Sleepy Hollow: Children of the Revolution

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  Abbie came within a hairsbreadth of saying, “In a cave outside town,” but managed to restrain herself.

  “All right, look, I wasn’t gonna say anything till you reminded me of that triple beheading. ’Cause we got us another one. C’mon in.” She turned, her trench coat again billowing.

  Crane and Abbie both followed, the former asking the latter, “How does she enable her topcoat to—to flow in such a manner?”

  Abbie just chuckled.

  They ducked under the yellow crime-scene tape across the museum entrance, and then Abbie saw the first of the three bodies—all five parts of it. His head had rolled into a corner, and was staring upward, with the right arm and left leg on top of the security desk. The other limbs were in the opposite corner from the head, with the torso lying right in the middle of the floor.

  “There’s not enough blood.” Abbie said the words before she even realized why she spoke them aloud.

  “Good work, Detective,” Costa said snarkily. “This was Kyle Means, one of the three security guards that the Cortlandt Trust had on the payroll. And you’re right, you slice up a body like this, there should be a helluva lot more blood. And the ME confirmed that the wounds were not cauterized, so I got no damn clue.”

  She then led Abbie and Crane through two gallery rooms before they reached a room containing two similar sets of body parts. One torso was female, the other male, and Abbie saw the heads of an African-American woman and a Latino man. There was the same lack of blood.

  Crane said, “I observe, Detective, that there are no noticeable gaps in the displays. It does not appear that any of the treasures in this museum were removed.”

  “Almost.” Costa pointed at one display case, which was open.

  Peering into it, Abbie saw that the red felt of the display case had a cross-shaped spot that was lighter than the rest of the visible felt, plus there was a placard under it.

  Then she read the placard. “Sonofabitch.”

  “What is it, Lieutenant?” Crane asked.

  In response, Abbie just pointed at the placard.

  Crane bent over to read it aloud. “ ‘This Independence Cross was crafted by the French silversmith Gaston Mercier. It is one of ten Mercier created, which were issued to soldiers of the American Revolutionary War who showed special valor in the defense of freedom against the tyranny of the British crown. The cross, which was also known as the Congressional Cross due to its being issued by the Second Continental Congress’ ”—at that point, Crane shot Abbie a look—“ ‘was awarded to Ezekiel Cortlandt in 1775, and was issued with the other nine in 1785 after they were completed.’ Fascinating.”

  Costa was frowning. “Fascinating, how, exactly?”

  “Can’t say yet,” Abbie said quickly before Crane said something he shouldn’t. “It might be related to our case. It might not. We’ll keep you posted.”

  “Fine.” Costa didn’t seem happy with that answer, but she didn’t seem unhappy with it, either, which suited Abbie fine. She started leading the pair of them toward the door. “Let’s go. You’ve seen what you gotta see, now it’s time to go.”

  As they went through the other galleries, Abbie asked, “You get anything from the security footage?”

  “Nah, it was deleted. Whoever did this was a pro.” Costa snorted. “A professional what I ain’t sure, but they thought to erase the footage. Not just the cameras, the computers they feed to are completely wiped. Hopin’ our nerd squad can reconstruct some of it.”

  As soon as they got to the front door, Costa said, “See ya,” and turned back on her heel, allowing her coat to billow one last time.

  “That is impressive,” Crane said admiringly as she retreated back into the museum.

  Abbie rolled her eyes and ducked under the tape.

  As soon as she did, an older man approached her. She squinted at him, as he looked like he’d thrown the suit on in a hurry—but the suit in question cost more than Abbie made in a month.

  “Excuse me, are you the detective in charge? I need to know what the hell’s going on in there.”

  “And you are?”

  “My name is Daniel Kapsis, my wife and I are in charge of the Cortlandt Trust, and we demand to know what’s going on!”

  Abbie gave Kapsis her best screw-you smile, one perfected over years of dealing with abusive citizens who just loved getting into a cop’s face. “I’m sorry, Mr. Kapsis, I’m afraid I’m not the detective in charge. You want to talk to Detective Lisa-Anne Costa. She just went inside, but I’m sure you can grab her, just duck under that yellow tape.”

  “Excellent. Thank you.” Kapsis pushed right past her and ducked under the tape. Two uniforms saw that and chased after him as he went inside.

  Crane looked down at Abbie. “You enjoyed that.”

  “You’re damn right. C’mon, let’s try to get some sleep. I need a crowbar to keep my eyelids open right now. Don’t worry,” she added, holding up a hand, “I’m fine to drive. I need to be a lot more tired than this before I can’t operate a motor vehicle.”

  “There are livery services that can—”

  “I’ll get you home,” Abbie said tightly. “In the morning, I’ll give Jenny a call and we’ll dive into the research. We got three dead bodies, so this is a real thing now.”

  “Not just three corpses, Lieutenant.” Crane glanced back at the museum. “Three murders that were committed via supernatural means.”

  Abbie nodded. “Yeah, no way those bodies were killed by anybody—or anything—normal. The good news is that we’ve got another name for that medal of yours. Maybe we’ll get more hits on the Independence Cross than we did on the Congressional Cross.”

  “And perhaps we may learn what happened to my own cross.”

  “Yeah.” Abbie sighed. “Let’s hope so.”

  SIX

  SLEEPY HOLLOW, NEW YORK

  JANUARY 2014

  “COPS SUCK.”

  Jennifer Mills burst out with this interjection after searching through her third file cabinet trying to find the copy of Tobin’s Spirit Guide.

  Everyone else in the room—her sister Abbie, Crane, and Captain Irving—all looked up from what they were doing. Crane was surprised; Abbie just smiled.

  But the captain got that just-ate-a-sour-lemon look he always seemed to get around Jenny. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just what I said.” She slammed a cabinet drawer shut. “Corbin had all this stuff meticulously organized. It was indexed, filed, subfiled, cross-referenced—made the Library of Congress look like a recycling bin. You cops come in, take it all away, and just toss it all across the street in this little dungeon of yours. No organization, no cross-referencing, nothing. How exactly are we supposed to save the world if we can’t find what we need to save the world with?”

  There was a brief pause as everyone just kind of stared at Jenny. It was like she was back in the loony bin again.

  Finally the captain spoke again. “Believe me, if I’d known the fate of the world depended on this stuff, we’d have taken better care of it. But all we knew was that Corbin had a whole lot of useless crap in his office and we needed to clear space.”

  They’d spent the better part of the day going over Corbin’s files and searching online, trying to find out everything they could about the medals that had been stolen, and how it might relate to Crane’s vision. Abbie also looked into the places where they knew the medals were displayed, leaving messages and asking for status updates. Irving had had to go off and do his captain thing periodically, so he wasn’t contributing as much, but they’d started first thing in the morning, and it was now starting to get dark.

  “Anyhow,” Abbie said before Jenny could get into it any further with Irving, “why don’t we take a break and see where we are?”

  “Agreed,” Crane said.

  Jenny shook her head. “Fine.”

  Abbie glared at Jenny, who just glared right back. So Abbie indicated Irving with her head. Jenny just rolled her
eyes, and Abbie indicated Irving with her head again. This time Jenny shook her head and folded her arms.

  That just got Abbie to sigh, but Jenny didn’t care. She was not going to apologize to that jerk, and Abbie should’ve known better.

  Jenny had spent so much time loving her sister, so much time hating her, and so much time just not understanding her. Sometimes it was all three at once, and this was one of those times. She appreciated the concern she had, yet she was annoyed that Abbie thought it was something she had to apologize for.

  Then again, she was a cop, and so was Irving. Cops, as she had pointed out a few minutes ago, sucked.

  “As far as can be determined,” Crane said, “there are six of the Congressional Crosses—or Independence Crosses—extant. Of those six, three have gone missing. There is the one belonging to Ezekiel Cortlandt, stolen last night, and the ones belonging to Marinus Willett and Abraham van Brunt, recently stolen from the large museum in New York.”

  Jenny regarded Crane with a raised eyebrow. “You okay, Crane?”

  Crane closed his eyes and sighed. “It is not necessary for you all to be concerned regarding my feelings toward my erstwhile best friend. The van Brunt I knew is dead. The creature we captured, the creature whom I beheaded, is a demon who is using van Brunt’s body and his relationship to Katrina to hurt me.” He then smiled wryly. “At least, that is what I tell myself to ease the guilt and anger. Regardless, my friendship with van Brunt has no bearing on this particular task we must perform.”

  “We even know what the task is?” Irving asked. “Right now, all we got is three dead bodies and three stolen medals.”

  “Three gruesomely dead bodies.” Abbie shook her head.

  “If you’re calling it gruesome …” Jenny shuddered. She and her sister had seen plenty of sights, together and separately, that pretty much redefined the word gruesome in both their lexicons. It wasn’t a word either used lightly anymore. Jenny then went on to answer the captain’s question. “If there’s any significance to these medals, I haven’t found it yet. There’s no mention of it in any of the texts that Corbin gathered.” She shot Irving a look. “At least that I’ve been able to find.”

  Irving just gave her the sour-lemon look again. “You volunteering to organize it?”

  Before Jenny could reply, Abbie snorted.

  “What was that?” Jenny asked.

  “What was what?” Abbie tried and failed to look all innocent.

  “That snort.”

  “Oh, just remembering what your room always looked like. Organization’s not exactly your strong suit. Only neat room you ever lived in was Room 49, and I’m guessing they made you keep it tidy.”

  Jenny folded her arms and gave her a nasty look, but before she could respond to what she viewed as a wholly gratuitous and unfair reference to the room she was assigned to at Tarrytown Psychiatric Hospital, Crane spoke up.

  “If we may return to the issue at hand?”

  Rolling her eyes, Jenny said, “Fine.”

  “The other three crosses that we’ve been able to find are likewise in museums. Lieutenant Mills found one yesterday, belonging to Tench Tilghman. It is normally on display in the District of Columbia, but there is a traveling exhibit about the Society of the Cincinnati, of which Tilghman was a member. It’s currently ensconced in the Museum of the City of New York. Another, which was given to Henry Knox, is at Fort Ticonderoga—when did they change the name?”

  “Excuse me?” Abbie asked.

  “It was Fort Carillon in my day. The region was called Ticonderoga, an Iroquois word referring to the two lakes that met there.”

  “Well, you’ll love it,” Irving said. “I took the family up there a few years ago, and the fort’s been completely restored to what it was like back in the day.”

  Crane’s eyes went wide the way they always did when he found out something new, though usually it led to him bitching and moaning about something. “Has it? I should very much like to see such a thing.”

  As usual, Abbie kicked the subject back in bounds. “Where’s the last one?”

  “Conveniently,” Crane said, pointing at a local map that was laid out on one of the tables, “it’s right here in Sleepy Hollow.”

  Jenny followed his finger, which pointed at the Whitcombe-Sears Library over on Chestnut Street. “I know the place. Corbin sent me there to do research a few times. It’s in an old Episcopal church that got converted about fifty years ago.”

  “We must protect these locations,” Crane said. “They are likely to be targeted next.”

  “Unless they only need three of ’em.” Abbie was always good at pouring cold water on a perfectly good plan.

  The captain put his two cents in. “Or our drawn-and-quarterer has the ones that are unaccounted for.”

  Crane stared at Irving. “ ‘Drawn-and-quarterer’?”

  “I’m a police captain,” Irving deadpanned. “I can make up words if I want to. So, what’s the plan, Stan?”

  “My—my name is Ichabod.” Now Crane got all befuddled, which resulted in his lost-puppy look. Of Crane’s many and varied facial expressions, Jenny found that one to be the most entertaining.

  “It’s a song quote, Crane,” Jenny said. “And cut him some slack, Cap. He’s not gonna know Paul Simon.”

  “Surprised you do.” Irving actually chuckled at that.

  “I’m very complicated,” Jenny said in a mockarrogant tone. “So, we sure these medals are where they’re supposed to be?”

  Abbie checked her phone. “Just got a text back from one of the docents at Ticonderoga. Knox’s Independence Cross is still in its case.”

  Crane pointed at Abbie’s laptop. “The Society of the Cincinnati exhibit has some manner of surveillance machine that allows one to see the exhibit from a distance.”

  Grinning, Abbie said, “It’s called a webcam, and Tilghman’s cross is intact, too.”

  Irving nodded. “And I’d’ve heard if anybody had broken into Whitcombe-Sears.”

  “Okay, so we split up.” Jenny clapped her hands. Corbin had showed her the value of doing research, but at this point, she’d been sitting on her ass long enough. She was ready to take action. “I can sit on MCNY.”

  Abbie was shaking her head, but it was Irving who spoke. “Nah, I got the museum. I’ve got NYPD connections—past and present—that can help me out there.”

  “Fine, I can take Crane up to Ticonderoga. Can’t wait to see the look on his—”

  “No.” Abbie said the word with a lot more intensity than Jenny thought was at all warranted.

  “Excuse me?” Jenny stared at her sister with a hard expression. She was not putting up with her crap on this, and did not want to make this one of the times she hated her sister.

  “You’ll take Whitcombe-Sears. You already know the place.”

  Jenny rolled her eyes. “I’ve been there maybe three times, and the last time was years ago. Why can’t I go to Ticonderoga?”

  Abbie closed her eyes, then opened them again. “Because it’s against the law.”

  “Say what?”

  “Part of the terms of your release from Tarrytown Psychiatric into my custody was that you would stay in Westchester County. You can’t go down to the city, you can’t go across to Jersey, you can’t go east to Connecticut, and you can’t go upstate. That’s the deal, and if you break that deal, it’s back to Room 49 you go.”

  Crane frowned. “I can’t imagine that they would assign Miss Jenny the same room when …” He trailed off, probably seeing the look on Jenny’s face. She was certainly going for majorly pissed-off.

  “This sucks.”

  “I agree, but it was the only way to get the judge to sign off on your release.”

  Jenny stared angrily at her sister, but this time Abbie wasn’t giving her a nasty look back. It was a look of apology and of guilt.

  Abbie walked up to Jenny and put a hand on her shoulder. “Look, Jenny, cops may suck—but judges suck more.”

  Unable t
o help herself, Jenny burst out with a laugh. “Guess so. All right, fine, I’ll head to the library.”

  “Thanks for understanding.”

  “Oh, no.” Jenny took a step back and shook her head. “This isn’t understanding. At best, this is resignation.”

  “Fair enough.” Abbie turned to Crane. “It’s four hours to Ticonderoga from here. We hit the road now, we can get a motel room for the night and check the fort out in the morning.”

  “Very well.” Crane nodded.

  Abbie then turned to Irving. “I don’t suppose I can get the department to pay for the motel?”

  Jenny again couldn’t help bursting out with a laugh.

  For Irving, though, it was just a chuckle. “You want the honest answer or the polite answer?”

  Crane frowned. “The polite one, I should think.”

  “Hell no, not in your wildest dreams.”

  That just deepened Crane’s frown. “If you knew the full tenor of my dreams, Captain, you would not make such a statement. And I shudder to think what the honest answer was.”

  Abbie quickly said, “My credit card can handle it, as long as we stick with a cheap-ass motel. I’m still paying off the movers who had to ship everything back when I changed my mind about moving to D.C., plus I lost the security deposit on the apartment down there.”

  Jenny chuckled. “Always the little things, ain’t it, sis?”

  Irving nodded. “Yeah, all right. I got some other business in the city to take care of anyhow.” He pulled out his cell phone and called someone. After a few rings: “Hey, Beth. Listen, I need you to do me a favor.…”

  Whatever favor Irving wanted this Beth woman to do for him was lost as the captain left the room.

  “Who’s Beth?” she asked Abbie.

  “His former partner. She’s an insurance investigator for the company that insures the Met these days. She’s the one that verified that the medals were stolen.”

  Jenny nodded. “Cool. All right, I’ll head over to the library soon, then. I want to check a few more things here.”

  “We’ll hit the road.” Abbie looked at Crane. “Let’s go.”