As he told her of his desire to leave the firm, Emily was surprised to realize how dismayed she was to learn Nick’s plans. I was looking forward to working with him, she thought.
“Where will you apply for a job?” she asked.
“The U.S. Attorney’s office. That’s where I’d really like to go. Failing that, I’m pretty sure that I could go back to Boston. I worked as an assistant DA there. When I left, the DA told me I’d be welcome to come back if I didn’t like private practice. I’d prefer to stay in New York. But my guess is that I’m not going to be able to sweet-talk you into starting at the office next week, am I?”
“I’m afraid not. Will your father be very upset?”
“The cold, hard reality that I’m leaving is undoubtedly sinking in, and he’s probably hanging me in effigy right now. When I report back to him that you’ll be unavailable until May 1st, you’ll be right there beside me.”
“‘We must all hang together or most assuredly . . .’” Emily smiled.
“‘We’ll hang separately.’ Exactly.” Nick Todd picked up the menu. “Business concluded,” he said. “What’s your choice?”
IT WAS NEARLY FOUR O’CLOCK when he dropped her off at home. He walked her to the porch and waited while she put her key in the door. “You do have a good alarm system?” he asked.
“Absolutely. And tomorrow an old friend from Albany is going to install security cameras.”
Nick’s eyebrows went up. “After that stalker you had in Albany, I can understand why you’d want them.”
She opened the door. They saw it at the same time. An envelope on the floor of the foyer, the flap side facing up.
“Looks as if someone left a note for you,” Nick said as he bent to pick it up.
“Pick it up by the corner. It may have fingerprints.” Emily did not recognize her own voice. It had come out as a strained whisper.
Nick looked at her sharply, but obeyed. As he stood up, the flap of the envelope flew open and a photograph fell out. It was of Emily in church at the memorial Mass.
Scrawled across the bottom were three words: “Pray for yourself.”
Monday, March 26
thirty-six ________________
I AM EAGERLY LOOKING FORWARD to the activity that I know will ensue later today.
I am very pleased that I changed my mind and made Emily Graham the recipient of my message.
Her mail should be delivered soon.
As I expected, there were questions about the scarf, but I’m sure that no one can prove who finally took possession of it that night.
Martha admired it. I heard her tell Rachel that it was very pretty.
I remember that at that very moment, the thought ran through my head that Martha had just chosen the instrument of her own death.
After all, a scarf, I thought, is not unlike the sash that squeezed the breath from Madeline’s throat.
At least I no longer have to be concerned about the psychologist. I do not even have to be concerned if they somehow manage to reconstruct her computer files.
When I consulted Dr. Madden it was in the evening, and the receptionist was not there, so no one else saw me.
And the name and address I gave her will mean nothing to them.
Because they do not—will not—ever understand that we are one.
There is only one person who, learning that name and address, might begin to suspect, but it won’t matter.
For I have no fears on that score, either. Emily Graham is going to die on Saturday. She will sleep with Ellen Swain.
And after that, I shall live out the rest of my life as I have before, as a respectable and honored citizen of Spring Lake.
thirty-seven ________________
TOMMY DUGGAN had been about to leave the office on Sunday afternoon when the call came in from Emily Graham. He immediately rushed to Spring Lake and took the envelope and photograph from her.
On Monday morning, he and Pete Walsh were in the prosecutor’s private office, filling their boss in on the events of the weekend. Osborne had been in Washington since Friday evening.
Tommy briefed him on the Madden murder and his interrogation at Will Stafford’s home of the guests at that final Lawrence party.
“It’s Mrs. Wilcox’s scarf, and she was wearing it that night. She claims she asked her husband to put it in his pocket. He claims she asked him to put it next to her pocketbook.”
“The Wilcoxes drove their car to the Lawrences that night, sir,” Walsh offered. “It was parked down the block. If Dr. Wilcox stuck the scarf in his pocket, it might have fallen out, either in the house or on the street; then anyone could have picked it up. And if he left it with her pocketbook, again, anyone could have taken it.”
Osborne tapped the top of his desk with his index finger. “From what was left of it, that scarf appeared to be fairly long. It would have been pretty bulky to fold up and put in the pocket of a summer jacket.”
Tommy nodded. “That’s what I thought too. By the time it was used to strangle Martha, part of it had been cut off. But on the other hand, Wilcox lied to his wife about calling the Lawrences to ask if it had been found. His story is that by then everyone knew Martha was missing, and he wasn’t going to bother them about a scarf.”
“He could have spoken to the housekeeper,” Osborne observed.
“Something else,” Tommy said. “We think that Wilcox was lying about not knowing Dr. Madden.”
“How much do we know about Wilcox? I mean really know about him?”
Tommy Duggan looked at Walsh. “Pete, you take over. You checked him out.”
Pete Walsh pulled out his notes. “Solid academic career. Ended up president of Enoch College. That’s one of those places that are small, but snooty. Retired twelve years ago. Used to come to Spring Lake summers when he was a kid, so settled here. Publishes regularly in academic journals. They don’t pay enough to keep a sparrow in breadcrumbs, but it’s considered hot stuff to be in them. Since he settled here, he’s done a lot of historical writing about New Jersey, particularly Monmouth County. He’s considered something of the town historian in Spring Lake.”
“Which ties in with Emily Graham’s theory that Martha Lawrence’s killer had access to records about the women who disappeared in the 1890s,” Tommy pointed out. “I swear that guy was lying when he said he didn’t know Dr. Madden. I want to start digging a lot deeper with him. My bet is that there’s dirt to be found.”
“Anything more about the Carla Harper case?” Osborne asked.
“The eyewitness is sticking to her story that she saw Carla at a rest stop in Pennsylvania. At the time, she gave interviews to everyone in the media who would talk to her. The cops in Pennsylvania admit they made a mistake in accepting the eyewitness’s story, but when Carla’s pocketbook was found near that rest stop a few days later, it gave the witness the credibility she needed. The killer was probably laughing when he tossed it out the window of his car. Now the trail is cold, especially since the Warren Hotel closed last year. That’s where Carla Harper was staying the weekend before she disappeared.” He shrugged. It was a dead end.
Finally Tommy and Pete filled in Elliot Osborne on the call they had received at 4:00 P.M. on Sunday from Emily Graham.
“She has guts,” Tommy said. “White as a sheet, but composed when we got there. She thinks it’s a copycat situation, and that’s the way the Spring Lake cops are leaning too. I talked to Marty Browski, the guy who handled her stalking case in Albany.”
“What does Browski think?” Osborne asked.
“He thinks that the wrong guy is doing time on this one. He’s reopened the investigation and says he has two possible suspects: Emily Graham’s ex-husband, Gary White, and Joel Lake, a slime she got off on a murder rap.”
“What do you think?”
“Best possible scenario: copycat. A teenager or a couple of teenagers found out that Emily was being stalked in Albany and are playing sicko games with her now. Middle scenario: either Gary White or
Joel Lake. Worst possible scenario: the guy who killed Martha Lawrence is toying with Graham.”
“Which scenario do you buy?”
“Copycat. Dr. Lillian Madden, the psychologist who was murdered in Belmar, was definitely tied to the Lawrence case. I’d stake everything that Martha’s killer must have been Dr. Madden’s patient and couldn’t take a chance on her talking to us about him. But on the other hand, I don’t think he would be so dumb as to risk being seen hanging around Emily Graham’s house. He has too much at stake.”
“Have you any idea where the person who took that picture of Emily Graham in church might have been sitting?”
“Across the aisle. In a pew to the left.”
“Suppose Browski—that’s the name, isn’t it?—is right that Graham’s original stalker is on the loose in Spring Lake? I’d say that if he’s obsessed enough to come all the way down here from Albany, she’s in extreme danger.”
“If the original stalker is the one doing this, yes, she’s definitely in extreme danger,” Tommy Duggan agreed soberly.
Elliot Osborne’s secretary’s voice came over the intercom. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but Ms. Emily Graham is on the phone. She insists she must speak to Detective Duggan at once.”
Tommy Duggan picked up the phone. “Duggan, Ms. Graham.”
The prosecutor and Pete Walsh watched as the lines deepened on Duggan’s face. “We’ll be right over, Ms. Graham.”
He hung up and looked at Osborne. “Emily Graham received a troubling postcard in the morning mail.”
“The stalker? Another picture of herself?”
“No. This one is a drawing of two tombstones. The name on one is Carla Harper. The name on the other is Letitia Gregg. If this card is on the level, they’re buried together in the backyard of 15 Ludlam Avenue in Spring Lake.”
thirty-eight ________________
ERIC BAILEY BEGAN MONDAY MORNING EARLY, as a guest on the news hour of the local Albany television channel.
Slight of frame and barely medium height, with rumpled hair and frameless glasses that dominated his narrow face, he was unprepossessing in appearance and manner. When he spoke, his voice had a nervous, high-pitched quality.
The anchorman of the program had not been happy to see Bailey’s name on the list of guests. “Whenever that guy is on, the loud clicking sound you hear is all the remote controls in Albany switching to another channel,” he complained.
“A lot of people around this area invested money in his company. The stock’s been on the skids for the last year and a half. Now Bailey claims he has new software that will revolutionize the computer industry,” the financial editor snapped back. “He may sound like a chipmunk, but what he has to say is worth hearing.”
“Thank you for the compliment. Thank you both.”
Eric Bailey had come on to the set quietly, without either man hearing him approach. Now, with a slight smile, as if enjoying their discomfort, he said, “Perhaps I should wait in the green room until you’re ready for me?”
* * *
THE STATE-OF-THE-ART security cameras he was going to install around Emily’s home were already packed in his van, so immediately after the television interview, Eric Bailey began the drive to Spring Lake.
He knew he had to be careful not to drive too fast. Anger combined with humiliation made him want to press the gas pedal to the floor of the car, to weave in and out of traffic, terrifying the occupants of the vehicles he would cut off.
Fear was his answer to all the rejections in his life, to all the rebuffs, to all the ridicule.
He had learned to use fear as a weapon when he was sixteen. He had invited three girls, one after another, to go to the junior prom with him. They all refused. Then the snickering started, the jokes.
How far would Eric Bailey have to go before he could get a date?
Karen Fowler was the one whose imitation of him fumbling to articulate his invitation to her was considered most hilarious. He had overheard her mimicking him.
“Karen, I’d really like . . . I mean, would you . . . it would be nice if . . .”
“And then he started sneezing,” Karen Fowler would tell her audience, laughing so hard she was almost gasping. “The poor dope started sneezing, can you believe it?”
The best student in the school, and she called him “the poor dope.”
The night of the prom he had waited with his camera at the local hangout where everyone went after the band quit. When the drinking and pot smoking started, he secretly snapped pictures of a glassy-eyed Karen, hanging all over her date, her lipstick smeared, the strap of her dress falling over her arm.
He showed the pictures to her in school a couple of days later. He could still remember the way she paled. Then she cried and pleaded with him to give them to her. “My father will kill me,” she said. “Please, Eric.”
He put them back in his pocket. “Want to do your imitation of me now?” he asked coldly.
“I’m sorry. Please, Eric, I’m sorry.”
She had been so frightened, never knowing whether or not he would ring the bell some evening and hand those pictures to her father, or if one day they’d be delivered to him in the mail . . .
Thereafter, whenever she passed him in the hall in school, she’d given him a frightened, beseeching glance. And for the first time in his life Eric Bailey had felt powerful.
The memory calmed him now. He would find a way to punish the two who had dissed him this morning. It just took a little quiet thinking, that’s all.
Depending on traffic, he would be in Spring Lake between one and two.
He knew the route fairly well by now. This would be his third round trip since Wednesday.
thirty-nine ________________
REBA ASHBY, investigative reporter for The National Daily, had taken a room at The Breakers Hotel in Spring Lake for the week. A small, sharp-featured woman in her late thirties, she planned to milk the story of the reincarnated serial killer for all it was worth.
On Monday morning she was having a leisurely breakfast in the hotel dining room, on the alert for someone with whom she could strike up a conversation. At first she saw only business types at the nearby tables, and she knew it would be useless to interrupt them. She needed to find someone who would talk about the murders.
Her editor shared her chagrin that she had not managed to get an interview with Dr. Lillian Madden before she was murdered. She’d tried to contact Dr. Madden all day Friday, but the secretary wouldn’t put her through. Finally she’d managed to get one of the single-session tickets to Dr. Madden’s lecture Friday night, but still had no luck in talking to her privately.
Reba no more believed in reincarnation than she believed elephants could fly, but Dr. Madden’s lecture had been compelling and thought-provoking, and what was going on in Spring Lake certainly was bizarre enough to make one wonder if there was such a thing as a reincarnated serial killer.
She also had noticed how Chip Lucas from the New York Daily News had startled Dr. Madden when he asked her if anyone had ever asked to be regressed to the 1890s. It also had brought an end to the evening’s open forum.
Even though she couldn’t have gotten home before 10:30 P.M. or so, Madden had been in her office when she died. Had she been looking up the record of a patient, Reba wondered, maybe a patient who had asked to be regressed to the 1890s? If nothing else, it provided a good angle for another story on the Spring Lake serial killer.
Hardened as she was by the nature of her job, Reba nonetheless had been shocked to the core by Dr. Madden’s cold-blooded murder. She had heard about it shortly after attending the memorial Mass for Martha Lawrence and she had written extensively on both events for the next issue of The National Daily.
What she wanted now was to get an exclusive interview with Emily Graham. She rang the bell of Graham’s house on Sunday afternoon, but there was no answer. When she swung by her house again an hour later, she saw a woman on the porch, bending down as if she were slipping somet
hing under the door.
Reba looked up hopefully when she saw that the table next to her had been cleared, and the hostess was leading a woman who appeared to be in her late seventies over to it.
“The waitress will be right with you, Mrs. Joyce,” the hostess promised.
Five minutes later, Reba and Bernice Joyce were deep in conversation. The fact that Joyce was a friend of the Lawrence family was a bit of serendipity, but the fact that all the people who had been guests at a party at the Lawrence home the night before Martha’s disappearance had been questioned in a group that had included Mrs. Joyce was the kind of break tabloid writers pray for.
Under Reba’s skillful questioning, Mrs. Joyce explained how each of them was called in, one by one, to talk to the two detectives. The questions were general, except that they were asked if they knew if something had been lost that night.
“Was anything lost?” Reba inquired.
“I didn’t know of anything being lost. But after we spoke to the detectives individually, we were all questioned together. The detectives asked if anyone had noticed Mrs. Wilcox’s scarf. Apparently that’s what was lost. I felt sorry for poor Dr. Wilcox. In front of the entire group, Rachel was quite brusque, blaming him for not putting the scarf in his pocket as she’d asked him to.”
“Can you describe the scarf?”
“I remember it quite well because I was standing next to Rachel when Martha, poor darling, made a point of admiring it. It was a silvery shade of chiffon, with some beading at the edges. Rather gaudy for Rachel Wilcox, actually. She tends to dress more conservatively. Perhaps that’s why she took it off a short time later.”
Reba was salivating at the thought of writing her next story. The police had said the cause of Martha’s death was strangulation. They wouldn’t have asked about the scarf if it hadn’t been important.
She was so busy composing her headline, in fact, that she did not notice how quiet her elderly companion at the next table had become.