The Betrayed. Heather Graham
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looked in and sighed. “Back out, everyone but Mahoney, Van Camp and Voorhaven. I don’t want evidence compromised. Get the M.E. and the crime scene people here,” he ordered.
Aidan followed him, then carefully stepped through.
He threw the beam of his flashlight over the stone floor. No hope of prints, since the stone was bare of dust. He walked carefully toward the body, touching nothing, keeping his light trained on the corpse.
Aidan wasn’t an M.E., but it seemed to him that the head had been cleanly severed with great strength and probably a single blow. Highsmith hadn’t been killed in the tomb; there wasn’t much blood. And, of course, Aidan couldn’t know if he’d been killed and then decapitated—or killed by decapitation. He found himself reminded of a history lesson: Queen Anne Boleyn asking Henry VIII for a headsman from France so her execution would be swift and clean.
Purbeck had come in behind him. He, too, touched nothing and studied the body.
As the two detectives—Van Camp and Voorhaven—also walked into the tomb, Aidan put down his flashlight and checked for Highsmith’s wallet with gloved hands. He found it in his pocket, just as he’d expected to.
“Anything in there?” Van Camp asked him.
“Wallet, keys...”
Carefully, Aidan checked Highsmith’s other pocket. Lint—and a matchbook. He held it up to Voorhaven’s flashlight glare.
“From some place called Mystic Magic,” he said.
“Whoa,” Van Camp muttered.
“It’s a new strip club down close to Irving,” Voorhaven explained.
“Doesn’t sound like Richard Highsmith,” Purbeck said.
Voorhaven produced an evidence bag, but Aidan briefly held on to the matchbook, flipping it open. He wasn’t surprised to see that Highsmith had scribbled something in it. “‘Lizzie grave,’” he read aloud.
“Odd name for a stripper,” Van Camp commented.
“I doubt it’s a stripper’s name,” Aidan told the others.
“Then what?” Van Camp asked.
“Maybe it has to do with a dead woman named Lizzie. Lizzie’s grave,” Aidan said impatiently, dropping the matchbook in the evidence bag.
Voorhaven snorted. “Ah, hell! Do you know how many Lizzies have died and been buried here over the last several hundred years?”
Purbeck shook his head. “Let the M.E. and the crime scene techs in now,” he said, turning to leave the vault. He paused at the door. “We have another victim out there—and another head to find.”
Aidan stayed behind for a minute, his gloved hand resting lightly on Richard’s arm. Rigor had come and gone; he’d been dead awhile. He’d probably been killed soon after he disappeared.
“Old friend,” he murmured. “I’ll get whoever did this to you.”
The young woman, Maureen—or Mo— Deauville, had not come in. She stood with her dog just outside the gates and Aidan felt her eyes on him, even though he was darkness and shadow.
He exited the tomb and approached Maureen just as Purbeck came up beside her. The place was now crawling with people. Voorhaven and Van Camp were by the corpse that had been so strategically arranged to look like a host—welcoming them, inviting them to enter the tomb. They had to discover the identity of this woman. Her death was as great a crime, as great a tragedy, as Highsmith’s.
“I know Van Camp already mentioned this, but are we sure it’s not a name? Lizzie Grave?” Purbeck asked Aidan. “Not necessarily a stripper’s name. Maybe someone he met?”
Aidan shook his head. “I’m almost certain it’s not,” he said. “I think he grabbed that matchbook wherever he was—could’ve been anywhere—and jotted down a note. I agree with you that it’s highly unlikely he was ever in that strip club—not when he was here on an important speaking engagement. I think he just saw the matchbook somewhere. In a dressing room or at a lunch counter, maybe. Or someone gave it to him. And I think Lizzie grave means...Lizzie’s grave. But the first thing we need to do is discover the identity of our other victim.”
“God help us,” Purbeck said. “We started out looking for a body. Now...now, we’ve got to find another head.” He turned to Mo Deauville. “You and Rollo ready?”
Aidan believed she was fighting her own mental battle, but she nodded. “Yes, of course,” she said. She brought the wolfhound to where the headless corpse leaned. The cops made way for her. The dog stood at a distance, but lifted his nose high—almost as if he were weighing the merits of a perfume.
Mo Deauville commanded the dog to sit, then approached the corpse and rested her hand gently on the woman’s shoulder.
As if she could...somehow feel something. A communication—from the corpse!
She lowered her head, then looked at Purbeck.
“We’re ready,” she said.
She touched the dog’s head. Aidan couldn’t be sure, but he thought she was giving Rollo some kind of signal.
Well, of course she was. She was asking him to find...the rest of the woman.
No, it seemed to be more than that.
But she quickly set off, tightly clutching the dog’s leash.
With the exception of the crime scene personnel and a few cops left standing guard, everyone trailed after her. They went up and down hills as they walked through one cemetery to get to the other, and eventually wound up on the street again.
“Oh, no. Oh, God, no,” Purbeck said.
Yes.
Across the street, at yet another headless horseman effigy, this one in front of a dry cleaning business, a crowd was gathering.
People weren’t alarmed; they seemed to be in awe.
There were pictures being taken.
The crowd wasn’t even being particularly ghoulish. The horseman stood in the midst of a Halloween display of pumpkins, bats, black cats and flying witches.
“Get the people away,” Purbeck said quietly.
Rollo woofed.
Voorhaven and Van Camp went running across the street, along with half-a-dozen men in uniform.
Aidan glanced at Mo. She stood there, holding Rollo’s leash. She didn’t turn away, although he could tell she wasn’t going any closer. There was a stoic expression on her face, but sadness in her eyes.
“Thank you,” Aidan murmured to her. He crossed the street and hurried over to the display. The area was now being cleared of people.
He knew the crowd hadn’t understood that the horseman with its witch’s head wasn’t part of this gruesome display. The head...was real.
Purbeck followed him. As Aidan stepped up onto a bale of hay beside a wire-and-plastic assembly, he heard the lieutenant mutter.
“God, I pray this means both our bodies are complete!”
Aidan thought they were. It was difficult to be sure, but he had to believe this was what they were looking for. The “witch’s” wealth of long dark hair had been adorned with a black pointed hat. Van Camp stood on a second bale near him, silently inspecting the scene. He motioned to one of the photographers to capture the image from a number of different angles. When the photographer finished the initial shots, Aidan turned to Van Camp, who nodded. He removed the hat and passed it down to Jimmy Voorhaven. Jimmy bagged it, then he carefully brushed aside the tangle of dark hair.
“Mid-thirties?” Van Camp murmured. “Attractive, good bone structure.