The Fifth Petal Read online

  ALSO BY BRUNONIA BARRY

  The Lace Reader

  The Map of True Places

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by BruBar LLC

  Excerpt from The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry, copyright © 2006 by Brunonia Barry. Published by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  crownpublishing.com

  CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  Hardcover ISBN 9781101905609

  Ebook ISBN 9781101905616

  International ISBN 9780451497291

  Illustrations by Meredith Hamilton

  Photographs by Textures.com

  Cover design by Tal Goretsky

  Cover photographs: (mystical insignia) Private Collection Archives / Bridgeman Images; (tree illustrations) William H. Murphy Fund / Bridgeman Images; (writing) Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, 2016 / Bridgeman Images

  v4.1_r1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Brunonia Barry

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Part Two

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Part Three

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  An Excerpt from The Lace Reader

  For Gary

  It will have blood, they say: blood will have blood.

  Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak…

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, MACBETH

  Isn’t it a little late for praying? Tom Dayle thought but did not say. The child sat on a gurney just behind the privacy curtain in one of Salem Hospital’s ER stalls, clutching what, to his lapsed Catholic eyes, appeared to be rosary beads.

  It was an odd picture: a young girl, not more than five or six, prayer beads dangling from clenched and whitened fingers that were holding on to the crucifix part of the rosary so hard it drew blood, trails of dried reddish brown branching down her forearms and into the cracks between her fingers. Mean-looking scratches covered the child’s arms and legs. If you could ignore the blood, she looked like one of Botticelli’s angels: dark curls cascading down her back, alabaster skin not yet marred by tanning beds or summer sun.

  The two nuns who accompanied her completed the angelic picture: the younger one sitting next to the child, holding her own rosary as she silently mouthed the prayers, the older one, whom he recognized as the mother superior from St. James’s School, standing just behind, keeping watch.

  It was the nuns who’d found her. He’d heard the story on his way over here. While the murders were being committed, the child had hidden in a patch of bushes, clutching the rosary and praying. The nuns, who’d admitted to hearing screams during the night, hadn’t found her until the following morning, when the screaming faded to a mournful moan. They’d followed the sound along the North River and discovered the little girl standing by the pit where the bodies of her mother and two as yet unidentified young women had been dumped.

  “Maybe she should have prayed you’d called 911 sooner,” Dayle said to the older nun. He didn’t say it so much to be cruel as to keep his own heart from breaking at the sight of the little girl. She looked the same age as his granddaughter.

  One of the officers at the scene had asked the older nun why she’d waited to make the 911 call when the screaming continued into the night. “It was Halloween in Salem,” she said, sadly. “It would have been strange if we didn’t hear screaming.” Another responding officer thought he recognized one of the young women as her body was hauled from the crevasse. Upon closer examination, he changed his mind.

  This morning, they had picked up a person of interest, a local woman who lived over on Daniels Street, but he wasn’t about to share that information with the nuns. “At the moment, we’re still trying to identify the victims.”

  “One of the victims was the child’s mother.”

  “How do you know that?” he asked, as if hearing it for the first time.

  “She told us. She was talking to us when we first got here,” the older nun said. “She only stopped when you came in.”

  In all his years as a detective, Tom Dayle had never seen anything as grisly as what had happened last night on Proctor’s Ledge. Three young women, throats slashed, had been dumped into a narrow crevasse, the same mass grave where Salem had unceremoniously disposed of the bodies of those accused and executed for witchcraft during the hysteria of 1692.

  A nurse hurried in and began to minister to the scratches on the girl’s arms and legs. The child recoiled.

  “I’m sorry, honey, but I have to clean these up.”

  “How’d you get those scratches?” Dayle asked the child. She didn’t answer but stared as if seeing right through him.

  “She was hiding in the brambles most of the night,” Mother Superior said to Dayle. “That’s how she got those scratches.”

  The nurse walked over to get bandages. “She’s going to need a tetanus shot,” she said.

  “No,” the child said, snapping out of her trancelike state and acting, for the first time since he’d arrived, like a scared little girl. She started to cry.

  “It’s okay, honey,” the nurse said. “Tetanus shots don’t hurt.”

  The child began to cry harder, recognizing a lie when she heard it.

  “Let’s see what the doctor says first,” the nurse said, trying to comfort her. “Maybe you won’t need any shots.”

  “I want Rose,” the child said. Rose. That was the name of the woman they’d just picked up over in Broad Street Cemetery. When they’d found her, Rose Whelan had been covered with blood and babbling incoherently. The patrolman who’d picked her u
p was a rental cop. Salem used a lot of them on Halloween. He’d assumed Rose was just a leftover, someone who’d partied too hard last night and needed to dry out. It was a safe assumption. When he’d realized that the blood that covered her skin and clothing wasn’t the fake stuff they sold in the costume shops but real—he’d seen enough bar fights and car accidents over the years to know—he’d taken her to the station, where the woman was recognized almost immediately, which made the story even more bizarre.

  Rose Whelan was a noted historian who’d written several books on the subject of Salem’s history and founded the city’s Center for Salem Witch Trials Research, a resource library that drew scholars from all over the world. She was a well-respected woman, who, sometime between last night and this morning, appeared to have lost her marbles.

  “She keeps asking for Rose,” Mother Superior said. “Rose is the woman who pushed her into the brambles and told her to pray. She gave her those rosary beads.”

  “The rosary beads saved her,” the young nun said, holding her own set out to him, its crucified body of Christ swinging like a pendulum. “It’s a miracle.”

  The nurse finished washing the scratches but did not tackle the larger wound on the child’s hand. “The doctor is on his way….Don’t open your hand, honey. We don’t want you to start bleeding again. Hold it just like you’re doing until he gets here.” She left the stall.

  With the nurse out of the way, Dayle focused on the child, pulling up a chair and sitting in an effort to be less threatening.

  “What’s your name?” he asked in his most gentle voice.

  She didn’t answer. She was clearly afraid of him.

  “It’s okay, he’s a policeman. You can tell him,” the younger nun said.

  Dayle pulled his chair closer to the gurney. “How old are you?”

  Again, she didn’t answer but squeezed her hands tighter, fingers folded and ghostly pale, a single drop of fresh blood trailing down the inside of her forearm. Seeing the blood once again, the young nun picked up the pace of her own praying, mouthing her silent Hail Marys in rapid succession, as if a speedy invocation could erase all that was happening here.

  “I have a granddaughter about your age,” Dayle said, forcing a smile. “What are you, four maybe?”

  “I’m five!”

  “Five, huh? Five is a very grown-up age.”

  The child stared at him. “I want Rose,” she said, starting to panic.

  “Maybe I can help,” he said. “Can you tell me Rose’s last name?”

  She nodded. “Rose Whelan.”

  “And do you know where I could find this Rose Whelan?” he asked, smiling at her. “If I wanted to get her for you. Do you know where she lives?”

  Once again she nodded.

  “Will you tell me the name of the street where she lives?” He hated to play her this way, but he had to double-check.

  “I live there, too,” she said, defensive.

  “Can you tell me your address then?” Almost every child knew her address these days. It was one of the first things he’d made them teach his granddaughter.

  As if reciting a rehearsed speech, she answered. “Sixty-two Daniels Street, Salem, Massachusetts, 01970.”

  The doctor came in, ending any further chance at dialogue. Annoyed, Dayle stood and moved his chair out of the way.

  “Let’s see this cut,” the doctor said.

  The little girl looked unsure.

  “It’s okay, you can let go now.” He touched her hands gently.

  One by one, she released her fingers from their prayer clutch, and then they all saw what she’d been desperately holding on to.

  Upside down, embedded in her palm, was a wooden symbol Dayle didn’t recognize: rounded and carved, with sharp ridges that dug deep into her hand. He didn’t know what it was, but it certainly wasn’t a crucifix.

  Gently, using a scalpel to free the crusted edges, the doctor pried the wooden rosary free. It fell to the floor. Dayle reached down and picked it up.

  It took a moment for the blood to find its way back into the girl’s palm. Slowly, it pooled, turning the wound from white to red as it filled each layered level, creating a scarlet image of the medallion Dayle now held in his hand: a perfect five-petaled rose.

  There were no witches in Salem in 1692, but they thrive here in great numbers now.

  —ROSE WHELAN, The Witches of Salem

  Rafferty had never seen so many trick-or-treaters on Chestnut Street. Nor had he ever been charged with escorting such a large Witches’ March up to Gallows Hill. There were at least 150 of them this year—Wiccans, Druids, Celts, nature mama hippies with psychic tendencies, pantheists and polytheists all—walking slowly behind his 1980 Crown Vic cruiser, the one he’d rescued from the junk pile. For safety reasons, several streets had been blocked off. Traffic was already backed up onto Highland Avenue as visitors streamed into town for the festivities.

  He’d been living in Salem for almost twenty years now. Back in the nineties only summer and early fall were filled with tourists; by midsummer you couldn’t find a parking space anywhere downtown, which was a pain in the ass. But come November 1, you could park anywhere you wanted. Not so anymore. This was no longer a forgotten seaport. No longer an aging industrial city. Salem had been discovered, and not just as a tourist destination but as the new hot place to live. These days, you were lucky to get a parking space in town at any time of year, which is why Rafferty always drove the cruiser, even on his day off. As chief of police, he could double-park anywhere. More often than not, a tourist would ask him to pose next to the cruiser so they could capture its Witch City logo: a police badge emblazoned with a flying witch on a broomstick wearing a pointed hat.

  But all that was nothing compared to what happened here in October. The city had been dubbed the Halloween Capital of the World. That was no big surprise. But no one had expected it could turn into a monthlong celebration. Lately, it was even more than a month, which was great for the merchants: The population grew by at least 300,000 each October. Every year Salem imported extra police from Boston and Lynn and as far away as Connecticut, and each year they were still shorthanded.

  The crowds tonight were something. Even here, in this residential neighborhood, the trick-or-treaters were waiting in long lines for their candy at the Federal mansions that were decorated for the occasion.

  Rafferty drove the wrong way up Chestnut Street to the corner of Flint.

  “Hey, Rafferty,” yelled a man dressed as a pirate and known locally as Worms, “write yourself a ticket. This is a one-way street!”

  Each year the pirate reenactors gathered at the Phillips House museum, the only historic home open to the public on Chestnut Street, to sing to the children, and maybe scare them a little, too.

  “Scallywag!” his companion, Mickey Doherty, growled.

  “Argh!” Rafferty shouted back at them.

  “Them’s fighting words, John,” Mickey said, taking it as an invitation to approach the cruiser.

  “Argh is only one word, Mickey,” Rafferty said. Mickey Doherty was more entrepreneurial than almost anyone in town. He owned two haunted houses on Derby Street and the pirate shop on the wharf, where he sold a bit of weed on the side. Since possession was a misdemeanor these days, and Mickey didn’t sell to kids, Rafferty looked the other way. “And if you don’t know that, you should lay off the Dark ’n Stormies. Isn’t this a kids’ party?”

  Mickey laughed and pounded the cruiser with his fist. “This kind of fortification’s the only way I can stand the little demons!”

  Rafferty shook his head.

  “Hey, what’re the streets like?” Mickey wanted to know. “I spoke to Ann earlier, and she warned me. There’s a weird energy tonight.”

  Ann Chase. Salem’s most famous present-day witch. “Well, if anyone should know…” Rafferty said, and Mickey laughed. “Actually, it seems pretty tame to me,” Rafferty said. It was true.

  Fall had come late this year, but now the ai
r was chilling, and the darkness felt pervasive. He nodded to Mickey, turned on his siren, and pulled out, blocking incoming cars on Essex Street, so the parade could cross the road. As the candlelight vigil moved on, a driver blasted his horn, and others joined in chorus to protest the delay. The witches walked in formation, as slowly as brides.

  Once the last witch had crossed the road on the way up to Gallows Hill Park, Rafferty’s escort duties were over. He circled the city, checking on the rental cops and mounted police. A weird energy. He noticed that the Choate memorial statue at the corner of Essex and Boston Streets sported toilet paper streamers—nothing new or particularly weird there. Costumed children roamed more freely here, mostly without their parents: the little ones sugared up and bouncing, the older kids just looking for trouble. He spotted a few teens hanging out in the parking lot of an auto body shop on Boston Street. They scattered when they saw him coming—probably a drug deal. There’d been a lot of that lately in this area. He hoped the new senior center they were going to build here would turn the neighborhood around. That lot had been vacant too long.

  He U-turned into the parking lot of the Dairy Witch and came back around when he got the call that there was some kind of disturbance in the Walgreens parking lot a few doors down. “I’ve got it,” he said, thinking it was probably the same kids. But as he pulled into the lot, the kids were nowhere to be seen. He drove around back and spotted the hearse parked at the side of Proctor’s Ledge. Hearse tours were big business in Salem; featured venues included everything from haunted houses to the apartment building over on Lafayette Street where the Boston Strangler had killed his only North Shore victim back in the early sixties. Salem entrepreneurs would go to any length to frighten the tourists, especially on Halloween, though the ghostly Fright Tours logo hand-painted on the side of the hearse looked far more like Casper than Jacob Marley.