The Salem Witch Society by K. N. Shields Read Free Book Online Page A

“Rushing away, he’d be quite a savage sight—lower face covered in blood.”
    “Some blood on his hands also,” said Dr. Steig. “He took hold of her shoes and left a bloody thumb mark there.”
    Grey moved to the sideboard to inspect the right shoe. He lifted his leather satchel over his head and set it down close by. Lean came over to observe as Grey took some filament paper and a small vial of liquid from his kit. He placed drops on the paper before placing it onto the bloody thumbprint to collect an impression. With a pair of tweezers, Grey set it between two glass slides, which he then clamped together.
    “Fingerprinting, right?” Lean said.
    “Yes. Galton has worked out a system of classification. Unlike the remainder of the man’s dangerously misguided notions, this appears to possess scientific merit.” Grey deposited the slides into a hard case that he returned to a compartment within his kit. “When we locate a suspect, perhaps we’ll be able to obtain another sample for comparison.”
    Dr. Steig began his cuts tothe torso in order to examine the internal organs and the contents of her stomach. Grey moved closer to the examination, while Lean elected to remain by the side table and made a point of closely examining the neatly folded pile of Maggie Keene’s clothing. He caught a scent and raised her shirt to his face and inhaled. An underlying current of stale sweat lingered in the fabric, but it was overpowered by Maggie’s cheap perfume. Morbid though it seemed, Lean found it a welcome relief from the surrounding odors and took another breath. Next were her white gloves, both of them. The killer had removed them before proceeding with his grisly work.
    Lean held the right glove, itself like a hollow, phantom version of the dismembered and missing right hand. There was something on the glove, near the tip of the pointer finger. Lean examined it beneath the light of the gas jet. The fingertip was red, but there was something peculiar about the stain. The coloring did not look consistent with a stain from dipping the surface into blood. It looked incomplete, as if it had been absorbed and soaked through more thickly in spots. Lean turned the glove inside out and had his answer.
    He interrupted the narrative of the doctor’s examination to show them his discovery. The stain had originated from within the glove. Grey took the glove and then held it up against where blood had dried on Maggie Keene’s body. The contrast was clear. The glove’s stain had dried deep red, while the blood on the body had already turned an iron-rich reddish brown.
    “Is it blood at all?” asked Lean.
    “A spectrometer test of some scrapings would tell us,” said Dr. Steig.
    “It looks more like ink,” Grey said. “Red ink.”
    Lean glanced down into the opened chest cavity of Maggie Keene. His stomach nearly revolted. He was in desperate need of sleep, food, coffee, and fresh air, and so he announced he would need to get back to the Portland Company.
    “I still have the internal organs to go, but my report should be ready tomorrow,” Dr. Steig said.
    “I recommend justthe clear medical facts,” Grey said. “Let’s leave our more speculative comments out of the official record for now. Do you agree, Lean?”
    “Of course,” Lean said with a nod. He stood there in the fetid air of the underground morgue alongside a dead prostitute, the body mutilated by a meticulously scheming, pitchfork-wielding lunatic who liked to quote the Bible one minute and suckle at witches’ tits the next. He glanced up at the windows where, a world away, daylight existed.

6

    L ean tromped up the stairs to his family’s second-floor apartment on Hanover Street. He had stopped along the way at a police call box and learned that several drunks and vagrants had been rounded up but there were no good suspects among them.
    After reaching the landing, Lean let his head rest against the doorframe for a moment. Inside was the unmistakable