Blood Red (18 page)

She rolls over, huddling deeper into the goose down comforter as the thought of her soon-­to-­be-­ex-­husband settles over her like a clammy blanket on a raw day.

Back in September, when he said they had to talk, she assumed he wanted to discuss their upcoming wedding anniversary.

She was wrong.

“This isn't working,” he said, and for a moment she thought he was referring to the cell phone clasped in his strong, well-­groomed surgeon's hands. He wasn't wearing his gold wedding band, she noticed belatedly—­but only after he clarified that it was their marriage that wasn't working.

“We've grown apart,” he said, and had the audacity to heap on a few more clichés: “I want us to stay friends,” and “There's no one else,” topped off by “It's not you. It's me.”

“Really?” she said with a bitter laugh. “Really? It's not you, it's me? Can't you do any better than that?”

He could not, other than to assure her, once again, that there's not another woman.

She didn't believe it then, and she doesn't believe it now. You don't walk away from a life like the one they've built here unless you're walking toward something you think is going to be better.

But it won't be, after a while. It never is, in these situations. Sooner or later, Kevin is going to come crawling back.

Or maybe he won't be able to leave her after all, despite having presented it as a fait accompli.

She's always given him plenty of space. She's never complained about him being gone so much. She brings in a good income and she takes good care of the house and the kids and the dog and herself. She may be closing in on fifty, but there's not an ounce of flab on her body. She avoids the sun and has regular injections to keep facial wrinkles at bay, and she'd never permit a strand of gray in her long red mane.

Hell, she's handled enough divorce cases to know that she's not the kind of wife men leave; she's the kind of woman they leave their wives for. In fact . . .

She shakes her head, pushing away the thought of the man who would have done just that, if she'd let him.

But I wasn't about to walk away from Kevin, and I was so positive he'd never walk away from me.

Yes, well . . . live and learn.

Aware that she has a client meeting in less than an hour, she throws aside the covers and stretches, glad she showered the first time she got up. All it takes now is ten minutes to splash water on her face, put on some makeup, brush her teeth and her hair, and throw on a suit.

Downstairs, she pours lukewarm coffee into a mug and goes over the kids' afterschool schedules as she waits for it to reheat in the microwave. Shannon has an SAT prep class, Sabrina has a piano lesson, Samantha a Girl Scout meeting. Three different directions, but with enough time between them that Noreen can get each girl to where she has to be and back home again.

Piece of cake, she thinks, removing her coffee from the microwave, dumping it into a plastic go-­mug, and heading for the door.

The kids haven't been informed of the looming separation. With Sean overseas until just before Christmas, the news has had to wait; it's the kind that should be shared in person with all the kids at once. They'll undoubtedly be caught off guard by it.

Noreen certainly was.

Her three daughters, who have been living obliviously under this roof as the marriage unraveled, will be upset when they find out, but it's her son who will take it the hardest. Sean is by far the most sensitive of her brood, and he's been homesick this semester. Just last night he texted that he can't wait to come home for Christmas and reminded her that he doesn't have to be back on campus at Notre Dame until mid-­January.

I was thinking you and I and Dad can do some skiing while the girls are in school
, he wrote.

Sounds fun
, she replied, which was better than a vague
We'll see
, much less letting it slip that he's going to spend part of that break helping his father settle into a new apartment.

Kevin wants to officially move in on January first. “That'll give the kids some time to absorb the separation.”

“Ten days. Great.”

Even she hasn't absorbed it yet, and she's had three months.

“You must have seen this coming,” Kevin kept insisting.

She denied it. But looking back, she can't remember if she was lying to him, or to both of them. When, exactly, did she fall out of love? When did he? Does it matter?

Aside from her clients, plenty of ­couples she knows manage to keep their families intact when the romance fades. They just live separate lives, and no one outside the marriage is the wiser.

Why do we have to be different? Why do we have to endure a divorce?

No one knows better than Noreen what that can do to children, not to mention finances.

Now the world will know she failed spectacularly at something she'd considered one of her greatest successes. For twenty-­three years, she was proud, perhaps smugly so, that she'd married so well.

And now . . .

I have no control over my future. None. He's decided what's going to happen to me, whether I like it or not.

In the front hall, she takes her coat from the closet and picks up her leather satchel filled with legal briefs for the meeting.

Her gaze falls on the wedding portrait in a Baccarat crystal frame on the table by the staircase. Just looking at it, she feels a fresh scream beginning to swell inside of her.

She reaches a trembling hand toward the photo, displaced by Luz and her dust cloth.

The burgeoning scream, were she to allow it to escape her throat, would undoubtedly shatter the frame along with every window in the house.

As always, she suppresses the rage.

She gently nudges the frame back a bit, away from the table's edge, once more at a perfect forty-­five-­degree angle.

There. That's better. Much better.

She gives a satisfied nod and walks out the door.

H
aving wasted the early morning hours prowling the streets for a suitable stand-­in, Casey gave up when the commuters began to swarm.

Back at home, a nap would have been welcome, but sleep refused to come. A long hot shower—­not a bath, never a bath!—­helped a little. So did some tea and toast, yet Casey remains fidgety as the day wears on.

Out on the street beyond the window, a light drizzle washes into the gutters the last traces of snow that had fallen overnight. There was barely enough to stick, but it was sufficient to keep all but the hardiest New Yorkers from venturing out early unless they had to. Casey's interest lies not in those hardy types, but in the sweetly feminine and vulnerable—­precisely the kind of woman who would choose to spend a stormy morning safely snuggled at home.

At least the futile early morning wanderlust resulted in one fruitful find: a copy of the
New York Daily News
, with its front page photo of a West Side crime scene and the headline:
MYSTERY WOMAN SLAIN
.

She's not a mystery to me.

How gratifying to be the only person alive who knows her name. And how amusing to find that the accompanying article shares so few specific details about the crime. The authorities hold them back, hoping to eventually trap the culprit into revealing things only the killer would know.

They won't trap me.

Casey settles at the table with the newspaper and takes great care to cut out the article with freshly honed scissors. On the reverse side is an article about the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor bombing.

Ah, today is December 7—­the date lives in infamy, right up there with September 11.

And November 30
.

Casey smiles contentedly. The second scrapbook is coming along as nicely as Vanessa's, filled with precious relics of a productive and cathartic year. A time capsule, if you will.

Really, the collection rivals the archival exhibits at the Mundy's Landing Historical Society. It might even, when all is said and done, compete with whatever lies buried in the vault beneath the marble floor of Village Hall.

Casey thinks back to a rainy summer afternoon when the museum was packed with visitors. They were so stupidly oblivious, caught up in dusty old murders when a modern mastermind was right there in their midst, scheming something far greater.

One day, these scrapbooks will be part of just such an exhibit. ­People will travel from all over the world to see it.

They'll try to solve the case, try to figure out who I am—­but of course, they won't be able to. I'll always be one step ahead of them, just like the best of the best: the Sleeping Beauty Killer and Jack the Ripper and the Zodiac . . .

Casey flips chronologically through the pages of the scrapbook.
So many memories. So many beautiful girls. I'll never forget them.

Ah, here's the blank page. This is where Julia Sexton's story will begin—­and end.

First, the proper tools: a ruler to measure the page and then the clipping, three times. That's the rule. You measure once, twice, thrice, and then you use a pencil to mark the spot. It has to be a number two pencil, because it brings back the memory of the yellow cardboard cutouts taped on to the wall outside each classroom at Mundy's Landing Elementary School.

I want the one that says Ms. Mundy
, Casey decides.
I have to have it, for Rowan's scrapbook.

Like Vanessa, Rowan has her very own volume. Already, hers is filled with souvenirs. Some were gleaned from Casey's excursions through her house; others were relevant items picked up here and there along the way. The latest addition: the customer copy of the dinner check from Marrana's last Monday night.

The quest to get the pencil cutout will present a bit of a challenge, but nothing insurmountable. In fact, another visit to the school would present the perfect opportunity to deliver another little gift.

Contemplating the new plan, Casey pastes the newspaper article precisely in the center of the page, then reaches into a drawer where the rest of the relics are waiting.

Julia's wallet, minus its meager contents, was discarded in a Dumpster a few blocks away from where she died. Sooner or later, it'll find its way into the landfill or into the hands of the NYPD. Either way is fine.

They'll never suspect me.

Even if, by some bizarre turn of events, Casey's tracks aren't covered as well as they should be, it won't matter.

A whole new life will be under way very soon, far from New York City and far from Mundy's Landing. Julia Sexton will be nothing but a distant memory, albeit a pleasurable one. For the police, she'll represent yet another unsolved homicide.

Now who's the authority?

Positioning her driver's license, MetroCard, and five-­dollar-­bill on the page, Casey feels the edgy compulsion beginning to take hold again.

It was all so perfect: the secret ladybug tattoo, sweet-­smelling skin, the throaty pleas for her life to be spared . . .

She'd been so wonderfully terrified in those all-­too-­fleeting final moments when she grasped exactly what was about to happen to her.

I wanted to savor it this time, but I got carried away again.

Quickly, much too quickly, it was over. Julia lay lifelessly cradled in Casey's arms. It was time to kiss her good-­bye.

Next time, it will be Rowan's turn.

And then it will be over for good, and Casey will move on.

Just one more . . .

Two, if you count Rowan's son.

And I'm not counting him
, Casey thinks with disdain.

Anyway, it won't be enough.

If I could only have one more stand-­in, I'd make it last. I wouldn't just pounce on someone who strikes my fancy. I'd get closer and closer and when it's time, I'd make sure she suffers.

Vanessa's voice floats back from Thanksgiving Day just over a year ago, the last time Casey saw her alive. It was just the two of them.

“No, I didn't make any hors d'oeuvres,” she said. “They only ruin your appetite.”

“But I'm starved.”

“Good. Everything will taste much better if you're truly famished. Know what I mean?”

“I know exactly what you mean.”

But I didn't really. Not then.

Anyway, Vanessa's philosophy didn't keep Casey from complaining that dinner was taking too long.

“Come on, cut it out.”

“Cut what out?”

“Being so hangry.”

“You mean hungry.”

“I mean angry because you're hungry.
Hangry
.”

Who wouldn't smile at something so clever?

I did, even though I was hangry. And now . . . I'm even hangrier.

But she was right—­everything tastes much better when you're truly famished. And I'll be sated very soon . . .

Resolving to stick to the plan, Casey picks up the final memento of last night: silken strands of Julia Sexton's long red hair, tied—­just for now—­with a white satin ribbon smeared with blood.

 

From the
Mundy's Landing Tribune
Archives

Front Page

November 4, 2015

Mayor Ransom Ousted in Landslide

Democrat John Elsworth Ransom, whose roots extend to the first settlers of Mundy's Landing and whose tenure as mayor stretches back to dawning hours of the twenty-­first century, was soundly defeated by Republican Dean Cochran in yesterday's local election.

Cochran, a native Californian, is a commercial real estate developer who relocated to the area in 2011. He has since been instrumental in the development of Mundy Estates, a luxury townhome development where he currently resides. Celebrating his victory last night at party headquarters, he said, “The ­people of Mundy's Landing are prepared to prove that it is, indeed possible to march toward the future while keeping the past firmly in our collective sightline.”

The incumbent mayor expressed disappointment that constituents had “placed their confidence in a candidate whose tenuous ties to our community and lack of a viable political track record may jeopardize the dignity and integrity of our hometown.”

Sworn in on January 1, 2000, lifelong resident Ransom had promised a new era of prosperity and revitalization of the central business district. Indeed, despite the recession, Mayor Ransom's four consecutive terms saw nearly two dozen empty storefronts along Market and Broad Streets transformed into thriving locally owned restaurants and boutiques, successfully keeping national chains such as Starbucks and CVS from setting up shop within the village proper.

“I'm as much a fan of mom-­and-­pop operations as the next guy,” Cochran told voters during an election eve rally. “But why limit ourselves? Chain stores exist alongside small businesses in economically vibrant communities across the country. Let's embrace the expansion that will ultimately restore our beloved village to its glory days as a Hudson River boomtown.”

A vocal proponent of the budding local tourism industry, Mayor-­elect Cochran is currently in discussion with several major hotel corporations interested in developing the vacant parcel of land on Colonial Highway where Valley Cove Pleasure Park stood a century ago. He points out that the vast majority of attendees for the annual Mundy's Landing Historical Society–sponsored Scene of the Crime Convention—­colloquially known as Mundypalooza—­are forced to find lodging elsewhere. “Let's keep those visitors—­and their open wallets—­right here in town,” he said during the campaign, prompting Mayor Ransom to accuse him of “exploiting murder for politics and profit.”

The convention, during which crime buffs, armchair sleuths, and curiosity seekers from around the globe try their hand at solving the Sleeping Beauty murders of 1916, was perhaps the most hotly contested issue in a tension-­fraught mayoral race.

Ransom has eschewed the event since its inception in 1991, while Cochran serves on the planning board for the 2016 convention, which marks the hundred-­year anniversary of the crime spree and coincides with ML350, a planned celebration to commemorate the village's 350-­year-­old heritage and the public opening of a time capsule buried a century ago.