Blood Red

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “Lost it?”

  “You know . . . he had a rough time. He kind of went off the deep end.”

  “In what way?”

  “He couldn’t sleep, he lost weight and he didn’t want to see anyone, not even Rick.”

  Understandable. Some ­people react to a sudden loss by holding on tightly to their remaining loved ones; others by letting go for fear of losing someone else.

  “He’s the one who found her,” Derek adds.

  Steve pretends he wasn’t aware of that when, in fact, he looked into Vanessa De Forrest’s death before he headed over to Brooklyn.

  She had, indeed, slit her own wrists in a bathtub, on November thirtieth of last year.

  She was discovered by her eldest son, who’d gone over to check on her after she failed to show up at work. Her doctor had recently prescribed an antidepressant that carried a risk of suicidal tendencies, and she’d left a rambling, handwritten note that both blamed her ex-­husband and professed her love for him.

  That isn’t unusual after a divorce. The timing isn’t unusual either: she killed herself on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

  According to Derek, Rick had custody of the younger half siblings on that first Thanksgiving after the divorce. Derek went to Mexico with friends, so Vanessa cooked a turkey for herself and Casey. When Derek called her that night, she was alone again, had been drinking, and was upset and resentful.

  “At you?” Steve asks.

  “Kind of. At everyone, really. But mostly at Rick.”

  “Why did they split up?”

  “They were so different. Looking back, I’m more surprised they ever got married in the first place than I am that they got divorced.”

  “Did your brother feel the same way?”

  “Probably. I don’t think anyone who knew them wouldn’t feel that way.”

  “Yet your mother didn’t want the divorce.”

  “No.”

  “Because she was still in love with him?”

  “That, and I think she felt like a failure. She was a real perfectionist, and . . . you know. Both her husbands left her.”

  Steve shifts gears.

  “When was the last time you saw your brother?”

  “It’s been a while. Probably not since . . . I’d say it’s been almost a year.”

  “That’s a long time when you live in the same city.”

  “I know, but he’s . . . not that social. Plus, he travels a lot for work.”

  “What does he do?”

  “He’s an electrical lineman—­he does power restoration in areas that have been hit by storms.”

  From the Mundy’s Landing Tribune Archives

  Front Page

  July 8, 1916

  Second Young Woman Murdered

  Bloodied Corpse at G. H. Purcell Residence

  Village in Uproar at News

  At approximately ten-­thirty this morning, Mrs. Florence S. Purcell of 46 Bridge Street was greeted by a horrific sight upon entering the second-­floor guest room to prepare it for weekend visitors. A young woman lay beneath the coverlet with her head resting upon a pillow, eyes closed as if in slumber. Had Mrs. Purcell not been aware of a similar discovery earlier in the week at the home of Dr. and Mrs. Silas O. Browne of 65 Prospect Street, she might have approached and attempted to awaken the sleeping intruder as did the unfortunate Mrs. Browne.

  Correctly surmising that the bed’s occupant was deceased, Mrs. Purcell began shrieking, which greatly frightened her children, Miss Augusta A. Purcell and Master Frederick G. Purcell. Hastening to the scene were Mr. Homer M. Sampson, who resides across the way at 49 Bridge Street, and Niall Devlin, a stable hand at Harrison’s Livery on Fulton Avenue, whose barns are located adjacent to the rear of the Purcell property.

  After ushering the distraught Mrs. Purcell and her children to the safety of a neighboring home, Mr. Sampson dispatched the Devlin lad to fetch both the police and Mr. Purcell, who at the time was in his office at the First National Bank on Fulton Avenue.

  This follows the aforementioned incident that took place last Friday morning, when the lifeless body of an unidentified young girl was found in the former bedroom of Miss Maude Browne, the eldest daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Browne, who is spending the year abroad. In that case, as in this one, there were no witnesses to the dastardly deed, no assassin was readily apprehended, nor were any suspects questioned.

  At press time, a full investigation was under way. Asked whether the two crimes were linked, Officer Ernest B. Vestal informed the Tribune, “It would be imprudent to offer speculation.”

  Chapter 19

  After noticing several police cars in town, Mick decided to search along the bike path that follows the river north of the Schaapskill Nature Preserve. He’s pretty sure that at this time of year, no one else would think to look over here for Brianna—­or for him.

  When Mom and Dad were growing up in Mundy’s Landing it was a rail track, but neither of them remember it ever being used. It’s since been paved over and it’s where he jogs every morning, accessing it via a shortcut behind his house. During the summer, it’s busy with bike traffic, but at this time of year, it’s nearly deserted.

  He’s never crossed paths with Brianna here, but that doesn’t mean anything. Maybe she goes earlier or later than he does. He can’t keep tabs on her every move, though he regrets that now.

  He moves slowly, searching the grayish-­brown scrub along both sides of the paved trail, determined not to leave until he finds her.

  Waiting for the water to fill the tub in Rowan’s master bathroom, Casey regrets that it isn’t an old claw-­foot model that you might expect to find in a house like this.

  Ironically, you wouldn’t expect to find a claw-­foot tub in a Hoboken condo, but there was one in the master bathroom of the place they’d moved into after leaving Westchester County thirteen years ago.

  “Are you going to start taking bubble baths?” Casey remembers asking his mother when he saw it.

  Rick answered for her. “Are you kidding? Your mom would never sit around soaking in a tub. She doesn’t like to waste time.”

  “I don’t have time to waste,” Mom said in the brittle tone she was using more and more often when she spoke to Rick.

  Casey was still just a kid then—­thirteen—­but he was old enough to recognize the ever-­escalating tension between them. It had worsened right before they moved away from Westchester, with a fight about Rowan Mundy.

  Rick felt bad that she had moved away; Mom accused him of being in love with her. Casey overheard everything.

  By that time, he’d been indulging his voyeuristic tendencies for years—­with his mother and stepfather, his siblings, the neighbors . . .

  He was addicted to eavesdropping on ­people’s private conversations, watching their most intimate moments. There was tremendous power in omniscience.

  The habit had originally been born out of paranoia, back when his biological father was still around and frequently threatening Mom that he was going to leave town with Casey and his brother. Terrified that it would actually happen, Casey monitored his father’s every move, looking for signs that he was getting ready to take off.

  Mercifully, when it finally happened—­when Kurt Clark, Senior, finally left—­he went alone.

  Casey kept spying, though. At first, just on his mother. He was afraid she was going to leave, too. That fear eased when Rick came along, but watching the two of them together was so titillating that he couldn’t stop. Finally, Rick caught him peeking through a crack in the door one night when he and Mom were in bed together. Casey didn’t let on that he’d been watching them and pretended he wasn’t feeling well. They bought it. But they began locking their bedroom door after that.

  There were ways around that for a precocious kid like Casey. When they still lived in the city, he’d crawl out t
he fire escape outside the bedroom he shared with his brother and peek through the window into the room next door. His parents never bothered to close the blinds; the apartment faced an alley and an unbroken concrete wall.

  When they moved to the house in Westchester, the master bedroom was on the ground floor, making it even easier for him to spy from outside. But as time went on, he rarely caught his mother and Rick naked in each other’s arms. Most nights, they were just sleeping.

  That was okay. By then he’d discovered Rowan.

  He wasn’t much interested in her when they first met. She was just a mom, hugely pregnant.

  But one day, soon after she had the baby, she bared her breast to nurse him right there in front of Casey. He was mesmerized, watching the baby suckling, his tiny fingers toying with his mother’s long red hair. Mesmerized, and insanely, irrationally jealous.

  From that moment on, he watched Rowan Mundy every chance he got and pleasured himself to fantasies that involved her.

  From the tree house, he could see over the fence into the yard next door. Sometimes, at night when the lights were on, he could see directly into her house from his own. Having spent so much time inside the house during the day, he knew the layout of the rooms, well aware which windows belonged to the master bedroom and which to the bathroom. The curtains were always closed at night, so he never glimpsed anything more erotic than Rowan nursing her baby, but his imagination conjured plenty of tantalizing scenarios that were undoubtedly unfolding across the way. He longed to glimpse her showering or disrobing or making love with her husband . . .

  It didn’t happen.

  Something else did.

  Always a stickler for details, for numbers, Casey remembered the date clearly. November thirtieth.

  That was the day his stepfather finally did what Casey had long fantasized about doing to Rowan. Naturally, he was spying on them from the next room. In the throes of adolescence, hormones raging, he didn’t blame Rick for finding her irresistible. Nor did he resent the woman in the arms of his mother’s husband.

  Not at first.

  But that day was the turning point. Afterward, everything changed. She changed.

  Until November thirtieth, Rowan was always so open, so affectionate—­not just with Rick, but with Casey. To be fair, she was that way with everyone: Casey’s younger brother Derek, his half brother Liam, and his sister Erin, too. But overnight, she went from loving and warm to ice cold.

  Not long after, a For Sale sign went up, and she was gone.

  Eavesdropping on his mother and Rick’s argument after the Mundys had moved away, Casey felt torn. He loved his mother more than anything in the world, and he didn’t want her to be unhappy. But he loved Rick, too, almost as much. Rick was his hero. He’d saved Casey from being the kid with the loser dad, or the kid with no dad at all. He’d made everything okay.

  “Don’t worry, you can do no wrong in his eyes,” he once heard Mom telling Rick, laughingly, when they were behind closed doors talking about how Rick had grounded Casey for a week. As his new stepfather, Rick was afraid Casey was going to hate him for the punishment, but was adamant about teaching him a lesson.

  Casey can no longer remember what he’d done. Not that time, anyway. He only remembers that no one ever caught him doing anything that was truly wicked, like stealing a pocket knife from Kmart and using it to skin small, furry animals. Live ones. Well, not live for long. His hand, back then, wasn’t nearly as steady as it is now.

  But I was much too smart to get caught. Smarter than Mom and Rick, smarter than Derek and Liam and Erin, smarter than the teachers . . .

  Just like I’m smarter than the police. Even Sullivan Leary.

  The thought of the redheaded detective jars him back to the present.

  The tub is filled with steaming water.

  Casey turns off the tap just in time to hear a car pulling into the driveway. She’s just in time.

  He smiles, pleased, and takes out Rick’s cell phone to make a quick, final call.

  Biting into a flaky apple pastry dusted with cinnamon and sugar, Sully forgets, momentarily, about the disturbing screenshot, and about the homicide, and even about bagels. Good bagels, bad bagels . . . who needs bagels? She could live here, and subsist on this pastry.

  “That’s not lunch,” Stockton points out as he unwraps a ham and cheese sandwich on a croissant. “That’s dessert.”

  “It’s not lunchtime,” she replies with a shrug. Anyway, there’s nothing wrong with dessert for lunch. Especially when it’s mid-­afternoon and you had absolutely no appetite when you placed your order.

  But the secretary stationed outside Colonomos’s office had encouraged her and Stockton to order something when she’d passed around a menu earlier. “It’s going to be a long day.”

  Every day is a long day where they come from, but in the few hours they’ve been here, they’ve become well aware that the Mundy’s Landing police force isn’t accustomed to this intense state of overdrive. They’re efficient, but small. From what Sully gathers, they deal mostly with petty crimes, parking tickets, and crowd control during the summer festival.

  Now they’re dealing with not one, but two missing teens. They identified a high school kid who was reportedly stalking Brianna Armbruster, only to have him slip away before they could question him.

  “Mick Mundy?” Sully echoed, when she heard the name. “As in . . . Mundy’s Landing?”

  “Right. His dad’s family is descended from the first settlers here.”

  That they were executed as accused murderers wasn’t lost on Sully, but Colonomos assured him that Mick Mundy is a good kid from a good family.

  Theoretically, all he did was give a girl a ­couple of gifts. Sully would be inclined to believe it was totally innocent if one of the beads hadn’t been etched with the word Redhead.

  Even that might be innocent; a coincidence.

  Brianna Armbruster aside, it’s hard to imagine that a sixteen-year-­old small-­town kid—­regardless of what his ancestors might have done three hundred and fifty years ago—­is responsible for the heinous serial murders. Too bad he took off before he could be questioned and cleared.

  Her cell phone rings as she takes another bite. She hurriedly chews and swallows when she sees that the call is from the precinct.

  “Detective L—­”

  “Sully.” Jin again. “He called back. Can I patch him through?”

  She doesn’t have to ask who. “Go ahead.”

  “Okay. And he says it’s urgent. Life or death.”

  Yeah, whose? Sully wonders, and then he’s on the line.

  Stepping through the back door into her sister’s kitchen, Noreen is aghast.

  Dishes in the sink, clutter on the counters, dirt tracked on the floors, spilled food and water around the dog’s bowls . . .

  Her first instinct is to start tidying up. Still wearing her coat, with her purse and overnight bag hanging from her shoulders, she begins with the coffeemaker. After pouring this morning’s stale brew down the drain, she dumps the cold, wet grounds into the nearly overflowing—­of course—­garbage can, and opens the dishwasher. It, too, is full, and someone—­Gee, I wonder who?—­forgot to run it. The dishes inside weren’t rinsed so they’re caked in crud. Among them is the chipped red pitcher from their childhood home.

  Noreen closes the dishwasher and steps away.

  She’s not here to clean up this mess. She’s here to clean up the bigger one.

  Maybe, if she can set this loser Rick Walker straight and help her sister get past this marital setback, she’ll feel better about all the things she can’t fix in her own life.

  Still, she walks through the first floor with a critical eye. Throw rugs are slightly askew, closet doors ajar, coats draped over chairs, shoes are scattered on the floor . . .

  The dog, when she comes across him n
apping on the sofa, shouldn’t be shedding on the furniture, and he should be barking at her presence.

  And there are far too many framed family photos, she decides when she reaches the front hall. Especially on the wall leading up the stairs, where they’re hung in mismatched frames of all shapes and sizes.

  Hearing a rustling sound behind her, she spins around.

  No one is there.

  She never did like old houses. She doesn’t believe that they’re haunted, but they do creak and groan. Settling noises, her parents used to call them. Which never made sense to Noreen, because old houses should have had plenty of time to settle.

  Again, she hears the sound.

  Again, she whirls around.

  This time someone is there.

  This is the moment Casey has anticipated for months, years. Yet now it’s finally arrived, it isn’t quite right. It isn’t right at all.

  Coming face to face with Rowan Mundy at last, Casey confirms that all the familiar components are accounted for: the compact build, fine bone structure, speckled green eyes, long, lovely cinnamon-­colored hair . . .

  It’s all there, but . . . different. Off.

  Why? Casey wonders, his brain muddled in confusion. Is it because of time passing? Proximity? Perspective?

  It’s been a few weeks now since he last glimpsed her even from afar, but still . . .

  Close up, she seems taller and leaner than she should. There’s not a hint of freckle on her face. Her hair—­her beautiful hair—­is pulled back in a severe ponytail. She never wears it that way.

  But it’s her eyes—­the expression in her eyes—­that is most startling. She isn’t just wary or even frightened or furious. Her gaze is calm and cold. Stone cold. So is her voice when she addresses him; the pitch lower and barely recognizable.

  “You’re not Rick Walker.”

  “No.” He pushes aside his confusion, forcing a laugh. “I know you were expecting him, but he’s . . . incapacitated.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Oh, Rowan . . . you don’t recognize me? Really?”