Indeed, it was then that the vast majority of our forebears arrived on an overdue supply ship from England, only to discover that nearly all members of the existing colony had succumbed to starvation over the course of their first treacherous winter in the New World.
The aghast newcomers determined that two of the surviving quintet—-James and Elizabeth Mundy—-had butchered and cannibalized their fellow settlers. After their parents had been executed for their dastardly crimes, the -couple’s three children were mercifully allowed to stay on in the home their father had built. Charity Mundy passed away in her teens, but Jeremiah Mundy and his sister Priscilla lived well into their dotage after marrying and raising children of their own.
Many of their descendants live and work among us to this day—-most notably, Horace J. Mundy, one of several prominent American financiers who met with J. P. Morgan and the late Senator Nelson W. Aldrich on Jekyll Island, Georgia, to draft legislation for the new Federal Reserve System that was subsequently signed into law by President Wilson. Although he passes the winter months in Georgia, Mr. Mundy summers at his Prospect Street mansion and shall preside as honorary chairman of tomorrow’s festivities as planned.
At two o’clock in the afternoon, a parade featuring the award--winning Dutchess Fife, Drum, and Bugle Corps will step off from the Mason Street schoolhouse and march to the Village Common. There, Miss Etta Abrams will deliver a noble oration covering the town’s history. Mrs. Mildred Haynes, president of the Ladies’ Aid Society, will then step forward to close the treasure chest containing pertinent vestiges of our time. Surely, just as we would regard the relics of 1816 as quaint antiques, so shall our progeny view the assemblage of items deemed representative of our life and times in the year 1916.
The handsome metal chest, donated by Westerly Dry Goods Co. of Market Street, will be sealed at precisely midnight and lowered into its temporary tomb, not to see the light of day again until our ancestors unearth it on the sixteenth of July in the distant year 2016.
Chapter 18
Steve Lindgren has been trying unsuccessfully to get in touch with the doorman who was on duty in the Weehawken high--rise from early Monday evening through Tuesday morning. Now, in a small office adjacent to the room where he’d spoken with Rick Walker’s son Kurt, he’s hoping to have better luck with the building’s security camera footage.
Artie Vance, the brash, middle--aged building manager, operates the remote control as they work their way through the past forty--eight hours. They’re watching it on fast forward, pausing it every time someone enters the building, looking for anything out of the ordinary.
“Whoa, whoa, stop,” he says, yet again, and Artie freezes on a hooded figure entering the lobby.
“Nah, that’s Bobby Shaw,” he tells Steve. “He lives here.”
“Okay, keep going. Sorry.”
“Hey, this is a lot more exciting than what I’d be doing if I were at home right now with my wife. This is how she watches those stupid reality shows she tapes on the DVR. She keeps stopping them, backing them up, playing them, stopping them—-” He interrupts himself to freeze the footage, exclaiming, “There! Look at that! That’s him!”
“That’s who?”
“That’s Richard Walker, just coming in the door, see?”
Steve leans in to get a better look at the video monitor, noting that the time stamp is Monday evening at 8:17 p.m.
That’s Richard Walker, all right. And he isn’t alone.
Immediately after Sully received the text message from Richard Walker’s phone, Mundy’s Landing police officers were dispatched to the location at the edge of town.
“What did they expect?” Barnes mutters to Sully after Colonomos received the call that they’d found nothing out of the ordinary. Now he’s down the hall, summoned by one of the detectives, leaving Sully and Stockton to mull things over.
“It’s not like this guy was going to be standing by the side of the road flagging them down,” Barnes says. “You know?”
“But he’s here someplace.”
“Only if the GPS screenshot was legitimate.”