A search had actually begun last night around midnight. From Jackson Crow’s last call, Aidan knew that more people had been called out at the crack of dawn.
The police had searched through the night. Many of the tourist attractions in Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow—like Washington Irving’s Sunnyside and the old Philips Manor—had acres of farmland, surrounded by forest.
The police had called in all kinds of assistance. Officers from the county and state. Bloodhounds and other canine search-and-rescue units, including an Irish wolfhound and his keeper who seemed to have an extraordinary rate of success. Anything and everyone was out there—and now the information had hit the airwaves.
Aidan had decided to go on instinct. On the voices he heard in his head. He hated when that happened, loathed it. But the voices still came now and then. And today...
He’d heard Richard. Heard him when it was too late.
They got me, my old friend. They got me.
He wished he’d heard something different. Like, I’m in danger, old friend.
Cursing, he began to walk. First he climbed uphill, by the Old Dutch Church. But somehow he knew that was wrong, so he changed course, got back in his car and drove beside the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Finally, he reached the end and parked again.
It was fall; mid-October had just arrived. The day had been beautiful when he’d started driving and even when he’d first parked. The leaves were turning, offering brilliant touches of color here and there. The temperature was cool but not cold.
Suddenly a chilly breeze was whipping around him, and when he looked up he saw that the sky was gray and ominous.
A brook trickled between the boundaries of the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and Saint Andrew’s burying ground. He hopped over the brook, studying the expanse of trees that flourished everywhere—the plan when the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery was designed had been to make it a serene and beautiful place, a place where families might come to picnic and find peace while they honored their lost loved ones. And it was beautiful here. The dead rested between the graceful trees and gurgling water. Nature at its best.
The one land of the dead blended into the next. There hadn’t been a burial at the old grounds for a century while Sleepy Hollow Cemetery still accepted new denizens. But the old burying ground was just as beautiful, though not actually planned that way. Nature, on her own, had stepped in. The grounds were somewhat overgrown, yet that made them more forlorn and more poignant. Crosses rose in high grass; cherubs appeared by tombstones.
Angels wept.
There were vaults dug into the hill where the church had once stood, surrounded by trees and bushes. Tombs had been built above the ground, and these old mausoleums endured within a fairy-tale land where the dead rested and the living might contemplate the beauty of life—and the inevitability of death.
He passed one of the old vaults and crawled high atop it to survey the area. A stone angel knelt in prayer to his left, an obelisk rose to his right. He hurried by them and clambered down an overgrown path to the rise of a second hill. For a moment, he paused. He could hear the tinkle of water and saw where a tree had broken several stones.
The day was darkening; it was going to rain.
The breeze quickened and Aidan felt an urge to hurry. He walked across the hill, looking around. So many graves. So many years of men living in this region—and dying here.
He noticed that a new flag marked the grave of a Revolutionary soldier. He passed a general on horseback—a tribute to the men of the valley who had fought in the Civil War.
He walked over graves and by monuments, past mausoleums and vaults, and then he peered into the distance.
And saw a man. Or the shape of a man. The area suddenly seemed very dark, even though it was almost seven-thirty and the sun had surely risen. The breeze was now a wind; the sky roiled.
“Hey!” he called. There was no answer.
Was he imagining the man? The figure leaned against a free-standing vault with great pillars before it.
The wind seemed to be against him as he hurried over. He was fighting to get there.
The man didn’t disappear.
As he struggled forward, he paused at the sound of a dog barking. He turned.
A massive animal was racing toward the other figure, straining at his leash, which was held by a young woman in a black trench coat. He had the rather irrelevant thought that she resembled Cousin Itt from The Addams Family, since the wind had covered her face with her long brown hair. She and the dog—the wolfhound, obviously—were threading their way through crooked tombstones and monuments listing at different angles.
He heard voices. The dog and the woman were being followed.
He ran forward, too. The dog was in a rush—not after him, but intent on something else. Or someone else.
The figure leaning by the vault. The young woman tripped on a broken headstone but found her footing.
He continued forward himself, realizing that dog and woman were headed for the man—and at the rate the dog was going, they might well knock him over.
“Rollo! Slow down!” the young woman commanded.
Rollo passed Aidan and skidded to a halt within ten feet of the figure.
Running, Aidan barely managed to stop himself from toppling over onto the woman.
Then she came to a standstill so quickly that she lost her balance and fell back.
Into Aidan’s arms.
She gasped and he righted her.
She turned to apologize, pulling strands of hair away from her eyes. They were like crystals, gray-green and shimmering with flecks of both colors.
She didn’t speak but her beautiful eyes widened, as if wondering what she’d seen just before she’d fallen backward—into his arms.
Their eyes met briefly in that confusion.
Rollo, the giant wolfhound, kept barking.
And as they both turned to look at the man—the figure by the tomb—a horde of people came panting up behind them.
They were mostly men in uniform.
Aidan ignored them. So did the young woman and the dog.
They were still staring at the man who’d been propped against the vault. He wore a long billowing coat and black boots, and might have been casually waiting there.
He just didn’t have a head.
But something else about the scene didn’t seem right.
“Oh, my God!” someone shrieked behind him.
Aidan noticed that the headless man stood as if he were about to enter the vault—or perhaps ask someone to join him.
It was staged. It was staged to be horrific.
One of the newcomers stopped about three feet from the young woman.
“Well, I believe you’ve found the rest of Mr. Highsmith, Mo.” He stopped speaking. Perhaps, under the circumstances, all their minds were working a little slowly. The man frowned, then gave Aidan a thorough look and said, “This is a crime scene, sir.” He paused, his expression grim. “But...”
Aidan was in a suit and trench coat, certainly not clothing worn by any of the others here. He guessed—hoped—that he wore it with a certain authority.
“You’re with the federal government?”
Aidan nodded and presented his credentials. The older man studied him again. “Took them long enough to get you here,” he said. “I called last night.”
“Sir, I got the word about an hour and a half ago,” Aidan said.
The older man didn’t offer his hand; he seemed to be an old-time lawman. “Lieutenant Robert Purbeck, Agent Mahoney,” he said. “Glad you made it. Things like this don’t happen in Tarrytown. Except in stories, of course.”
Someone next to him was on a radio, telling someone else to get the M.E. and crime scene techs up the hill.
The wolfhound barked.<
br />
“Shh, Rollo,” the young woman said.
“Agent Mahoney, meet my lead men on the case—Detectives Lee Van Camp and Jimmy Voorhaven. And—” he gestured to the young woman and the dog “—Maureen Deauville. Mo...we have a Fed here. Agent Mahoney of the FBI. Oh, and that’s our wonder dog, Rollo.”
Aidan nodded in acknowledgment. The other cops, a weary-looking lean guy and his younger partner, watched him curiously as they shook hands but they didn’t appear to resent his presence.
“God help me,” Purbeck muttered. “I hope that’s the rest of Richard Highsmith. If not...”
He didn’t finish his sentence.
But Aidan knew what he meant.
They’d found Richard’s head.
And if this wasn’t the body that went with the head...
Well, there might be headless bodies and bodiless heads all over the Hudson Valley.
But, as he stood there, staring at the form, Aidan saw that the loose coat had fluttered open—and he understood what was wrong with the scene.
And he knew their worst fears were realized.
“I’m sorry to say this,” Aidan announced, “but that’s not Richard Highsmith.”
“What?” Purbeck demanded. “How the hell do you know that?”
“Take a closer look,” Aidan said. “That’s not a man’s body. It’s a woman’s.”
“What?” Purbeck demanded again. “Rollo found a body, a woman’s body? But...he was on Richard Highsmith’s scent!”
“He sure as hell found something,” Aidan said.
The young woman, Maureen Deauville, spoke quietly then.
“Rollo is—Well, he’s really a sight hound, but—” She paused, glancing around. “He’s never wrong. Richard Highsmith is nearby,” she said. “The, um, rest of him.”
Aidan looked at her, then at the headless body by the tomb. Ms. Deauville seemed very certain. In a second, he’d pulled on a pair of neoprene gloves.
Then he stepped forward.
There was an iron gate that guarded the tomb. Beyond that was some kind of heavy metal door.
Aidan pulled at the gate; it creaked, but gave.
He pushed at the iron door. It groaned on its hinges but opened.
Taking a penlight from his pocket, he flashed it over the inside of the vault. He saw a stone sarcophagus or tomb in the center.
And on the stone tomb, a body. In a suit.
“This, I think,” Aidan said, rigidly controlling the emotion that ripped through him, “is Richard Highsmith.”
CHAPTER 2
Purbeck looked in and sighed. “Back out, everyone but Mahoney, Van Camp and Voorhaven. I don’t want evidence compromised. Get the M.E. and the crime scene people here,” he ordered.
Aidan followed him, then carefully stepped through.
He threw the beam of his flashlight over the stone floor. No hope of prints, since the stone was bare of dust. He walked carefully toward the body, touching nothing, keeping his light trained on the corpse.
Aidan wasn’t an M.E., but it seemed to him that the head had been cleanly severed with great strength and probably a single blow. Highsmith hadn’t been killed in the tomb; there wasn’t much blood. And, of course, Aidan couldn’t know if he’d been killed and then decapitated—or killed by decapitation. He found himself reminded of a history lesson: Queen Anne Boleyn asking Henry VIII for a headsman from France so her execution would be swift and clean.
Purbeck had come in behind him. He, too, touched nothing and studied the body.
As the two detectives—Van Camp and Voorhaven—also walked into the tomb, Aidan put down his flashlight and checked for Highsmith’s wallet with gloved hands. He found it in his pocket, just as he’d expected to.
“Anything in there?” Van Camp asked him.
“Wallet, keys...”
Carefully, Aidan checked Highsmith’s other pocket. Lint—and a matchbook. He held it up to Voorhaven’s flashlight glare.
“From some place called Mystic Magic,” he said.
“Whoa,” Van Camp muttered.
“It’s a new strip club down close to Irving,” Voorhaven explained.
“Doesn’t sound like Richard Highsmith,” Purbeck said.
Voorhaven produced an evidence bag, but Aidan briefly held on to the matchbook, flipping it open. He wasn’t surprised to see that Highsmith had scribbled something in it. “‘Lizzie grave,’” he read aloud.
“Odd name for a stripper,” Van Camp commented.
“I doubt it’s a stripper’s name,” Aidan told the others.
“Then what?” Van Camp asked.
“Maybe it has to do with a dead woman named Lizzie. Lizzie’s grave,” Aidan said impatiently, dropping the matchbook in the evidence bag.
Voorhaven snorted. “Ah, hell! Do you know how many Lizzies have died and been buried here over the last several hundred years?”
Purbeck shook his head. “Let the M.E. and the crime scene techs in now,” he said, turning to leave the vault. He paused at the door. “We have another victim out there—and another head to find.”
Aidan stayed behind for a minute, his gloved hand resting lightly on Richard’s arm. Rigor had come and gone; he’d been dead awhile. He’d probably been killed soon after he disappeared.
“Old friend,” he murmured. “I’ll get whoever did this to you.”
The young woman, Maureen—or Mo—Deauville, had not come in. She stood with her dog just outside the gates and Aidan felt her eyes on him, even though he was darkness and shadow.
He exited the tomb and approached Maureen just as Purbeck came up beside her. The place was now crawling with people. Voorhaven and Van Camp were by the corpse that had been so strategically arranged to look like a host—welcoming them, inviting them to enter the tomb. They had to discover the identity of this woman. Her death was as great a crime, as great a tragedy, as Highsmith’s.
“I know Van Camp already mentioned this, but are we sure it’s not a name? Lizzie Grave?” Purbeck asked Aidan. “Not necessarily a stripper’s name. Maybe someone he met?”
Aidan shook his head. “I’m almost certain it’s not,” he said. “I think he grabbed that matchbook wherever he was—could’ve been anywhere—and jotted down a note. I agree with you that it’s highly unlikely he was ever in that strip club—not when he was here on an important speaking engagement. I think he just saw the matchbook somewhere. In a dressing room or at a lunch counter, maybe. Or someone gave it to him. And I think Lizzie grave means...Lizzie’s grave. But the first thing we need to do is discover the identity of our other victim.”
“God help us,” Purbeck said. “We started out looking for a body. Now...now, we’ve got to find another head.” He turned to Mo Deauville. “You and Rollo ready?”
Aidan believed she was fighting her own mental battle, but she nodded. “Yes, of course,” she said. She brought the wolfhound to where the headless corpse leaned. The cops made way for her. The dog stood at a distance, but lifted his nose high—almost as if he were weighing the merits of a perfume.
Mo Deauville commanded the dog to sit, then approached the corpse and rested her hand gently on the woman’s shoulder.
As if she could...somehow feel something. A communication—from the corpse!
She lowered her head, then looked at Purbeck.
“We’re ready,” she said.
She touched the dog’s head. Aidan couldn’t be sure, but he thought she was giving Rollo some kind of signal.
Well, of course she was. She was asking him to find...the rest of the woman.
No, it seemed to be more than that.
But she quickly set off, tightly clutching the dog’s leash.
With the exception of the crime scene personnel and a few cops left stand
ing guard, everyone trailed after her. They went up and down hills as they walked through one cemetery to get to the other, and eventually wound up on the street again.
“Oh, no. Oh, God, no,” Purbeck said.
Yes.
Across the street, at yet another headless horseman effigy, this one in front of a dry cleaning business, a crowd was gathering.
People weren’t alarmed; they seemed to be in awe.
There were pictures being taken.
The crowd wasn’t even being particularly ghoulish. The horseman stood in the midst of a Halloween display of pumpkins, bats, black cats and flying witches.
“Get the people away,” Purbeck said quietly.
Rollo woofed.
Voorhaven and Van Camp went running across the street, along with half-a-dozen men in uniform.
Aidan glanced at Mo. She stood there, holding Rollo’s leash. She didn’t turn away, although he could tell she wasn’t going any closer. There was a stoic expression on her face, but sadness in her eyes.
“Thank you,” Aidan murmured to her. He crossed the street and hurried over to the display. The area was now being cleared of people.
He knew the crowd hadn’t understood that the horseman with its witch’s head wasn’t part of this gruesome display. The head...was real.
Purbeck followed him. As Aidan stepped up onto a bale of hay beside a wire-and-plastic assembly, he heard the lieutenant mutter.
“God, I pray this means both our bodies are complete!”
Aidan thought they were. It was difficult to be sure, but he had to believe this was what they were looking for. The “witch’s” wealth of long dark hair had been adorned with a black pointed hat. Van Camp stood on a second bale near him, silently inspecting the scene. He motioned to one of the photographers to capture the image from a number of different angles. When the photographer finished the initial shots, Aidan turned to Van Camp, who nodded. He removed the hat and passed it down to Jimmy Voorhaven. Jimmy bagged it, then he carefully brushed aside the tangle of dark hair.
“Mid-thirties?” Van Camp murmured. “Attractive, good bone structure. It doesn’t appear that any of the bones in the face were broken or disturbed.”
Heather Graham Krewe of Hunters Series, Volume 4 Page 63
