Blood Red (34 page)

He'd been caught off guard when his stepfather left him a message on Sunday wanting to talk. He was certain Rick must have somehow figured out what was going on, and he knew he'd have to do something about it.

He didn't want to kill Rick. But he had no choice.

Rick sounded glad to hear from him on Monday night and claimed he only wanted to reestablish the connection that had been lost in the year since Vanessa had died. He said he'd been on his way to meet a friend for dinner but his plans had changed last minute, and suggested that they connect for a drink.

Thinking quickly, Casey lied that he was in Jersey City on a local job and offered to meet Rick at his apartment.

He arrived at the building just as Rick did, and his stepfather greeted him with a warm hug. He didn't seem suspicious . . . but maybe he was covering up.

Casey proceeded with the plan, but there was no joy in it.

When Rick had passed out, he dragged him to the tub, ran a bath, and slit both his wrists with Rick's straight razor from the medicine cabinet. It wasn't the one Vanessa had used, though Casey had kept that.

Casey had kept a lot of things.

One memento he'd preserved in Vanessa's scrapbook had come in especially handy.

Rick had left her a note when he walked out on her the first time. She'd crumpled it and thrown it away, but Casey had plucked it from the trash.

I can't do this anymore. You'll be better off without me. I'm so sorry.

It was the perfect suicide note. Rick had written it himself.

Casey hated to part with that keepsake.

But now he has an even better one: Rick's cell phone.

F
leeing the school, Mick has no idea where he's going, exactly. He only knows that he has to find Brianna.

He starts out running at top speed. A safe distance away, he slows to a trot and then a walk, feeling weak and still a little nauseated. He's panting, and his heart seems to be beating in time to the mantra in his head.

Find her . . . save her . . .

He pulls his phone from his pocket to see what he can learn from social media.

Great. His phone battery is almost dead—­again.

At least it lasts long enough for him to find several links to an official missing persons bulletin that features a photo of Brianna and a physical description. She hasn't been seen since she went to bed on Monday evening. A few of her friends mentioned having heard from her late that night. The presumption is that she got up and went jogging as usual.

Find her . . . save her . . .

Where does she go when she runs? What if she fell and hit her head and is wandering around with amnesia? Worse yet, what if she's lying unconscious somewhere?

He shoves his dead cell phone back into his pocket. As he strides along Highland Street toward town, Mick realizes two things: he has no idea where to start looking, and it's snowing even harder than it was when he first glimpsed it from Mr. Goodall's office window.

She's going to freeze to death if he doesn't find her.

Find her . . . save her . . .

R
owan tells herself she shouldn't be alarmed when Mick's phone, like Jake's, rings directly into voice mail. She knows too well that her son frequently forgets to charge it. The battery could have run down.

Even the fact that he skipped out of school wouldn't be alarming under ordinary circumstances. Not if he felt trapped, and sick to his stomach, and if he thought he was in trouble.

Ordinary trouble—­the kind of trouble ordinary teenagers get into. Because her son, of course, is an ordinary teenager.

Then again, what does she know?

She had no idea he was buying gifts for a girl or visiting her house when he was supposed to be at basketball practice. Apparently, Mick has a whole secret life.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree . . .

Regardless of what she doesn't know about him, though, Rowan is positive of one thing: he isn't responsible for Brianna Armbruster's disappearance. Not in the way the police chief and principal are insinuating.

That Mick is suddenly nowhere to be found—­with Rick Walker here in town—­strikes her as ominous.

It's time to tell the police chief the rest of the story.

Clutching her cell phone tightly, praying it will ring and she'll hear her son's voice, she looks at Ron Calhoun.

“I need to speak to you,” she says urgently. “In private.”

W
hen Steve Lindgren saw the security camera footage of Rick Walker coming home on Monday evening, it took him a moment to recognize the man beside him. He was bearded, and wearing glasses . . .

But it was Rick's stepson, Kurt Walker.

Kurt Walker, who—­according to the neighbors who heard his screams—­was distraught when he discovered Rick's body.

When Lindgren last saw Walker, he claimed to be on his way to notify his siblings of their father's so-­called suicide. He never did.

That was evident after a few phone calls. All three—­Derek, Liam, and Erin—­were stunned and devastated by the news. Steve broke it as gently as he could.

Now, trying to piece together the rest of the story, he sits across from Derek Walker, Kurt's brother, in the Brooklyn loft he shares with a roommate.

Steve was taken aback, meeting Derek.

Kurt Walker had struck him as intense and socially awkward, but he'd attributed that to being in the midst of a personal crisis. Derek, while he didn't walk in on his stepfather dead in a bathtub this morning, is dealing with the same loss. But he's much more likable, and comes across as an average Joe.

Of course, he most likely has nothing to hide, and he doesn't seem to realize that his brother does. Steve hasn't told him yet that Kurt not only already knows about their stepfather's death, but might very well have caused it.

“This is going to be really hard for Casey,” Derek says.

“Casey?” Steve makes a mental note. “Is that what you call him?”

“Yeah. He was named after our father. He's Kurt Clark, Junior. But he hated that. He hates
him
. We both do, and so did our mom.”

That part of the story rings true, and understandably so: Steve's earlier search revealed that the elder Kurt Clark is a convicted felon now serving twenty years for first-­degree assault.

“So Casey was your brother's nickname.”

“Yeah. It's his initials. K.C.—­Casey. Rick came up with it. He even made the teachers in school use it when we were little, because my brother would get so upset whenever anyone called him Kurt.”

“So they got along pretty well, your brother and Rick?”

“Always. I mean, he was the dad we never had. My brother worshipped Rick like a superhero and they were inseparable, even after the divorce, until . . .”

“Until . . . ?”

Derek's blue eyes cloud over. “Until, you know . . . Mom died. She killed herself, too. My brother almost lost it.”

“Lost it?”

“You know . . . he had a rough time. He kind of went off the deep end.”

“In what way?”

“He couldn't sleep, he lost weight and he didn't want to see anyone, not even Rick.”

Understandable. Some ­people react to a sudden loss by holding on tightly to their remaining loved ones; others by letting go for fear of losing someone else.

“He's the one who found her,” Derek adds.

Steve pretends he wasn't aware of that when, in fact, he looked into Vanessa De Forrest's death before he headed over to Brooklyn.

She had, indeed, slit her own wrists in a bathtub, on November thirtieth of last year.

She was discovered by her eldest son, who'd gone over to check on her after she failed to show up at work. Her doctor had recently prescribed an antidepressant that carried a risk of suicidal tendencies, and she'd left a rambling, handwritten note that both blamed her ex-­husband and professed her love for him.

That isn't unusual after a divorce. The timing isn't unusual either: she killed herself on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

According to Derek, Rick had custody of the younger half siblings on that first Thanksgiving after the divorce. Derek went to Mexico with friends, so Vanessa cooked a turkey for herself and Casey. When Derek called her that night, she was alone again, had been drinking, and was upset and resentful.

“At you?” Steve asks.

“Kind of. At everyone, really. But mostly at Rick.”

“Why did they split up?”

“They were so different. Looking back, I'm more surprised they ever got married in the first place than I am that they got divorced.”

“Did your brother feel the same way?”

“Probably. I don't think anyone who knew them wouldn't feel that way.”

“Yet your mother didn't want the divorce.”

“No.”

“Because she was still in love with him?”

“That, and I think she felt like a failure. She was a real perfectionist, and . . . you know. Both her husbands left her.”

Steve shifts gears.

“When was the last time you saw your brother?”

“It's been a while. Probably not since . . . I'd say it's been almost a year.”

“That's a long time when you live in the same city.”

“I know, but he's . . . not that social. Plus, he travels a lot for work.”

“What does he do?”

“He's an electrical lineman—­he does power restoration in areas that have been hit by storms.”

 

From the
Mundy's Landing Tribune
Archives

Front Page

July 8, 1916

Second Young Woman Murdered
Bloodied Corpse at G. H. Purcell Residence
Village in Uproar at News

At approximately ten-­thirty this morning, Mrs. Florence S. Purcell of 46 Bridge Street was greeted by a horrific sight upon entering the second-­floor guest room to prepare it for weekend visitors. A young woman lay beneath the coverlet with her head resting upon a pillow, eyes closed as if in slumber. Had Mrs. Purcell not been aware of a similar discovery earlier in the week at the home of Dr. and Mrs. Silas O. Browne of 65 Prospect Street, she might have approached and attempted to awaken the sleeping intruder as did the unfortunate Mrs. Browne.

Correctly surmising that the bed's occupant was deceased, Mrs. Purcell began shrieking, which greatly frightened her children, Miss Augusta A. Purcell and Master Frederick G. Purcell. Hastening to the scene were Mr. Homer M. Sampson, who resides across the way at 49 Bridge Street, and Niall Devlin, a stable hand at Harrison's Livery on Fulton Avenue, whose barns are located adjacent to the rear of the Purcell property.

After ushering the distraught Mrs. Purcell and her children to the safety of a neighboring home, Mr. Sampson dispatched the Devlin lad to fetch both the police and Mr. Purcell, who at the time was in his office at the First National Bank on Fulton Avenue.

This follows the aforementioned incident that took place last Friday morning, when the lifeless body of an unidentified young girl was found in the former bedroom of Miss Maude Browne, the eldest daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Browne, who is spending the year abroad. In that case, as in this one, there were no witnesses to the dastardly deed, no assassin was readily apprehended, nor were any suspects questioned.

At press time, a full investigation was under way. Asked whether the two crimes were linked, Officer Ernest B. Vestal informed the
Tribune
, “It would be imprudent to offer speculation.”

 

Chapter 19

A
fter noticing several police cars in town, Mick decided to search along the bike path that follows the river north of the Schaapskill Nature Preserve. He's pretty sure that at this time of year, no one else would think to look over here for Brianna—­or for him.

When Mom and Dad were growing up in Mundy's Landing it was a rail track, but neither of them remember it ever being used. It's since been paved over and it's where he jogs every morning, accessing it via a shortcut behind his house. During the summer, it's busy with bike traffic, but at this time of year, it's nearly deserted.

He's never crossed paths with Brianna here, but that doesn't mean anything. Maybe she goes earlier or later than he does. He can't keep tabs on her every move, though he regrets that now.

He moves slowly, searching the grayish-­brown scrub along both sides of the paved trail, determined not to leave until he finds her.

W
aiting for the water to fill the tub in Rowan's master bathroom, Casey regrets that it isn't an old claw-­foot model that you might expect to find in a house like this.

Ironically, you wouldn't expect to find a claw-­foot tub in a Hoboken condo, but there was one in the master bathroom of the place they'd moved into after leaving Westchester County thirteen years ago.

“Are you going to start taking bubble baths?” Casey remembers asking his mother when he saw it.

Rick answered for her. “Are you kidding? Your mom would never sit around soaking in a tub. She doesn't like to waste time.”

“I don't have time to waste,” Mom said in the brittle tone she was using more and more often when she spoke to Rick.

Casey was still just a kid then—­thirteen—­but he was old enough to recognize the ever-­escalating tension between them. It had worsened right before they moved away from Westchester, with a fight about Rowan Mundy.

Rick felt bad that she had moved away; Mom accused him of being in love with her. Casey overheard everything.

By that time, he'd been indulging his voyeuristic tendencies for years—­with his mother and stepfather, his siblings, the neighbors . . .

He was addicted to eavesdropping on ­people's private conversations, watching their most intimate moments. There was tremendous power in omniscience.

The habit had originally been born out of paranoia, back when his biological father was still around and frequently threatening Mom that he was going to leave town with Casey and his brother. Terrified that it would actually happen, Casey monitored his father's every move, looking for signs that he was getting ready to take off.

Mercifully, when it finally happened—­when Kurt Clark, Senior, finally left—­he went alone.

Casey kept spying, though. At first, just on his mother. He was afraid she was going to leave, too. That fear eased when Rick came along, but watching the two of them together was so titillating that he couldn't stop. Finally, Rick caught him peeking through a crack in the door one night when he and Mom were in bed together. Casey didn't let on that he'd been watching them and pretended he wasn't feeling well. They bought it. But they began locking their bedroom door after that.

There were ways around that for a precocious kid like Casey. When they still lived in the city, he'd crawl out the fire escape outside the bedroom he shared with his brother and peek through the window into the room next door. His parents never bothered to close the blinds; the apartment faced an alley and an unbroken concrete wall.

When they moved to the house in Westchester, the master bedroom was on the ground floor, making it even easier for him to spy from outside. But as time went on, he rarely caught his mother and Rick naked in each other's arms. Most nights, they were just sleeping.

That was okay. By then he'd discovered Rowan.

He wasn't much interested in her when they first met. She was just a mom, hugely pregnant.

But one day, soon after she had the baby, she bared her breast to nurse him right there in front of Casey. He was mesmerized, watching the baby suckling, his tiny fingers toying with his mother's long red hair. Mesmerized, and insanely, irrationally jealous.

From that moment on, he watched Rowan Mundy every chance he got and pleasured himself to fantasies that involved her.

From the tree house, he could see over the fence into the yard next door. Sometimes, at night when the lights were on, he could see directly into her house from his own. Having spent so much time inside the house during the day, he knew the layout of the rooms, well aware which windows belonged to the master bedroom and which to the bathroom. The curtains were always closed at night, so he never glimpsed anything more erotic than Rowan nursing her baby, but his imagination conjured plenty of tantalizing scenarios that were undoubtedly unfolding across the way. He longed to glimpse her showering or disrobing or making love with her husband . . .

It didn't happen.

Something else did.

Always a stickler for details, for numbers, Casey remembered the date clearly. November thirtieth.

That was the day his stepfather finally did what Casey had long fantasized about doing to Rowan. Naturally, he was spying on them from the next room. In the throes of adolescence, hormones raging, he didn't blame Rick for finding her irresistible. Nor did he resent the woman in the arms of his mother's husband.

Not at first.

But that day was the turning point. Afterward, everything changed. She changed.

Until November thirtieth, Rowan was always so open, so affectionate—­not just with Rick, but with Casey. To be fair, she was that way with everyone: Casey's younger brother Derek, his half brother Liam, and his sister Erin, too. But overnight, she went from loving and warm to ice cold.

Not long after, a For Sale sign went up, and she was gone.

Eavesdropping on his mother and Rick's argument after the Mundys had moved away, Casey felt torn. He loved his mother more than anything in the world, and he didn't want her to be unhappy. But he loved Rick, too, almost as much. Rick was his hero. He'd saved Casey from being the kid with the loser dad, or the kid with no dad at all. He'd made everything okay.

“Don't worry, you can do no wrong in his eyes,” he once heard Mom telling Rick, laughingly, when they were behind closed doors talking about how Rick had grounded Casey for a week. As his new stepfather, Rick was afraid Casey was going to hate him for the punishment, but was adamant about teaching him a lesson.

Casey can no longer remember what he'd done. Not that time, anyway. He only remembers that no one ever caught him doing anything that was truly wicked, like stealing a pocket knife from Kmart and using it to skin small, furry animals. Live ones. Well, not live for long. His hand, back then, wasn't nearly as steady as it is now.

But I was much too smart to get caught. Smarter than Mom and Rick, smarter than Derek and Liam and Erin, smarter than the teachers . . .

Just like I'm smarter than the police. Even Sullivan Leary.

The thought of the redheaded detective jars him back to the present.

The tub is filled with steaming water.

Casey turns off the tap just in time to hear a car pulling into the driveway. She's just in time.

He smiles, pleased, and takes out Rick's cell phone to make a quick, final call.

B
iting into a flaky apple pastry dusted with cinnamon and sugar, Sully forgets, momentarily, about the disturbing screenshot, and about the homicide, and even about bagels. Good bagels, bad bagels . . . who needs bagels? She could live here, and subsist on this pastry.

“That's not lunch,” Stockton points out as he unwraps a ham and cheese sandwich on a croissant. “That's dessert.”

“It's not lunchtime,” she replies with a shrug. Anyway, there's nothing wrong with dessert for lunch. Especially when it's mid-­afternoon and you had absolutely no appetite when you placed your order.

But the secretary stationed outside Colonomos's office had encouraged her and Stockton to order something when she'd passed around a menu earlier. “It's going to be a long day.”

Every day is a long day where they come from, but in the few hours they've been here, they've become well aware that the Mundy's Landing police force isn't accustomed to this intense state of overdrive. They're efficient, but small. From what Sully gathers, they deal mostly with petty crimes, parking tickets, and crowd control during the summer festival.

Now they're dealing with not one, but two missing teens. They identified a high school kid who was reportedly stalking Brianna Armbruster, only to have him slip away before they could question him.

“Mick Mundy?” Sully echoed, when she heard the name. “As in . . . Mundy's Landing?”

“Right. His dad's family is descended from the first settlers here.”

That they were executed as accused murderers wasn't lost on Sully, but Colonomos assured him that Mick Mundy is a good kid from a good family.

Theoretically, all he did was give a girl a ­couple of gifts. Sully would be inclined to believe it was totally innocent if one of the beads hadn't been etched with the word
Redhead
.

Even that might be innocent; a coincidence.

Brianna Armbruster aside, it's hard to imagine that a sixteen-year-­old small-­town kid—­regardless of what his ancestors might have done three hundred and fifty years ago—­is responsible for the heinous serial murders. Too bad he took off before he could be questioned and cleared.

Her cell phone rings as she takes another bite. She hurriedly chews and swallows when she sees that the call is from the precinct.

“Detective L—­”

“Sully.” Jin again. “He called back. Can I patch him through?”

She doesn't have to ask who. “Go ahead.”

“Okay. And he says it's urgent. Life or death.”

Yeah, whose?
Sully wonders, and then he's on the line.

S
tepping through the back door into her sister's kitchen, Noreen is aghast.

Dishes in the sink, clutter on the counters, dirt tracked on the floors, spilled food and water around the dog's bowls . . .

Her first instinct is to start tidying up. Still wearing her coat, with her purse and overnight bag hanging from her shoulders, she begins with the coffeemaker. After pouring this morning's stale brew down the drain, she dumps the cold, wet grounds into the nearly overflowing—­of course—­garbage can, and opens the dishwasher. It, too, is full, and someone—­
Gee, I wonder who?
—­forgot to run it. The dishes inside weren't rinsed so they're caked in crud. Among them is the chipped red pitcher from their childhood home.

Noreen closes the dishwasher and steps away.

She's not here to clean up this mess. She's here to clean up the bigger one.

Maybe, if she can set this loser Rick Walker straight and help her sister get past this marital setback, she'll feel better about all the things she can't fix in her own life.

Still, she walks through the first floor with a critical eye. Throw rugs are slightly askew, closet doors ajar, coats draped over chairs, shoes are scattered on the floor . . .

The dog, when she comes across him napping on the sofa, shouldn't be shedding on the furniture, and he should be barking at her presence.

And there are far too many framed family photos, she decides when she reaches the front hall. Especially on the wall leading up the stairs, where they're hung in mismatched frames of all shapes and sizes.

Hearing a rustling sound behind her, she spins around.

No one is there.

She never did like old houses. She doesn't believe that they're haunted, but they do creak and groan. Settling noises, her parents used to call them. Which never made sense to Noreen, because old houses should have had plenty of time to settle.

Again, she hears the sound.

Again, she whirls around.

This time someone is there.

T
his is the moment Casey has anticipated for months, years. Yet now it's finally arrived, it isn't quite right. It isn't right at all.

Coming face to face with Rowan Mundy at last, Casey confirms that all the familiar components are accounted for: the compact build, fine bone structure, speckled green eyes, long, lovely cinnamon-­colored hair . . .

It's all there, but . . . different. Off.

Why? Casey wonders, his brain muddled in confusion. Is it because of time passing? Proximity? Perspective?

It's been a few weeks now since he last glimpsed her even from afar, but still . . .

Close up, she seems taller and leaner than she should. There's not a hint of freckle on her face. Her hair—­her beautiful hair—­is pulled back in a severe ponytail. She never wears it that way.

But it's her eyes—­the expression in her eyes—­that is most startling. She isn't just wary or even frightened or furious. Her gaze is calm and cold. Stone cold. So is her voice when she addresses him; the pitch lower and barely recognizable.

“You're not Rick Walker.”

“No.” He pushes aside his confusion, forcing a laugh. “I know you were expecting him, but he's . . . incapacitated.”

“Who are you?”

“Oh, Rowan . . . you don't recognize me? Really?”

“I'm not—­”

“I'd be insulted,” he goes on, cutting her off abruptly, “if I believed you.”

“You don't?”

“Of course not.”

There's a subtle shift in her gaze as she stares at him. She tilts her head, studying him, and then shakes it. It's obvious that she's stalling, buying time by pretending not to know who he is, but that's okay. He's the one in control here.

“My memory isn't what it used to be,” she says. ­“People change.”

“You have a point. I
was
just a boy the last time we saw each other. Now I'm a man. A real man.”