On the Street Where you Live (6 page)

Rachel had become a volunteer at several local charities, where she was admired for her organizational abilities and energies, although no one particularly liked her. She had also made sure that everyone knew that her husband was a former college president, and that she herself was a graduate of Smith. “All the women in our family, starting with my grandmother, have been graduates of Smith,” she would explain. She had never forgiven Clayton for an indiscretion with a fellow professor three years after their marriage. Later, the mistake that had caused him to retire abruptly from Enoch College, a place where she had enjoyed the lifestyle, had permanently embittered her.

As a picture of Martha Lawrence filled the television screen, Clayton Wilcox felt his hands go moist with fear. There had been someone else with long blond hair and an exquisite body. Now that Martha's remains had been found, how intensely would the police probe into the backgrounds of the people who had been at the party that night? He swallowed over the dryness in his mouth and throat.

“Martha Lawrence had been visiting her grandparents before returning to college,” the CBS anchorwoman, Dana Tyler, was saying.

“I gave you my scarf to hold at the party,” Rachel complained for the millionth time. “And naturally, you managed to lose it.”

T
ODD,
S
CANLON,
K
LEIN AND
T
ODD,
a nationally known criminal defense law firm located on Park Avenue South in Manhattan, had been founded by Walter Todd. As he put it, “Forty-five years ago I hung out a shingle in a storefront near the courthouse. Nobody came. I started making friends with the bail bondsmen. They took a liking to me and began telling their clients that I was a good lawyer. And, even better than that, I was cheap.”

The other Todd in the partnership was Walter's son, Nicholas. “Looks like me, sounds like me, and before he's finished, he'll be as good a lawyer as I am,” Walter Todd would brag. “I swear Nick could get Satan off the hook.”

He always ignored Nick's protest. “I would hardly consider that a compliment, Dad.”

On March 21st, Nick Todd and his father worked late on an impending trial, then Nick joined his parents for dinner in their spacious U.N. Plaza apartment.

At ten minutes of eleven he started to leave, but then decided to wait and watch the CBS eleven o'clock news with them. “There may be something about the trial,” he said. “There's a rumor floating that we're working on a plea bargain.”

The Martha Lawrence story was the breaking headline. “That poor family,” his mother said, sighing.
“I guess it's better for them to know, but to lose a child . . .” Anne Todd's voice trailed off. When Nick was two, she had given birth to a baby girl whom they named Amelia. She had lived only a day.

She would have been thirty-six next week, Anne thought. Even as a newborn she looked like me. In her mind she could see Amelia alive, a young woman with dark hair and blue-green eyes. I know she would have loved music as much as I do. We'd have gone to concerts together . . .

She blinked back the tears that always welled in her eyes when she thought of her lost daughter.

Nick realized what had been pricking at his subconscious. “Isn't Spring Lake the place where Emily Graham bought a house?” he asked.

Walter Todd nodded. “I still wonder why I let her get away with waiting until May to come into the office,” he said, gruffly. “We could use her now.”

“Maybe because, after seeing her in Albany, you thought she had something worth waiting for,” Nick suggested amiably.

An image of Emily Graham floated through his mind. Before they offered her the job, he and his father had gone up to Albany to observe her in court. She had been brilliant, getting an acquittal for a client who had been charged with criminally negligent homicide.

She had gone out to lunch with them. Nick remembered the eloquent praise his usually taciturn father had heaped on her.

They're as alike as two peas in a pod, he thought now. Once they take on a case they'd just about kill for the client.

Since she'd taken the New York apartment, Emily had been in to see them several times, settling her office and getting to know the staff. Nick realized that he was looking forward very much to having her there every day.

His lanky six-foot-two frame unfolded as he stood up. “I'm on my way. I want to hit the gym early tomorrow, and it's been a long day.”

His mother accompanied him to the door. “I wish you'd wear a hat,” she fretted. “It's terribly cold out.”

He bent down and kissed her cheek. “You forgot to tell me not to forget to wear a scarf.”

Anne hesitated, then glanced into the living room where her husband was still intent on hearing the news. Dropping her voice, she begged, “Nick, please tell me what's wrong, because, don't deny it, there is something wrong. Are you sick and not letting me know?”

“Trust me. I'm in perfect health,” he reassured her. “It's just that the Hunter trial is worrying me.”

“Dad
isn't worried about it,” Anne protested. “He said he's sure the worst possible scenario is a hung jury. But you're like me. You always were a worrier.”

“We're even. You're worried about me and I'm worried about the trial.”

They smiled together. Nick is like me inside, Anne thought, but in looks he's all Walter, even to wrinkling his forehead when he's concentrating.

“Don't frown,” she told him as he opened the door.

“I know. It makes wrinkles.”

“And don't worry about the trial. You know you'll win in court.”

On the way down in the elevator from the 36th floor, Nick thought, That's just it, Mom. We will win, on a technicality, and that scum will get off scot-free. Their client was a sleazy lawyer who had invaded the trust accounts of estate heirs, many of them people who desperately needed their inheritance.

He decided to walk downtown and then take a subway to his co-op in SoHo. But even the crisp night air did not relieve the depression that was increasingly becoming part of his psyche. He passed through Times Square barely aware of its glittering marquees.

You don't have to be Lady Macbeth and kill someone to feel as if you have blood on your hands, he thought grimly.

E
VER SINCE THEY BEGAN
digging for the pool, he had known they might come across Martha's remains. He could only hope that the finger bone was still intact within the plastic shroud. But even if it wasn't, they were bound to find the ring. All the reports said that every inch of the excavation area was being sifted by hand.

Of course it was too much to expect the medical examiner to realize that Martha and Madeline had died exactly the same way. Martha with the scarf tightened around her neck, Madeline with the starched white linen sash torn from around her waist as she tried to flee.

He could recite
that
passage from the diary from memory.

It is curious to realize that without a single gesture on my part, Madeline knew she had made a mistake in coming into the house. There was a nervous plucking at her skirt with those long, slender fingers, even though her facial expression did not change.

She watched as I locked the door.

“Why are you doing that?” she asked.

She must have seen something in my eyes, because her hand flew to her mouth. I watched the muscles in her neck move as she vainly tried to scream. She was too frightened to do anything but whisper, “Please.”

She tried to run past me to the window, but I grabbed her sash and pulled it from her, then grasped it in two hands and wrapped it around her neck. At that, with remarkable strength, she tried to punch and kick me. No longer a trembling lamb, she became a tigress fighting for her life.

Later, I bathed and changed and called on her parents, who by then were deeply concerned as to her whereabouts.

Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

There was a front page picture of Martha in all the papers, even the
Times.
Why not? It was newsworthy when the body of a beautiful young woman was found, especially when she was from a privileged family in an upscale and picturesque community. How much more newsworthy it would be if they announced they had found a finger bone with a ring inside the plastic. If they had found it, he hoped they would realize that he had closed Martha's hand over it.

Her hand had been still warm and pliable.

Sisters in death, one hundred and ten years apart.

It had been announced that the prosecutor was holding a news conference at eleven. It was five of eleven now.

He reached over and turned on the television set, then leaned back and chuckled in anticipation.

F
IFTEEN MINUTES
before his scheduled news conference, Elliot Osborne briefed his top aides on what he would and would not tell the press.

He would report the findings of the autopsy, and that the cause of death was strangulation. He would not, repeat
not,
tell them a scarf had been the murder weapon or about the metallic beading that had edged it. He would say that the victim's body had been wrapped in thick layers of plastic that, though separating and crumbling, had kept the skeletal remains intact.

“Are you going to talk about the finger bone, sir? That's gonna really stir up a hornet's nest.”

Pete Walsh had just been promoted to the rank of detective. He was smart and he was young. He also couldn't wait to get his two cents in, Tommy Duggan thought sourly. It gave him a small measure of satisfaction to hear the boss tell Walsh to let him finish, although he felt like a louse as Walsh's face turned beet red.

He and Osborne had been back here at dawn. They had gone over every detail of O'Brien's completed autopsy report and rehashed every detail of the case.

They didn't need Pete Walsh to tell them the media would have a field day with this one.

Osborne continued: “In my statement I will say that we never expected to find Martha Lawrence
alive; that it is not unusual for the remains of a victim to be found buried near the place where death had occurred.”

He cleared his throat. “I will have to reveal that, for some bizarre and twisted reason, Martha Lawrence was buried in contact with other human remains, and those remains are over a century old.

“As you know, four and a half years ago, when Martha disappeared,
The Asbury Park Press
dug up the old story about the disappearance of nineteen-year-old Madeline Shapley in 1891. It is very likely that the media will jump to the conclusion that the finger bone found with Martha belonged to Madeline Shapley, particularly since the remains are on the Shapley property.”

“Is it true that the new owner of that property is a descendant of the Shapleys?”

“That is true, yes.”

“Then can't you check her DNA against the finger bone?”

“If Ms. Graham is willing, we can certainly do that. However, last night I ordered that all available records of Madeline Shapley's disappearance be examined and a search be made for any other cases of missing women in Spring Lake around that time.”

It was just a blind stab, Duggan thought, but we hit the jackpot.

“Our researchers found that two other young women had been listed as missing at around that same time” Osborne continued. “Madeline Shapley had last been seen on the porch of the family home on Hayes Avenue when she disappeared on September 7, 1891.

“Letitia Gregg of Tuttle Avenue disappeared on August 5, 1893. According to the police file, her parents feared that she might have gone swimming alone, which was why that case was never classified as suspicious.

“Three years later, on March 31, 1896, Letita's devoted friend Ellen Swain disappeared. She had been observed leaving a friend's home as dusk was settling in.”

And that's when the media starts screaming about a turn-of-the-century serial killer in Spring Lake, Tommy thought. Just what we need.

Osborne glanced at his watch. “It's one minute of eleven. Let's go.”

The briefing room was packed. The questions thrown at Osborne were rapid and hard-hitting. There was no way he could argue with the
New York Post
reporter who said that the finding of the two skeletal remains on the same site could not be a bizarre coincidence.

“I agree,” Osborne said. “The finger bone with the ring was deliberately placed inside the plastic with Martha's body.”

“Where
inside the plastic?” the ABC crime reporter asked.

“Within Martha's hand.”

“Do you think it was a coincidence that the killer found the other remains when he dug Martha's grave, or could he possibly have chosen that spot because he knew it had been used as a burial ground?” Ralph Penza, a senior reporter from NBC, asked quietly.

“It would be ridiculous if I were to suggest that someone anxious to bury his victim and avoid possible detection would happen upon the bones of another victim and make the snap decision to place a finger bone within the shroud he was creating.”

Osborne held up a photograph. “This is an enlarged aerial shot of the crime site.” He pointed to the excavation pit in the backyard. “Martha's killer dug a relatively shallow grave, but it might never have been found except for the pool excavation. Until a year ago a very large holly tree totally blocked that section of the backyard from the view of anyone in the house or on the street.”

In response to another question, he verified that Emily Graham, the new owner of the property, was a descendant of the original owners, and that, yes, if she were willing, DNA testing would establish whether or not the remains found with Martha's were those of Ms. Graham's great-great-grandaunt.