The Evil Inside. Heather Graham
there for all to see and know. I never thought that you could come here and solve all my problems with a simple chat with the dead. It’s never a simple ‘How do you do, and can you answer a question for me?’ But we are dealing with old stories and legends around here, true and enhanced.”
“These murders aren’t legends,” she said.
“No. But, but the natural ‘storytelling’ desire is to automatically say that the kid did it, neat and tidy and a juicy, repeatable story. That he freaked out because his father was a browbeating fanatic and he figured he could say that the house was filled with devils. People want to say this, for the newspapers at least. See what other stories are out there, from dead men or the living. I know that you can sort it all out.”
“You do have faith in me,” she murmured.
“Of course!” he said cheerfully. “Well, we’d best get on home, huh? I have a feeling it’s going to be an early morning.”
“And why is that?”
“Sam Hall is going to want me to visit his client with him,” Jamie said.
“He hasn’t agreed to defend Malachi Smith yet,” she said.
Jamie grinned. “Faith, lass. I live by it!” he said cheerfully.
It was good to be back at Uncle Jamie’s house. She’d spent a lot of time coming up here as a teenager. She smiled, thinking of the past. She’d had local friends—girls who had been glad to see her—and she brought the excitement of the big city, Boston, along with her.
They’d shopped at the wonderful stores; they’d played at being Wiccan, and it had surprised her at first that her Catholic parents hadn’t minded. They had been amused. But they had seen the wars fought in their own country over religion and economics and were tolerant.
Jamie’s house was old, but the family had always seemed to agree that it was a benign house. Whatever ghosts remained, they were tolerant, as well.
Jenna went to sleep in the familiar old bedroom her uncle had always referred to as “hers.” Jamie had allowed her to have her whims: there were posters of Gwen Stefani and No Doubt and other groups on the walls. They were a little incongruous there, since the bedroom was furnished entirely in period furniture, not from the seventeenth century, but the eighteenth century. Her bed was a four-poster; an old seafaring trunk sat at the foot of it, and a washstand with an antique ewer stood against the wall, along with an old wardrobe. To walk into the room—other than the posters and the stuffed Disney creatures on the shelves—was to walk into another time.
She lay awake a long time, what she had learned from Jamie rushing through her head. She admired her uncle and his steadfast faith; all the evidence in the world might stand against Malachi Smith, but Jamie believed in him.
When she fell asleep at last, she wasn’t sure that she had done so. The room still seemed to be bathed in a gray, half light. There seemed to be movement in her room, a movement of shadows, and then they stood still at the foot of her bed, staring at her.
It was a group of women, and they were in the rather stern and drab shades of the late sixteen hundreds. Only one seemed to be in a slightly different color, and in the shadows Jenna thought it might be a dark crimson. They just stared at her, and even she, who was accustomed to meeting the dead, felt a deep unease. And then an old woman in the front lifted a hand toward her. She whispered something, and at first, Jenna couldn’t make out the words. She wanted to wake up; she wanted to reach over and turn on the bedside light or just let out a scream and run into the hallway.
But then she comprehended the words the woman was trying to speak.
“Don’t let the dead have died in vain.”
Her throat was still tight; she was still so afraid. And, yet, she was the one who sought out those who had died.
Words came at her again.
“Don’t let the blood run, don’t let more blood run. Don’t let your blood run.”
Sam Hall arrived at Jamie’s door at precisely eight in the morning. He was going to defend Malachi Smith, and he was going to do it pro bono.
Jenna decided that her uncle really did know how to read people.
By the time he arrived, Jenna had mused over her dream, her waking dream or her nightmare—whatever it might have been. It had been natural, certainly. The conversation all day had been about blood and murder, and her thoughts had long lingered on Salem and the city’s past.
When she opened the door, dressed and ready to go as Jamie had suggested she be, Sam didn’t seem surprised, though he might have been a bit irritated that they both were confident he wouldn’t back away from the case.
“I’m not sure why you’re coming—I have to spend time at court. I have to become the attorney of record, see what the public defender has done, see where custody lies, file motions … it could be a long day,” he said. “I’m sure the public defender he hired has already made arrangements for Malachi to be seen by a court-appointed psychiatrist, and if we’re going for a not-guilty plea, I have to make sure that we stall the court date as long as possible.”
“I’m absolutely excellent at sitting around and waiting,” Jenna assured him.
Jamie came to the door. “Let’s go,” he said. “Sam, thank you.”
Sam grunted. “I’ll drive. You two do what I say, sit when I say sit and wait as long as you have to wait.”
Jamie was cheerfully agreeable.
It was a long morning, and there was a lot of paperwork to file. Since Malachi Smith was a minor with no family and still under the age of eighteen, he had become a ward of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and there were filings to be made with the state. None of that was difficult, not, apparently, when you were a hotshot attorney. Jamie was given a hearing and appointed Malachi’s guardian. Malachi had to fire the public defender he’d been assigned and accept Sam Hall as his attorney. That was easily accomplished—Jenna waited in the car while Jamie spoke to Malachi with Sam—but then time was needed for filing all the documents Sam had prepared.
When arraigned, Malachi had not been granted bail; the crime was far too heinous. They met Evan Richardson, Sam’s assistant, who had come to Salem as soon as Sam had called him and had already worked on the motions that had set the ball rolling. He would deal with more motions and more paperwork and the courts while Sam was engaged elsewhere. Jenna liked him. Just about her age, he was a pragmatic fellow from Syracuse, New York, not embroiled in the burden of history that often came with being a New Englander.
When they finished with the legal paperwork and headed back to see Malachi with all the papers properly filed, Jamie argued the point of Malachi’s incarceration with Sam.
“I can watch the young man day and night!” he told Sam.
Sam gave him a long sideways glance. “Jamie, you’re forgetting something,” he said.
“What’s that?” Jamie demanded.
“If Malachi Smith didn’t kill his family, a vicious killer remains at large.”
Jenna felt a streak of cold zip up her spine.
“Someone who has now killed six people,” Sam said.
Jamie was silent. She remembered her dream. Blood would flow… .
“All right,” Jamie said gruffly.
“And you do realize that the majority of the world will believe in Malachi’s guilt. The facts point to his guilt—until we can offer more facts,” Sam said.
Jamie nodded. “Yes, I see. If the killer strikes again, that will prove that Malachi is innocent, because he’ll have in indisputable alibi.”
“Yes. That and, if we’re going to do this, no one will really have the time to babysit Malachi every moment and make sure he’s safe. He’s better