Southern Belle by Stuart Jaffe

the murders, whatever evidence the police had went up in flames, destroyed in a bizarre fire. With the kidnapping, the police had the girl in protective custody. She claimed that they lifted her from a grocery store parking lot, told her they knew she was a witch and that they planned to kill her. At some point during her captivity, they decided they had made a mistake and let her go, making her swear to never tell a soul. She swore as instructed, and then headed straight for the police.
    "This is where you changed," Max said to the laptop screen.
    He could picture them having a difficult conversation. Ernest insisted they use their skills with the dark arts to silence this girl. Leed objected — after all, why did they let her go in the first place if they would only kill her in the end? But Ernest pressed on, pointing out that they had made a mistake, a tragic mistake, that he didn't want to hurt this girl, but that she jeopardized all they had worked for, that if she were allowed to testify, they would go to jail for a long time, and then who would be looking out for mankind? Who would fight the witches?
    Max could hear Leed's arguments weaken as well as his resolve. He may have despised the decision, but Leed eventually agreed. They put a curse on the girl, and within a day, she had died from unknown causes.
    While a lot of this story was supposition on Max's part, he had done this sort of thing enough to know when his imagination had struck close to the truth. This felt true. The newspaper articles, public police logs, and filed lawsuits that he could find supported his conclusion. And even if he missed the mark a little, it didn't change much.
    The facts remained that Ernest and Leed had deluded themselves into attacking women, some of whom were actually witches. No doubt, the ones they tracked down to North Carolina were real. Drummond might have been a bit gullible at the time, but he wouldn't kill random people just on the word of these guys. Since Drummond participated in the curse, Max had to assume the story of a North Carolina coven held merit.
    Unfortunately, while Max managed to put together a grim picture of Ernest and Leed — essentially two unintentional serial killers — he found little to link them up with the coven. Their history died when they reached Winston-Salem. Considering Leed's paranoia, Max guessed they purposely hid after dispatching the coven in order to protect themselves from retaliation.
    Max thought about different avenues to research — more basics on witch covens, searching for acknowledged witches in Winston-Salem, looking up some of the symbols Ernest and Leed had drawn on their walls. As his bouncing ball screen saver kicked in, he realized none of this would help him much. He already knew most of the witch basics from his previous research and his own unfortunate experiences with Dr. Connor, the Hull's witch on retainer. Finding current witches in Winston-Salem might be interesting, but the coven in question had been destroyed decades ago. The best he could find would be a relative of one of the witches, and he doubted any relative would be very forthcoming in the matter. As for the symbols, he needed to look them up but his mind didn't want to focus on that at the moment. In fact, there was only one thing he kept thinking about — Marshall Drummond.
    Max rested his fingers on the keyboard. "Okay, Drummond. You've got more answers than I do, and if you won't tell us, if all you're going to do is lie, then I'm not going to feel guilty about looking into you a little deeper."
    He typed Drummond's name into the search field but hesitated. He craned his neck to peek toward the stairs. Listening for any sound of Sandra, he held still.
    "Don't feel guilty," he finally said and tapped the Enter key.
    After a few hours, he had to admit that much of Drummond's life remained an undigitized mystery. He found several newspaper reports of cases Drummond had worked on as well as records of his