The Betrayed (Krewe of Hunters) (4 page)

“Hey!” he called. There was no answer.

Was he imagining the man?
The figure leaned against a free-standing vault with great pillars before it.

The wind seemed to be against him as he hurried over. He was fighting to get there.

The man didn’t disappear.

As he struggled forward, he paused at the sound of a dog barking. He turned.

A massive animal was racing toward the other figure, straining at his leash, which was held by a young woman in a black trench coat. He had the rather irrelevant thought that she resembled Cousin Itt from
The Addams Family,
since the wind had covered her face with her long brown hair. She and the dog—the wolfhound, obviously—were threading their way through crooked tombstones and monuments listing at different angles.

He heard voices. The dog and the woman were being followed.

He ran forward, too. The dog was in a rush—not after him, but intent on something else. Or someone else.

The figure leaning by the vault. The young woman tripped on a broken headstone but found her footing.

He continued forward himself, realizing that dog and woman were headed for the man—and at the rate the dog was going, they might well knock him over.

“Rollo! Slow down!” the young woman commanded.

Rollo passed Aidan and skidded to a halt within ten feet of the figure.

Running, Aidan barely managed to stop himself from toppling over onto the woman.

Then she came to a standstill so quickly that she lost her balance and fell back.

Into Aidan’s arms.

She gasped and he righted her.

She turned to apologize, pulling strands of hair away from her eyes. They were like crystals, gray-green and shimmering with flecks of both colors.

She didn’t speak but her beautiful eyes widened, as if wondering what she’d seen just before she’d fallen backward—into his arms.

Their eyes met briefly in that confusion.

Rollo, the giant wolfhound, kept barking.

And as they both turned to look at the man—the figure by the tomb—a horde of people came panting up behind them.

They were mostly men in uniform.

Aidan ignored them. So did the young woman and the dog.

They were still staring at the man who’d been propped against the vault. He wore a long billowing coat and black boots, and might have been casually waiting there.

He just didn’t have a head.

But something else about the scene didn’t seem right.

“Oh, my God!” someone shrieked behind him.

Aidan noticed that the headless man stood as if he were about to enter the vault—or perhaps ask someone to join him.

It was staged. It was
staged
to be horrific.

One of the newcomers stopped about three feet from the young woman.

“Well, I believe you’ve found the rest of Mr. Highsmith, Mo.” He stopped speaking. Perhaps, under the circumstances, all their minds were working a little slowly. The man frowned, then gave Aidan a thorough look and said, “This is a crime scene, sir.” He paused, his expression grim. “But...”

Aidan was in a suit and trench coat, certainly not clothing worn by any of the others here. He guessed—hoped—that he wore it with a certain authority.

“You’re with the federal government?”

Aidan nodded and presented his credentials. The older man studied him again. “Took them long enough to get you here,” he said. “I called last night.”

“Sir, I got the word about an hour and a half ago,” Aidan said.

The older man didn’t offer his hand; he seemed to be an old-time lawman. “Lieutenant Robert Purbeck, Agent Mahoney,” he said. “Glad you made it. Things like this don’t happen in Tarrytown. Except in stories, of course.”

Someone next to him was on a radio, telling someone else to get the M.E. and crime scene techs up the hill.

The wolfhound barked.

“Shh, Rollo,” the young woman said.

“Agent Mahoney, meet my lead men on the case—Detectives Lee Van Camp and Jimmy Voorhaven. And—” he gestured to the young woman and the dog “—Maureen Deauville. Mo...we have a Fed here. Agent Mahoney of the FBI. Oh, and that’s our wonder dog, Rollo.”

Aidan nodded in acknowledgment. The other cops, a weary-looking lean guy and his younger partner, watched him curiously as they shook hands but they didn’t appear to resent his presence.

“God help me,” Purbeck muttered. “I hope that’s the rest of Richard Highsmith. If not...”

He didn’t finish his sentence.

But Aidan knew what he meant.

They’d found Richard’s head.

And if this
wasn’t
the body that went with the head...

Well, there might be headless bodies and bodiless heads all over the Hudson Valley.

But, as he stood there, staring at the form, Aidan saw that the loose coat had fluttered open—and he understood what was wrong with the scene.

And he knew their worst fears were realized.

“I’m sorry to say this,” Aidan announced, “but that’s not Richard Highsmith.”

“What?” Purbeck demanded. “How the hell do you know that?”

“Take a closer look,” Aidan said. “That’s not a man’s body. It’s a woman’s.”

“What?”
Purbeck demanded again. “Rollo found a body, a
woman’s
body? But...he was on Richard Highsmith’s scent!”

“He sure as hell found something,” Aidan said.

The young woman, Maureen Deauville, spoke quietly then.

“Rollo is— Well, he’s really a sight hound, but—” She paused, glancing around. “He’s never wrong. Richard Highsmith is nearby,” she said. “The, um, rest of him.”

Aidan looked at her, then at the headless body by the tomb. Ms. Deauville seemed very certain. In a second, he’d pulled on a pair of neoprene gloves.

Then he stepped forward.

There was an iron gate that guarded the tomb. Beyond that was some kind of heavy metal door.

Aidan pulled at the gate; it creaked, but gave.

He pushed at the iron door. It groaned on its hinges but opened.

Taking a penlight from his pocket, he flashed it over the inside of the vault. He saw a stone sarcophagus or tomb in the center.

And on the stone tomb, a body. In a suit.

“This, I think,” Aidan said, rigidly controlling the emotion that ripped through him, “is Richard Highsmith.”

2

P
urbeck looked in and sighed. “Back out, everyone but Mahoney, Van Camp and Voorhaven. I don’t want evidence compromised. Get the M.E. and the crime scene people here,” he ordered.

Aidan followed him, then carefully stepped through.

He threw the beam of his flashlight over the stone floor. No hope of prints, since the stone was bare of dust. He walked carefully toward the body, touching nothing, keeping his light trained on the corpse.

Aidan wasn’t an M.E., but it seemed to him that the head had been cleanly severed with great strength and probably a single blow. Highsmith hadn’t been killed in the tomb; there wasn’t much blood. And, of course, Aidan couldn’t know if he’d been killed and then decapitated—or killed
by
decapitation. He found himself reminded of a history lesson: Queen Anne Boleyn asking Henry VIII for a headsman from France so her execution would be swift and clean.

Purbeck had come in behind him. He, too, touched nothing and studied the body.

As the two detectives—Van Camp and Voorhaven—also walked into the tomb, Aidan put down his flashlight and checked for Highsmith’s wallet with gloved hands. He found it in his pocket, just as he’d expected to.

“Anything in there?” Van Camp asked him.

“Wallet, keys...”

Carefully, Aidan checked Highsmith’s other pocket. Lint—and a matchbook. He held it up to Voorhaven’s flashlight glare.

“From some place called Mystic Magic,” he said.

“Whoa,” Van Camp muttered.

“It’s a new strip club down close to Irving,” Voorhaven explained.

“Doesn’t sound like Richard Highsmith,” Purbeck said.

Voorhaven produced an evidence bag, but Aidan briefly held on to the matchbook, flipping it open. He wasn’t surprised to see that Highsmith had scribbled something in it. “‘Lizzie grave,’” he read aloud.

“Odd name for a stripper,” Van Camp commented.

“I doubt it’s a stripper’s name,” Aidan told the others.

“Then what?” Van Camp asked.

“Maybe it has to do with a dead woman named Lizzie. Lizzie’s grave,” Aidan said impatiently, dropping the matchbook in the evidence bag.

Voorhaven snorted. “Ah, hell! Do you know how many Lizzies have died and been buried here over the last several hundred years?”

Purbeck shook his head. “Let the M.E. and the crime scene techs in now,” he said, turning to leave the vault. He paused at the door. “We have another victim out there—and another head to find.”

Aidan stayed behind for a minute, his gloved hand resting lightly on Richard’s arm. Rigor had come and gone; he’d been dead awhile. He’d probably been killed soon after he disappeared.

“Old friend,” he murmured. “I’ll get whoever did this to you.”

The young woman, Maureen—or Mo— Deauville, had not come in. She stood with her dog just outside the gates and Aidan felt her eyes on him, even though he was darkness and shadow.

He exited the tomb and approached Maureen just as Purbeck came up beside her. The place was now crawling with people. Voorhaven and Van Camp were by the corpse that had been so strategically arranged to look like a host—welcoming them, inviting them to enter the tomb. They had to discover the identity of this woman. Her death was as great a crime, as great a tragedy, as Highsmith’s.

“I know Van Camp already mentioned this, but are we
sure
it’s not a name? Lizzie Grave?” Purbeck asked Aidan. “Not necessarily a stripper’s name. Maybe someone he met?”

Aidan shook his head. “I’m almost certain it’s not,” he said. “I think he grabbed that matchbook wherever he was—could’ve been anywhere—and jotted down a note. I agree with you that it’s highly unlikely he was ever in that strip club—not when he was here on an important speaking engagement. I think he just saw the matchbook somewhere. In a dressing room or at a lunch counter, maybe. Or someone gave it to him. And I think
Lizzie grave
means...Lizzie’s grave. But the first thing we need to do is discover the identity of our other victim.”

“God help us,” Purbeck said. “We started out looking for a body. Now...now, we’ve got to find another head.” He turned to Mo Deauville. “You and Rollo ready?”

Aidan believed she was fighting her own mental battle, but she nodded. “Yes, of course,” she said. She brought the wolfhound to where the headless corpse leaned. The cops made way for her. The dog stood at a distance, but lifted his nose high—almost as if he were weighing the merits of a perfume.

Mo Deauville commanded the dog to sit, then approached the corpse and rested her hand gently on the woman’s shoulder.

As if she could...somehow
feel
something. A communication—from the corpse!

She lowered her head, then looked at Purbeck.

“We’re ready,” she said.

She touched the dog’s head. Aidan couldn’t be sure, but he thought she was giving Rollo some kind of signal.

Well, of course she was. She was asking him to find...the rest of the woman.

No, it seemed to be more than that.

But she quickly set off, tightly clutching the dog’s leash.

With the exception of the crime scene personnel and a few cops left standing guard, everyone trailed after her. They went up and down hills as they walked through one cemetery to get to the other, and eventually wound up on the street again.

“Oh, no. Oh, God, no,” Purbeck said.

Yes.

Across the street, at yet another headless horseman effigy, this one in front of a dry cleaning business, a crowd was gathering.

People weren’t alarmed; they seemed to be in awe.

There were pictures being taken.

The crowd wasn’t even being particularly ghoulish. The horseman stood in the midst of a Halloween display of pumpkins, bats, black cats and flying witches.

“Get the people away,” Purbeck said quietly.

Rollo woofed.

Voorhaven and Van Camp went running across the street, along with half-a-dozen men in uniform.

Aidan glanced at Mo. She stood there, holding Rollo’s leash. She didn’t turn away, although he could tell she wasn’t going any closer. There was a stoic expression on her face, but sadness in her eyes.

“Thank you,” Aidan murmured to her. He crossed the street and hurried over to the display. The area was now being cleared of people.

He knew the crowd hadn’t understood that the horseman with its witch’s head wasn’t part of this gruesome display. The head...was
real.

Purbeck followed him. As Aidan stepped up onto a bale of hay beside a wire-and-plastic assembly, he heard the lieutenant mutter.

“God, I pray this means both our bodies are complete!”

Aidan thought they were. It was difficult to be sure, but he had to believe this was what they were looking for. The “witch’s” wealth of long dark hair had been adorned with a black pointed hat. Van Camp stood on a second bale near him, silently inspecting the scene. He motioned to one of the photographers to capture the image from a number of different angles. When the photographer finished the initial shots, Aidan turned to Van Camp, who nodded. He removed the hat and passed it down to Jimmy Voorhaven. Jimmy bagged it, then he carefully brushed aside the tangle of dark hair.

“Mid-thirties?” Van Camp murmured. “Attractive, good bone structure. It doesn’t appear that any of the bones in the face were broken or disturbed.”

“No bruises or contusions. Naturally, the skin is somewhat...”

“Yeah,” Van Camp said.

“You recognize her, by any chance?” Aidan asked him.

Van Camp shook his head. “No. And I guess we can’t be a hundred percent sure if this head goes with the body by the vault until...until the M.E. puts her together.”

The two men scrambled down; the police photographer got into position to take more pictures. Members of the crime scene unit assembled to search for trace evidence.

Aidan rejoined Purbeck. The man just stared at the display. He shook his head. “You know what our murder rate is around here? Practically zero.”

“Doesn’t help that we’re close to Halloween,” Voorhaven said.

That was probably true. There were few places in the country to rival the Sleepy Hollow area for Halloween. It came complete with the rolling hills, brooks, fog and spooky woods that first gave rise to legends and then to the stories written by the first American recognized as a great writer by the European community. So there were a zillion “haunted” venues: haunted houses, haunted hayrides, haunted happenings. Usually, it was an entertaining and commercially successful time—and the merchants were in a frenzy of happiness.

And the headless horseman reigned supreme.

“Whoever did this has to be stopped. Fast,” Van Camp said.

“Van Camp, I need you and Voorhaven to go to the station with Special Agent Mahoney. Get him up to speed on everything. Mahoney, you’re alone on this?” Purbeck asked him, apparently puzzled.

Aidan hesitated. It wasn’t that he couldn’t be a team player; he usually enjoyed working with others. True, he wasn’t completely familiar or completely comfortable with his new team yet. But he trusted that would happen in time.

Everyone wanted a trusted coworker at his back.

Still, he was well aware that he didn’t work like most agents. Sometimes his methods of investigation were...different.

Just as he’d heard that the agents in the Krewe had what might be considered different methods of investigation.

His methods worked—and that was why, he assumed, his superiors had decided to make use of him in a way that brought about results.

“We’ll bring in more people, I’m sure,” Aidan said. “When necessary.”

“Nice. Seems they give the locals some respect,” Voorhaven muttered sarcastically.

Aidan looked squarely at the man. “Detective, I’m here because Lieutenant Purbeck called my office. Because, thank God, there aren’t many murders in this area. I was sent because I grew up here. More than that, I grew up here with friends—one of whom was Richard Highsmith. I know how the man thought. I know his habits, his virtues and his weaknesses. I’m not here to step on toes. But I’m going to get whoever murdered my friend.” He realized that, without really thinking about it, he’d made the decision to disclose his relationship with Richard to these policemen, even though he hadn’t yet told Jackson Crow.

Voorhaven stared at him awkwardly. “I, uh, I’m sorry. By all accounts, Highsmith was a really good man.”

Aidan nodded. “Yeah.” He looked at the headless horseman effigy—with its head. “And now we have a Jane Doe and she might have been a good person, too, and if not...well, she’s still entitled to the very best law enforcement can give her. So, I’m willing to do anything it takes to get to the bottom of this.”

“Of course,” Voorhaven said.

“The kid just got his shield a year ago,” Van Camp told Aidan. “He’ll learn. When you’ve been around long enough and you see something like this, you’re happy to accept whatever assistance you can get.”

Aidan nodded.

“So, now we’ve kissed and made up,” Purbeck said. “Good. You two, give the nice Fed anything he needs or wants, okay?”

“You got it, yeah, sure, of course,” Voorhaven said.

Aidan looked across the street.

Mo Deauville was still there, Rollo at her side. She was watching them.

Purbeck raised a hand in a gesture of thanks or farewell or both.

She waved in return. For a moment, the wind caught her hair and lifted it around her. The Cousin Itt comparison no longer seemed the least bit apt and he wondered why it had ever occurred to him. She might have been wearing a trench coat, but she suddenly created an image in his mind. He pictured her as an ancient warrior princess. A Viking goddess, maybe.

A moment later, she was gone, but the image lingered.

* * *

Mo moved through the different cemeteries until she reached her point of arrival that morning—street parking by the Old Dutch Church.

Rollo trotted obediently along. She thought she should’ve put on his service-dog vest, since dogs weren’t really allowed in some of the places she walked through to get where she was going. But it was a Thursday morning, and although there were a few people in the various historical cemeteries and burying grounds, she remained at a distance and no one bothered her. Still, she did hear a few people exclaim what a beautiful dog Rollo was and, one girl squeaked that there was a woman walking around with a
pony.

She pretended not to hear any of it as she made her way back to the car. Everything she’d seen that morning seemed to be imprinted on her mind.

The scenes she’d witnessed weren’t easy to forget.

“Remember, Rollo? We figured it would be such a lark, living here!” Mo said aloud.

Rollo let out a deep, rich
woof,
as if he understood.

She’d worked with the police for a long time. First in New York City and then—when she moved out here—with the county.

Fortunately, she could live wherever she wanted. She had a freelance career and was lucky enough to have a nice contract with a greeting card company. Many of her cards were e-cards, but many were also constructed of paper. Her company was actually based not too far away, in Connecticut, and she drove over for meetings once a month. Other than that, she worked on the internet and with graphic programs. She produced her paper creations by hand and on her own time, which allowed for her sideline of finding the lost and missing with Purbeck and Rollo.

Purbeck called her whenever a child went missing in the woods, and she and Rollo would find that child. It wasn’t always children. The last time she’d been called out, Mr. Husseldorf—one hundred and two, and looking forward to his next birthday—had wandered out of his nursing home. She’d found him down by one of the brooks, fishing without a pole. But the expression on his face and his every movement showed her that in his mind he was fishing.

She’d left the city because she preferred to find the living. In the city, it seemed, she too often found the dead.

But then, that was her real talent, wasn’t it?

Arriving at her car, Mo opened the door for Rollo to hop into the front, then walked around and slid into the driver’s seat. Technically, she was in Tarrytown and not Sleepy Hollow. There were signs that announced when you actually reached Sleepy Hollow.