PLACKETT, VIRGINIA
Wednesday morning
It doesn’t look like anyone’s home,” Griffin said as he got out of the Porsche into the fresh morning air. It was so quiet he could hear a crow cawing high in the air above him.
Savich knocked on the front door. He heard the coming footfalls, recognized the steps as Deliah Alcott’s. When she opened the door, she looked at each of them, and nodded. “Agent Savich, Agent Hammersmith. I’ve been expecting you. I thought it best I be here alone when you arrived, after that scene between you and Liggert yesterday.” She suddenly smiled. “Thank you. Finally, it’s over. Come with me, see for yourselves.”
Savich and Griffin followed her past the pentacle hanging on the front door and down a long hallway fragrant with the scent of lavender, to the very end room. She stopped in front of the closed door, drew a deep breath, quietly opened it, and stepped inside.
It was a large room with old-fashioned furniture, lace curtains on the windows, rag rugs on the polished maple floor, an old person’s room. There was an ancient iron-framed bed against the far wall, and on it lay Ms. Louisa, utterly still, deeply asleep or unconscious. She was wearing a white high-necked nightgown, a white bedspread drawn to her neck. Her hair was in a skinny braid over her shoulder, as gray as her still face. The nightstand beside her was ablaze with lighted green, white, and gold candles surrounding a plate overflowing with herbs and dried flowers.
Deliah looked down at her. “I heard her scream after midnight. When I came running in she was on the floor, clutching her head. Then she fell over unconscious. When I touched her I knew she was gone. How strange it is, but do you know, I miss the sound of those infernal knitting needles of hers?” She turned to them. “You know now, don’t you? You know what she was?”
“Until this moment I wasn’t completely sure whether she was Stefan Dalco,” Savich said.
“You thought I was this Dalco character?”
“Perhaps, for a short time. I quickly realized how much you loved Brakey, how you’d go to any lengths to protect him. You would never make Brakey a murderer.”
“She came after you again?”
Savich nodded. “She would have killed me if Griffin hadn’t shot her. I was helpless until then.”
“Actually,” Griffin said, “a huge black eagle was attacking Savich. I shot its head off.”
Deliah picked up a large book from under the bedside table, handed it to Savich. “She liked her Greek mythology. She was studying this.” He and Griffin looked down at a painting of a naked Prometheus chained to a rock over a violent sea, an eagle hovering above him, wings flapping madly. Savich nodded, handed it back. “Yes, that was what she fashioned for me.” He turned to stare down at the still figure who’d had so much power. He remembered the horrific pain in his side.
Deliah said, “She was always bragging how she was the most powerful witch who’d ever lived. But you beat her, Agents, you beat her.”
“What she was,” Savich said, “was a powerful psychic who used the symbols of witchcraft. And she was quite mad. I’ve known a couple others like her, both of them terrifying.”
“Why isn’t she in a hospital, Mrs. Alcott?” Griffin asked, looking down at the slack face.
“It would do absolutely no good.”
“They could monitor her, feed her intravenously.”
She shook her head again. “As I told you, I knew the moment I touched her that she was no longer there. Come with me to the kitchen. We can have some tea.” She turned and left the bedroom. Savich and Griffin followed her through the lavender-scented hallway to the kitchen.
Savich and Griffin remained silent, watching her prepare the tea, giving it all her focus and attention.
When at last she sat at the table with them, spooning sugar into her tea, she said, “Looking back, I realize she’d been hovering on the edge of madness for a long time, or maybe she always was and I simply refused to see it. After Arthur and I were married, she liked to mock me for being a Wiccan, for my foolish and meaningless rituals, she called them, but never when Arthur could hear her. He held her in check. You see, my husband knew what she was, knew what powers she had, knew she had no compunction about using them. She was his mother, after all. Then a car accident put her in the wheelchair a few years ago. Arthur was driving when a drunk slammed into the passenger side at an intersection. That man died a month later. He killed himself. We didn’t know if she was responsible, but sometimes I would look at her and she would look very pleased with herself. But when her injuries healed, she changed. She was angry all the time. Arthur was worried he couldn’t control her. When he realized he had no choice, he bound her. Binding is a powerful spell that holds a witch’s power in check. After that, she didn’t harm anyone for several years.”
“Or perhaps, Mrs. Alcott,” Savich said, “she respected him enough to listen to him?”
Deliah rolled her eyes. “Believe that if you like, but I strongly doubt that. It is true that she loved Arthur more than anyone in the world, more than her two dead husbands, more than any of us. She admired his strength, you see, probably envied it, continually begged him to free her. She thought he was weak not to use his power, and she blamed me.
“When he died six months ago, she said she was free to do as she wished. That’s when her madness surfaced for all of us to see, and the chaos began.” Tears sheened her eyes. “Arthur was a fine man, a good man. He didn’t expect to die and leave us in her hands.
“After he died, I tried everything I knew to control her. I tried cajoling her, making her feel a central part of the family. I tried ritual prayers, even repeated the binding spell Arthur had worked to control her, but none of it was enough. I wasn’t strong enough, not like Arthur was.”
Deliah looked down at her tea cup. “I confronted her one night after I overheard her speaking to Liggert, encouraging him to punish his wife because she thought Marly had insulted her.”
“What did she do?” Griffin asked her.
“She laughed at me. She did that a lot, said I was a silly weakling, a sham who couldn’t stop her from doing anything she liked. She started threatening my children, making them do bizarre and dangerous things to amuse herself and frighten me. She told me if I didn’t behave—her word—she’d make Tanny, Liggert’s daughter, sorry she’d ever been born. I believed her. I think now that if I’d had a knife in my hand I’d have tried to use it, I was that afraid for my children.
“When Liggert told her about Sparky Carroll’s damaged Mustang, she didn’t scream and yell and curse him, she went silent, didn’t say a word for hours. Then she made Walter murder Sparky because she thought they both deserved it. She picked Brakey, her own grandson, to kill Deputy Lewis. In her mind he was as guilty as Sparky—he’d buried the truth. I believe it’s my fault she used Brakey. She was punishing me for trying to control her. She wanted me to see how powerful she was—she could make Brakey murder someone, and her silent threat was that she could make me kill someone, too.
“It’s been a reign of terror, and she’s held us all prisoner. Until you came, Agent Savich. What will happen to Brakey now?”
Savich said, “Brakey will be fine. As for Walter, that will be more difficult. He stabbed Sparky Carroll in front of dozens of witnesses, but I hope I’ll be able to convince the federal prosecutor to send him for psychiatric evaluation and, I hope, a stint in a federal sanitarium, not jail.”
“When you left that first time, do you know she sat rocking in her chair, and she laughed, knitted and knitted and laughed and laughed. She said she was going to have some fun tormenting you, teaching you what was what, she said. We all thought she would kill you.