On the Street Where You Live

  He bent down and caressed Emily’s cheeks. “You remind me of Madeline,” he whispered. “You, with your beauty and youth and vitality. Can you understand what it was like for me to look across the street and see my son with you and to know that I was condemned to live my life with an ailing woman whose beauty was gone, whose sole attraction was her wealth?”

  “But surely you loved your son and wanted him to be happy?”

  “Surely I would not allow someone as exquisite as Madeline to be in his arms while I sat at the bedside of a besotted invalid.”

  There was a flash of light from a passing police cruiser. “Our police in Spring Lake do their best to secure our safety,” Will Stafford said as he reached in his pocket and brought out a piece of silvery material edged with metal beading. “Since they have just checked this house, we will have at least a few minutes more. Is there anything more you would like me to explain to you?”

  eighty-seven ________________

  THE SPRING LAKE POLICE SQUAD CAR was cruising along Ocean Avenue. “There it is!” Officer Reap said, pointing to a dark blue van parked in one of the spots that faced the boardwalk.

  They pulled into the space beside it and rapped on the front window. “There’s light coming from the back,” Phil said. He rapped again, harder.

  “Police, open up!” he called.

  Inside, Eric was watching the screen in rapt fascination, and he had no intention of being interrupted. The key to the van was in his pocket. He pulled it out and pressed the remote button that unlocked the doors.

  “Come in,” he said. “I’m right here. I’ve been expecting you. But please let me finish watching my show.”

  Reap and his partner slid open the door and immediately saw the television screen. What does he think he’s doing? This guy must be a nut, Reap thought, as he glanced at the screen. For an instant he thought he was watching a horror movie.

  “He’s going to kill her,” Eric said. “Be quiet, he’s talking to her. Listen to what he has to say.”

  The two officers stood immobile for a moment, transfixed by the shocking realization of what was unfolding in front of them and by the calmness of the voice that came through the speaker.

  “In my current incarnation I had only expected to repeat the pattern of the past,” Will Stafford was saying, “but it was not to be. I thought Bernice Joyce was a threat that had to be eliminated. Her last words to me as she died were that she was mistaken. She thought she had seen someone else pick up the scarf. A pity. She did not have to die after all.”

  “Why Natalie?” Emily asked, fighting for time.

  “I am sorry about Natalie. The night of the Lawrence party, she had stepped onto the porch to have a final cigarette before she gave them up for good. From that vantage point, she may have seen me carrying the scarf to the car. When she started smoking again at our luncheon last Wednesday, I could sense that she was starting to remember. She had become a danger. I could not allow her to live. But don’t worry. Her death was mercifully swift. It always has been that way. It will be for you too, Emily, I promise.”

  Astounded, Officer Reap realized suddenly that he was about to see a murder committed.

  “. . . when I was fourteen, my mother and I first came to Spring Lake. A sentimental journey for her. She never stopped loving my father. We walked past the house where her mother, my grandmother, had been born.”

  “God Almighty, that’s Will Stafford and Emily Graham!” Reap snapped. “I was by her house last Sunday after that picture of her at the memorial Mass was pushed under her door. Stay here with him!” he shouted to the other officer, as he leapt out of the van and broke into a run.

  “. . . The woman who lived in my great-grandfather’s house invited us in. I became bored and started rummaging around on the second floor of the carriage house. I found his old diary. I was meant to find it, you see, because I am Douglas Richard Carter. I have returned to Spring Lake.”

  Don’t let me be too late, Phil Reap prayed as he got back in the squad car. As he raced to 100 Hayes Avenue, he radioed headquarters for backup.

  eighty-eight ________________

  NICK TODD DECIDED that for his own peace of mind, he would drive past Emily’s house just to reassure himself that all was well inside. He was just approaching it when a police car came racing down the street from the other direction and pulled into the driveway.

  With a sense of dread, Nick pulled in behind the police car and quickly jumped out. “Has anything happened to Emily?” he demanded. Please, God, please, don’t let anything happen to her, he begged silently.

  “We hope not,” Officer Reap said tersely. “Stay out of my way.”

  * * *

  THE POLICE WILL DRIVE BY AGAIN, Emily promised herself. But then if they didn’t see him come in, what good is that? she reasoned. He’s managed to get away with the murders of Martha, Carla, Natalie, Mrs. Joyce, and probably others. I’m next. Oh, dear God, I want to live!

  “Tell me about the diaries,” she said. “You have kept a record of everything, haven’t you? You must have written down every detail of the way everything happened, of your emotions at the time, of the reactions of the families of the girls?”

  “Exactly.” He seemed pleased that she understood. “Emily, for a woman you are very intelligent, but your intelligence is limited by a woman’s natural enemy—her generosity of spirit. With compassion visible in your eyes, you drank in my story about taking the blame for a friend who had been the real driver in an accident. I told you that because my receptionist admitted she had revealed too much to that gossip columnist, and I was afraid if something was printed, it would put you on your guard.”

  “Whatever you did, the juvenile record would have remained sealed.”

  “What I did was to follow my great-grandfather’s example. I overpowered a young woman, but before I could complete my mission, her screams were heard. I spent three years in juvenile detention, not one as I told you.”

  “It is time, Emily—time for you to join lovely Madeline, time for you to rest with Ellen.”

  Emily stared at the tattered shreds of cloth in his hands. He’s enjoying himself, she thought. Make him keep answering questions. He wants to brag.

  “When I am with Ellen, will it be over?” she asked.

  He was behind her now, gently wrapping the remnant of scarf around her neck.

  “I wish that could be true, but alas there is at least one more. Dr. Madden’s secretary unfortunately caught a glimpse of me the night I visited Dr. Madden. In time, she might remember me. Like Bernice Joyce and Natalie Frieze, she poses an unacceptable risk.”

  He leaned forward and brushed her cheek with his lips. “I kissed Madeline as I tightened her sash,” he whispered.

  TOMMY DUGGAN AND PETE WALSH arrived at Emily’s house just in time to see Officer Reap running up the steps to the porch, followed by another man.

  Reap quickly reported what he had seen on the monitor in Bailey’s van.

  “Forget the front door. Take one of the porch doors on the right,” Duggan shouted. He and Walsh, followed by Nick, ran to the left. Reaching the door to the study, the three men looked in the window and saw the scarf being tightened around Emily’s neck.

  Tommy knew that in another few seconds it would be too late. He drew his pistol, took aim, and fired through the glass.

  The impact of the bullet caused Will Stafford to jerk back, then crumple to the floor, the remains of the scarf that had snuffed out the lives of Martha Lawrence and Carla Harper still clutched in his hand.

  Sunday, April 1

  eighty-nine ________________

  ON SUNDAY MORNING, Tommy Duggan and Pete Walsh joined Emily and Nick at a quiet corner table in The Breakers breakfast room.

  “You were right, Emily,” Tommy said. “There was a complete written record of what his great-grandfather did. In addition, Stafford kept his own journal and wrote the details down in the same clinical fashion his great-grandfather did.”

 
“We got a search warrant for Stafford’s house and we found the original Douglas Carter’s diary as well as the one Stafford kept,” Tommy Duggan said. “I stayed up all night reading it. It was exactly the way you had figured it out. Douglas Carter’s wife was out of it with the amount of laudanum she was taking. And maybe he was feeding her more. He writes in his journal that he had beckoned Madeline over to his house, saying that his wife was having a seizure. When he put his arms around her and tried to kiss her, she began to struggle, and he knew he’d be ruined if she talked.”

  “I find it hard to think that it was Will Stafford’s great-grandfather who did this,” Emily said. It was like being touched by fingers from the grave. I still feel so frightened, she thought. Will I ever feel safe again?

  “Douglas Carter was nearly fifty years old when his second wife, Lavinia, gave birth in 1900 to a baby girl, Duggan said. “They named her Margaret. After Douglas died, in 1910, Lavinia and Margaret moved back to Denver. Margaret married in 1935. Her daughter, Margo, was Will Stafford’s mother.”

  “He told me that he found that diary by chance when he and his mother were visiting Spring Lake and stopped at the house where his great-grandparents lived,” Emily said.

  “Yes, and he rummaged in that loft over the carriage house and found his great-grandfather’s journal,” Duggan confirmed.

  “It seems to me,” Nick said, “that the seeds of corruption were in him then. A normal kid would have been horrified and would have shown the journal to an adult.”

  Listening to the discussion, Emily felt as though she was still in a kind of dream world. Will had obviously arrived early the night he had taken her to dinner so that he could remove the sensor from the alarm system for the door that led into the study. He must have taken the key for that door from the ring the Keirnans gave him to enter the house before the closing.

  Last night, after Stafford’s body had been removed and the forensics team was finishing the painstaking sifting for evidence, Nick told her to pack an overnight bag and took her to The Breakers Hotel where he was registered.

  “Once again my home is a crime scene,” she told him.

  “It won’t be after this,” he assured her. “It’s all over now.”

  But even in the safety of The Breakers, Emily woke at 3:00 A.M., startled, frightened, remembering, sure she had heard footsteps in the hallway. Then the certainty of Nick’s presence in the next room had been enough to make the trembling stop, to allow sleep to claim her.

  “Did Douglas Richard Carter kill his son?” Emily asked.

  “His diary isn’t really clear on that point,” Duggan answered. “He says that Douglas had a gun and he struggled with him. After it went off, he managed to make it look like a suicide. I wouldn’t be surprised if Douglas had figured out what his father had done and confronted him. Maybe even that guy couldn’t face the fact that he’d murdered his only son. Who knows?”

  “What about Letitia and Ellen?” Emily knew she had to know their fates as well if she were ever to be able to put all this behind her.

  “Letitia was on her way to the beach,” Pete Walsh said. “She had brought a bouquet of flowers from her garden for Mrs. Carter, and Carter happened to be home. Again his advances were rebuffed and again he killed a young woman.

  Tommy Duggan shook his head. “The diary makes for pretty nasty reading. Ellen Swain was visiting Mrs. Carter and began to ask questions, apparently having come to suspect that Carter was the cause of her two friends’ disappearances. She never got out of the house that day, although given his wife’s befuddled state, it was easy enough for Carter to convince the poor woman that she actually had seen Ellen leave.”

  Duggan frowned. “He’s very specific about where he buried Ellen. We’re going to try to find her remains and put them in her family’s plot. She died trying to find out what happened to her friend Letitia. So in a way it’s especially fitting that the two family plots are side by side in the cemetery.”

  “I was supposed to be buried with Ellen,” Emily said. “That was his plan for me.”

  She felt Nick Todd’s arm around her shoulders. This morning he had knocked on her bedroom door with a cup of coffee for her in his hand. “I’m an early bird,” he explained. “This is one of the things you’ll miss at the office, because if I get the job I think I’m going to get, I’ll be downtown. I invited my dad to have lunch with me at the cafeteria at the U.S. Attorney’s office. You can come too. Better yet, you can come down without him.”

  I’ll be there, she thought. You bet I will.

  Pete Walsh had just finished a double order of scrambled eggs, sausage, and bacon. “Your study is being cleaned right now, Emily. I think from now on you’ll find peace in your home.”

  Tommy Duggan’s breakfast had been orange juice, black coffee, and a banana. “I have to be on my way,” he said. “My wife, Suzie, has great plans for me. She’s been threatening that on the first warm weekend day I’d get to clean the garage. This is it.”

  “Before you go,” Emily said quickly, “what about Dr. Wilcox and Bob Frieze?”

  “I think Dr. Wilcox is one relieved guy. It’s out in the open that he got too cozy with a student years ago. Her picture is in all the papers today. Although he was way out of line getting involved with a college student when he was president of the university, no one looking at her picture today would think he took advantage of an innocent young maiden.”

  “What about his wife’s reaction?”

  “My guess is that the public humiliation will finish that marriage. She did know why he resigned the college presidency so abruptly. There was no way he could have hidden it from her, and I guess she’s been throwing it up to him on a regular basis. Actually, I think he’s relieved about everything. He did tell me that he thinks his novel is damn good. Who knows? The guy may end up with a whole new career.”

  Tommy was pushing back his chair. “As for Frieze, he can thank Natalie that he’s in the clear. She gave him a piece of paper she’d found in his pocket, with a phone number and the name Peggy, asking him to call her. Our guys checked her out. Frieze was in the habit of dropping into some bar in Morristown. Claims he didn’t remember any of it, but obviously he didn’t waste time during his blackouts. Peggy’s pretty cute.

  Mary Higgins Clark

  Talks About Her Life and Work

  • Reincarnation is a theme in your thriller On the Street Where You Live. What gave you this idea?

  “The novel is set in the historic resort Spring Lake, New Jersey, where families have lived for generations and where I recently bought a Victorian home. The thought struck me: What if a serial killer believes he has been reincarnated and decides to re-enact murders committed a century ago? And it took off from there.”

  • Do you believe in reincarnation?

  “No, but I am intrigued by its dramatic possibilities.”

  • Regression therapy plays a significant role in the plot of On the Street Where You Live. How is it done?

  “Under hypnosis, people are regressed to early childhood, infancy and past lives. Amazing cases of regression to former lives are documented in medical journals.”

  • Can you describe an actual case?

  “Yes—one I observed during a course I took in parapsychology at New York’s New School for Social Research.

  “Under hypnosis, a young woman was regressed to a former lifetime in which she was a man—a naval officer who got killed in Pearl Harbor. The abrupt change in her voice to that of a man’s and the precise description of events leading up to the naval officer’s ship being blown up were astounding.”

  • How did this experience affect you?

  “It had a powerful impact.”

  • Regression therapy gone wrong is a theme in your novella The Anastasia Syndrome. What happens here?

  “A woman falls into the hands of a psychiatrist experimenting with regression therapy. Through the use of drugs and hypnosis, she is regressed to another era and takes on the persona
of a murderess.”

  • When did you first realize that you wanted to be a writer?

  “I knew it as a child. The first thing I wrote was a poem, when I was seven. I still have it. It’s pretty bad, but my mother thought it was beautiful and made me recite it for everyone who came in. I am sure the captive audience was ready to shoot me, but that kind of encouragement nurtures a budding talent. From the time I was seven, I also kept diaries. I can read them now and look back at what I was like at different ages. I still keep diaries; they are a great help to my novels. No one has seen them—they are locked in a trunk.”

  • What early experiences influenced you?

  “I grew up in the Bronx, where my father was the owner of Higgins Bar and Grille. When I was ten years old, I had a terrible shock. Coming home from early mass one morning, I found a crowd of neighbors outside the house. My father had died in his sleep. When I had said good-night to my father, I didn’t know it was for the last time. His sudden death jolted me into awareness of the fragility of life. My mother went on to raise me and my two brothers alone. My mother’s example taught me to be resilient, resourceful and, through the ups and downs of life, to keep a sense of humor.”

  • How did your father’s death influence the course of your life?

  “Our whole existence changed. My mother tried to get a job, but at that time it was practically impossible for women in late middle-age to return to the job market. She took baby-sitting jobs and, while I was in high school, I worked as a babysitter and as a switchboard operator. After graduating from high school, I went to secretarial school, so I could get a job and help with the family finances.”

  • So you had to sacrifice your college education?

  “Only postpone it. I went to college after my children were grown and I was already an established writer. In 1979, I graduated from Fordham University at Lincoln Center summa cum laude with a B.A. in philosophy. To celebrate, I gave myself a graduation party. The card read: ‘This invitation is 25 years overdue—help prove it’s not too late.’”