On the Street Where you Live (5 page)

As they walked to the door, the bell pealed insistently.

The moving van from Albany had arrived.

F
OR THE RESIDENTS
of Spring Lake, the day had begun in its usual, orderly fashion. Most of the commuters had gathered at the train station for the hour-
and-a-half ride to their jobs in New York City. Others had parked their cars in neighboring Atlantic Highlands and caught the jet water launch which whisked them to a pier at the foot of the World Financial Center.

There, under the watchful gaze of the Statue of Liberty, they had hurried to their various offices. Many of them worked in the financial community as traders on the stock exchange or executives in brokerage houses. Others were lawyers and bankers.

In Spring Lake the morning passed in reassuring regularity. Children filled the classes at the public school and St. Catherine's. The tasteful shops on quaint Third Avenue opened for business. At noon a favorite spot for lunch was the Sisters Café. Realtors brought prospective buyers to see available properties and explained that, even with the escalating prices, a home here was an excellent investment.

The disappearance of Martha Lawrence four and a half years earlier had hung like a pall over the consciousness of the residents, but other than that terrible event, serious crime was virtually nonexistent in this town.

Now, on this wind-driven first day of spring, that local sense of security was shaken to the core.

Word of the police activity on Hayes Avenue spread through the town. Rumors of the discovery of human remains followed quickly. The operator of the backhoe quietly used his cell phone to call his wife.

“I heard the forensics chief say that from the condition of the bones he thinks it's a young adult,” he
whispered. “There's something else down there too, but they're not letting on what it is.”

His wife rushed to call her friends. One of them, a stringer for the CBS network, phoned in the tip. A helicopter was dispatched to cover the story.

Everyone knew that the victim was going to be Martha Lawrence. Old friends gathered one by one in the Lawrence home. One of them took it upon herself to dial Martha's parents in Philadelphia.

Even before the official word came, George and Amanda Lawrence canceled their planned visit to the home of their older daughter in Bernardsville, New Jersey, to see their new granddaughter. With a sense of heartsick inevitability, they set out for Spring Lake instead.

By six o'clock, as dark settled over the East Coast, the pastor of St. Catherine's accompanied the prosecutor to the Lawrence home. Martha's dental records, accurate in their description of the teeth that had given Martha her brilliant smile, matched exactly the impression Dr. O'Brien had made during the autopsy.

A few strands of what had been long blond hair still clung to the back of the skull. They matched the strands the police had taken from Martha's pillow and hairbrush after her disappearance.

A sense of collective mourning settled over the town.

The police had decided to withhold, for the present, information about the second skeletal remains. They were also those of a young woman, and the
forensics chief estimated that they had been in the ground for over one hundred years.

In addition, it would not be revealed that the instrument of Martha's death had been a silk scarf with metallic beading, knotted tightly around her throat.

However, the most chilling fact that the police were not ready to share was the revelation that, within her plastic shroud, Martha Lawrence had been buried with the finger bone of the century-old victim, and that a sapphire ring still dangled from that bone.

N
EITHER THE STATE-OF-THE-ART
security system nor the presence of a policeman in the cabana to guard the crime scene could reassure Emily the first night in her new home. The bustle of the moving men, followed by the need to unpack and restore the house to orderliness, had distracted her for the afternoon. As far as was humanly possible, she tried to take her mind off the activity in the backyard, the presence of the quiet and orderly spectators gathered in the street, and the penetrating noise of the helicopter hovering overhead.

At seven o'clock she made a salad, baked a potato, and broiled the baby lamb chops that had been part of her celebratory food shopping after she took title to the house.

But even though she drew all the blinds and turned the fire in the kitchen hearth to the highest setting, she still felt completely vulnerable.

To distract herself, she brought the book she'd been looking forward to reading to the table, but, despite her efforts, nothing relieved her anxiety. Several glasses of Chianti neither warmed nor relaxed her. She loved to cook, and friends had always commented that she could make even a simple meal seem special. Tonight she could barely taste what she was eating. She reread the first chapter of the book twice, but the words seemed meaningless, without coherence.

Nothing could overcome the haunting knowledge that a young woman's body had been found on this property. She told herself that it had to be an ironic coincidence that her great-great-grandaunt had disappeared from these grounds and that today another young woman who had disappeared in Spring Lake had been found here.

But as she tidied the kitchen, turned off the fire, checked all the doors, set the alarm to go off at any attempt to open the doors or a window, Emily was unable to either ignore or escape the growing certainty that the death of her ancestor and the death of that young girl four and a half years ago were inexorably linked.

The book under her arm, she climbed the stairs to the second floor. It was only nine o'clock, but all she wanted to do was to shower, change into warm pj's and go to bed, where she would read or watch television or both.

Like last night, she thought.

The Kiernans had suggested she would be pleased with their twice-a-week housekeeper, Doreen Sullivan. At the closing their lawyer had said that as a welcoming present they had engaged Doreen to go through the house and put fresh linens on the beds and fresh towels in the bathrooms.

The house was on the corner, one street from the ocean. There were ocean views from the south and east sides of the master bedroom. Twenty minutes after she reached the second floor, Emily was showered and changed, and now somewhat relaxed, pulled the coverlet back from the matching headboard.

Then she hesitated. Had she bolted the front door?

Even with the security system on, she had to be sure.

Annoyed at herself, she hurried out of the bedroom and down the hall. At the head of the stairs, she flipped the switch that lit the foyer chandelier, then hurried down the stairs.

Before she reached the front door she saw the envelope that had been slipped under it. Please, God, not again, she thought as she bent down to pick it up.
Don't
let that business begin again!

She ripped open the envelope. As she had feared, it contained a snapshot, the silhouette of a woman at a window, the light behind her. For a moment she had to focus on it to realize she was the woman in the picture.

And then she knew.

Last night. At the Candlelight Inn. When she'd opened the window she had stood there looking out before she lowered the shade.

Someone had been standing on the boardwalk. No, that wasn't possible, she thought. She had looked at the boardwalk and it was deserted.

Someone standing on the
beach
had snapped her picture and had it developed, then slipped it under the door within the last hour. It hadn't been there when she went upstairs.

It was as though the person who had stalked her in Albany had followed her to Spring Lake! But that was impossible. Ned Koehler was in Gray Manor, a secure psychiatric facility in Albany.

The house phone had not yet been connected. Her cell phone was in the bedroom. Holding the picture, she ran to pick it up. Her fingers trembling, she dialed information.

“Welcome to local and national information . . .”

“Albany, New York. Gray Manor Hospital.” To her dismay she could barely speak above a whisper.

A few moments later she was talking to the evening supervisor of the unit where Ned Koehler was confined.

She identified herself.

“I know your name,” the supervisor said. “You're the one he was stalking.”

“Is he out on a pass?”

“Koehler? Absolutely not, Ms. Graham.”

“Is there a chance he managed to get out on his own?”

“I saw him at bed check less than an hour ago.”

A vivid image of Ned Koehler flashed through Emily's mind: a slight man in his early forties, balding, hesitant in speech and manner. In court he had
wept silently throughout the trial. She had defended Joel Lake, who had been accused of murdering Ned's mother during a bungled robbery.

When the jury acquitted Lake, Ned Koehler had gone berserk and had lunged across the room at her. He was screaming obscenities, Emily remembered. He was telling me I'd gotten a killer off. It had taken two sheriff's deputies to restrain him.

“How is he doing?” she asked.

“Singing the same old song—that he's innocent.” The supervisor's voice was reassuring. “Ms. Graham, it's not uncommon for stalking victims to feel apprehensive even after the stalker is under lock and key. Ned isn't going anywhere.”

When she replaced the receiver, Emily made herself study the picture. In it she was framed in the center of the window, an easy target for someone with a gun instead of a camera, it occurred to her.

She had to call the police. What about the policeman in the back, in the cabana. I don't want to open the door. Suppose he isn't there. Suppose someone else is there.

911—

No, the number of the police station was on the calendar in the kitchen. She didn't want the police to arrive with screaming sirens. The alarm system was on. No one could get in.

The officer who took the call sent a car immediately. The lights were flashing, but the driver did not turn on the siren.

The cop was young, probably not more than
twenty-two. She showed him the picture, told him about the stalker in Albany.

“You're sure he hasn't been released, Ms. Graham?”

“I just called there.”

“My guess is that a smart-alec kid who knows you had this problem is playing a practical joke,” he said soothingly. “Have you got a couple of plastic bags you could give me?”

He held the snapshot and then the envelope at the corner as he dropped them into the bags. “These will be checked for fingerprints,” he explained. “I'll be on my way now.” She walked with him to the door.

“Tonight we'll be keeping a close watch on the front of the house and we'll alert the officer in the back to keep his eyes open,” he told her. “You'll be fine.”

Maybe, Emily thought as she bolted the door behind him.

Getting into bed, she pulled up the covers and forced herself to turn off the light. There was plenty of publicity when Ned Koehler was caught and then put away, she thought. Maybe this person is a copycat.

But
why?
And what other explanation could there be? Ned Koehler was guilty. Of course he was. The supervisor's voice: “singing the same old song”—that he was innocent.

Was
he? If so, was the real stalker still free and ready to renew his unwelcome attentions?

It was nearly dawn when, with the reassurance of the early morning light, Emily finally fell asleep. She was woken at nine by the barking of the dogs the police
had brought to assist them in their search for other possible victims buried on her property.

C
LAYTON AND
R
ACHEL
W
ILCOX
had been guests at the Lawrence home the night before Martha Lawrence disappeared. Since then, like all the other guests, they had been visited regularly by Detective Tom Duggan.

They had heard the shocking news that Martha's body had been discovered, but unlike many of the other guests at that final festive gathering, they had not gone immediately to the Lawrence home. Rachel had pointed out to her husband that only the very closest friends would be welcome at such a time of grief. The finality in her voice left no room for discussion.

Sixty-four-years old, Rachel was handsome, with shoulder-length iron-gray hair that she looped neatly around her head. Tall and with impeccable carriage, she exuded authority. Her skin, devoid of even a touch of makeup, was clear and firm. Her eyes, a grayish blue, had a perpetually stern expression.

Thirty years ago, when, as a shy, nearly forty-year-old assistant dean, Clayton had been courting her, he had lovingly compared Rachel to a Viking. “I can imagine you at the helm of a ship, armed for battle,
with the wind blowing through your hair,” he had whispered.

He now mentally referred to Rachel as “The Viking.” The name, however, was no longer an endearment. Clayton lived in a constant state of high alert, ever anxious to avoid his wife's blistering wrath. When he nonetheless somehow provoked it, her caustic tongue lashed him mercilessly. Early in their marriage he had learned that she neither forgave nor forgot.

Having been a guest at the Lawrence home hours before Martha disappeared seemed to him to be sufficient reason to pay a brief condolence call, but Clayton wisely did not make that suggestion. Instead, as they watched the eleven o'clock news broadcast, he listened in suffering silence to Rachel's caustic comments.

“It's very sad, of course, but at least this should put an end to that detective coming around here and annoying us,” she said.

If anything, this will bring Duggan around
more
often, Clayton thought. A large man, with a leonine head of shaggy gray hair and knowing eyes, he looked the academic he had been.

When, twelve years ago, at age fifty-five, he retired from the presidency of Enoch College, a small but prestigious institution in Ohio, he and Rachel had moved permanently to Spring Lake. He had first come to the town as a young boy, visiting an uncle who had moved there, and over the years he had come back for occasional visits. As a hobby, he had delved with enthusiasm into the history of the
town and was now known as the unofficial local historian.