M Sellars - Never Burn A Witch

“How long?” I asked.

“Six to twelve hours, approximately.”

“I assume she rented the room and not her client?” I directed the question over my shoulder to Ben. “Or else I wouldn’t be here looking at this.”

“Yeah,” he grunted. “Room was in her name. Rented that afternoon on her credit card. Not unusual for her accordin’ to her Vice rap sheet. Considerin’ what she charged per hour, I expect she just considered it the cost of doin’ business.”

“What time did she take the fall?”

I heard him flip back through his notes. “Call came in around one-forty a.m. She bounced off the hood of a BMW and set off the alarm. It was parked right in front of the lobby entrance, so she wasn’t layin’ there for long.”

I mused aloud for my friend’s benefit as well as my own. “That means, theoretically, he could have been torturing her almost the entire day. But why didn’t anyone hear her? Surely she had to have screamed.”

“We found fibers matching the hotel linens in her mouth and bite lacerations on her tongue,” the medical examiner offered. “As well as tape residue around her mouth.”

“There were washcloths and a lot of duct tape in the room,” Ben added. “Lab’s checking for saliva and all that, but we’re pretty sure he used ‘em to gag her. Show him the other marks, Doc.”

“Mister Gant, if you’ll step over here.”

I moved down the length of the metal table toward the M.E., and Ben followed along behind. With heartless clinical detachment, the doctor carefully scissored Brianna Walker’s legs apart. In a sense, I had begun to feel sorry for him. Dealing with the cruelties of death on a daily basis had robbed him of his compassion. I loathed the thought of becoming as he was but at the same time wished for the ability to switch off the emotions I was now feeling.

“Here on the inner thigh.” He indicated a patch of incised flesh as he held a large magnifying glass above it.

The lens did its prescribed duty and visually enlarged the area, showing a circle carefully carved into the skin. Around the edges of the circle, small hash marks bisected the curved line. Centrally located in the ringlet, a large X intersected and formed union with a large P. I simply stared in utter disbelief.

“There is an identical marking on the left inner thigh as well. There are several small but unremarkable puncture wounds on her back and buttocks. It also appears that several cigarettes were used to burn the soles of her feet.”

The doctor continued his antiseptic diatribe, carefully outlining the facts of the examination for my benefit. He was still holding the magnifying glass in place while I blindly gazed through it. Staring dumbfounded, only superficially aware that it was he who was speaking, yet still assimilating the information that was voiced.

“Her pelvis is fractured in a manner inconsistent with injuries from the fall. Evidence of bleeding and preliminary examination would seem to indicate that some foreign object was inserted forcibly into her vagina.”

“A Pear,” I whispered, ending my muteness.

“What?” Ben asked. “You mean the shithead stuck fruit up ‘er?”

“No. Not fruit, Ben.” I broke my gaze from the symbol inscribed in her flesh and turned to him. “It’s a spiked, medieval torture device used during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It was inserted, sometimes into the mouth but more often, rectally or vaginally. I guess the best analogy is that it worked like a shoe stretcher. By turning a screw it would expand or contract. Its purpose, however, was to rend flesh and crush bones.”

“Jeezus fuck…” he muttered.

My mouth was beginning to water, and sharp convulsions of nausea were threatening to overtake my stomach and relieve me of its contents.

“What did you say she called herself?” I asked as I closed my eyes and forced down the overwhelming need to vomit.

“Mistress Bree?”

“No. The other one.”

He shuffled back through his notes once again. “Hmmmm, yeah, here it is. The Wicked Witch of the West End.”

I turned back to the doctor and opened my eyes, careful to keep my gaze on his face and the young woman’s body well out of my field of view.

“Doctor. Did she have any distinguishing birthmarks? Possibly a mole? Maybe even a distinctly shaped scar or a tattoo?” I raised my left arm and used my right hand to indicate the area. “Either under her arms, on her shoulder, or on her upper back. Either side, it doesn’t matter.”

“She has a tattoo of one of those devil worship symbols just above her right scapula. A five-pointed star, whatever they’re called.”

“A Pentacle,” I told him as I clutched my stomach and sent my eyes searching for the door. I didn’t bother to correct his evaluation of the symbol’s meaning. Fact was, in this case, his perception was closer to the reason this young woman had been murdered than was the truth.

“Why do you ask?”

“Yeah, Row.” Ben chimed in. “What’s it got to do with anything? What’s that other symbol anyhow? Did’ya recognize it or not? Hey, where’re you goin’?”

“I need some air.” I was halfway to the exit, and it was all I could manage to say.

When Ben finally caught up to me, I was in the corridor with my back pressed into the institutional grey wall. I had carelessly stuffed my glasses into a shirt pocket, and my face was now buried in my hands, shielding me from the horror in the autopsy suite, trapping, however, the vivid remembrance of it in my mind. My breath was labored, and I slid slowly down the wall until I was seated, hunched on the frigid tile floor.

“Rowan! What the hell’s goin’ on, man? Are you all right?” Ben was kneeling in front of me, hands clasping my shoulders. “What’s happening? Answer me!”

I had pitched my head forward the moment I noticed the darkness edging into my vision. I was still hyperventilating and now rode the fence between consciousness and unconsciousness. I struggled to control my breathing. Reaching deep inside, I forced myself to ground and center, a Witch’s equivalent of relaxing and focusing. My breaths began to come slower, deepening with each draw. I could feel electric tremors still dancing up my spine and knew I was shivering, but the cold was far from being the cause.

“Dammit, white man, talk to me!” Ben demanded.

“You think you’re safe,” I finally told him softly from behind the wall of my palms.

His confusion was evident. “What? Safe? What’re ya’ talkin’ about?”

Slowly I rubbed my eyes and let out a heavy breath. Pressing my palms together, I steepled my hands and rested the point of my index fingers on my bearded chin then looked him squarely in the eyes. His expression told me that he was not only confused but also frightened for me as well. The last time he had witnessed me behaving such as this, I had almost died, and there had been nothing he could do to stop it.

The medical examiner had followed him and now stood across the corridor looking helpless. He displayed his own grimace of fear as he nervously milled about. I was certain, however, that his fear was not for me, but rather, of me. His profession dealt with the dead. Silent corpses devoid of feeling or emotion. To this he had grown accustomed over the years, and its comfortable emptiness had left him with little skill in the realm of the living.

“You think you’re safe,” I repeated before continuing the explanation. “You believe it no matter what you see on the news at ten. ‘No, that could never happen to me. That only happens to other people.’ We all say it. We all believe it. Then it strikes a little closer to home. A friend. A relative. It hurts, but you still think you’re immune. Then it comes even closer…”