Aiden Willis stands up and fishes in his pocket for money, drops it on the table. Under his arm is a paperback—Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men.
A little deeper reading than I might have expected from our Aiden.
“Apparently, after Cecilia’s death, a string of murders and disappearances began,” Ricketts continues. “Over two dozen people died over the next twenty years.”
I turn back to Ricketts. “Tell me about the victims.”
“They were hookers or immigrants. They’d go missing in the summer and then they’d be found dead with some kind of hole in their body, usually a through-and-through.”
“Impaled,” I say, my heartbeat responding.
“Yeah. Always some kind of spear or cutting instrument. And sometimes with all the blood drained out of their bodies.”
“Jesus.” I draw back. “And they never put this on Winston? Or his kid, Holden?”
My eye catches Aiden Willis, stuffing his hands in his pockets, checking me out with a sidelong glance on his way out, the paperback still tucked under his arm.
Then I look back at Noah, who’s watching me while he drinks a bottle of beer, still with his friends at the table.
Then Noah’s expression changes, goes cold, hard, and his eyes move away from mine to …
… Isaac, approaching him, the entire table freezing up. Isaac, with that cop bravado, saying something to Noah that elicits a frown, and I see something in Noah’s eyes that makes me think there’s going to be violence between them. But then Isaac moves along, heading toward the exit, catching my eye as well, smirking at me.
“They never charged either Winston or Holden,” says Ricketts. “Legend has it, Winston had the local constable in his pocket. He was one of the wealthiest people on Long Island.”
I watch Isaac leave and think over what Ricketts has told me. “He chose prostitutes and immigrants,” I say. “Drifters. People—”
“—who wouldn’t be missed. Yeah, there’s a saying attributed to Winston. I think I have this right: ‘A peasant, any peasant will do, and better still a stranger. Whosoever shall not be missed is welcome in my chamber.’”
Our scallops arrive, with a delicious buttery aroma, but I’ve lost my appetite.
“Sounds like a fun family,” I say.
“Oh, but it gets better,” Ricketts says, trying to keep her voice down. “Every generation left a single son, each of them named Holden. Holden Junior, Holden the Third, etc., all the way to Holden the Sixth. All of them suffering some mental illness, most of them suspected of violence. One of them killed his wife. Several committed suicide.”
“Where’s the most recent Holden?” I ask.
Ricketts spears a scallop with her fork.
“In the ground,” she says. “The last Holden died almost twenty years ago, without any children.”
63
I CHECK MY sidearm for ammunition and holster it.
My head is buzzing after spending hours poring over a copy of the book that Ricketts used for her research, Winston’s Heirs: A Haunted House in the Hamptons, chronicling the Dahlquists from the time when Winston came to Long Island in the late 1700s until recent years, the many generations of Holdens.
The original Holden, who these days would have been in an institution for the criminally insane, who may have murdered as many as two dozen women.
Holden Junior, who had three kids of whom only one survived, the only boy.
Holden III, who decapitated his wife on their fifth anniversary before jumping out of the same bedroom window from which Cecilia fell.
Holden IV, who went through four wives and a lot of booze before hanging himself at age fifty-two.
Holden V, who married and divorced three times and overdosed on a combination of amphetamines and alcohol, just days after four vacationers were stabbed to death on the beach not fifty yards from his home at 7 Ocean Drive.
And Holden VI, described by his mother as a “simpleton with violent tendencies and the empathy of a rattlesnake, but other than that a dear boy.” Known for his philanthropy publicly, but suspected of multiple rapes and assaults, none of which ever stuck. Holden was found dead in his bedroom in 1994; he slashed his own throat and tossed the knife out the window before dying, thus ending the ignominious reign of the Dahlquist clan.
My sidearm in place, I leave the house, a chill in the midnight air.
I start up my car and put it into gear. The roads are all but empty at this hour, in late March, before the summer vacationers have begun to arrive.
A gray pall hangs over the lonely streets.
I kill the headlights as I approach and let my foot off the gas. I pull my car over on Main Street and kill the engine. I’ll walk the rest of the way. One hand on my sidearm. The other clutching my Maglite.
I approach the cemetery from the west. The air is thick, promising rain, but none has yet fallen. As I get closer, the street lighting dims considerably, leaving the cemetery in sleepy black.