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SIX MONTHS LATER ON HALLOWEEN NIGHT
October 31. The monsters were out in force tonight. They’d taken over Burning Lake, New York, and Detective Natalie Lockhart was powerless to stop them. She adjusted her 99-cent eye mask and headed through a huge crowd of costumed revelers, making her way toward the town square. The night air was cool and sweet-smelling. Autumn leaves crunched underfoot. The annual ritual was in full swing—a monthlong celebration culminating in Halloween’s Eve, a night full of dancing and drinking and having as much spooky fun as you could fit into one wild twenty-four-hour period.
“Love your costume!” a passing vampire shouted, and Natalie smiled back. She was dressed in her old police uniform. She’d pulled it out of mothballs, and it felt loose on her skinnier frame. All the detectives in the Criminal Investigations Unit had been assigned undercover duties tonight and were required to wear a costume, but Natalie didn’t feel like parading around as a mermaid or a princess or a witch. After spending the past six Halloweens on foot patrol, monitoring the streets as a BLPD officer, she decided to do the same thing this year, minus her service weapon and duty belt. She would be a zombie cop. Before her shift began, Natalie let down her hair, put on a chalky foundation and dark lipstick, added a dribble of fake blood to one cheek, slipped on a blue eye mask and a plastic joke badge, and told anyone who asked, “This is my costume. Like it or lump it.” Her fellow detectives had greeted her announcement with clammy silence. Only Luke had the temerity to ask, “Is that wise, Natalie?”
After thinking about it now, she realized no … it wasn’t the wisest decision she’d ever made. But it represented a subliminal desire to be a cop again, not the tabloid-splashed detective who’d shot the Crow Killer point-blank. She wanted to turn back time and walk the beat again, like she had in the good old days before Grace died. Nothing positive had happened to Natalie since last April. She’d lost everything that ever mattered to her.
The downtown district was dazzling tonight, lit by thousands of twinkle lights. The sizeable crowds had no clue that Natalie and her fellow detectives were working undercover, communicating via their department smartphones using secure, encrypted software to disseminate real-time communications. Her phone with its earpiece disguised as white AirPods allowed her to go about undetected, transmitting video feed to the rest of the unit, who were spread out across town, monitoring for trouble spots.
By all estimates, more than a hundred thousand people had descended on this self-proclaimed epicenter for magic and witchcraft. With a little help from the surrounding jurisdictions, a total of two hundred and twenty-five police officers were safeguarding downtown Burning Lake tonight—cops on foot, cops on bikes, cops in squad cars—along with forty plainclothes officers and the BLPD’s seven detectives. So far, the radio chatter had been nonstop—illegal drones were spotted flying above the fairgrounds, drunken tourists had broken through the barriers and climbed on top of vehicles, fights had broken out in multiple locations, shoplifters and pickpockets were having a field day. There were unexpected road closures and arguments over parking spaces. Most of the public lots and garages were filled to capacity, and traffic congestion was heavy in places.
“This is Command,” Lieutenant Luke Pittman’s voice sputtered in her ear.
Natalie tensed as she always did nowadays when she heard Luke speak and adjusted her earpiece. “CIU-seven,” she responded, while the other detectives in the unit chimed in as well. “CIU-four … CIU-two … received…”
“We’ve got a boisterous crowd spilling onto Beulah Miles Road, which is supposed to be closed to pedestrian traffic,” Luke told them from the nerve center of tonight’s operation, the dispatch area of the station house with its telecommunications equipment and mapping software. “That street is officially closed, but a huge crowd is coming out of the Witches’ Ball, and I need a couple of warm bodies down there to monitor the situation while we send over a few squad cars to clear it.”
“I’m two blocks away, Lieu,” Detective Augie Vickers volunteered, his take-charge voice booming in her earpiece. “You want me to head over there?”
“Go ahead, Augie.”
“Me also,” Mike Anderson chimed in.
“Go, Mike. The rest of the team continue along your assigned routes,” Luke said.
“You don’t need any more of us?” Natalie asked.
“Negative. Continue along your assigned routes. Out.”
She signed off and grimaced at her phone. “Fuck you, too.” Luke’s cold professionalism wounded her, but it no longer surprised her. After Grace passed away last April, Natalie had done her very best to push him away. She didn’t know why. It was just that Luke’s sympathy, his kindness, only seemed to make things worse, like poking a raw wound and never letting it heal. The more he tried to help, the worse Natalie felt, until finally Luke gave up and complied with her wishes, leaving her to her grief. Now she missed him. Really missed him. They used to meet casually after work just to gripe and shoot the shit. Their friendship had spanned decades, reaching all the way back to their tumultuous childhoods, and Natalie had secretly been in love with him forever. Their mutual alienation was painful, and lately she felt a desire to move closer to Luke, but the misunderstandings had piled up and the cracks in their relationship had become chasms.
Not only was her relationship with Luke on the fritz but Detective Brandon Buckner was avoiding her, too. Brandon and Natalie had once been good buddies, but the tragic events of last April had torn them apart. He recently confessed he didn’t want to hate Natalie—he just couldn’t help himself. Whenever he looked at her, Brandon was reminded of his dead wife. He refused to talk to her outside of their official duties and had taken the night shift in order to avoid working with her. Every time she interacted with Luke or Brandon, she wanted to crawl home and pull the covers over her head.
Now her scalp itched beneath the sweaty hatband, and her feet ached. Natalie had been walking for three hours straight without a break. The air smelled spicy and greasy from the open-air market food carts. There were tacky storefront displays of broomstick-riding witches, swooping bats, and a mock-dungeon with skeletons chained to the walls. People screamed with delight at the Freddy Krueger and Beetlejuice look-alikes. The BLPD was stretched thin to accommodate long lines for various guided tours, museum exhibits, Halloween-themed balls, fortune-teller booths, haunted houses, and graveyard tours. Visitors could buy combination tickets, and comfortable shoes were recommended. For the kids, there were corn mazes, pumpkin-decorating contests, and other family-friendly activities.
Copyright © 2020 by Alice Blanchard
Excerpt from The Witching Tree copyright © 2021 by Alice Blanchard
