Her phone rings right on cue.
She picks it up immediately. “This is Detective Leary.”
“Hello there, Detective.” Rick Walker’s voice is mid-range, pleasant, unaccented. There’s music playing in the background.
“With whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”
Ignoring her question, he asks one of his own: “Where are you?”
“I’ll tell you if you tell me.”
“Very clever, Detective,” he croons in a tone that sends shivers down her spine. Not good shivers. Creeped-out-by-a-psychopath shivers.
“Do we have a deal, then?” she asks him, recognizing the background music.
It’s U2. “Sunday, Bloody Sunday.”
Bloody . . .
She wonders if he’s trying to send her a message.
“You’d have to promise to be honest with me if we do this, Detective Leary.”
Sully looks at Barnes, who nods.
“Absolutely. And you’d have to promise to be honest with me.”
“Of course, although . . . promises. Promises are never quite as convincing as proof. Do you agree?”
“Absolutely,” she says again.
“Well, you really are brilliant. We can text photographs to prove our locations. Make sure that yours is a selfie. I’d dearly love a photo of you.”
“And I’d love one of you.”
He laughs. “Nice try. A photo of my surroundings will have to suffice.”
“It wouldn’t prove anything unless you’re in it.”
Barnes jots something on the pad and shows it to Colonomos as the caller laughs again, saying, “Now that would be stupid of me, wouldn’t it? To send you a picture of myself? I enjoy my anonymity. Really, I do.”
Yeah, so did I, she thinks grimly, realizing she’s going to be looking over her shoulder until they catch this guy.
Colonomos nods at whatever Barnes wrote on the pad. Barnes slides it toward and mouths, Keep him talking.
The call is being recorded, of course, back at the precinct, and they’ll be attempting to trace it. The longer she keeps the guy on the line, the better.
“If you sent a photograph, how would I even know you took it right now?” she asks. “It could be any old picture stored in your phone.”
“You’re right. It could. I have to admit, you’re very, very clever, Detective.”
The way he says it suggests that he’s certain she’s not as clever as he is.
We’ll just see about that.
She glances at the note on the pad in front of her, and nods at Barnes and Colonomos.
“Okay,” she says into the phone, “here’s what I want. I want you to pull up a map on your phone that can show GPS coordinates of your location. And then I want you to take a screenshot and send it to me.”
“A screenshot?”
“Yes. One that shows a bull’s-eye of your location, and it has to be time stamped, obviously.”
She fully expects him to refuse, well aware that the NYPD would instantly put out an APB and, given the population-dense tri-state area, probably have an officer at just about any location in the city or its suburbs within seconds. There are so many security cameras in the area that even if it took a few minutes to get a live person on the scene, they’d have a virtual eye on his location right away and track him if he tried to get away.
“Fair enough,” he says, to her surprise. “You tell me, and then I tell you.”
“No, you tell me, and then I tell you.”
“I may be accommodating, but I’m not stupid, and neither are you. You first. And I want a photo. Deal?”
She hesitates for only a moment, glad she’s well over a hundred miles away from the city and the New Jersey suburbs where his phone is registered. It’s not as if he’s going to materialize here in a matter of seconds, even if he is by chance responsible for Brianna Armbruster’s disappearance.
“Deal,” she says.
“Good thinking. Where are you?”
“I’m in a little town in upstate New York called Mundy’s Landing.”
The statement is met with silence, followed by a long, hard laugh—and then a click.
“Bastard,” she whispers.
A moment later, her phone buzzes with an incoming text.
It’s a screenshot of a map—with a GPS bull’s-eye located a few blocks away, right here in Mundy’s Landing.
It takes Jake a few rings to answer Rowan’s call, and when he does, he sounds harried. “Hey. What’s up?”
“Where are you?”
“Don’t tell me you forgot again.”
“No, I mean, I know you’re in Saratoga Springs, but I meant . . . are you in the meeting?”
“We broke for lunch. We’re about to go back in. What’s up?” he repeats.
“I just needed to talk to you about something. It’s important. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have bothered you there.”
“What is it?”
Hearing the impatience in his voice and the hubbub of background voices, she knows she made a mistake. Why did she think it was a good idea to have this conversation over the phone? Especially when he’s in the middle of an important sales meeting?
“Never mind. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“Are you okay? The kids?”
“The kids are fine,” she says quickly.
“You’re not fine, though.”
“How do you know that?”
“I didn’t, but you just confirmed it. What’s going on?”
“Nothing. I’ll talk to you when you get home tonight.”
“It’s not nothing, Ro. I can tell by your voice. And I won’t be home until really late. Tell me.”
His tone is so gentle, despite the fact that he’s in the midst of an important meeting. She opens her mouth to tell him to forget it, but a choked little sob is all that comes out.
“Hang on.”
She hears him tell whomever he’s with that he has to step outside, and the background noise fades away.
“Okay,” Jake says quietly, “you’re scaring me. Are you sick? What’s going on?”
Her attempt to stammer a reassurance and a good-bye is met with a stern “Tell me. Now.”
“You’re in the middle of a meeting.”
“Right, and if you don’t tell me now, I’m going to think the worst and I won’t be able to focus on my presentations.”
“It isn’t . . . the worst,” she tells him—and reminds herself—as she clutches the phone hard against her ear. “It’s just something that happened a long time ago and it popped up again. Something bad. I should have told you back then, but you need to know now, because . . .”
“What is it?”
This is it. Confession time—if she has the nerve.
The moment Casey heard that Detective Sullivan Leary is here in town, he had to hang up the phone. He could scarcely speak, overwhelmed by joy and temptation.
First things first—he did send the screenshot she’d demanded. A deal is a deal, and how could he resist?
Then, of course, he left the area immediately, heading away from the business district, out to the strip malls on the highway. He pulled into a crowded Home Depot parking lot, where his van was one of many.
They won’t be looking for it, of course, or for him. They have no idea what he’s driving, or who he is.
He just needs a moment to blend into the scenery and collect his thoughts. It might be time to revise the plan yet again, but he doesn’t want to make a rash decision. Things have been moving too quickly as it is.
He leans his head back against the seat rest, catches sight of himself in the rearview mirror, and grins.
Hey there, stranger.
The beard is gone. He’d forgotten all a
bout that. He’d lathered up and shaved it off this morning before he left his apartment, using the freshly sharpened antique blade.
It was time. He’d started growing it over a year ago—not deliberately, of course. He’d never been a fan of facial hair. But after someone you love slits her wrists with a razor blade, you don’t handle one lightly.
No, not at all. Not on yourself.
He’d stopped wearing his contact lenses, too. When you’ve been through a loss like that, you find yourself crying at any random moment, and tears make contacts cloudy.
But today, Casey was finally ready to put all that behind him. He shaved off the beard, and he swapped the glasses for contacts.
Now he looks like his old self, the man he was one year, one week, and three days ago.
Hearing sirens, he looks up and sees a police car racing along the highway toward town.
Are they looking for him?
Or are they looking for Brianna?
He drove her up into the mountains and left her far off the trail. When the snow comes, it’ll cover her. Chances are, they’re not going to find her for a long, long time.
And they’re never going to find me.
And Rowan Mundy and Sullivan Leary . . . what about them?
Imagine having them both at once: two beautiful redheads, one representing good, the other evil. Which would win in the end?
Neither.
I’m in control. I decide who wins and loses, lives and dies.
I decide how, and when . . . and where.
So. Maybe it should be right here in Mundy’s Landing after all. Maybe two of them together will be enough, so exquisite that when all is said and done, he’ll be satisfied at last.
If that’s the case, why not stay?
Why not live right here among the locals? They’ll never suspect that the most brilliant killer of their time is right there in their midst.
For all he knows, the Sleeping Beauty Killer did the same thing.
“Do you remember Rick Walker?” Rowan asks Jake, her voice shaking as she says the name.
It’s met with a moment of silence. Then a taut, “What about him?”
“He . . . I . . .”
Jake curses softly. “I knew it.”
“What? What did you know?”
“I knew you and he were . . . I knew it.”
“No! We weren’t—we didn’t—”
“Then what?”
She hesitates, hearing someone calling Jake’s name in the background.
“It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t—”
“It wasn’t what? You didn’t what?”
Now she can’t find her voice at all.
“Did you sleep with that guy, Rowan?”
She swallows hard. “No. I didn’t sleep with him. I stopped it before it went that far. He made a move on me, and I . . .”
“Slapped him across the face?” he asks. “Did you slap him across the face?”
“No.”
“And you didn’t tell me so that I could slap him across the face, or—” He breaks off to call to someone on the other end, “I know, sorry, I’ll be right there.”
“Jake, listen—”
He cuts her off. “How long did it go on?”
A little more than eight minutes.
Eight minutes, and I burned the cookies.
“It wasn’t like that, Jake. It didn’t go on. He made a pass, and I didn’t stop it right away, and . . . it didn’t go any further than that. I barely saw him again after that day.”
“But you did see him.”
“Not that way. The kids were friends. He lived next door. And after we moved away, I never saw him again . . .” Dammit. She swallows miserably before concluding the sentence: “. . . until last week.”
“You saw him last week? Where? Did you run into him?”
“No. I got a package in the mail, and I thought it was from him.”
“Why?”
“Because it arrived on the exact day that he . . . you know. The anniversary.”
“So you remember the exact date, after how many years?”
“Fourteen. How could I forget it? I was so upset after it happened. It was horrible.”
“Yeah. I’ll bet.”
“Jake—”
“So you didn’t see him for fourteen years, and then out of the blue, he sent you a gift on your anniversary.”
“I don’t have an anniversary with him, Jake. It was the anniversary. And it wasn’t a gift. It was something stupid that he knew would remind me of him.”
Mercifully, he doesn’t ask what it is. She can’t stomach the thought of painting a vivid verbal image involving the smoke alarm and burnt cookies.
“So you saw him . . . when?”
“Saturday.”
“Saturday,” Jake echoes, and she can sense the wheels turning. “So you lied about going shopping? You were with him instead?”
Oh, how she wishes she could lie again.
Those days are over. Own it, dammit. Own what you did. Ask for forgiveness.
“I really did go shopping. But I saw him, too. Only to find out why he’d sent the package and to tell him to leave me alone.”
“And did you?”
“He didn’t send it.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“I know. I don’t believe him, either. I mean, I didn’t. Now I don’t know what to believe. I’ve gotten two other weird packages since then, and if they’re not from him, I don’t know who they’re from.”
She waits for the logical follow-up question: Who else did you tell?
But he doesn’t ask it. She can picture him sitting there outside some hotel conference room, trying to process it all. If he weren’t there—if they were together, alone, at home—would he be so quiet? Or would he be ranting at her? Walking out on her?
“I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you what happened, Jake. I was afraid to. I was afraid you’d think the wrong thing. I was afraid of losing you. But you have to believe me—what I’ve just told you is the entire truth. I have nothing else to hide. Please believe me.”
Silence. And then: “How can I ever believe you again, when you kept something like this from me for all those years? How could you?”
“You were never around back when it first happened, and I—”
“Because I was working to keep a roof over our heads, just like I’m doing right now,” he says over someone calling his name in the background, “so if you’re trying to blame this on me—”
“I’m not. I’m blaming it on myself. It was one hundred percent my fault. But what you asked me was how I could have kept it from you, the answer is that it wasn’t very hard.”
She pauses.
Silence, interrupted after a few moments by “I’ll be right there, sorry,” but he isn’t talking to her.
“Jake, remember how it was back then? You were gone for days on end, and nights, too. When you were around, our time together and with the kids was either so hectic or so precious that I could never find the right moment. I knew we wouldn’t have had time to heal something that huge. Was that the right decision? No. I’d never make that decision now. But I was a different person back then. We both were.”
“I’ve never lied to you. Never. ”
She absorbs that. “If you had ever come right out and asked me if something like this had happened—back then, or in the years since—I wouldn’t have lied about it.”
“How would I know to even ask something like that?”
“You wouldn’t. I’m just saying—”
“I get it. I have to go.”
She wants to protest, needs to keep talking until they’ve found resolution, until they’ve healed.
Well aware that it’s not going to happ
en right now, or today, or maybe even soon, she says only, “I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. The last thing I’d ever want to do is hurt you.”
“But you did.”
“I know, and I’m sorry, and I love you.” She waits for him to say it back.
He doesn’t. Not this time. She hears only a click as he disconnects the call.
From the Mundy’s Landing Tribune Archives
News
July 15, 1916
Sestercentennial Festivities to Resume
Memorabilia Chest Will Be Buried
The spate of inexplicable murders over recent weeks put a grisly halt to the merry celebration of our two-and-a-half-century-old village, which will recommence tomorrow.
“The tragic and mysterious deaths of three anonymous schoolgirls notwithstanding,” Mayor Cornelius Holmes said from his office in Village Hall, “we ought not ignore our first settlers, who courageously arrived in Mundy’s Landing 250 years ago and deserve, upon this momentous occasion, to be fêted in a grand manner befitting their tenacity.”
Gently reminded that the first settlers arrived a year prior, the mayor returned that the village has perennially recognized its official birth date as 1666.
Indeed, it was then that the vast majority of our forebears arrived on an overdue supply ship from England, only to discover that nearly all members of the existing colony had succumbed to starvation over the course of their first treacherous winter in the New World.
The aghast newcomers determined that two of the surviving quintet—James and Elizabeth Mundy—had butchered and cannibalized their fellow settlers. After their parents had been executed for their dastardly crimes, the couple’s three children were mercifully allowed to stay on in the home their father had built. Charity Mundy passed away in her teens, but Jeremiah Mundy and his sister Priscilla lived well into their dotage after marrying and raising children of their own.
Many of their descendants live and work among us to this day—most notably, Horace J. Mundy, one of several prominent American financiers who met with J. P. Morgan and the late Senator Nelson W. Aldrich on Jekyll Island, Georgia, to draft legislation for the new Federal Reserve System that was subsequently signed into law by President Wilson. Although he passes the winter months in Georgia, Mr. Mundy summers at his Prospect Street mansion and shall preside as honorary chairman of tomorrow’s festivities as planned.
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