Roaming the gallery, she noticed random objects among the detritus, some of which she still remembered from her childhood visits. A pocket watch. A woman’s shoe. A blade saw from the mill’s early days. In the corner, a wax figure wore the remains of a Union Army uniform from the Civil War. Drops of water fell from the sleeves, and large holes that resembled cigarette burns marred the fabric. The figure’s face had melted, its misshapen nose oozing down to what had once been its chin.
She looked to the wall opposite the front door. Still hanging there, safe in its frame, was the deed Emma had mentioned earlier. Roughly the same size as a newspaper and written in florid script, it stated that Mr. Irwin Perry now owned a hundred acres of land outside an unnamed village in southeastern Pennsylvania. A year later, the Perry Mill opened, flooding the village with workers. To mark this surge, the village was officially named Perry Hollow. Of all the pieces in the museum, the deed was the most treasured. Seeing that it had been spared made Kat breathe a sigh of relief.
Emma, however, was downright overcome with emotion. Sniffing back tears of gratitude, she hugged both Kat and Dutch.
“You helped save history,” she told them. “You really did.”
“I’ll take it down,” Dutch said. “Then we’ve got to get the hell out of here. I don’t want to press our luck.”
While he removed the frame from the wall, Emma took off her helmet and whipped out her cell phone one more time. “I have to tell Constance. She’ll be thrilled to know the deed survived.”
She dialed and held the phone to her ear. A second later, Kat heard a muffled trilling coming from somewhere inside the museum. It chirped three more times before abruptly going silent.
“She’s still not picking up,” Emma said, flipping her phone shut.
Kat also removed her helmet. “Call her again.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
Once again, Emma tapped in the phone number. And once again, Kat heard the electronic trill. She edged to a corner of the room. The sound was slightly louder there, though still muffled. When it chirped again, Kat realized the noise was coming from beneath the floor.
She turned to Emma. “Does the museum have a basement?”
“There’s a crawl space under the gallery. We sometimes use it for storage, although the rest of the collection is up in the attic.”
“How can I get down there?”
“A trapdoor,” Emma said, confused. “You’re standing on it.”
Kat took a step backward, finally seeing several gaps in the floorboards that formed a square. A nickel-sized hole—easy to miss if you weren’t looking for it—sat on one side of the square. Kneeling, Kat jammed an index finger into the hole and raised the trapdoor until she could slide a hand under it.
Seeing what she was doing, Dutch handed the framed deed to Emma. He then knelt next to Kat, aiming the flashlight into the crawl space as she removed the door and peered inside.
What they saw was Constance Bishop.
She was slumped over a wooden chest, her generous rump raised in the air. Her legs were bent slightly, knees pushing against the wooden chest, and her lifeless arms dangled forward. One of her shoes was missing, revealing the sole of a foot blackened with dirt.
Dutch moved the flashlight beam over her body, which hadn’t been able to escape the fire hoses despite being beneath the floor. Beads of water dotted the pale skin on the back of her legs. Her blouse and skirt, darkened by moisture, clung to her body.
When the light reached the back of her head, Kat saw a flash of crimson. Blood. Just behind her right ear. Tiny bits of white stuck to her hair. Bone fragments, Kat surmised. Or maybe brain matter.
“Sweet Jesus,” Dutch muttered.
“What’s down there?”
It was Emma Pulsifer, stomping toward them with the deed tucked under her arm. Kat stood, trying to block her, but it was too late. Emma peered into the crawl space, spotted Constance, and choked out a strangled cry.
“No! Dear God, no.”
She clamped a palm against her open mouth, the deed slipping from her arms. The frame shattered when it hit the floor—Perry Hollow’s founding document smashed into a hundred pieces.
The noise snapped Kat into action. Returning to the floor, she lowered herself into the crawl space. It was a tight fit, especially with Constance there, but she managed to squeeze herself inside. For once, being short was an advantage. Still, wiggle room was nonexistent, forcing her to stand behind Constance, straddling her lifeless legs.
As Dutch held the light steady from above, Kat leaned forward until her chest was pressed against Constance’s back. She placed two fingers against the side of Constance’s neck, feeling for a pulse.
There wasn’t one.
Not content with the results, Kat pivoted as much as space would allow and reached for Constance’s left arm. Although it was as heavy and unwieldy as wet cardboard, she managed to raise it enough to slip two fingers against her wrist. No pulse there, either.
“She’s dead,” Kat announced.
She swallowed hard, suppressing the sob that threatened to bubble up from deep in her chest. Part of her sadness was, of course, for Constance Bishop, a kind woman whose life had been cut short. The rest of the grief was reserved for her town. She thought the violence had died with the Grim Reaper killer. She was wrong. Murder had once again visited Perry Hollow.
Above her, Emma’s sobs grew louder. They blasted through the hole in the floor and echoed into the smallest recesses of the crawl space until they became tinny and faint. The light above Kat shifted as Dutch apparently turned in an attempt to comfort Emma. The new slant of the flashlight’s beam illuminated the left side of Constance’s head, her shoulder, and part of the arm that Kat was still holding. It also, Kat noticed, shed light on a series of black marks on Constance’s hand.
“Don’t move,” she shouted up to Dutch. “Keep the light right where it is.”
“Why?” he called back.
Kat didn’t answer. Instead, she leaned forward even more, staring at the dark lines on chalky flesh. They were letters, she realized, scrawled in what seemed to be black marker.
Someone had written on Constance Bishop’s hand.
Kat twisted the wrist until all of the words were visible. Fear poked her ribs as she read what had been written across Constance’s skin. It was a fear she had last experienced a year ago. A fear she had hoped to never feel again. But there it was, jabbing at her with an insistence that made her want to scream. It stayed with her as she read the words on Constance’s hand a second time, then a third.
A mere five words long, the message was simple but agonizingly clear.
THIS IS JUST THE FIRST.
It was the longest journey of his life, if not in distance then in actual travel time. Sixteen hours total. Most of them containing at least one headache.
First was the maddening cab ride through rush hour in Rome—a gridlock of Smart Cars and scooters and curses shouted in Italian. Next came the interminable wait at the airport as his flight was delayed. Twice. Once onboard, it was ten hours in coach, trying to sleep as the college kid sitting next to him exhausted an endless supply of gadgets: iPad, iPod, iPhone.
After they landed in Philadelphia, it took an hour to get through customs, although he was still an American citizen. He chalked that up to his face. People tended not to trust a face like his. As annoying as it was, he couldn’t blame them.
He considered every roadblock an omen, telling him to turn around. He certainly had considered it. Many times. The words I shouldn’t be doing this ran through his mind more often than not. It was a bad idea, clearly. Anyone could see that. Yet he pressed on, exiting the airport and stepping once again onto American soil.
Since he didn’t have a driver’s license, in the U.S. or in Italy, he had to plead with a cabbie to drive him forty-five minutes into the middle of nowhere. When begging didn’t work, cash did. An exorbitant amount that he had to pay up front before he could even open the passenger door. Reaching town, he found a very familiar police car blocking the street his hotel was on, forcing him to carry his luggage several blocks on foot, through a crowd, in front of a fire.
A fitting end to his journey, really. And, he thought, yet another reason why he should have stayed where he was. But now it was too late to turn back. Now he couldn’t blame the traffic or the delayed flights or the snide jackass at customs.
Now, whether he wanted to be or not, Henry Goll was back in Perry Hollow.
He was staying at the Sleepy Hollow Inn, a three-story bed-and-breakfast that was the only game in town as far as hotels went. His room was on the top floor, and while surprisingly large, it left a lot to be desired. It was too antique, too flowery, and smelled too much like cheap soap. All that pastel and potpourri was suffocating—like being hugged too tightly by an old woman.
As he unpacked, Henry considered finding another place to stay. His options, though, were limited. He knew exactly one person who would put him up for the night, and she was two blocks away dealing with a fire.
Henry had heard Chief Kat Campbell shout his name through the crowd of onlookers. For a moment, he had almost stopped and greeted her with the warmth and kindness she deserved. Instead, he ignored her, escaping the crowd unseen while the chief was occupied with some tall man she had just bumped into.
It’s not that he didn’t want to see Kat. He was genuinely looking forward to catching up and hearing how both she and James were doing. But tonight wasn’t the right time. She was busy, and Henry was—well, he wasn’t happy to be here.
He never thought he’d be back in Perry Hollow. He had had no desire to return. There were too many bad memories of the last time he was here. The thread pulling through his skin. The scalpel at his throat. The fire and chaos and blood that followed. Moving to Italy had dulled the memories, but Henry was afraid seeing Kat would bring many of them back. That trip down memory lane, he decided, could wait until later.
When Henry finished unpacking, he looked at his watch, which was still set to Italian time. It was after eight A.M. there. Dario would definitely be awake. Which meant it was time to call home.
Henry’s phone barely got out one ring before it was answered with a terse “Pronto.”
“Sono Henry.”
“Henry! How was your flight?”
Although Henry was fluent in Italian, Dario Giambusso insisted on speaking English with him. Henry suspected his editor was trying to show off. Or maybe his Italian was that bad, and Dario was tired of hearing him butcher his native tongue. Either way, whenever they spoke, English was the language of choice.
“The flight was”—Henry grasped for the right word—“long. But I’m here.”
“Very good. Now you should relax. It’s early there, no?”
Dario’s voice was almost drowned out by a loud whirring noise. It was accompanied by the rhythmic slapping of bare feet on a hard surface. He was on his treadmill. Other than knowing English, a love of exercise was the only thing Henry and his editor had in common.
“It is early,” Henry said. “But relaxation isn’t on the agenda. I have a lot of background information to go through before I start contacting my sources.”
“Don’t run yourself ragged. You need sleep, too.”
“I slept on the plane.”
“Then maybe you can visit that lady friend of yours,” Dario said, voice thick with innuendo. “Does she still live in town?”
He was talking about Deana, Henry’s girlfriend before everything went to hell. Of course Dario knew about her. Most of the world did, just as they knew about what had happened to Henry. His story wasn’t a secret. It was the reason, in fact, he had been sent to Perry Hollow instead of the reporter who usually covered this beat. Henry certainly didn’t volunteer for the assignment. No, he had been handpicked by Dario, who thought Henry’s history with the town was something he could exploit.
“Seeing Deana Swan isn’t on my agenda,” Henry said. “I just want to do my job and go home.”
“That’s very noble, Henry.” The slapping noises got faster. Dario had just kicked up his speed. “But, in a way, you already are home.”
Henry, no longer in the mood to talk, told his editor he’d check in as soon as he found something. Then with a quick ciao, he hung up.
Tossing the phone onto the bed, Henry retreated to the bathroom and stared in the mirror over the sink. His reflection contained so many flaws he didn’t know where to look first. The large burn mark at his left temple had been there for so long that he barely even noticed it anymore. Same thing with the scar that ran from ear to chin, intersecting both of his lips in the process.
The others at his lips were more recent, and he still wasn’t used to them. Not even after a year spent studying them in any mirror he could find. The plastic surgeons had managed to save what they could, but it was still clear something horrible had happened to him. His lips were now a series of unsightly bumps, populated with specks of white where the needle and thread had slipped through. When Henry ran his fingertips over them, it felt like he was trying to read Braille.
Tugging on his collar, Henry examined the right side of his neck. His skin was eggshell pale, even after months of living in Italy, and logic dictated that the scar there wouldn’t be as noticeable because of it. But sometimes logic had no place where the human body was concerned, and the scar on his neck was the most visible one of all. It was a bright pink and wider than the others. Even when Henry wore a shirt and tie, it was still visible, a cruel reminder of his past peeking out of his collar.
“Welcome home, Henry,” he muttered to his reflection. “Hopefully you’ll leave in better shape than you did last time.”
“I don’t know why anyone would want to hurt Connie. It’s devastating. Absolutely devastating.”
Emma Pulsifer used the sleeve of her nightgown to dab at her eyes. They were red and raw, the result of a crying jag that had lasted for the better part of an hour. Kat spent that time making calls to the appropriate authorities—county sheriff, prosecutor’s office, state police—and then greeting the endless stream of cops and crime scene techs who arrived at the museum. Now she was back with Emma, who had calmed down enough to talk.
The two of them sat in a dim conference room next to the museum’s back door. It was dry there and mostly free of the smoky residue left by the fire. Just down the hall, the small army of investigators got to work in the main gallery. Kat heard cautious footsteps on the charred floor and the low murmur of voices trying to piece everything together. Occasionally, the incandescent flash of a camera bounced down the hallway, causing Emma to flinch.
“Constance was a widow, right?” Kat asked.
“Just like me,” Emma said. “There weren’t any children.”
“Did she have any other family that you know of? Any immediate next of kin you think we should contact?”
“Not that I know of. The historical society was her family. She devoted her life to it.”
“Is there anyone in the historical society that didn’t get along with Constance?” Kat asked. “Anyone who might want to do her harm?”
The suggestion seemed to horrify Emma, who dropped her jaw before answering, “Of course not. Everyone loved her. There were disagreements, naturally. But nothing that would result in murder.”
She was mistaken there. Kat knew anything could result in murder. A grudge. An affair. A lie that spiraled out of control. Sometimes nothing prompted the killing. Sometimes people just snapped. The ominous warning scrawled on Constance’s hand—THIS IS JUST THE FIRST—pointed in that direction. Kat didn’t want to consider that possibility at the moment, so she asked, “What kind of disagreements are we talking about?”
“Well, this museum, for one,” Emma said. “It’s free to the public, and some members disagreed with that. They thought we should charge admission. We’re always short on funds, and the extra money would help. Connie disagreed. She said the town’s history belonged to everyone. We were just the people who took care of it.”
“And what did you think?”
“It didn’t matter what I thought. Connie was the president. She had the final say.”
Kat leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms. “How many members does the historical society have? I know there were you and Constance. Who else?”
“It was just the five of us. Father Ron is the secretary. Claude Dobson is the treasurer. And Mayor Hammond is the honorary member, as were all the mayors before him.”
Kat had seen Father Ron and the mayor outside while the fire was still raging. As far as she knew, Claude Dobson, a retired high school history teacher, wasn’t with them. She wasn’t sure if that worked in his favor or not.
“When was the last time you saw Constance?”
“Tonight.” Emma checked her watch, seeing they had entered a new day. “I mean, last night.”
“What time was that?”
“A little before eight. I drove past the museum and saw the lights were still on. I popped in and found Connie still here, just like I thought.”
“In the gallery?”
“In her office. It’s across the hall.”
Kat looked past Emma to the doorway behind her. An office sat on the other side of the hallway, its door closed. Someone had been smart enough to criss-cross it with police tape.
“I’m assuming she was alone,” she said.
“It was just Connie at her desk, as usual.”
“What did you two talk about?”
“Chitchat, mostly,” Emma said. “I asked if she planned on going to the Chamber of Commerce fund-raiser later.”
The fund-raiser was the premier social event of the year in Perry Hollow, which wasn’t saying much. It probably looked like a rinky-dink affair to people from more metropolitan areas, but in a town where most wedding receptions were held in the Elks Lodge, the fund-raiser was a very big deal. Those who could afford it put on their best clothes, sipped cocktails, and gossiped the night away. Kat had been invited but politely declined the offer. She wasn’t good at schmoozing, nor did she enjoy it. Besides, it had been movie night with James—part of her renewed push to spend more time with him. That night’s selection was Toy Story, one of his favorites.
“Is the fund-raiser where you were headed when you passed the museum?”
Emma’s nod turned into a flinch as another burst of flashbulbs shot down the hall. “It was. Connie told me she’d be there in a little while. But she never showed.”
“Were any other members of the historical society there?”
“Yes,” Emma said. “All of us.”
“What time did it end?”
“I’m not sure. I left close to midnight. The others were still there.”
The fire, Kat had learned, was first reported by Dave and Betty Freeman, who saw it from their bedroom window. The 911 call was made at 12:52. Whoever was still at the fund-raiser at that time was in the clear. Emma Pulsifer, however, wasn’t one of them.
“Where was the fund-raiser held this year?”
“Maison D’Avignon,” Emma said, referring to the French restaurant that had helped turn Perry Hollow from a crumbling mill town into something slightly more upscale. It was located on Main Street, five blocks up and four blocks over from the museum.
“And did you pass the museum on your way home?”
“I took a different route.”
“Did you stop anywhere along the way? A place where someone else could verify your presence. A gas station, perhaps? Or maybe at the ATM outside Commonwealth Bank.”
“No. I went straight home.” Suspicion crept into Emma’s voice. “And I don’t see why any of this matters.”
“I’m just trying to place your whereabouts when the fire started.”
“I was in bed,” Emma said, tugging absently on her pink nightgown. “I heard the sirens, looked out the window, and saw the flames. I didn’t even know it was the museum that was on fire until I got closer.”
Since Emma was also a widow, there was no one at home to back up her alibi. Kat had to take what she was saying at face value. She didn’t want to, but for the time being, she had no choice.
“One last question before you can go,” Kat said. “Why was Constance here so late on a Friday night?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Emma said.
“Was she normally here at night?”
“In the past, no. But in the last few weeks or so, yes.”
“Was she working on something?”
“Maybe.”
Emma made no effort to elaborate, prompting Kat to say, “Either she was or she wasn’t.”
“She was. Possibly. On Thursday, she sent an e?mail to the rest of us in the historical society calling an emergency meeting.”
“About what?”
“No one knows. But I have a feeling it had something to do with all the time she was spending here lately.”
“And when did she want to have this meeting?”
“Tonight,” Emma said. “She wanted to have it tonight.”
Kat felt the yawn coming on as she guided Emma Pulsifer out of the museum via the back door. She managed to stifle it as she told Emma to expect more questions in the morning, both about Constance and about the museum itself. But once she was back inside the building, heading down the hall to the main gallery, the yawn erupted—jaw-stretching proof of just how tired she really was.
A sallow-faced man with gray hair standing in the middle of the gallery noticed—it was hard not to—and gave her a knowing smile. The man was Wallace Noble, the medical examiner, and Kat had known him since the days when her father was Perry Hollow’s police chief.
“Long night, eh?” he said in a voice made raspy by forty years of smoking.
Kat replied with another, more modest yawn. “Yep. And I’m afraid this is just the beginning of a very long morning. This case looks like it’ll keep me up for days.”
“I thought you’d be used to it by now,” Wallace said. “First the Grim Reaper killings. Then the Olmstead thing. You seem to get all the good crimes.”
“I guess I’m just lucky,” Kat said, although she knew the opposite was true. A lucky cop would be one who spent an entire career avoiding such cases. The only reason Kat felt fortunate was because she had somehow managed to survive them.
“This is far cleaner than those Reaper killings,” Wallace said. “No amateur embalming here, thank God. Remember how he attacked his victims?”
Kat gave him a slight nod. As if she could ever forget. The Grim Reaper, one of the two most evil people she had ever encountered, liked to play games. He’d place a dead animal at the scene, distracting his victims long enough for him to sneak up on them. Then he’d render them unconscious with a handkerchief doused with chloroform. Then he’d kill them.
Slowly.
Painfully.
Henry Goll had been the only one to survive.
“Well, now there’s this,” Kat said.
Her gaze drifted around the gallery, which looked far different than when she first arrived with Dutch Jansen and Emma Pulsifer in tow. The darkness that had previously enveloped them was now banished by a few well-placed klieg lights powered by a generator outside. The blinding glare highlighted the destruction, from the fire-scarred walls to the floors already warping from water damage. Shards of glass were everywhere, glinting in the light.
Above Kat, a portion of the ceiling had been eaten away, revealing both the second and third floors. She remembered from her grade-school visits that on the second floor were rooms decorated just as they would have been during the town’s founding. Above that, she assumed, was the attic, where Emma said the rest of the museum’s collection was stored.
The devastation from the fire and the water damage that followed meant there was likely very little trace evidence to be found. Still, a few crime scene techs huddled around the crawl space where Constance had been discovered. Although her body was now lying beneath a white sheet on a wheeled gurney next to Wallace, Kat still pictured her slumped over that trunk, her wool skirt wet and clinging to the back of her legs. The techs, who were probably used to seeing far worse, worked in silence. One of them, wearing a baseball cap with a penlight duct-taped to the bill, dropped into the crawl space like a seasoned spelunker.
“I’m assuming the cause of death is blunt force trauma,” Kat said.
“Probably,” Wallace replied with a nod. “She was certainly hit hard with something heavy. A single blow to the back of the head. Cracked her skull right open.”
“Any guess as to the time of death?”
“Fairly recent. The body was still warm, so I’m guessing no more than three hours ago.”
Immediately, Kat started forming a timeline of events. If Wallace was correct, Constance had died between twelve-thirty and one A.M., around the same time the fire started. Kat assumed that whoever killed her dragged the body into the crawl space before starting the fire.
“What do you think the murder weapon was?” she asked.
Wallace gave a palms-up gesture of ignorance before opening his arms wide. “Take your pick. There were probably a hundred objects in here heavy enough to do that kind of damage. Bronze statues. Household items, which were heavier back in the day than they are now. Housewives back then must have had biceps the size of bowling balls.”
“All the better to keep men like you in check,” Kat said.
Wallace let out a low chuckle that quickly morphed into a smoker’s cough and seemed to last a full minute. When he recovered, he said, “I’m off to do the autopsy now. I’ll call you as soon as I find anything.”
He started to wheel out Constance’s body, pausing long enough to pull a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket and pop it between his lips.
“Don’t worry,” he said, the cigarette bobbing up and down. “I won’t light it until I get outside. Not that it’ll make much of a difference to this place.”
Once Wallace was gone, Kat crossed to the other side of the gallery. She trod lightly, careful not to step on any of the debris that littered the charred floor. What she didn’t see, oddly enough, were many evidence markers. The gallery contained exactly one, placed a few paces to the left of the museum’s front door.
Two men knelt next to the yellow fold of plastic. One of them was a stranger. The other Kat knew very well.
“Lieutenant Vasquez,” she said. “No offense, but I wish you weren’t here.”
Tony Vasquez was a detective with the Pennsylvania State Police’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Neither the town nor the county had the manpower or expertise to handle crimes as big as homicide and arson, so the BCI was usually called to step in. As a result, Tony had worked on the Grim Reaper murders and the Charlie Olmstead disappearance. Now he was here once again.
“Frankly, I do, too.”
“I’m assuming you’re in charge.”
“Yeah,” Tony said. “Seeing how I know my way around the town by now, they figured I’d be a good point person.”
“Well, you know the score,” Kat told him. “You’re in charge. I don’t mind that you’re in charge. And I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
Lieutenant Vasquez got to his feet. In addition to being a professional cop, Tony was also an amateur bodybuilder. Those biceps the size of bowling balls that Wallace mentioned? Tony had them. His sheer size never ceased to amaze Kat. He was so big that he looked out of scale with the rest of the gallery—like Alice after nibbling on the cake that made her grow.
“It’s looking very likely that the fire hoses washed away all the evidence,” he said. “No trace. No blood spatter. If there is any evidence, it’s mixed in with this rubble. What did you find?”
Kat caught Tony up to speed on the events before and after she discovered Constance Bishop’s body. She also detailed her interview with Emma Pulsifer and the whereabouts of the other members of the historical society when the fire broke out. Then it was time to talk about the thing she least wanted to talk about. The thing that indicated this was no ordinary murder.
“There was something written on Constance’s hand.”
“I know,” Tony said. “I saw it.”
“What do you make of it?”
“I’m not sure. It might be nothing.”
“Or it could mean we have another Grim Reaper on our hands.”
Kat couldn’t get those five words out of her head. When she closed her eyes, she still saw them, smudged and startling. THIS IS JUST THE FIRST.
Tony inhaled, his massive chest expanding and deflating. “Yes. That’s a distinct possibility.”
It wasn’t what Kat wanted to hear. The answer silenced her for a moment as she pondered what it could mean for her and the town.
The man standing at Tony’s side cleared his throat, forcing an introduction.
“Kat,” the lieutenant said, “this is Larry Sheldon. He’s an arson investigator with the state police.”
Kat quickly sized up the newcomer while shaking his hand. He was younger than her, thirty if a day, and boyishly handsome. Wearing jeans, a button-down shirt, and a tie, he looked more like a math teacher than someone who’d be studying a crime scene at three-thirty in the morning. His wire-frame glasses, slipping off his nose, didn’t help.
“You find anything interesting?” Kat asked.
“A lot that’s interesting, actually,” Larry said. “And before you ask, I’m ninety-nine percent sure that this fire was arson.”
“How can you tell?”
“This is the point of origin.” He turned to the patch of floor he and Tony had been examining. “Although a trail of accelerant at the wall caused the most damage.”
Kat tapped him on the shoulder. “This is my first arson. You’ll have to dumb it down for me.”
Pulsuz fraqment bitdi.