“Marrana’s sounds good,” she tells him, noticing that the desk drawer where she stashed the snow globe is open slightly. She pushes it closed as she stands.
Barnes went home to get some sleep an hour ago after extracting a promise from Sully that she’d do the same thing as soon as she finished her paperwork.
Now that it’s done, however, instead of gathering her things and heading out into the night, she decides to spend a little more time searching the databases.
Having identified weather as a possible trigger or a draw that might have lured a transient killer, she and Barnes had identified several catastrophic storms over the past year. A few—-a category 2 Caribbean hurricane and a deadly Oklahoma tornado—-were likely beyond their perp’s range. But she can’t stop thinking about the massive Labor Day nor’easter.
All six New England states were affected, as was Long Island. There were no related homicides during that time frame, but they were searching a large area, both in population and in geography.
Wondering if they’d missed something earlier, Sully again combs the records for female slashing victims. This time, she finds one—-a Boston prostitute—-but she was brunette and of Asian descent, and doesn’t fit the victimology. Anyway, her pimp was later arrested for the crime, had confessed, and is behind bars.
Turning her attention back to the missing persons files, Sully embarks on a state by state search, focusing on the areas that were hardest hit by the storm.
In Vermont, she hits pay dirt.
A female college senior in Burlington has been missing since September 11, four days after the storm passed through.
She had long red hair.
She’d grown up in New York City and lost her beloved godmother in the World Trade Center attacks. According to the case file, her friends reported that the anniversary always brought her down, but she’d been more depressed than usual this year because their sorority house had been without power for several days. Suicide had not been ruled out, though no evidence of that had ever turned up; nor had her body.
At the time she disappeared, much of storm--ravaged Burlington was still flooded by Lake Champlain and littered with downed trees and power lines. The area was crawling with reporters, relief workers, repairmen, contractors, insurance inspectors . . .
Somewhere among them, Sully is now convinced, lurked a killer with a straight--edged razor and a deadly obsession with redheads.
From the Mundy’s Landing Tribune Archives
Police Blotter
March 28, 1984
A Mundy’s Landing teen is safely back home after a massive search that began Tuesday evening when her parents reported her missing. Believing she was safely in her bedroom, they had noticed nothing amiss throughout the evening, but called police when they discovered the bedroom empty shortly after eleven o’clock. Following an extensive overnight search, the teen returned to her parents’ home mid--afternoon of her own accord. She stated that she had traveled out of state to a rock concert. Her identity is being withheld due to her age.
Chapter 14
Dressing for the field trip on Wednesday morning, Rowan can hear Jake singing in the shower.
He wouldn’t be doing that if she’d had the chance to tell him what she wanted to tell him last night.
Now who’s a coward? she scolds herself as she pulls a red sweater over her white blouse and zips her feet into a pair of warm boots.
It hadn’t taken much for Jake to sidetrack her efforts to bare her soul last night.
All he had to do was offer to take her out to dinner, and she dropped the whole plan.
As they drove over to Marrana’s, she toyed with the idea of continuing the conversation over dinner and even momentarily convinced herself that it wasn’t as big a deal as she’d made it out to be. As Noreen had pointed out, Jake isn’t likely to walk out of their marriage over something that had happened fourteen years ago . . .
Is he?
Wasn’t Noreen the one who’d acted as though Rowan might as well sew on a scarlet letter back when she first confessed to having kissed Rick?