“How? Women knifed to death in old graveyards or cemeteries. No sexual assault. Left where they lay, in remote areas.”
“She wasn’t his usual target,” Jon said. “And her face...he didn’t touch her face.”
Ben glanced at him. “The faces on the other victims were injured?”
“I don’t think the killer was trying for the faces. But in the stabbing, they wound up with at least one slash.”
“What about the number of wounds?”
“The most on a previous victim? Eight. And that included two defensive wounds on the arms. I’m not sure there is a difference between being killed with eight or twelve slashes, but... I don’t know. It just bothers me. Something has changed. As you mentioned, the victimology. I’m waiting on your crime scene folks to let me know if they have anything, anything at all, to suggest where he might strike next.” Jon was quiet a minute. “If this was him. The same killer.”
Kylie had seen state Senator Westerly in her...well, it couldn’t have been a regression, not if it had been happening when she’d been under. He really needed the exact timing on what had happened at the graveyard, and when Kylie had been “under.” It seemed to jive, but could mean exactly nothing. Was he grasping at straws?
But that’s what his unit often did.
“I’m going back out to the graveyard this afternoon,” Jon told Ben.
“Our forensics people are good. If there’s something to find, Jon, I swear they’ll find it,” Ben told him. He sighed. “I’m arranging interviews. According to friends and family, Annie was seeing a mystery man. But if this is a serial killer at work, one who has moved up the coast, I’m not sure how her mystery man might be involved.”
“Hopefully the boyfriend will come forward,” Jon said. “If you find anyone you think has useful information—”
“I’ll bring you in on it right away, my friend, I promise. But what do you think you’re going to gain by going out to the cemetery?”
“I don’t know. I’m going with a new acquaintance.”
“Are you holding out on me?” Ben asked, frowning.
“You know I wouldn’t do that. No, this is a bizarre circumstance. She was in Salem all day—plenty of witnesses. But...” He hesitated, and Ben groaned.
“You’re going out there with some kind of psychic? Jon, you believe a kook—”
“She isn’t a kook, Ben, and I don’t know if she can or can’t help. That’s why I’ll explore this avenue alone, and you let me know about friends and family.”
“Fine. Have fun. I hope you’re not dragging along a crystal ball.”
“We’re not dragging along a crystal ball,” Jon said, but he looked at Ben. “But if I thought we might get anywhere with a crystal ball, I’d damned sure give it a shot.”
Ben let Jon out on the street near the office space he had rented. He saw Kylie approaching the office; she moved with a slightly hurried grace, as if she was afraid she’d be late.
He couldn’t help but notice that movement; she had a slim build, and yet was curvy enough. She was, no doubt, an exceptionally attractive woman, and hard as he tried, it was almost impossible not to notice her in that way. She simply called out to just about everything primal in him.
He’d felt the softness of her chestnut hair on his arms when he caught her falling the night before. It had been a brush of velvety silk.
Jon watched as a child of about ten, bored and running in circles as his mother looked in a shop window, ran into Kylie. She laughed and straightened him, and he smiled, and his mother smiled, and Kylie moved on.
She had a way about her.
He quickened his walk, as if he could reinforce his resolve to stay completely professional. He thought of Annie Hampton. And the others...so many lives, so sadly lost before they could ever really live.
“Kylie!” he called out to her.
She turned, saw him coming, and changed direction.
“My car is in the garage,” he said. “We’ll go straight to it and head out.” He paused, looking at her. “You’re sure you’re still willing to do this?”
“Willing,” she said, “and wanting. Let’s hope...”
“For something,” he finished.
She kept step with him, and despite his resolve, he couldn’t help noting the scent of her perfume was just as compelling as her eyes, her movement...
Every single little thing about her.
Four
The graveyard was exactly as Kylie remembered it, having been there a few times over the years...and from her experience when she had been hypnotized. The abandoned church and burial ground surrounding it belonged to the county, but there were no signs warning against trespassing. There were signs that warned the area wasn’t safe after dark. Kylie figured it was left for curiosity seekers. No one had been buried there for well over a hundred years, so family members wouldn’t be bringing flowers to a recently lost loved one.
The cemetery wasn’t in the center of town, and there were no known participants in the witch trials buried there. It was notable in the amount of Revolutionary and Civil War soldiers it housed. But Salem was a town where one history ruled over all others, and many visitors never ventured out of the old section of town.
As if reading her mind, Jon said, “No recent burials. No real reason to be here. Except there are records for this church that date back centuries, and there are online sites where you can find a grave. With the trend of finding about their ancestry through DNA, you have more people than ever searching out their family’s past. Plenty of people around here can date their ancestry way back, so they might well have family here, and you have those from other places who just discovered that great-great-great-granddad is buried here. And then there are people who study the American Revolution and there are also a few Union soldiers buried here. Still...”
“It’s not a heavily traveled tourist destination,” Kylie said.
The road, almost empty, stretched out in both directions with only a few distant homes dotting the landscape. She could see a farm up a hill; cows were out in the surrounding paddocks.
They paused at the entry. It was much like any of the very old cemeteries in the area. Stones were crooked and broken, weeds hugging many of them. In places, trees had simply joined with the stones so that roots broke out jaggedly from them, eerie as new life crept over the death’s-heads, reapers, and skeletons that had been the iconography prevalent in the graveyard’s heyday. There were a few aboveground tombs, worn and grayed, but no mausoleums or vaults—just the occasional one-person tomb, big enough for one coffin and stark in the center of broken stones.