Now, I understand your desperate, selfless act. I ask in return that you grant me your compassion, along with your permission, and your blessing, for my marriage to Benjamin.
Your sister,
Priscilla Mundy
Chapter 12
Stepping back outside, Sully finds only Nick on the porch, seated at a table, writing on a clipboard. Beyond the yellow tape, most of the neighbors have shuffled home to resume their lives, leaving just a few bystanders to linger on the street. Judging by their casual posture and a burst of animated laughter that reaches the porch, they might as well be planning a fall block party.
Nick looks up at her. “Detective Leary. Did you . . .”
“Yes. I told her.”
“We’ll need her to make a positive ID.”
“She’s willing. I told her I’ll call later tonight when the ME is ready for her.”
Obviously it can’t be done here and now, given the state of the corpse. The medical examiner will take it away, clean it up, make it presentable, and place it on a refrigerated slab. It’s all designed to make the morbid process as easy as possible on people forced to identify their loved ones.
“Did you interview her?”
“Yes. She said she hasn’t seen him since she left California and she didn’t think he was suicidal.”
“Where is she?”
“Upstairs pulling herself together. The news hit her hard. She and Roy had their problems, but he was her fiancé.”
“Did she react when you asked her about the scratches on his arms?”
“I didn’t ask her specifically. She said there was no physical violence, and I believe her.”
“Really?”
Sully nods, and extends her gloved hand. “Look at this, Nick.”
“What is it?” Nick takes gloves from his own pocket and pulls them on. “Another so-called suicide note. Her father’s.”
She hands it over, watching Nick’s eyes widen with recognition as he takes in the similarities—same sized sheet of spiral-bound notebook paper, same hangman diagram drawn in the same shade of purple ink.
“Where did you get this?”
She explains quickly. Nick is on his way down the porch steps before she finishes, beckoning her to follow.
The crime scene investigators, both of whom happen to be named Bob, have moved over to the area where the rope attaches to the hose spigot. They’re still shooting photos, along with the breeze, but their inane conversation grinds to an immediate halt when they see Nick and Sully.
“What’s up, Lieutenant? Detective?” asks the taller, heftier, round-faced Bob.
“Found anything that would indicate a homicide?”
“Only the scratches on his forearms.”
“But they might be self-inflicted,” says the other Bob, much younger and smaller with a wiry build. “Some kind of dermatitis. The guy’s fingernails are bitten down to the quick. He might have driven himself crazy trying to scratch an itch.”
“Crazy enough to commit suicide?” Sully shakes her head.
“Imagine that you have a bad case of poison ivy, and no fingers.”
“He has fingers.”
“I’m trying to make a point.”
“So am I.” Sully points at the broken rose of Sharon branches on the ground and dangling from the shrub, all now marked by numbered yellow evidence placards. “Could there have been a struggle?”
“Could have been, but based on TOD, we know he did this in the dead of night, Detective.”
Time of death. She knows what they’re getting at. “It would have been dark out here.”
“Yes, and he could have done the damage to the area just by fumbling around here alone.”
“Especially since he was drunk as a skunk.”
Sully raises an eyebrow at Small Bob’s comment. “How do you know that?”
“Found a receipt in his pocket. Looks like the stiff had a couple of stiff drinks at the Windmill.”
Large Bob cracks a smile at the quip.
Sully does not.
The Windmill—not surprising. It isn’t the only bar in town, but it’s the oldest, the most upscale, and by far the most popular with tourists and locals alike. The others include a waterfront dive that draws the tugboat crowd, a few no-frills social clubs, and the lobby bar over at the Holiday Inn. Maybe he worked his way over from there.
“What time did he leave the bar?” she asks Small Bob.
“Stayed until just about closing time. The receipt is stamped at 1:47 a.m.”
“Can I see?”
He rummages around a small bin with gloved hands, going through the contents of Roy’s pockets: a crumpled napkin, a set of car keys, some cash, all encased in clear plastic pouches, as is the crumpled slip of paper he shows Sully.
Peering at it, she can see that Roy bought three expensive drinks and left what amounts to a dollar a drink as a tip—three bucks on a bill that was almost fifty.
“I’m guessing the bartender will remember him, if no one else does,” she says.
“Especially if he was upset about the fiancé,” Nick tells her. “He wouldn’t be the first idiot to pour his heart out to anyone who will listen, drink himself into a stupor, and make a suicide attempt.”
“A lot of them live to tell about it,” Small Bob says. “But you gotta wonder about the ones who don’t. Were they just trying to get some attention and win back someone who’s lost interest?”
“Girl I knew growing up did that. She told her friends her ex-boyfriend would dump his new girlfriend and come see her in the hospital . . .” Large Bob shakes his head. “She jumped off the Tappan Zee.”
Small Bob responds with a wince and a whistling sound. “Did he come to her wake instead?”
“Along with everyone else in town. Including the new girlfriend.”
Sully barely listens.
A significant amount of alcohol is not just capable of rendering someone suicidal.
It could also have made him vulnerable to a predator on the prowl.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor in the local history room, Savannah isn’t sure what she’s looking for. She only knows, as she leafs through one book after another, that she has yet to find it.
Some are scholarly volumes with a general focus on Dutch and English settlements of the Hudson Valley. Many are fairly recent, but a few are at least a hundred years old, with old-fashioned text and a damp must wafting from the yellowed pages.
All devote chapters or at least a few pages to Mundy’s Landing, but she finds no new information about the settlers themselves. Most provide a general—and in the older books, perhaps melodramatic and embellished—account of their tragic fates.
Frustrated, she moves past the traditionally published volumes to a low shelf containing mostly homegrown materials.
Here, she finds something far more interesting.
The thick pamphlet written by local historian Etta Abrams, Ora’s great-aunt, contains far more relevant detail. Curator of the historical society back in 1915, Miss Abrams published the pamphlet to mark the two hundred and fifty years since the first settlers came ashore at Mundy’s Landing. The booklet is little more than a bound manuscript hand-typed on the typewriter used to create Ora’s list of settlers. Digging it out of her purse to compare, Emerson confirms that the same letters are smudged or raised.
Ora had said the skull belonged to her aunt, and she’d probably inherited the list from her as well.
The pamphlet features biographical information about each of the early settlers, including the four young women who could possibly have been Jane Doe.
Sixteen when she died, Tabitha Ransom had married John Ransom the previous spring in England. The young couple made the transatlantic journey with John’s older brother, William. The Ransom brothers’ parents and two additional sons were scheduled to follow, arriving in the fall. They were on board the ship stranded by ice many miles south of the settlement, and arrived in May to find their family members dead . .
. and devoured.
Ann Dunn, also married, was the wife of Richard Dunn and mother of five-month-old Henry Dunn. She lost them on the same day, and outlived them by what must have been a ghastly month.
Anne Blake, little more than a child at fourteen, was one of three servants traveling with the Barker family—parents George and Mary, children also named George and Mary. All four died around Christmas, Anne not until the last week of February.
Verity Hall and her younger sisters Patience and Honor had lost their mother before leaving England, and were orphaned when their father, Josiah, became the first casualty in the New World. Long before famine struck, he was fishing at the river’s edge in October 1665, lost his footing, and drowned.
Savannah uses her cell phone to photograph the entries about Tabitha, Ann, Anne, and Verity, none of whom survived the winter, and at least one of whom was brutally killed.
Maybe it will be easier to identify Jane Doe if she narrows the lineup of suspects.
She grabs a pencil and Ora’s list of settlers, placing checkmarks beside every child twelve and younger. Then she checks off everyone noted as having died before January 29, when Ann Dunn, the first of the four possible Janes, passed away.
That leaves her with ten adult suspects that includes a remaining trio of Jane candidates, and James, Elizabeth, and Jeremiah Mundy. In addition, there are two other men, John and William Ransom, and two additional women. One was a middle-aged spinster named Jane Carroll, the other, Verity’s fifteen-year-old sister, Honor.
Verity herself died on February 3.
John Ransom died February 5, one week before his wife Tabitha. On dates between their deaths, several young children perished, as did Honor Hall. Jane Carroll followed, on Valentine’s Day.
That left only William Ransom, Anne Blake, and the five Mundys.
For one week, the seven survived.
Anne Blake’s death, the final among the colonists, was recorded on February 21.
For the first time, Savannah notices that there is no death date listed for William Ransom. Yet he wasn’t among the five survivors, and . . .
Hmm. Despite pertinent information on the individual settlers, Etta’s pamphlet includes no specific death dates. Only Ora’s list has that information. So where did she—or her Aunt Etta—find it?
There must have been another resource.
Combing the shelves row by row, Savannah finds books about survivalist cannibalism, Hudson Valley traders, European immigration, Native American tribes . . .
All interesting, but not relevant to her search. More promising are a couple of published journals from later settlers, and several folders containing old letters and research papers about the Mundy family legacy and their descendants, none published earlier than the 1920s.
Achy from sitting on the floor, she carries them over to a desk. Wondering what time it is, she fishes her phone out of her bag to check the clock, and sees that she missed a call while it was silenced. No, a couple of calls, and a text, too. All from Braden, eager to reconnect.
Forgot you don’t have a car. Sorry. Will pick you up. What time?
She starts to text back, then decides to step outside and call him instead. If they have an actual conversation, maybe he’ll ask if she’s free this evening.
She looks at the stack of folders. Should she leave them out on the table while she’s gone, or put them back, for now, where she found them?
A third option enters her mind, and she glances at the glass walls to see if anyone is visible beyond. She was the only one on the third floor when she got here, and it still appears deserted.
After a moment’s consideration, she opens her backpack and tucks the folders inside one of her binders. No one was inspecting bags, and even if the guard is here now, he’ll take a quick peek and wave her past.
She isn’t stealing the materials, Savannah promises the library, and herself, as she zips the backpack. She’s borrowing them to aid in solving a historical mystery.
Outside in the sunshine, she sits on a bench and dials. Maybe they can have that Marrana’s pizza after all. Maybe this is one reckless fling that will end in happily-ever-after.
“Hey, this is Braden.”
Voice mail.
Optimism snuffed as quickly as it ignited, Savannah hangs up.
Sully stares at the corpse, still in the same position. The hands have been bagged for evidence. The rope remains intact, and will until the investigation is complete and the body removed.
“Do you have his cell phone?” she asks the Bobs.
They don’t.
“Did you check his pockets?”
“Where else would we look?” Large Bob asks, and Small Bob snickers a crude suggestion.
Sully looks at Nick. “He had his phone when I saw him at Dunkin’ Donuts.”
“Maybe he left it in his truck when he went into the bar?”
“Who does that?”
“Maybe the battery was dead. Maybe it’s charging back at the Holiday Inn.”
“Maybe someone took it to conceal evidence.”
“Maybe. But it looks like a straightforward suicide.”
“Hangings almost always are,” Small Bob says.
The almost echoes in Sully’s head as she heads back toward the house, thinking about Emerson.
She’s worked a number of cases where a female domestic abuse victim became a murder suspect based on motive, opportunity, or circumstantial evidence.
What if her own Aunt Ida’s husband were to die under suspicious circumstances? Though Sully is ninety-nine percent sure that her kind, gentle aunt is incapable of even reciprocal violence, she’d wonder whether the years of abuse had taken their toll. People can snap under duress and become violent in self-defense.
But you don’t stage a homicide as suicide in the heat of the moment.
Either Roy Nowak took his own life in a way that was meant to mimic Jerry Mundy’s death, right down to details Emerson said he couldn’t have known, or . . .
Or she killed him in a fit of rage, or self-defense . . .
Or someone else did. Perhaps someone who wanted to protect Emerson from a man she perceived as dangerous.
Savannah had considered returning to the library after she failed to reach Braden, but she didn’t want to risk having to smuggle the historic papers back in—and then out again if he decides to return her call before she’s finished with her research.
Instead, she’s back in the lab with Jane Doe, combing the files for relevant information, and setting aside several documents she’d like to re-examine.
Among them are the ship’s manifest listing the original settlers who traveled up the Hudson River in the late spring of 1665, and a collection of letters the colonists had written to loved ones back in England over the course of that devastating winter. The messages, initially laced with hope and reassurance, grew desperate as the winter wore on. Later dates bore agonizing details of starvation and heartbreaking accounts of loved ones dying one by one.
Months later, rescuers arriving far too late discovered the poignant missives along with a scattering of worldly belongings and a litter of carnage.
Wading through archaic prose, searching for mention of the Mundys or any detail relating to her four Jane Doe candidates, Savannah has momentarily forgotten about Braden when her phone rings.
“Hey,” he says when she answers, “I saw that you called. What’s up?”
“I was returning your call. And you texted, too. A few times.”
“What?”
“I mean . . . you did, right?” She couldn’t have imagined it, could she?
“Sorry, I can’t hear you very well. I’m on the road.”
Realizing he must already be heading over to pick her up, she says, “I was just calling you back, but you didn’t answer.”
“I was in the middle of a phone interview.”
“That’s good. How’d it go?”
“It went great. I’m pretty psyched. So anyway, I was going to
give you a ride home—I forgot that you don’t have your car . . .”
“But . . . ?” she prompts, sensing a big fat one hanging in the air.
“But now I can’t.”
“You can’t give me a ride home?”
“No, sorry—I’m on my way to Hartford right now.”
“Hartford . . . ?”
“Connecticut.”
She listens in silence to his explanation that he’d sent his résumé to a large insurance company there over a week ago, in answer to an advertisement for an opening in research. This afternoon, their human resources rep called him for an impromptu phone interview, liked what she heard, and invited him to meet with the person doing the hiring.
“Today? Isn’t that short notice? Especially for a job that’s so far away.”
“It’s not even a two-hour drive,” Braden says, “and she was going to schedule it for Tuesday morning because this guy is going away tomorrow for a long weekend. But I figured I’d better jump on it, so I offered to come right away. You never know what’s going to happen between now and then.”
“I’m sure the job will still be there on Tuesday.”
And I’ll still be here if you don’t come get me like you said you would, you jerk.
“Don’t count on it. This is the first opportunity I’ve had in weeks.”
“But . . . an insurance company? Your degree is in history. I thought you wanted to work at a museum.”
“Museums don’t want me,” he says curtly. “Listen, I’m sorry you’re stuck there. Can you get a ride from someone?”
“No.”
“Oh well . . . can you walk? I mean, it’s not that far.”
He’s right, and it isn’t as if she didn’t consider walking. But she’s not going to make this easy on him.
“It’s a few miles. And there aren’t even sidewalks the whole way.”
“Can you take a cab? I’ll pay for it.”
“There are no cabs. If there were cabs, your brother could have taken one yesterday.”
Bone White Page 23