“They’re still testing trace evidence, but of course, the killer wore gloves. He left his beheading tools in plain sight, but he wore gloves the entire time. They haven’t got a decent fingerprint. All they found were prints that matched J.J.’s.”
“How do you know you’ll ever catch him?” Mo asked.
“Because I won’t stop until I do,” he answered. “And one of the killers will have made a mistake somewhere. Two people are involved, we’re sure of that. And when two people are involved, it’s actually easier for us. One of them is going to slip up. Or there’ll be a falling-out.”
“I do wonder, though, if there’s really a connection between our Lizzie and this crime. Did you ask if there was a stripper named Lizzie Grave?”
“There’s not.”
Their waitress arrived with their food, and they enjoyed their meal then left, with Aidan asking her again, “Anything?”
“We can try the area where she was killed—the Old Dutch Church isn’t there anymore but there’s a new building. Well, middle-of-the-1800s new. Maybe...”
“We’ve come this far,” he said. “We might as well.”
As they drove, Mo was intensely aware of everything about him. The way his hands held the wheel. The texture of his sweater. The scent of his soap or aftershave. His snug jeans...
She looked out the window.
When they reached the Old Dutch Church and the relatively new church and its grounds, they took a leisurely walk with Rollo.
“Quite different from Manhattan,” Aidan commented. “Although it’s equally historic.”
She nodded. “I love New York City, too. Wall Street, the churches, figuring out exactly where the old drained pond and the Five Points were...”
She let her voice trail off.
“You worked with the police there,” he said. “Searching for missing people. You found a lot of them. Dead.”
She drew in a breath. “Yes. I wish I could explain it to you. I can...hear the dead. Obviously not all the time. And I can hear—or figure out, using logic, which is half of it!—where the missing might be. It started when I was young. I had Rollo’s mom then. She was a beautiful female wolfhound named Heidi. I heard a lost child crying one day—that was in Sleepy Hollow—and I told my mom what I heard. She thought she was humoring me. We found a little boy lost in the woods. I told the truth, I said it was Heidi who’d led me to the child. Anyway, it happened again. And that time the police came to me, and we found the girl who’d gone missing. A few years later, I offered my services and Heidi’s when a woman disappeared in the city.”
“And?” he asked when she didn’t immediately continue. “You found her?”
She nodded. “Only we didn’t find her alive. She’d been killed in the park. But after that...I was called fairly frequently. And, most of the time, I was finding the dead. But what I really wanted to do was help the living. There are so many wooded places that get so dark around here, and people, especially visitors, easily become lost. That made more sense to me. I decided to live in Tarrytown. Of course, it made a difference that I already loved the area. I got to know Purbeck when I was a kid, and now, if someone goes missing anywhere around here, he calls on me.”
“You’re very special,” he said.
She flushed and turned away. “I just have...voices, I guess. And, yes, I see the dead. Sometimes. And talk to them. When they’re willing to talk to me. When they can talk to me.”
He didn’t express his feelings on her ability. He asked, “Anything here?”
She shook her head. “One last try?” he suggested.
“Where?”
“The graveyard. I can’t think of anything else.”
Rollo barked, as if agreeing it was the right thing to do.
The Tappan cemetery was established in 1694, according to the inscription at the gates, and still accepting burials. The place offered a veritable time-traveler’s tour of burial sites, with stones dating back to the founding of the area, markers from the Revolution, and soldiers’ monuments from every war in U.S. history. The Victorian era had brought in the grandiose, and during the Great Depression, many had been buried with no markers at all; only the master plan stated where their remains could be found. Aidan wandered off to look at a historic stone that had been re-etched.
“‘Sleep my child, rest in love’s embrace; And know that I will join thee soon. In sweet earth together then, ’til judgment come with our Sweet Lord’s grace,’” he read out loud.
Listening to him, Mo stopped abruptly.
She could see a woman. At times, especially Halloween, there were costumed interpreters at historic sites. But she knew she wasn’t seeing the living.
The woman peered at Mo from around a tomb—much as Mo did to frighten visitors at the Haunted Mausoleum.
But this woman wasn’t seeking to frighten anyone. She saw Mo looking at her and seemed surprised. She stood very still for a minute, then turned, as though she intended to hurry away.
Rollo made a whining sound and came to stand by Mo; she knew the dog saw the apparition just as clearly as she did.