The rain has given way to a yellow haze drifting in the festive glow, fragrant with steamy cider and cocoa, rife with chatter and piped--in music and a chorus of sidewalk Santa bells.
Caught up in the slow--moving crowd of shoppers, Bob gradually makes his way toward the domed subway kiosk on the south side of the park.
“Todd!” a female voice shrieks a little too close to his ear. “There you are! Where have you been? I’ve been waiting an hour!”
“Sorry,” calls a guy who’s shouldering his way toward her. “Some guy jumped in front of my train and I’ve been stuck in the tunnel.”
“No way, that’s sick! Did you see it?”
Todd’s reply is lost as the crowd propels him away, but a new realm of possibility has been introduced that Bob finds either comforting—-or terrifying.
Maybe Rick, too, was delayed by the subway incident . . .
Or maybe he was the reason behind it, having chosen to take his own life just as Vanessa had taken hers last November.
From the Mundy’s Landing Tribune Archives
Editorial
June 23, 1992
On Monday, researchers in Moscow announced that they had used computer modeling to positively identify the remains of Russian Czar Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra. Murdered by the Bolsheviks on July 17, 1918, along with their five children, three servants, and the family doctor, the Romanovs were among nine skeletons unearthed last year in a shallow grave in Yekaterinburg. Tests will continue on the remaining bodies, along with the search for the missing two. That this development comes as a prelude to next week’s historical society fund--raiser is an interesting coincidence.
Last year’s inaugural gathering was such a resounding success, drawing attendees and media attention from across the globe, that the society determined that it will be an annual event whose purpose is twofold. Primarily conceived to raise much--needed funding for the non--profit, the event lured armchair sleuths by extending an invitation to solve the so--called Sleeping Beauty murders that took place here in 1916. Never identified, the trio of young female victims is buried in Holy Angels Cemetery.
At last summer’s event, sitting on a panel of scientists and criminologists, chemistry professor Lina Abu Bakr of Hadley College stated that it might very well be possible now to identify those bodies using modern scientific methods that were unavailable in 1916. The issue will be further examined at this year’s convention. Many locals are in favor of exhumation in order to lay the mystery to rest at last. Yet perhaps an equal number of us are opposed to disturbing the remains, citing ethical or fiscal reasons.
Indeed, is it prudent, in this pivotal presidential election year, with an ever--tremulous economy and unemployment at levels not seen in nearly a decade, to devote significant resources to further investigate a crime whose victims have not only been deceased for three quarters of a century, but whose loved ones and yes, most likely the perpetrator himself, are likely also dead or infirm?
Chapter 11