Any Witch Way You Can by Amanda Lee[murder] Page A

before his heart had been cut out.
    Chief Terry turned back to me briefly. “I’ll let you know what we find out.”
    “Thanks.”
    I started to move away but Chief Terry stopped me. “Bay, they did say one other thing.”
    “What?”
    “They said if it is some sort of ritual thing, this might only be the beginning.”
     

Six
    When I left the corn maze, I was still shaken by Chief Terry’s parting words. Only the beginning. More murders? More teenagers with their hearts cut out? I couldn’t even imagine that. Why here? And why now?
    I found my hands shaking as I drove and pondered what had just happened. This was Hemlock Cove. Things like this weren’t supposed to happen here. The most distressing thing to happen here on a regular basis was gossip.
    I stopped at the paper to see how the layout for this week’s edition was going. It wasn’t exactly rocket science, but it was still important. This was the town’s only source of local information, after all. And, even though the townspeople made fun of the paper, they would be lost without it.
    I went into my office, closing the door behind me, and opened my laptop. I started Googling ritual murders – and was disturbed by what I found. To be fair, my only knowledge on anything like this came from television – basically Criminal Minds and Dateline reruns. The only thing I could ascertain is that there were no set rules for this sort of thing.
    Essentially, two types of people conduct ritualistic murders: Those that thought the devil was making them do these things and those that thought they were doing horrific things because they were actually the devil. Both sounded insane to me.
    Surprisingly, when I widened my search, I found that there were a disturbing number of ritual murders throughout the country that involved removing hearts. Apparently, the heart was the most common organ to be removed. Nice.
    Despite surfing through several websites, I couldn’t find one commonality for why people would take the heart. Some did it as a way to appease certain pagan gods. Others did it as a trophy – putting it in a jar or on display in their homes. The truly disturbed, I found, actually ate them. And I thought liver was gross.
    I was so engrossed in my work that I didn’t see Edith float through the wall and join me in my research.
    “Why are you looking at that?”
    “A boy was found in the Harrow Bluff corn maze this morning,” I explained. “He had his heart cut out.”
    “That’s awful,” Edith intoned. “Was it done with a chainsaw?”
    “I don’t think so. I think it was done with a simple knife,” I replied. I didn’t know if that was better or worse, though.
    “Was he from town?”
    “They don’t think so,” I said. “No one recognized him. The state police are trying to find out who he is through dental records.”
    Edith’s gaze was focused on my computer screen. “And the police think it was ritualistic? Like a cult?”
    “They don’t know. They think it’s a possibility, though. I was just doing my own research.”
    “Well, I hope that it’s not devil worshippers,” Edith said. “The last thing this town needs is devil worshippers – what with all the witches and everything.”
    I tried not to let her comments hurt me – but it wasn’t an easy endeavor. I knew she didn’t mean me specifically, but since I was the only one in town that could see and talk to her, I thought she would show a little restraint. If only for my benefit.
    Edith didn’t seem to notice my sudden discomfort. Or, maybe she did, and she chose instead to ignore it. “This won’t be good for the town,” she said.
    “It’s not good for anybody.”
    I left the office after another twenty minutes of research and decided to go to Hypnotic to tell Clove and Thistle what had happened. I knew they would never forgive me if I didn’t give them the details myself. Plus, I wanted to get their thoughts on ritualistic murders. I didn’t think they knew any more