other children did.”
“Did you ever tell that to the police?”
“The police never asked me.” She sighed impatiently. “Peter was killed over in Andover, what, about six months ago? Malachi was not one of our student body then.”
Sam stood up. “The boy with whom the altercation took place—David Yates? Is he still in school here? He’d be … a senior, so ready to graduate next June, right?”
“Yes,” she said almost inaudibly.
“Well, thank you, Mrs. Newbury. You’ve been a tremendous help.”
She looked up at him, and her face appeared stricken. She hadn’t wanted to help him at all. She managed a jerky nod.
He left her office, very afraid for the youth of the day.
Jenna had thought that there might be a For Sale sign on the farmhouse where Peter Andres had been murdered.
There was. And it was already showing signs of wear and tear. No matter how great a deal the property might be, many people would be loath to live at a place where a heinous murder had taken place. While they loved to stay at “haunted” hotels and bed-and-breakfast inns, they didn’t particularly want to spend their lives in places with actual “evil” reputations.
Jenna put through a call to the Realtor. The woman who took her call seemed surprised by her interest in the property.
“You want me to show it to you?” she asked.
“Yes, please,” Jenna said.
“I … uh … of course. I can meet you in, say, half an hour.”
“Thank you. May I look over the grounds until you arrive?”
“Um, yes. If you wish. Look, I feel obliged to tell you that the previous owner was murdered in his barn,” she said.
“I know. Thank you.”
Jenna hung up quickly, glad that the woman didn’t press to make sure she had a serious interest in the property.
She left her car on the curb and walked toward the house itself. It was a typical New England farmhouse. There was an empty paddock to the right of the house, and overgrown fields beyond. The barn was to the left rear of the house.
She felt the breeze stir as she walked toward the barn. The day couldn’t have been more beautiful. The air was crisp and cool, and autumn colors seemed to hover around the property in shades of red and gold.
The doors to the barn were wide-open; she assumed a cleanup crew had been in, and that there would be no evidence of the crime remaining. Again she was proved right. The barn was clean swept. It had a lingering odor of hay and horses, but the place was spotless. She doubted that there were even spiderwebs in the eaves.
She walked into the barn. She’d had Jake Mallory perform his computer magic and get his hands on the crime-scene photos and send them through to her email, so she could close her eyes and imagine the scene. Peter Andres had died with his eyes open, a look of astonishment still on his face. His killer had used the scythe first against his throat; the victim had gripped his neck, stunned, trying to fight the flow of blood. He had gone down, and the killer had finished it all off with a few swipes to his chest. The murder hadn’t taken more than a few seconds, the first strike had been so swift.
Jenna stood in the dead center of the barn and closed her eyes.
She could see Peter Andres. He had been a big man, white haired and white bearded. He had been raking autumn leaves the wind had swept into the barn.
She frowned, opening her eyes. She’d had a sense of someone so strong that she had to see if it was real or not.
She was alone in the barn. And yet …
She’d felt as if there was someone there. Someone, or a something. There had been a figure in a cape and cowl—and some kind of a demon mask.
Halloween. It was Halloween season.
But it hadn’t been Halloween when Peter Andres had been killed. And still, she was certain that she’d had a sense of such a person, looking around the barn door first, seeing Peter …
And rushing in.
The mask had been … a demon face. The figure had been dressed like a caped and cowled version of the horned demon. Satan? Malachi’s father had suggested that despite the fact that the Wiccan religion had no demons, they actually did have a devil, one of their earth gods in disguise. She didn’t know that much about the religion, but she knew that it was far different than the kind of imagined “witchcraft” that people had been persecuted for in the past.
She closed her eyes again. There was a rush in the air around her, a rush of movement. Peter Andres had been taken entirely by surprise. A big man, he could have defended himself.
He’d never had the chance.
He’d looked up from his work to see the figure racing toward him. He’d been confused, frowning over the evil vestige of the whirlwind hurtling into his body. He probably hadn’t even noticed that the demon-thing was carrying a scythe.
She felt movement in the air. Someone was there.
