“We can prove it,” Corrine said.
“Corrine is getting married,” Nancy informed him. “This is her bachelorette weekend.”
“She isn’t into strippers,” Jenny explained. She glanced over at her friend. “Although, maybe in retrospect, Corrine, it might have turned out a heck of a lot easier if you’d been into the concept of a few naked bodies.”
“Jenny!” Nancy snapped.
“Look, I’m sorry to cause any distress,” Jon began, “but this is very serious, and horrible and tragic. Will you please just come with me to the office for a few minutes? We can sit down and clarify all this.”
Kylie started walking again, in the direction he had been leading them. Even if she didn’t know where they were going. For a moment, Jon was as still as her friends, who were looking at one another in confusion.
He turned and took the lead again, no longer attempting to take her hand. Everyone followed.
He produced a key to the ground-floor space he’d taken on Essex Street. Soon enough, it would be rented out to another gift shop, but for the moment, it was his space.
He opened the door. Kylie Connelly walked in, still ramrod straight and indignant.
Her friends balked.
“How do we know you’re not an insane murderer?” Corrine demanded. “The windows here are all covered. And there’s a sign that says Lola’s Little Lollipop Shop, Coming Soon!”
“There are four of you,” Jon said simply. “I’ve shown you my identification. If you’ll just look inside, you’ll see you’re fine. The street is filled with Friday night tourists, and—”
Kylie popped her head back out of his office. “Hey, just come in. Let’s get this over with.”
The others filed in. He followed behind them.
The room was set up sparsely; he had a desk with his computer, several folding chairs, fridge and microwave, and a file cabinet filled with hard copies for the case. Against the wall was the air mattress he’d been using since he arrived two days ago. His duffel bag of clothing sat on the floor.
The last clue—found near the body of Cecily Bryant, in a historic cemetery on the border of Rhode Island and Massachusetts near Fall River—had led him here. It remained in an evidence bag at Krewe headquarters in northern Virginia.
Their only clue.
He was glad the photos from the earlier crime scenes remained in his desk in an envelope.
He indicated the chairs in front of the desk. The four young women perched nervously. He took his position behind the desk—an automatic position of authority, or so they had claimed in one of his academy classes.
“As you saw on the news, a young woman named Annie Hampton was found in the old St. Francis graveyard, just about two miles from here. I don’t believe this is the killer’s first murder. We’ve been tracking a man up the coast from Virginia. Four known murders to date now with Annie, all young women, all killed in historic graveyards. Three unsolved murders from previous years might have been the work of this same killer, but they weren’t grouped together at the time because they took place almost a year apart from each other.
“If it’s the same killer, they’ve escalated at a frightening pace. It’s my deepest regret we haven’t caught this man yet. We have questioned hundreds of people, investigated family disputes, work disputes, random drifters, all to no avail. If we just had something... That young woman shouldn’t have died today. We are desperate to catch this monster before anyone else is killed, so I beg you, tell me anything at all you know.” He stared hard at Kylie.
She met his gaze fiercely, and then sighed and shook her head.
“I don’t know anything about the murder,” she said. “Seriously. We have been here—within six blocks of where we are right now—all day. We came in this morning, checked into the hotel, had lunch, and then went to our appointments with Dr. Sayers.” She seemed to wince. “He’s a psychologist and hypnotist known for his past-life regressions. It’s Salem, right? Then we shopped, mostly right there on Essex Street. In absolute truth, there is nothing we can tell you that would help to solve a murder. Any of us would help if we could. What you’re saying is horrible. Don’t you think we’d help if we thought we could give you any information that would bring in someone who was doing something so horrible?”
Jon leaned forward. “When the image of Michael Westerly came on the screen, you identified him as the murderer.”
The other girls were silent. Uneasy. They glanced over at Kylie, letting her do the talking.
“Corrine suggested I had seen his face somewhere before. Listen, I’m not sure I even believe in past-life regression. Everyone gets to be a princess. Except me,” she murmured, sounding a little bitter. “I was hypnotized. Trust me, I’ll never be hypnotized again. I pictured something awful.”
He kept eye contact with her. “Tell me, please, what did you see?”
She shook her head, as if what he was suggesting was impossible. The she sighed. “All right, I saw him—that man—Michael Westerly. And he was...killing me.” She hesitated. “Stabbing me to death.”
She paused for a moment; Jon could see she was remembering every brutal second of the attack. Whatever the experience had been, the terror of it had been real for her.
“But,” she continued, “I’m telling you, we were here. All day long. Whatever I saw was just... I don’t know...suggestion. Something evoked by his words or his tone, maybe. Not real. Obviously. I’m here. I’m alive and well. And you can check with Dr. Sayers. I doubt if he’s still in his office, but it’s just around the corner.”
“What happened, though, in this imaginary scene? Step by step,” Jon encouraged.
She looked at him as if he was asking something entirely ridiculous of her. “I was walking—”
“Walking where?”
She inhaled and seemed to grit her teeth before going on. “By a cemetery. Not the Old Burying Point here in the historic district, or even the Howard Street Cemetery. But it was very similar to those. The markers were from the 1600s and up. Pretty place. Old trees growing through some of the old stones, many weathered with no words left... Revolutionary soldiers, Civil War soldiers... Death’s-heads on some markers, a few newer ones...some angels and cherubs. Overgrown. A little sad, really, and by a church. I wouldn’t know which cemetery since there are at least thirty in the area that are so old... Salem is old.”
“But it had a little square-shaped church?”
She nodded uncomfortably.
“The little box church—deconsecrated—now a tiny museum that sits between here and the Rebecca Nurse Homestead?” he asked. “If you’ve been here often and traveled more than the usual tourist treks, you might know the church and old graveyard.”