“We have to find him,” Aidan said firmly. “And we will.”
Within ten minutes they were at Mo’s house. As they drove, Aidan filled her in on the situation regarding Wendy and her son. It took less than five minutes at her cottage to pick up Rollo. Ten minutes after that, they were at the Appleby home. It was a newer house for the area, a ranch style that was about sixty years old. It was spotless; Wendy Appleby had obviously been a meticulous housekeeper. The house was also charmingly decorated for Halloween. There were drawings that J.J. had done proudly displayed on the refrigerator, and scattered around the house were pictures of the boy and his mother at various places.
She’d had a beautiful smile.
Mo let Rollo free in the house. “You’re sure they were taken from here?” she asked Aidan. “There’s no sign of a struggle.”
“I’m not sure of anything,” Aidan said.
Rollo went to the front door and began to bark.
She followed the dog—and tried to open her own mind, tried to watch and listen with every instinct, every power she had.
It wasn’t difficult to find the dead. They seemed to call out to her. She heard their voices in her mind.
Oddly enough, it was usually harder with the living. And always, she used logic together with whatever sense it was that helped her.
Rollo sniffed around in a frenzy and then stood in the drive barking.
“The boy’s scent ends there,” Mo said. “The boy was put into a vehicle of some kind, I imagine.”
“That’s it?” Aidan asked. His disappointment was evident.
For a moment, she wanted to snap at him. This wasn’t easy. It involved creating a mental map of the area in her head and making an attempt to touch the mind of a killer or kidnapper. Or a child who’d wandered off.
She closed her eyes.
Wendy Appleby had been murdered. They didn’t know if she’d been home or somewhere else when she’d been kidnapped and then killed. There was no car in the yard; Wendy could have left the house with her son. Maybe they’d even set off on their trip and been intercepted. Sleepy Hollow’s earth had been accepting the dead for hundreds of years. Many of the old vaults led deep into the hills.
Where things could happen and remain unheard.
Where the dead might be beheaded and prepared for a macabre display.
And where a child, not part of the design, might be kept prisoner.
Or just left to die.
“The cemetery,” she said with certainty.
“Which cemetery?” Aidan asked.
“The one where we found his mother’s body,” Mo told him.
He looked at her, eyes narrowed. “You’re sure?” he asked.
She repeated his earlier words. “I’m not sure of anything.”
“Are you saying you believe he’s been killed and displayed somewhere, too?”
“No,” Mo said. “No.” She couldn’t tell if she was denying that possibility for Aidan or herself. “I don’t think he fit the plan. I think we may find him there. Injured, perhaps. Terrified, certainly.”
He nodded, studying her. She felt he was watching her again, that he knew about her again—that he looked into her mind or soul and saw that there was something different about her.
You have it, too! she wanted to scream.
She refrained.
Van Camp walked over to them. Aidan said, “Mo has a good suggestion. We have Rollo, who can find the scent so we’ll have something to go on, but since the two bodies were found in the cemetery, it’s possible the boy wound up there, too.”
“Sweet Jesus!” Voorhaven murmured.
“We don’t know where the murderer brought the victims to behead them. And Mo’s suggestion gives us a place to start looking,” Aidan said.
“No, wait.” Mo raised one hand. Van Camp turned to her and waited for her to speak.
“One of the vaults,” Mo began. “They’re deep in the earth. Some are very big—when we were kids, we used to play in the old Stewart vault. Time destroyed that one. The gate was gone, the seal was broken, and who knows what happened over the years. It was just a big empty space with a lot of coffin shelves when I was growing up. I’m assuming the authorities took care of the bodies. When I was a teenager, it was filled in. But we know there are dozens more.”
“Let’s go,” Aidan said. “Time has passed—but time may still be everything.”
Van Camp nodded and gave directions to the other officers present. Mo opened the door of Aidan’s car for Rollo to hop in and then slipped into the driver’s seat.
Aidan was on the phone. She watched him as he spoke.
“Anything? Anything at all?” she asked as he ended the call.
He hung up. “As I mentioned earlier, we discovered today that the victims had been knocked out with chloroform. We found some in the room of Richard’s assistant. Two of my colleagues have arrived, and they’ve been questioning the assistant, Richard’s campaign manager and his security detail.”