Richard Highsmith had been one of those friends.
Aidan hadn’t gone to the local station yet. Neither had he headed over to the center where Richard would be speaking. Jackson Crow had called Aidan with specifics about the last time Richard had been seen. In fact, Highsmith’s assistant, Taylor Branch, had feared that he’d just walked out—that he’d suddenly had an epiphany regarding politics and its negative, nasty side. Branch was sure that Richard would realize he was a different kind of politician, one who could bring about change, and that he’d come back. So he’d waited, entertaining the crowd with musicians hired for the event.
Richard had been missing for three hours before Branch had called the police. Then there’d been confusion. Next the place had been shut down and those who’d come to see him speak had been held and questioned, but finally they’d all been allowed to leave.
A search had actually begun last night around midnight. From Jackson Crow’s last call, Aidan knew that more people had been called out at the crack of dawn.
The police had searched through the night. Many of the tourist attractions in Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow—like Washington Irving’s Sunnyside and the old Philips Manor—had acres of farmland, surrounded by forest.
The police had called in all kinds of assistance. Officers from the county and state. Bloodhounds and other canine search-and-rescue units, including an Irish wolfhound and his keeper who seemed to have an extraordinary rate of success. Anything and everyone was out there—and now the information had hit the airwaves.
Aidan had decided to go on instinct. On the voices he heard in his head. He hated when that happened, loathed it. But the voices still came now and then. And today...
He’d heard Richard. Heard him when it was too late.
They got me, my old friend. They got me.
He wished he’d heard something different. Like, I’m in danger, old friend.
Cursing, he began to walk. First he climbed uphill, by the Old Dutch Church. But somehow he knew that was wrong, so he changed course, got back in his car and drove beside the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Finally, he reached the end and parked again.
It was fall; mid-October had just arrived. The day had been beautiful when he’d started driving and even when he’d first parked. The leaves were turning, offering brilliant touches of color here and there. The temperature was cool but not cold.
Suddenly a chilly breeze was whipping around him, and when he looked up he saw that the sky was gray and ominous.
A brook trickled between the boundaries of the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and Saint Andrew’s burying ground. He hopped over the brook, studying the expanse of trees that flourished everywhere—the plan when the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery was designed had been to make it a serene and beautiful place, a place where families might come to picnic and find peace while they honored their lost loved ones. And it was beautiful here. The dead rested between the graceful trees and gurgling water. Nature at its best.
The one land of the dead blended into the next. There hadn’t been a burial at the old grounds for a century while Sleepy Hollow Cemetery still accepted new denizens. But the old burying ground was just as beautiful, though not actually planned that way. Nature, on her own, had stepped in. The grounds were somewhat overgrown, yet that made them more forlorn and more poignant. Crosses rose in high grass; cherubs appeared by tombstones.
Angels wept.
There were vaults dug into the hill where the church had once stood, surrounded by trees and bushes. Tombs had been built above the ground, and these old mausoleums endured within a fairy-tale land where the dead rested and the living might contemplate the beauty of life—and the inevitability of death.
He passed one of the old vaults and crawled high atop it to survey the area. A stone angel knelt in prayer to his left, an obelisk rose to his right. He hurried by them and clambered down an overgrown path to the rise of a second hill. For a moment, he paused. He could hear the tinkle of water and saw where a tree had broken several stones.
The day was darkening; it was going to rain.
The breeze quickened and Aidan felt an urge to hurry. He walked across the hill, looking around. So many graves. So many years of men living in this region—and dying here.
He noticed that a new flag marked the grave of a Revolutionary soldier. He passed a general on horseback—a tribute to the men of the valley who had fought in the Civil War.
He walked over graves and by monuments, past mausoleums and vaults, and then he peered into the distance.
And saw a man. Or the shape of a man. The area suddenly seemed very dark, even though it was almost seven-thirty and the sun had surely risen. The breeze was now a wind; the sky roiled.
“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.