“I heard the forensics chief say that from the condition of the bones he thinks it’s a young adult,” he whispered. “There’s something else down there too, but they’re not letting on what it is.”
His wife rushed to call her friends. One of them, a stringer for the CBS network, phoned in the tip. A helicopter was dispatched to cover the story.
Everyone knew that the victim was going to be Martha Lawrence. Old friends gathered one by one in the Lawrence home. One of them took it upon herself to dial Martha’s parents in Philadelphia.
Even before the official word came, George and Amanda Lawrence canceled their planned visit to the home of their older daughter in Bernardsville, New Jersey, to see their new granddaughter. With a sense of heartsick inevitability, they set out for Spring Lake instead.
By six o’clock, as dark settled over the East Coast, the pastor of St. Catherine’s accompanied the prosecutor to the Lawrence home. Martha’s dental records, accurate in their description of the teeth that had given Martha her brilliant smile, matched exactly the impression Dr. O’Brien had made during the autopsy.
A few strands of what had been long blond hair still clung to the back of the skull. They matched the strands the police had taken from Martha’s pillow and hairbrush after her disappearance.
A sense of collective mourning settled over the town.
The police had decided to withhold, for the present, information about the second skeletal remains. They were also those of a young woman, and the forensics chief estimated that they had been in the ground for over one hundred years.
In addition, it would not be revealed that the instrument of Martha’s death had been a silk scarf with metallic beading, knotted tightly around her throat.
However, the most chilling fact that the police were not ready to share was the revelation that, within her plastic shroud, Martha Lawrence had been buried with the finger bone of the century-old victim, and that a sapphire ring still dangled from that bone.
seven ________________
NEITHER THE STATE-OF-THE-ART security system nor the presence of a policeman in the cabana to guard the crime scene could reassure Emily the first night in her new home. The bustle of the moving men, followed by the need to unpack and restore the house to orderliness, had distracted her for the afternoon. As far as was humanly possible, she tried to take her mind off the activity in the backyard, the presence of the quiet and orderly spectators gathered in the street, and the penetrating noise of the helicopter hovering overhead.
At seven o’clock she made a salad, baked a potato, and broiled the baby lamb chops that had been part of her celebratory food shopping after she took title to the house.
But even though she drew all the blinds and turned the fire in the kitchen hearth to the highest setting, she still felt completely vulnerable.
To distract herself, she brought the book she’d been looking forward to reading to the table, but, despite her efforts, nothing relieved her anxiety. Several glasses of Chianti neither warmed nor relaxed her. She loved to cook, and friends had always commented that she could make even a simple meal seem special. Tonight she could barely taste what she was eating. She reread the first chapter of the book twice, but the words seemed meaningless, without coherence.
Nothing could overcome the haunting knowledge that a young woman’s body had been found on this property. She told herself that it had to be an ironic coincidence that her great-great-grandaunt had disappeared from these grounds and that today another young woman who had disappeared in Spring Lake had been found here.
But as she tidied the kitchen, turned off the fire, checked all the doors, set the alarm to go off at any attempt to open the doors or a window, Emily was unable to either ignore or escape the growing certainty that the death of her ancestor and the death of that young girl four and a half years ago were inexorably linked.
The book under her arm, she climbed the stairs to the second floor. It was only nine o’clock, but all she wanted to do was to shower, change into warm pj’s and go to bed, where she would read or watch television or both.
Like last night, she thought.
The Kiernans had suggested she would be pleased with their twice-a-week housekeeper, Doreen Sullivan. At the closing their lawyer had said that as a welcoming present they had engaged Doreen to go through the house and put fresh linens on the beds and fresh towels in the bathrooms.
The house was on the corner, one street from the ocean. There were ocean views from the south and east sides of the master bedroom. Twenty minutes after she reached the second floor, Emily was showered and changed, and now somewhat relaxed, pulled the coverlet back from the matching headboard.
Then she hesitated. Had she bolted the front door?
Even with the security system on, she had to be sure.
Annoyed at herself, she hurried out of the bedroom and down the hall. At the head of the stairs, she flipped the switch that lit the foyer chandelier, then hurried down the stairs.
Before she reached the front door she saw the envelope that had been slipped under it. Please, God, not again, she thought as she bent down to pick it up. Don’t let that business begin again!
She ripped open the envelope. As she had feared, it contained a snapshot, the silhouette of a woman at a window, the light behind her. For a moment she had to focus on it to realize she was the woman in the picture.
And then she knew.
Last night. At the Candlelight Inn. When she’d opened the window she had stood there looking out before she lowered the shade.
Someone had been standing on the boardwalk. No, that wasn’t possible, she thought. She had looked at the boardwalk and it was deserted.
Someone standing on the beach had snapped her picture and had it developed, then slipped it under the door within the last hour. It hadn’t been there when she went upstairs.
It was as though the person who had stalked her in Albany had followed her to Spring Lake! But that was impossible. Ned Koehler was in Gray Manor, a secure psychiatric facility in Albany.
The house phone had not yet been connected. Her cell phone was in the bedroom. Holding the picture, she ran to pick it up. Her fingers trembling, she dialed information.
“Welcome to local and national information . . .”
“Albany, New York. Gray Manor Hospital.” To her dismay she could barely speak above a whisper.
A few moments later she was talking to the evening supervisor of the unit where Ned Koehler was confined.
She identified herself.
“I know your name,” the supervisor said. “You’re the one he was stalking.”
“Is he out on a pass?”
“Koehler? Absolutely not, Ms. Graham.”
“Is there a chance he managed to get out on his own?”
“I saw him at bed check less than an hour ago.”
A vivid image of Ned Koehler flashed through Emily’s mind: a slight man in his early forties, balding, hesitant in speech and manner. In court he had wept silently throughout the trial. She had defended Joel Lake, who had been accused of murdering Ned’s mother during a bungled robbery.
When the jury acquitted Lake, Ned Koehler had gone berserk and had lunged across the room at her. He was screaming obscenities, Emily remembered. He was telling me I’d gotten a killer off. It had taken two sheriff’s deputies to restrain him.
“How is he doing?” she asked.
“Singing the same old song—that he’s innocent.” The supervisor’s voice was reassuring. “Ms. Graham, it’s not uncommon for stalking victims to feel apprehensive even after the stalker is under lock and key. Ned isn’t going anywhere.”
When she replaced the receiver, Emily made herself study the picture. In it she was framed in the center of the window, an easy target for someone with a gun instead of a camera, it occurred to her.
She had to call the police. What about the policeman in the back, in the cabana. I don’t want to open the door. Suppose he isn’t there. Suppose someone
else is there.
911—
No, the number of the police station was on the calendar in the kitchen. She didn’t want the police to arrive with screaming sirens. The alarm system was on. No one could get in.
The officer who took the call sent a car immediately. The lights were flashing, but the driver did not turn on the siren.
The cop was young, probably not more than twenty-two. She showed him the picture, told him about the stalker in Albany.
“You’re sure he hasn’t been released, Ms. Graham?”
“I just called there.”
“My guess is that a smart-alec kid who knows you had this problem is playing a practical joke,” he said soothingly. “Have you got a couple of plastic bags you could give me?”
He held the snapshot and then the envelope at the corner as he dropped them into the bags. “These will be checked for fingerprints,” he explained. “I’ll be on my way now.” She walked with him to the door.
“Tonight we’ll be keeping a close watch on the front of the house and we’ll alert the officer in the back to keep his eyes open,” he told her. “You’ll be fine.”
Maybe, Emily thought as she bolted the door behind him.
Getting into bed, she pulled up the covers and forced herself to turn off the light. There was plenty of publicity when Ned Koehler was caught and then put away, she thought. Maybe this person is a copycat.
But why? And what other explanation could there be? Ned Koehler was guilty. Of course he was. The supervisor’s voice: “singing the same old song”—that he was innocent.
Was he? If so, was the real stalker still free and ready to renew his unwelcome attentions?
It was nearly dawn when, with the reassurance of the early morning light, Emily finally fell asleep. She was woken at nine by the barking of the dogs the police had brought to assist them in their search for other possible victims buried on her property.
eight ________________
CLAYTON AND RACHEL WILCOX had been guests at the Lawrence home the night before Martha Lawrence disappeared. Since then, like all the other guests, they had been visited regularly by Detective Tom Duggan.
They had heard the shocking news that Martha’s body had been discovered, but unlike many of the other guests at that final festive gathering, they had not gone immediately to the Lawrence home. Rachel had pointed out to her husband that only the very closest friends would be welcome at such a time of grief. The finality in her voice left no room for discussion.
Sixty-four-years old, Rachel was handsome, with shoulder-length iron-gray hair that she looped neatly around her head. Tall and with impeccable carriage, she exuded authority. Her skin, devoid of even a touch of makeup, was clear and firm. Her eyes, a grayish blue, had a perpetually stern expression.
Thirty years ago, when, as a shy, nearly forty-year-old assistant dean, Clayton had been courting her, he had lovingly compared Rachel to a Viking. “I can imagine you at the helm of a ship, armed for battle, with the wind blowing through your hair,” he had whispered.
He now mentally referred to Rachel as “The Viking.” The name, however, was no longer an endearment. Clayton lived in a constant state of high alert, ever anxious to avoid his wife’s blistering wrath. When he nonetheless somehow provoked it, her caustic tongue lashed him mercilessly. Early in their marriage he had learned that she neither forgave nor forgot.
Having been a guest at the Lawrence home hours before Martha disappeared seemed to him to be sufficient reason to pay a brief condolence call, but Clayton wisely did not make that suggestion. Instead, as they watched the eleven o’clock news broadcast, he listened in suffering silence to Rachel’s caustic comments.
“It’s very sad, of course, but at least this should put an end to that detective coming around here and annoying us,” she said.
If anything, this will bring Duggan around more often, Clayton thought. A large man, with a leonine head of shaggy gray hair and knowing eyes, he looked the academic he had been.
When, twelve years ago, at age fifty-five, he retired from the presidency of Enoch College, a small but prestigious institution in Ohio, he and Rachel had moved permanently to Spring Lake. He had first come to the town as a young boy, visiting an uncle who had moved there, and over the years he had come back for occasional visits. As a hobby, he had delved with enthusiasm into the history of the town and was now known as the unofficial local historian.
Rachel had become a volunteer at several local charities, where she was admired for her organizational abilities and energies, although no one particularly liked her. She had also made sure that everyone knew that her husband was a former college president, and that she herself was a graduate of Smith. “All the women in our family, starting with my grandmother, have been graduates of Smith,” she would explain. She had never forgiven Clayton for an indiscretion with a fellow professor three years after their marriage. Later, the mistake that had caused him to retire abruptly from Enoch College, a place where she had enjoyed the lifestyle, had permanently embittered her.
As a picture of Martha Lawrence filled the television screen, Clayton Wilcox felt his hands go moist with fear. There had been someone else with long blond hair and an exquisite body. Now that Martha’s remains had been found, how intensely would the police probe into the backgrounds of the people who had been at the party that night? He swallowed over the dryness in his mouth and throat.
“Martha Lawrence had been visiting her grandparents before returning to college,” the CBS anchorwoman, Dana Tyler, was saying.
“I gave you my scarf to hold at the party,” Rachel complained for the millionth time. “And naturally, you managed to lose it.”
nine ________________
TODD, SCANLON, KLEIN AND TODD, a nationally known criminal defense law firm located on Park Avenue South in Manhattan, had been founded by Walter Todd. As he put it, “Forty-five years ago I hung out a shingle in a storefront near the courthouse. Nobody came. I started making friends with the bail bondsmen. They took a liking to me and began telling their clients that I was a good lawyer. And, even better than that, I was cheap.”
The other Todd in the partnership was Walter’s son, Nicholas. “Looks like me, sounds like me, and before he’s finished, he’ll be as good a lawyer as I am,” Walter Todd would brag. “I swear Nick could get Satan off the hook.”
He always ignored Nick’s protest. “I would hardly consider that a compliment, Dad.”
On March 21st, Nick Todd and his father worked late on an impending trial, then Nick joined his parents for dinner in their spacious U.N. Plaza apartment.
At ten minutes of eleven he started to leave, but then decided to wait and watch the CBS eleven o’clock news with them. “There may be something about the trial,” he said. “There’s a rumor floating that we’re working on a plea bargain.”
The Martha Lawrence story was the breaking headline. “That poor family,” his mother said, sighing. “I guess it’s better for them to know, but to lose a child . . .” Anne Todd’s voice trailed off. When Nick was two, she had given birth to a baby girl whom they named Amelia. She had lived only a day.
She would have been thirty-six next week, Anne thought. Even as a newborn she looked like me. In her mind she could see Amelia alive, a young woman with dark hair and blue-green eyes. I know she would have loved music as much as I do. We’d have gone to concerts together . . .
She blinked back the tears that always welled in her eyes when she thought of her lost daughter.
Nick realized what had been pricking at his subconscious. “Isn’t Spring Lake the place where Emily Graham bought a house?” he asked.
Walter Todd nodded. “I still wonder why I let her get away with waiting until May to come into the office,” he said, gruffly. “We could use her now.”
“Maybe because, after seeing her in Albany, you thought she had something worth waiting for,” Nick suggested amiably.
An image of Emily Graham floated through his mind. Before they offe
red her the job, he and his father had gone up to Albany to observe her in court. She had been brilliant, getting an acquittal for a client who had been charged with criminally negligent homicide.
She had gone out to lunch with them. Nick remembered the eloquent praise his usually taciturn father had heaped on her.
They’re as alike as two peas in a pod, he thought now. Once they take on a case they’d just about kill for the client.
Since she’d taken the New York apartment, Emily had been in to see them several times, settling her office and getting to know the staff. Nick realized that he was looking forward very much to having her there every day.
His lanky six-foot-two frame unfolded as he stood up. “I’m on my way. I want to hit the gym early tomorrow, and it’s been a long day.”
His mother accompanied him to the door. “I wish you’d wear a hat,” she fretted. “It’s terribly cold out.”
He bent down and kissed her cheek. “You forgot to tell me not to forget to wear a scarf.”
Anne hesitated, then glanced into the living room where her husband was still intent on hearing the news. Dropping her voice, she begged, “Nick, please tell me what’s wrong, because, don’t deny it, there is something wrong. Are you sick and not letting me know?”
“Trust me. I’m in perfect health,” he reassured her. “It’s just that the Hunter trial is worrying me.”
“Dad isn’t worried about it,” Anne protested. “He said he’s sure the worst possible scenario is a hung jury. But you’re like me. You always were a worrier.”
“We’re even. You’re worried about me and I’m worried about the trial.”
They smiled together. Nick is like me inside, Anne thought, but in looks he’s all Walter, even to wrinkling his forehead when he’s concentrating.
“Don’t frown,” she told him as he opened the door.
“I know. It makes wrinkles.”