“Tom and I worked at the Warren,” Walsh observed. “Ten years apart, of course.”
Duggan shot a look at him. It as much as said, “Don’t interrupt.”
“The bones we found here underneath Martha’s skeleton were in a relatively shallow grave,” he continued. “They’d have been found long ago if that tree hadn’t been there. A few might have surfaced over the years. I think what happened is that somebody came across them at some point, maybe even found the finger bone with the ring, kept it, and when he killed Martha decided to bury her there with it.”
He looked at her. “You’re shaking your head,” he said. “You don’t agree.”
“I’m letting my guard down,” Emily said. “A good defense attorney keeps a poker face. No, Mr. Duggan, I can’t agree. It’s too much for me to believe that someone found the bone, never told anyone about it, murdered that poor Lawrence girl, then decided to bury her here. I don’t buy that.”
“How would you explain it?”
“I think whoever murdered Martha Lawrence knew exactly what happened in 1891, and has committed a copycat murder.”
“You’re not into that reincarnation theory, I hope?”
“No, I’m not, but I do believe that Martha’s killer knows a whole lot about Madeline Shapley’s death.”
Tom stood up. “Ms. Graham, this house has turned over ownership quite a few times during all those years. We’re going to look up the records, find out who those owners were, and see if any of them are still around here. Will you allow us to dig up your yard?”
“Yes, I will.” Her voice was resigned.
“And now I’m going to ask you something. Let me see the records you found about Madeline Shapley’s disappearance and the disappearance of those other two young women in the 1890s.”
They looked at each other. “I’d have to check with the boss, but I don’t see a problem there,” Duggan told her.
She walked to the front door with them.
“The contractor told me he can start again first thing in the morning,” she told them. “I had hoped he’d be here filling in the hole, but if the whole yard has to be dug up, so be it.”
“We’ll have the forensic unit here sifting. They shouldn’t take more than a day, or at the most two, then you can put all this behind you,” Duggan promised.
Back in the car, they drove in silence for five minutes. Then Duggan said, “Are you thinking the same thing I am, Pete?”
“Maybe.”
“That girl, Carla Harper, from Philadelphia?”
“Right.”
“She disappeared two years ago, in August.”
“Right. An eyewitness swears she saw her talking to a guy at a rest stop just outside Philadelphia. Claims they were driving separate cars, but when they left he followed her. Eyewitness swears he had Pennsylvania plates. Then a couple of days later Harper’s purse with apparently nothing missing was found in a wooded area not far from that rest stop. The case has been handled by the Philadelphia prosecutor.”
Tommy picked up the phone and called the office and asked to be put through to Len Green, one of the other detectives working closely on the case.
“Len, when did the second woman disappear in the 1890s?”
“Give me a minute?” There was a pause. “Here it is, August 5, 1893.”
“When was Carla Harper reported missing?”
“Be right back to you.”
Tommy held the phone until he heard the words he’d been expecting to hear. “August 5th.”
“We’re on the way. See you in twenty minutes. Thanks, Len.”
Tommy Duggan was no longer sleepy. They had to talk to the Philadelphia detective who had handled the case of Carla Harper immediately. The fact that both Madeline Shapley and Martha Lawrence had disappeared on September 7th, even though separated by one hundred and ten years, might have been coincidental; the fact that then two young women had disappeared on August 5th in the same time frame could not be coincidental.
They did have a copycat killer on their hands in Spring Lake. “You know what this means, Pete?” he asked.
Pete Walsh did not answer. He knew Tommy Duggan was thinking aloud.
“It means that if this guy is following a pattern, he’s going to target one more young woman, on March 31st.”
“This March 31st?”
“I don’t know yet. In the 1890s the three women vanished several years apart.” He got back on the phone. “Len, now check this out,” he began.
When he had the information he wanted, he said. “There was a difference of twenty-three months between the disappearances of the first two women in the 1890s. There was exactly that same number of months between the disappearance of Martha Lawrence and Carla Harper.”
They were pulling into the parking lot at the prosecutor’s office. “If some woman vanishes in Spring Lake next week on March 31st, the cycle will be complete. And to add to the fun, we may have a copycat stalker of Emily Graham on our hands too.”
As Pete Walsh got out of the car, he wisely did not tell Tommy Duggan that his mother-in-law believed in reincarnation and that he too was beginning to think there might be something to it.
twenty ________________
WHEN SHE HAD DONE the food shopping after the closing on the house, Emily had purchased a package of chicken parts with the idea of making a pot of soup. After the detectives left, she decided to prepare it now and have it for dinner tonight.
The open pit in the backyard and the possibility that other bodies were buried there made her feel as if the scent of death were permeating the very air around her. Besides, she thought, I always do my best thinking when my hands are chopping vegetables or kneading dough.
Chicken soup does do something for the psyche, and right now, Emily admitted to herself, mine needs some help.
She went into the kitchen and drew the blinds, grateful to block out the dismal scene in the yard. Her hands worked independently, scraping carrots, cutting up celery and onions, reaching for seasonings. By the time she had turned on the flame under the pot, she had made a decision.
It had been foolish not to call the Albany police immediately and report what had happened last night. They should be aware of it.
Why didn’t I call them?
She answered her own question. Because I don’t want to believe that it’s going to begin again. I’ve been burying my head in the sand since I saw that photograph slipped under the door last night.
She knew what she had to do. Detective Walsh had carried the bag of books into the kitchen. She picked it up, went into the study, and laid it by the ottoman in front of the deep armchair. She went over to the desk, got the portable phone, and perched on the ottoman.
Her first call was to Detective Marty Browski in Albany. He had been the one who collared Ned Koehler lurking outside her townhouse. Browski’s response to what she told him was both astonishment and concern. “My guess is that you’ve got a copycat, either that or one of Koehler’s friends is picking up where he left off. We’ll look into it. Emily, I’m glad you called the local police. Tell you what. I’ll give them a call down there and alert them to the seriousness of the problem. I can fill them in on the background.”
Her next call was to Eric Bailey. It was after five, but he was still in the office and delighted to hear from her. “Albany’s not the same without you,” he said.
She smiled at the familiar worried tone. Even with millions of dollars, Eric would never change, she thought. Shy, little-boy-lost, but a genius. “I miss you too,” she assured him. “And I’ve got a favor to ask.”
“Good. Whatever you want, you’ve got it.”
“Eric, the security camera you put in the townhouse was the reason the cops got Ned Koehler. You offered me one for Spring Lake. I want to take you up on that offer. Can you send someone down to put it in?”
“I can send myself down. I want to see you anyhow. The next few days are really busy. Is Monday okay?”
She could vis
ualize him, his forehead creased, his fingers restlessly toying with some gadget on his desk. When he became successful he traded his blue jeans and tee shirts and parkas for an expensive wardrobe. She hated the sly jokes people told about him, that he still looked the same: woebegone. The poor soul.
“Monday is fine,” she said.
“How’s everything going with your house?”
“Interesting. I’ll fill you in on Monday.” And that’s about as much as I can do, Emily thought as she replaced the receiver. Now to get into these books.
She spent the next three hours curled up in the big chair, absorbed in the books Wilcox had lent her. He had chosen well, she decided. She found herself pulled into an era of horse-drawn carriages, oil lamps, and stately summer “cottages.”
With the awareness of the price she had just paid for her house still fresh in her mind, the ordinance that the minimum amount a property owner could spend building a new home was three thousand dollars made her smile.
The report from the president of the Board of Health in 1893 over the need to stop the dumping of garbage in the ocean “to keep our beach free from offensive matter washed thereupon day to day” was a wry reminder that some things never change.
A book with many photographs included one of a Sunday school picnic in 1890. The list of the children in attendance included the name of Catherine Shapley.
Madeline’s sister. My great-great grandmother, Emily thought. I wish I could pick her out. In the sea of faces it was impossible to match one of them with the few family photos that had survived the storeroom fire.
At eight o’clock she went back into the kitchen and completed preparing dinner. Once again she propped a book up on the table. This one she had deliberately saved because it looked the most interesting. Reflections of a Girlhood was the title. It had been published in 1938. The author, Phyllis Gates, had summered in Spring Lake in the late 1880s and early 1890s.
The book was well written and gave a vivid picture of the social life of those days. Picnics and cotillions, splendid events at the Monmouth Hotel, bathing in the ocean, horseback riding and bicycling were described. What intrigued Emily most were the copious excerpts from a diary Phyllis Gates had kept during those years.
Emily had finished dinner. Her eyes were burning with fatigue, and she was about to close the book for the night when she turned the page and saw Madeline Shapley’s name in a diary excerpt.
June 18, 1891. This afternoon we attended a festive luncheon at the Shapley home. It was to celebrate Madeline’s nineteenth birthday. Twelve tables beautifully decorated with flowers from the garden had been placed on the porch. I sat at Madeline’s table as did Douglas Carter, who is so very much in love with her. We tease her about him.
In an 1891 excerpt, the author wrote:
We had just closed our cottage and returned to Philadelphia when we learned of Madeline’s disappearance. It was a great grief to all of us. Mother hurried back to Spring Lake to express her condolences and found the family to be in a state of profound grief. Madeline’s father confided that for the sake of his wife’s health he will remove the family from the area.
About to close the book, Emily skimmed through the pages. An October 1893 entry caught her eye.
Douglas Carter committed suicide. He had missed the early train from New York on that tragic day and was forced to wait for a later one. He became obsessed with the idea that had he been there earlier he might have saved her.
My mother felt that it had been a grave mistake for Douglas’s parents not to move from their home, directly across the street from the Shapleys. She felt that the melancholy that overcame Douglas might have been avoided, had he not sat hour after hour staring at the porch of the Shapley home.
Emily set down the book. I knew Douglas Carter had committed suicide, she thought. I didn’t know he lived directly across the street.
I’d like to find out a lot more about him, she thought. I wonder how sure they were that he did in fact miss the train?
Friday, March 23
twenty-one ________________
THE RUMOR HAD BEGUN with the question of The National Daily reporter to the prosecutor: “Do you think Martha’s killer is a reincarnation?”
Dr. Lillian Madden’s phone started to ring without stopping on Thursday afternoon. On Friday morning Joan Hodges, her secretary, had a stock answer, which she delivered crisply over and over again: “Dr. Madden has deemed it inappropriate to discuss the subject of reincarnation in regard to the Spring Lake murder case.”
At lunchtime on Friday, Joan Hodges had no problem discussing the matter with her boss. “Dr. Madden, look at what the newspapers are saying, and they’re right. It was no coincidence that Martha Lawrence and Madeline Shapley both disappeared on September 7th. And you want to know the latest?”
Pause now for dramatic effect, Lillian Madden thought wryly.
“On August 5, 1893, Letitia Gregg—listen to me, Doctor—‘failed to return home.’” Joan’s eyes widened. “Doctor, there was a girl, Carla Harper, who spent the weekend at the Warren Hotel two years ago, then just vanished into thin air. I remember reading about it. She checked out of the Warren and got in her car. Some woman swears she saw her near Philadelphia. That’s where she was going. She lived in Rosemont, on the Main Line. But now according to the New York Post, that eyewitness starts to sound like looney-tunes.”
Then Joan’s eyes, wide open and demanding, bored into Dr. Lillian Madden’s face. “Doctor, I don’t think Carla Harper ever left Spring Lake. I think—and apparently lots of people think—that there was a serial killer in Spring Lake in the 1890s and that he’s been reincarnated.”
“That’s utter nonsense,” Lillian Madden said brusquely. “Reincarnation is a form of spiritual growth. A serial murderer from the 1890s would be paying for his transgressions now, not repeating them.”
With decisive steps, her entire posture telegraphing her disapproval of the tone of the conversation, Lillian Madden went into her private office and closed the door. There, she sank into her desk chair and put her elbows on the desk. Her eyes closed, she massaged her temples with her index fingers.
Before too much longer, human beings will be cloned, she thought. All of us in the medical field understand that. Those of us who believe in reincarnation believe that pain we endured in other lifetimes may affect us in our present existence. But evil? Could someone knowingly or unknowingly repeat exactly the same kind of evil deeds he committed over a century ago?
What was bothering her? What memory was trying to force itself into her conscious mind?
Lillian wondered if she could skip her lecture tonight. No, that wouldn’t be fair to the students, she decided. In ten years she hadn’t missed one session of the course in Regression she gave every spring at Monmouth Community College.
There were thirty students enrolled in the course. The college was allowed to sell ten more single-session tickets for each lecture. Would some of those reporters who had been phoning find out about those tickets and be there tonight?
In the second half of the session it was her practice to ask for volunteers to be hypnotized and regressed. That sometimes resulted in vivid and detailed recollections of other incarnations. She made the decision to eliminate the hypnosis section tonight. During the last ten minutes she always took questions from the students and visitors. If reporters were there, she would have to respond to them. There was no way around that.
She always prepared her lectures well in advance. Each one was carefully integrated with both its predecessor and successor. Tonight’s lecture was based on the observations of Ian Stevenson, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. He had tested the hypothesis that in order to identify two different life histories as belonging to the same person, there would have to be continuity of memories and/or personality traits.
It was not exactly the lecture she would have chosen to give tonight. As she went over her notes shortly before she left home, Lillian became painf
ully aware that Stevenson’s findings could be interpreted as bolstering the theory about a reincarnated serial killer.
Lillian was so deep in thought that she was startled by Joan’s brisk knock on the door. It opened and Joan was in the room before she could be invited to enter.
“Mrs. Pell is here, Doctor, but she’s early, so take your time. Look what she brought to show you.”
Joan was holding a copy of The National Daily. SPECIAL EDITION was enblazoned across the logo. The headline read SERIAL KILLER RETURNS FROM THE GRAVE.
The story continued onto the second and third pages. Pictures of Martha Lawrence and Carla Harper, side by side, were captioned, “Sisters in Death?”
The story began, “Red-faced police are admitting that the eyewitness who claimed to have seen twenty-year-old Carla Harper at a rest stop not far from her home in Rosemont, Pennsylvania, may have been mistaken. They now admit it is entirely possible that Harper’s purse was planted near that rest stop by her killer after the eyewitness account was widely published. The focus of the investigation is now centered in Spring Lake, New Jersey.”
“It’s just what I told you, Doctor. The last time that girl was seen was in Spring Lake. And she disappeared on August 5th, the same day as Letitia Gregg—isn’t that a great name?—did in 1893!”
The newspaper also had sketches of three young women in the high-necked, long-sleeved, ankle-length garb of the late nineteenth century. The caption read, “The 19th Century Victims.”
A photograph of a tree-lined street of Victorian homes of that time was placed side by side with the picture of a remarkably similiar present-day street. The caption was, “Then and Now.”
The report that followed had the byline and picture of a columnist, Reba Ashby. It began: “A visitor to the lovely seaside town of Spring Lake has the sense of stepping back into a more peaceful and tranquil era. But in that time, as in the present, the peace was broken by a sinister and evil presence . . .”