Blue Moon: Mundy's Landing Book Two

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Does she wonder, occasionally, whether something might spark between them if they hadn’t mutually sworn off relationships with fellow cops?

  Sure. But it won’t ever happen, so—

  “This is it,” Colonomos mutters, turning off the highway onto a dirt access road that runs alongside a large field. “Back there, in the woods.”

  “What’s back there?”

  “An old icehouse where he’s been keeping them, apparently.”

  “Them?”

  “Juanita Contreras. Catherine Winston. Others.”

  A sick lump rises in Sully’s throat.

  Juanita Contreras didn’t survive. What are the odds that others did?

  Not good.

  Colonomos parks at the end of the road and grabs a couple of flashlights. He hands one to her without comment.

  She takes it, turns it on, and they head into the dark, foggy woods on foot.

  “Do you know this area?” she asks, following him along a tangled, barely discernible path.

  “We patrol it. Used to be an old amusement park.”

  Sully’s eyes widen at the eerie coincidence—which isn’t a coincidence at all, she reminds herself. “Valley Cove Pleasure Park, right?”

  “How do you know about it?”

  “I’ve been doing some research into the Sleeping Beauty case. I thought the killer might have trolled the park for victims.”

  Perhaps Greenlea guessed the same thing. It’s no accident that the denouement of his copycat crimes has led full circle back to this isolated spot.

  She struggles to keep up with Colonomos, hearing an occasional ominous rustling in the undergrowth as they hurriedly make their way toward the icehouse. Harmless woodland critters, she knows, but the woods feel alive with peril.

  An owl hoots overhead. A foghorn on some distant harbor sounds a mournful toll. Somewhere behind them, she can hear vehicles, footsteps, the faint voices of other officials rushing to join the rescue mission.

  Please, please let it be a rescue, and not a recovery.

  Sully’s flashlight picks up rubble and ruins: a weedy foundation, a heap of rotting planks, the contorted metal skeleton from some ancient amusement park ride. And then she sees it: a low stone building just ahead.

  Colonomos speeds ahead, far more surefooted on the treacherous path, and disappears around the side of the building. When she reaches him, she finds him, panting, inserting a key into a padlocked wooden door.

  “Where did you get the key?” she asks.

  “Greenlea’s pocket,” he says grimly.

  The lock opens.

  He grabs it and hurtles it aside, then pushes the door open.

  They train their flashlights on a small, empty room. A ladder and some cleaning supplies are stashed on the far wall.

  “Catherine!” Colonomos calls, striding over the threshold. “Catherine, are you here?”

  Trailing him into the icehouse, Sully recognizes the sickening smell of decomposing human flesh wafting in the air. Her heart plummets.

  Too late.

  She thinks of Catherine, of Juanita, of Manik.

  Of the dead female in Greenlea’s apartment.

  Always, always too late.

  I can’t do this anymore. I’m not strong enough. I’m broken.

  Then she hears it: a muffled, barely discernible cry.

  It came from beneath their feet. Training their flashlights, they make out a rectangular break in the floorboards.

  A trapdoor.

  They pounce upon it, prying it open.

  The unmistakable stench of a corpse floats up from below, but so does a female voice.

  “Help me . . . please . . .”

  “We are,” Sully calls as Colonomos grabs the ladder. “We’re coming.”

  “Please . . .”

  Colonomos lowers the ladder into the hole.

  Sully touches his sleeve. “Can I go first? Please?”

  He looks at her and nods.

  The ladder tilts precariously as she puts her foot on the top rung, despite Colonomos’s attempt to hold it steady while aiming a flashlight into the hole.

  “I’ll go down,” he says.

  “No, I’ve got it.” She makes her way down the wobbly ladder until at last her foot touches solid ground.

  Turning, she sees a child’s gaunt, tearstained face blinking at her from the chilly shadows.

  “Are you Catherine Winston?”

  The reply is nearly inaudible. “Yes.”

  Sully sidesteps the body on the floor.

  Sometimes, it’s too late.

  But sometimes . . .

  Sometimes, it isn’t.

  And that’s what gives you the strength to keep going.

  She wraps her arms around the violently trembling girl and hugs her close.

  “You’re okay,” she says. “It’s over, sweetie. You’re going home.”

  Annabelle and Trib sit on their porch steps, Oliver asleep between them with his head in her lap.

  The lawn remains lit by whirling red lights, though not nearly as many as before. The crowd on the sidewalk has dispersed.

  The first birds are beginning to chirp in the ancient trees high above the mansard roof.

  They listen.

  And wait.

  “What time is it?” she asks Trib.

  “Five twenty-seven. The sun will be up in a minute.”

  “Literally?”

  “Literally.” He holds up the morning Tribune, tossed at their feet a little while ago by their teenage paperboy, who instead of riding by on his bike, was accompanied on foot by his father and a police officer. “The sunrise and sunset times have been printed on the front page for over a hundred years, along with the weather forecast. Today, it will rise at—”

  The comment is cut off by his cell phone ringing in his hand.

  He looks down at it. “Colonomos.”

  Please, Annabelle thinks. Please let her be all right.

  Trib answers the call. “Yes? Did you find her?”

  Annabelle closes her eyes and holds her breath.

  Please don’t let it be bad news. Please.

  “That’s good.” Trib’s voice trembles with emotion. “That’s really good. Thank you for letting us know.”

  Annabelle exhales on a sob as he hangs up and looks at her, tears in his eyes. His nod tells her Catherine is safe.

  Unable to speak for a moment, they clasp hands across their sleeping son.

  Then, around a lump in her throat, Annabelle says, “Five twenty-eight.”

  “What?”

  She gestures at the eastern sky. The rooftops and treetops of The Heights glow with rosy golden light.

  “When the phone rang, you were about to tell me that the sun comes up at 5:28, and it’s going to be a beautiful day. You were probably also going to tell me that you love me,” she adds with a smile.

  Trib grins. “You took the words right out of my mouth.”

  Acknowledgments

  I’m thankful to my editor, Lucia Macro; her assistant, Nicole Fischer; publisher Liate Stehlik; and everyone at HarperCollins who played a role in bringing this book to print; to my literary agent, Laura Blake Peterson, her assistant, Marnie Zoldessy, and my film agent Holly Frederick at Curtis Brown, Limited; to Rick Gennett; to Betsy Glick of the F.B.I. Office of Public Affairs; to the special agents at the F.B.I. Headquarters in Manhattan; to Margery Flax and Mystery Writers of America; to International Thrillerwriters, Sisters in Crime, and Romance Writers of America; to Carol Fitzgerald and the gang at Bookreporter; to Cissy Hartley and the gang at Writerspace; to Peter Meluso; to my supportive fellow authors; to enthusiastic booksellers, librarians, and readers everywhere; to Mark Staub and Morgan Staub for the manuscript feedback and marketing support; and to my newly minted high school graduate, Brody Staub, for painstakingly mapping Mundy’s Landing.

  An Excerpt from Bone White

  Coming soon from

  New York Times bestselling author

 
; Wendy Corsi Staub

  BONE WHITE

  A Mundy’s Landing Novel

  Because the past is never really forgotten . . .

  Read on for a sneak peek.

  Prologue

  Hudson Valley

  July, 1666

  As the crowd begins to jeer, Jeremiah Mundy holds tightly to his younger sisters’ hands, steeling himself for the unthinkable tragedy about to unfold.

  Thou art a man now, he reminds himself, echoing the last words his father, James, said to him weeks ago, before he and Mother were taken away.

  At thirteen, Jeremiah felt in that moment—and feels in this one—like a mere child. Yet of course he promised his parents that he would accept his manly obligation, taking charge of his sisters and the household in their absence. He just never dreamed the absence would endure for weeks, let alone . . . forever.

  But forever it shall be.

  James and Elizabeth Mundy are sentenced to meet their death today at the hands of the black-clad hangman who, like the others present, only recently arrived in this year-old colony perched on the western bank of the Hudson River. They were originally due last fall, having traveled from England with sorely needed supplies. But a harsh winter set in before the reinforcements could make their way north from the port of Manhattan. Ice rendered the river impassible. The Mundy family and their fellow settlers were left to fend for themselves for nearly five months.

  Day in and day out, Jeremiah trudged with his father through a swirling white maelstrom to chop wood and feed a fire that did little to stave the bitter cold. For a long time, there was no way to feed the relentless hunger. The family nearly starved to death.

  But they didn’t. They were the lucky ones. They found the means to salvation—horrific means, and yet, as Jeremiah overheard his parents saying, what choice did they have?

  When at last the supplies and reinforcements arrived in May, only the Mundys remained of the three dozen original English settlers.

  “Look there! Satan himself blazes in the Goody Mundy’s eyes!” a man proclaims from the crowd behind Jeremiah.

  “Ay, and peculiar eyes they be,” comes the reply, and he recognizes the rasping voice of the Goodwife Barker, whose bachelor brother was among the first of the winter’s casualties.

  Peculiar eyes . . .

  Jeremiah closes his own eyes: one a piercing shade of blue, the other a chalky gray.

  Years ago, back in England, he caught a first glimpse of himself in his grandmother’s looking glass and was startled to see that he, like his mother, had one pale iris and one fully pigmented.

  “’Tis a rare gift,” his beloved grandmother told him, and he believed it . . .

  Until now.

  Rare, yes. Not a gift, but a curse.

  The subject of his mother’s “peculiar” eyes came up at the trial—offered as additional evidence of Elizabeth Mundy’s guilt, lest there be any claim that her initial confession had been coerced through bodily torture.

  Jeremiah had stalwartly witnessed that torture, a public spectacle that unfolded on the riverbank on a gray spring day. The entire colony turned out to watch, bristling with anticipation like an amusement-deprived London audience flocking to the post-Restoration theater.

  His father was first to be strapped to the ducking stool as Jeremiah stood helplessly by, apart from the gawkers and gossipers. Their voices and the chirping chatter of woodland creatures were drowned out by violent splashing as James Mundy was repeatedly submerged in the murky current. Each time he sputtered to the surface, he defiantly proclaimed his innocence, determined to let them drown him—until the moment they assured him that his wife would be spared the same punishment if he confessed.

  And so he did.

  Jeremiah’s fists clenched as he listened incredulously to the confession. Yes, he knew it was the noble thing to do and the only option. For either way, his father would die: drowned in the river, or sentenced to death for murder. At least James Mundy had preserved his wife’s dignity and her life . . . or so he believed.

  They had lied.

  Jeremiah’s mother had her own turn on the ducking stool. A pair of burly men—the same men who escort her to her doom this morning—held Jeremiah back when he tried to rush to her side. She endured nearly three hours before confessing to the heinous crimes of which she and her husband had been accused.

  The trial, now a mere formality, was swift; the verdict unanimous; the sentence so inevitable that the gallows was being built even before the trial had concluded. Again, the crowd has assembled, as eager to know that the devil had been banished from the settlement as they are thirsty for diversion from daily drudgery.

  Eyes squeezed shut to block out the horrific sight of the crude wooden structure, Jeremiah desperately searches his memory for the image of his mother’s face as it once was—serene, affectionate, exhilarated by the promise of life in this New World. But he can envision it only pale with worry, contorted in pain and terror.

  At the telltale pressing of the crowd around him, he opens his eyes to see that it has parted, allowing the procession into the clearing.

  Flanked by pairs of the settlement’s strongest men, Mother and Father appear even more frail than they were the last time Jeremiah saw them. That was only days ago, when they were sentenced to death after they each confessed to murder—and worse. Far, far worse.

  Ten year-old Charity, the elder but smaller of Jeremiah’s sisters, begins to whimper. Priscilla, eight, remains as silent and stoic as her brother, grasping his hand firmly.

  The magistrate reads the charges in a booming voice and orders that the death sentence be carried out immediately.

  Jeremiah shifts his gaze toward the forest on the far end of the clearing. An escape fantasy takes shape: his parents break away and run toward the trees. They disappear into the dense woods and find their way to the water, eluding their captors and the executioner’s twin nooses . . .

  Suddenly, the throng roars with glee, disrupting the comforting daydream. Elizabeth Mundy has fainted. The brutes at her side pull her roughly upright again and jerk her toward the gallows.

  Priscilla remains steadfast at Jeremiah’s side, but Charity tugs his hand. “I cannot bear to watch.”

  Nor can I.

  Aloud, he says only, “We must.”

  With a plaintive wail, his sister wrenches herself from his grasp and flees, momentarily capturing the crowd’s interest.

  Torn, Jeremiah knows that he should go after her. But there will be time enough to comfort her when the ordeal is over.

  Someone touches his shoulder, and he turns to see Goody Dowling, whose husband and sons are building a home on a plot of land adjacent to the Mundys’.

  Her expression is not unkind. “I shall see to the girl.”

  She hurries away, leaving Jeremiah dumbfounded.

  He’s scarcely wondered what might become of him and his sisters after today, but when he does allow himself to speculate, he assumes that the other settlers will shun them, forcing them to leave this place.

  Where will they even go?

  When their family left England a year ago, they were destitute, evicted by their landholder with nowhere to turn in an overpopulated country. Their only hope of salvation lay across the sea. The British had recently wrangled control of the New Netherland colony from the Dutch and renamed it New York, luring settlers like the Mundys with the promise of opportunity, freedom, and abundant land.

  Even if Jeremiah and his sisters could afford to pay for passage back to England, they’d be as alone there as they are here. Grandmother is gone and they have no other family to speak of. Certainly no friends.

  Here, they may not have family or friends, but they do have a home—if home can be defined simply as land, food and shelter, with livestock in the yard, crops budding in the fields, fish in the river, game in the forests.

  What little Jeremiah knows of the world beyond this settlement is formidable and fraught with danger. Mountains and forests teem
with feral creatures and unfriendly natives. The neighboring settlements are few and far between, populated by the Dutch, no ally to the English. Having glimpsed the teeming port of Manhattan last year and found it rife with strangers and filth, Jeremiah has no desire to make his way back there accompanied by two vulnerable little girls.

  Now, thanks to a stranger’s unexpected benevolence toward the imminent orphan and the crowd’s murmuring of sympathy as Charity fled, Jeremiah wonders whether he and his sisters may be permitted to stay on in their parents’ home after . . .

  After today.

  It isn’t the ideal scenario, yet it’s the only one he can possibly fathom. Now, however, isn’t the time to plan for the future. Somehow, he must find the strength and courage to focus on the present.

  Thou art a man now . . .

  His parents stand on the scaffold, side by side, hands bound, facing the crowd.

  Father’s jaw is set and his gaze is fixed straight ahead, but Mother is searching the crowd as the hangman wraps a length of rope around her skirt, binding her legs firmly.

  Her gaze lands on Jeremiah. In that final glimpse of her peculiar eyes, he sees not only the depth of maternal love, but a frantic question.

  Before Jeremiah can respond with a nod of reassurance, the hangman blinds his mother with a length of cloth and commands the prisoners to bow their heads for the nooses.

  Priscilla’s grasp tightens on his hand and he swallows a rush of grief and bile, trying to find his voice.

  I must tell her. She cannot die burdened by concern about the fate of her children.

  The hangman nods, satisfied that the nooses are fixed. An expectant hush falls over the crowd as he descends a rickety ladder audibly creaking under his weight.

  The command is given, and in that moment, Jeremiah finds his voice at last. “Do not worry!” he calls out, and to his own ears, his voice is shockingly strong and sure. “I shall protect my sisters and we shall make you proud and—”

  His final message is lost in a roar of approval from the crowd as the platform drops.