The Fifth Petal (The Lace Reader #2)
Brunonia Barry
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 up 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.”