M Sellars - Never Burn A Witch

“Do you have any record of her complaining of threatening or harassing e-mail?” Agent Mandalay interrupted him before he could continue reading off the list.

“Just a second.” He tapped out another series of clicks and clacks on the keyboard, then once again the screen flickered, and he slowly began nodding. “Yeah… yeah, looks like about a month ago. She got a crank e-mail and called. Looks like we just set up a trap filter on her account for that addy.”

“Did you have to trap an entire domain?” I inquired.

“Nope, whoever it was didn’t bother to spoof it. Address and IP were clean. It was an easy trap, not that it mattered. She only got the one e-mail.”

“Nothing else?” I pressed.

“Nope. Just the one.” He shook his head. “We e-mailed a notification of the problem to the originating server and didn’t even get an acknowledgement back. We assumed they just took care of it.”

“Can you give us a copy of that information?” Mandalay asked.

“Sure.” He rolled back a foot or so and punched the power switch on a laser printer that was positioned behind him. “You want a copy of the original crank e-mail too?”

“Please.” She nodded.

We watched on in silence as he rapidly issued a series of commands through the keyboard then sat back and raised his eyebrows at us. “Be just a second. It’ll spool just as soon as the printer warms up. You know, if you want my opinion, she was pretty much looking to get harassed if she was hanging out on newsgroups like that.” He let out a sudden cackling laugh. “I mean get serious. Witches? What a bunch of nutballs.”

Constance and I remained silent and waited patiently as the device came ready then began spitting out sheets of paper. After a moment, Wendell gathered the short stack of warm twenty-pound bond and handed it across the desk to Constance.

“Originating SMTP server is part of a privately owned domain,” he offered as she leafed through the pages, handing each one to me in succession as she finished scanning it. “Info is right there in the header.”

“Rowan,” Constance said as she handed over a sparsely printed page, “have a look at this.”

The text contained the standard date, time, tracking number and header information one would find on any e-mail. The TO line read “witchvixen@sthcnty-online. net.” The FROM read “wtchhnter@repent. com.” The body of the message was what really struck home. In bold black against the stark white paper the words “Thou Shalt Not Suffer A Witch To Live” stared back at me. Below that familiar sentence was another, far less eloquent phrase, “You will burn you fucking bitch!”

I glanced over at Constance and raised an eyebrow then turned my attention back to the man behind the desk.

“Did you by any chance run a check on this domain to see who owns it?” I asked.

“Just a sec…” he replied and once again assaulted his keyboard.

Almost instantly the laser printer wound up from a low squeal to a high pitched whine like a miniature jet preparing for takeoff. With a sharp click followed by a dull thunk, it peeled off a fresh sheet of paper from the tray and a moment later spit it out the top. Wendell snatched it up and perused the printing on its face briefly before tossing it on the desk in front of me.

“That’s a ‘whois’ on it,” he explained. “Shows who the domain is registered to, gives a contact name, phone number, all that. From the looks of the address the owner’s local.”

I gave the listing a quick once over, noting the address as well, then slid it over to Constance who picked it up and began to quickly read.

“We appreciate all your help, Mister Wendell,” she told him as she slowly stood and extended her hand, all the while still looking at the information on the page I had just given her. “We will be sure to contact you if we have any further questions.”

I followed her cue and rose up from my chair as well.

“Glad I could help,” the man returned as he shook her hand then looked over at me and reached out to shake mine. “Mind if I ask you something?”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Well I always thought you Feds were supposed to be clean cut and all,” he spoke as he pumped my right hand and gestured at my hair with his free appendage. “But you’ve got a ponytail and a beard. What’s up with that? You some kind of undercover agent or something?”

“Mister Gant isn’t with the Bureau,” Constance volunteered.

“She’s right, I’m not.” I smiled at him. “I’m one of those nutball Witches.”

“Yes, that’s right, last four digits are two-five-two-two,” Agent Mandalay said into her cell phone as she cranked the steering wheel and backed us out of the parking space. The tires let out a dull squeal as they spun against the wet pavement before taking hold. “Address looks like it’s a private residence in West County… Millchester… The man’s name that holds the registration on the domain or whatever is one Allen Roberts. That first name is spelled A-L-L-E-N… Yeah, like a surname. The last name is Roberts, R-O-B-E-R-T-S.

“Yes… Yeah… Uh-huh, okay… Rowan and I are on our way there right now. Uh-huh, okay, call me on my cellular if you need to. Uh-huh, yes…I’d say about twenty minutes… Okay, see you there… Bye.”

The phone let out an audible squelch as she pulled it away from her ear and stabbed the END button with her thumb, then dropped it onto the seat.

“Storm and Deckert are meeting us there.” She glanced quickly at me as she seized a break in the traffic and pushed the sedan out into the westbound lanes of Gravois. “Carl is calling in some backup from County right now.”

“You know,” I started hesitantly, “I don’t really want to rain on your parade, but something just doesn’t feel right about this. I don’t think this is our guy.”

“Why not?” she asked, settling into her seat and smoothly accelerating the vehicle as we merged with the flow.

“It’s just not right.” I shook my head. “It… It just doesn’t feel like him.”

“What about the message?” she posed. “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live? Exodus twenty-two eighteen, just like was highlighted in the Bible that old bum had in his pocket. You said you were sure he got it from the Miller crime scene.”

“I am sure,” I agreed. “And yes, it is the same verse, but that is the most commonly quoted, misquoted, and misinterpreted, mind you, passage from the Bible with regard to Witches and WitchCraft. It is definitely not out of the question that someone else would quote it in their hate mail.”

“Well what about the rest of it? The whole ‘You’ll burn you fucking bitch’ part?” Constance insisted. “That’s exactly how she was murdered, right?”

“Granted, he did burn her, but the whole comment doesn’t sound like this guy at all. He passes judgment using the questions and conventions of the Malleus Maleficarum, and he quotes it directly. It definitely has a tendency to be much more eloquently worded. This is not to mention the fact that he passes the judgment in person just as it would have been done at a Witch trial. He’s very intent on adhering to these methods, up to and including the motions of proving out the accusation through some means of torture. I don’t believe he would actually verbalize, or in this case write, the judgment until he had done that at the very least.

“The use of denigrating expletives in calling her a ‘fucking bitch’ is way out of character as well.” I shook my head vigorously. “No, I think this is all just a bizarre coincidence.”

“You don’t think it’s just a little too bizarre?”

“Believe me, I can see where you’re coming from, Constance,” I admitted with a sigh then endeavored to explain my logic. “But, just from my own experience I can tell you that when you mention Witches to someone, one of the first things they think of is burning at the stake. You’d be surprised how many people out there believe that those accused of WitchCraft in Salem were burned, when in fact they were hanged. While in one respect that is a testament to the apathy of the population, in another it shows how the whole myth surrounding Witch Burnings has become a very common and deeply ingrained fallacy. I really don’t find that comment surprising at all. Besides, for all we know, whoever wrote that e-mail could have meant she was going to burn in hell. That’s another well worn expression we’ve all been subjected to at one time or another.”