Sunday, October 25, 2015

Mundy’s Landing, New York

Here we are,” the Realtor, Lynda Carlotta, announces as she slows the car in front of 46 Bridge Street. “It really is magnificent, isn’t it?”

The Second Empire Victorian presides over neighboring stucco bungalows and pastel Queen Anne cottages with the aplomb of a grand dame crashing a coffee klatch. There’s a full third story tucked behind the scalloped slate shingles, topped by a black iron grillwork crown. A square cupola rises to a lofty crest against the gloomy Sunday morning sky. Twin cornices perch atop its paired windows like the meticulously arched, perpetually raised eyebrows of a proper aristocratic lady.

Fittingly, the house—rather, the events that transpired within its plaster walls—raised many an eyebrow a hundred years ago.

Annabelle Bingham grew up right around the corner, but she stares from the leather passenger’s seat as if seeing the house for the first time. She’d never imagined that she might actually live beneath that mansard roof, in the shadow of the century-old unsolved crimes that unfolded there.

For the past few days, she and her husband, Trib, have taken turns talking each other into—and out of—coming to see this place. They’re running out of options.

Real estate values have soared in this picturesque village, perched on the eastern bank of the Hudson River midway between New York City and Albany. The Binghams’ income has done quite the opposite. The only homes in their price range are small, undesirable fixer-uppers off the highway. They visited seven such properties yesterday and another this morning, a forlorn little seventies ranch that smelled of must and mothballs. Eau d’old man, according to Trib.

“Magnificent isn’t exactly the word that springs to mind when I look at this house,” he tells Lynda from the backseat.

She smiles at him in the rearview mirror. “Well, I’m not the professional wordsmith you are. I’m sure you can come up with a more creative adjective.”

Annabelle can. She’s been trying to keep it out of her head, but everything—even the tolling steeple bells from nearby Holy Angels Church—is a grim reminder.

“Monolithic,” pronounces the backseat wordsmith. “That’s one way to describe it.”

Murder House, Annabelle thinks. That’s another.

“There’s certainly plenty of room for a large family,” Lynda points out cheerily.

Optimism might be her strong suit, but tact is not. Doesn’t she realize there are plenty of families that don’t care to grow larger? And there are many that, for one heartbreaking reason or another, couldn’t expand even if they wanted to; and still others, like the Binghams, whose numbers are sadly dwindling.

Annabelle was an only child, as is their son, Oliver. Trib lost his older brother in a tragic accident when they were kids. Until a few months ago, Trib’s father, the last of their four parents to pass away, had been a vital part of their lives. He’d left them the small inheritance they plan to use as a down payment on a home of their own—a bittersweet prospect for all of them.

“I just want Grandpa Charlie back,” Oliver said tearfully last night. “I’d rather have him than a new house.”

“We all would, sweetheart. But you know he can’t come back, and wouldn’t it be nice to have a nice big bedroom and live on a street with sidewalks and other kids?”

“No,” Oliver said, predictably. “I like it here.”

They’re living in what had once been the gardener’s cottage on a grand Hudson River estate out on Battlefield Road. The grounds are lovely but isolated, and they’ve long since outgrown the tiny rental space.

Still . . . are they really prepared to go from dollhouse to mansion?

“There are fourteen rooms,” Lynda waxes on, “including the third-floor ballroom, observatory, and servants’ quarters. Over thirty-five hundred square feet of living space—although I have to check the listing sheet, so don’t quote me on it.”

That, Annabelle has noticed, is one of her favorite catchphrases. Don’t quote me on it.

“Is she saying it because you’re a reporter?” she’d asked Trib after their first outing with Lynda. “Does she think you’re working on an article that’s going to blow the lid off . . . I don’t know, sump pump function?”

He laughed. “That’s headline fodder if I ever heard it.”

Lynda starts to pull the Lexus into the rutted driveway. After a few bumps, she thinks better of it and backs out onto the street. “Let’s start out front so that we can get the full curb appeal, shall we?”

They shall.

“Would you mind handing me that file folder on the floor back there, Charles?” Lynda asks Trib, whose lanky form is folded into the seat behind her.

He’d been born Charles Bingham IV, but as one of several Charlies in kindergarten, was rechristened courtesy of his family’s longtime ownership of the Mundy’s Landing

Tribune. The childhood nickname stuck with him and proved prophetic: he took over as editor and publisher after his dad retired a decade ago.

But Lynda wouldn’t know that. She’s relatively new in town, having arrived sometime in the last decade. Nor would she remember the era when the grand homes in The Heights had fallen into shabby disrepair and shuttered nineteenth-century storefronts lined the Common. She’d missed the dawning renaissance as they reopened, one by one, to form the bustling business district that exists today.

“Let’s see . . . I was wrong,” she says, consulting the file Trib passes to the front seat. “The house is only thirty-three hundred square feet.”

Can we quote you on it? Annabelle wants to ask.

“I can’t imagine what it cost to heat this place last winter,” Trib comments, “with all those below-zero days we had.”

“You’ll see here that there’s a fairly new furnace.” Lynda hands them each a sheet of paper. “Much more energy efficient than you’ll find in most old houses in the neighborhood.”

Annabelle holds the paper at arm’s length—courtesy of advancing farsightedness—and looks over the list of specs. The “new” furnace was installed about fifteen years ago, around the turn of this century. The wiring and plumbing most likely date to the turn of the last one.

“Oh, and did I mention that this is the only privately owned indoor pool in town.”

She did, several times. Some potential buyers might view that as a burden, but Lynda is well aware that it’s a luxury for Annabelle, an avid swimmer.

Still, the house lacks plenty of key items on her wish list. There’s a ramshackle detached garage instead of the two-car garage she and Trib covet. There is no master suite. The lot is undersized, like many in this historic neighborhood.

“You’re never going to find exactly what you want,” Lynda has been reminding her and Trib from day one. “You have to compromise.”

They want a home that’s not too big, not too small, not too old, not too new, not too expensive, not a rock-bottom fixer-upper . . .

Goldilocks syndrome—another of Lynda’s catchphrases.

This house may be too old and too big, but it isn’t too expensive despite being located in The Heights, a sloping tree-lined enclave adjacent to the Village Common.

Its owner, Augusta Purcell, died over a year ago, reportedly in the same room where she’d been born back in 1910. Her sole heir, her nephew Lester, could have sold it to the historical society for well above market value. But he refused to entertain a long-standing preemptive offer from the curator, Ora Abrams.

“I’m not going to cash in on a tragedy like everyone else around here,” he grumbled, adamantly opposed to having his ancestral home exploited for its role in the notorious, unsolved Sleeping Beauty case.

From late June through mid July of 1916, a series of grisly crimes unfurled in the relentless glare of both a brutal heat wave and the Sestercentennial Celebration for the village, founded in 1666.

Forty-six Bridge Street was the second home to gain notoriety as a crime scene. The first was a gambrel-roofed fieldstone Dutch manor house just around the corner at 65 Prospect Street; the third, a granite Beaux Arts mansion at 19 Schuyler Place.

No actual homicide took place inside any of the three so-called Murder Houses. But what had happened was profoundly disturbing. Several days and several blocks apart, three local families awakened to find the corpse of a young female stranger tucked into a spare bed under their roof.

The bodies were all posed exactly the same way: lying on their backs beneath coverlets that were neatly folded back beneath their arms. Their hands were peacefully clasped on top of the folded part of the covers. Their long hair—they all had long hair—was braided and arranged just so upon the pillows.

All the girls’ throats had been neatly slit ear to ear. Beneath each pillow was a note penned on plain stationery in block lettering: Sleep safe till tomorrow. The line was taken from a William Carlos Williams poem published three years earlier.

The victims hadn’t died where they lay, nor in the immediate vicinity. They’d been stealthily transported by someone who was never caught; someone who was never identified and whose motive remains utterly inexplicable to this day.

Ghastly death portraits were printed in newspapers across the country in the futile hope that someone might recognize a sister, a daughter, a niece. In the end, their unidentified remains were buried in the graveyard behind Holy Angels Church.

Is Annabelle really willing to move into a Murder House?

A year ago, she’d have said no way. This morning, when she and Trib and Oliver were crashing into porcelain fixtures and one another in their tiny bathroom, she’d have said yes, absolutely.

Now, staring up at the lofty bracketed eaves, ornately carved balustrades, and curve-topped couplets of tall, narrow windows, all framed against a blood red foliage canopy of an oppressive sky . . .

I don’t know. I just don’t know.

“Since you both grew up here, I don’t have to tell you about how wonderful this neighborhood is,” Lynda says as the three of them step out of the car and approach the tall black iron fence that mirrors the mansard crest.

A brisk wind stirs overhead boughs. They creak and groan, as does the gate when Lynda pushes it open. The sound is straight out of a horror movie. A chill slips down Annabelle’s spine, and she shoves her hands deep into the pockets of her corduroy barn coat.

The brick walkway between the gate and the house is strewn with damp fallen leaves. For all she knows, someone raked just yesterday. It is that time of year, and an overnight storm brought down a fresh barrage of past-peak foliage.

Yet the grounds exude the same forlorn, abandoned atmosphere as the house itself. It’s the only one on the block that lacks pumpkins on the porch steps and political signs posted in the yard.

Election Day looms, with a heated mayoral race that reflects the pervasive insider versus outsider mentality. Most residents of The Heights back the incumbent, John Elsworth Ransom, whose roots extend to the first settlers of Mundy’s Landing. Support for his opponent, a real estate developer named Dean Cochran, is stronger on the other side of town, particularly in Mundy Estates, the upscale townhouse complex he built and now calls home.

A Ransom for Mayor poster isn’t all that’s conspicuously missing from the leaf-blanketed yard. There’s no For Sale sign, either.

Trib asks Lynda if she’s sure it’s on the market.

“Oh, it is. But Lester prefers to avoid actively soliciting the ‘ghouls’—not the Halloween kind, if you know what I mean.”

They do. Plenty of locals use that word to describe the tourists who visit every summer in an effort to solve the cold case. The event—colloquially dubbed Mundypalooza—has taken place every year since 1991. That’s when, in conjunction with the seventy-fifth anniversary of the cold case, the historical society first extended a public invitation: Can You Solve the Sleeping Beauty Murders?

So far, no one has—but every summer, more and more people descend to try their hand at it. The historical society sponsors daily speakers, panel discussions, and workshops. Even Trib conducts an annual seminar about the sensational press coverage the case received in 1916.

He turns to Annabelle. “That’s something we’d have to deal with if we bought this place.”

“You’re right. We’d be inundated with curiosity seekers. I don’t think I want to—”

“Just in the summer, though,” Lynda cuts in quickly, “and even then, it’s not a big deal.”

“This house will be crawling with people and press,” Annabelle points out.

After all, a Murder House isn’t just branded by century-old stigma; it bears the brunt of the yearly gawker invasion. No local resident escapes unscathed, but those who live at 46 Bridge Street, 65 Prospect Street, and 19 Schuyler Place are inundated.

“Let’s just walk through before you rule it out,” Lynda urges. “A comparable house at any other address in this neighborhood would sell for at least six figures more. I’d hate to have someone snatch this out from under you.”

The odds of that happening are slim to none. Lester, who insists on pre-approving every showing, requests that prospective buyers already live locally. Not many people fit the bill, but Annabelle and Trib passed muster and they’re here. They might as well look, even though Annabelle is sure she doesn’t want to live here after all. She’d never get past what happened here during the summer of 1916, let alone what will happen every summer forever after, thanks to Mundypalooza.

They step through the massive double doors into the dim, chilly entrance hall. So far, so not good.

Before Annabelle can announce that she’s changed her mind, Lynda presses an antique mother-of-pearl button on the wall. “There, that’s better, isn’t it?”

They find themselves bathed in the glow of an elegant fixture suspended from a plaster medallion high overhead. Surprisingly, it is better.

There’s a massive mirror on the wall opposite the door. In it, Annabelle sees their reflection: Lynda, a full head shorter even in heels, bookended by herself and Trib, who could pass for siblings. They’re similarly tall and lean, with almost the same shade of dark brown hair and light brown eyes—both attractive, if not in a head-turning way.

Their eyes meet in the mirror, and he gives her a slight nod, as if to say, Yes, let’s keep going.

“Just look at that mosaic tile floor!” Lynda exclaims. “And the moldings on those archways! And the woodwork on the grand staircase! We haven’t seen anything like this in any of the houses we’ve looked at, have we?”

They agree that they haven’t, and of course wouldn’t expect to in their price point.

Annabelle can picture twelve-year-old Oliver walking through those big doors after school, dropping his backpack on the built-in seat above the cast-iron radiator with a Mom? I’m home. As she runs her fingertips over the carved newel post, she envisions him sliding down the banister curving above.

The long-dormant old house stirs to life as they move through it. One by one, doors creak open. Spaces beyond brighten courtesy of wall switches that aren’t dime-a-dozen rectangular plastic levers. These are period contraptions with buttons or brass toggles or pull-pendants dangling from thirteen-foot ceilings. Lynda presses, turns, pulls them all, chasing shadows from the rooms.

Annabelle’s imagination strips away layers of faded velvet and brocade shrouding the tall windows. Her mind’s eye replaces Augusta’s dark, dusty furnishings with comfortable upholstery and modern electronics. Instead of mustiness and cat pee, she smells furniture polish, clean linens, savory supper on the stove. The ticking grandfather clock, dripping faucets, and Lynda’s chirpy monologue and tapping footsteps are overshadowed by the voices Annabelle loves best, echoing through the rooms in ordinary conversation: Mom, I’m home! What’s for dinner? I’m home! How was your day? I’m home . . .

Yes, Annabelle realizes. This is it.

This, at last, is home.

Saturday 11 October

The trees on Clapham Common are aflame with autumn colour. A couple are holding hands on a park bench, watching the leaves turn from red to gold in the early sunlight. They’re sitting in a deserted copse, the path ahead shrouded by thickets of hazel.

‘Maybe they won’t come,’ the man says, the chill already sapping his strength.

‘Give them time. Not panicking, are you?’

‘Of course not. It was my idea, remember?’

She leans over to kiss him, face shadowed by the collar of her black woolen coat, but the moment of intimacy soon passes. The man strains forward as he hears footsteps crunching on gravel – someone racing towards them through the trees.

‘Now,’ he whispers. ‘Let’s put it right.’

The first jogger is a slim brunette in a blue tracksuit. A young boy drifts in her wake, his smile wide and unquestioning, frame so slight that his sweatshirt flails in the breeze. The man steps out from the shadows and grabs the jogger from behind; she fights hard, a look of stunned recognition on her face. Her elbows gouge his ribs as she yells at the boy to run, but the woman has already caught him. The child goes down fighting, thin form collapsing as he inhales the anaesthetic, a blindfold covering his eyes. A chloroform pad is pressed to his mother’s mouth, before she’s dragged into the bracken.

The couple lift the victims’ inert bodies on to the back seat, their car camouflaged by thick foliage. The man’s hands fumble as he covers them with blankets, morning traffic thickening as the woman slips into the driver’s seat. The most dangerous stage is over; all they have to do now is deliver mother and son to the laboratory. When the man peers under the blanket, Clare Riordan’s face is pale as candle wax, the child’s body curled behind the driving seat. His gaze shifts to the road ahead.

‘Not far now, almost there.’ He repeats the words like a mantra.

Close to their destination they pause on a side street, a delivery van blocking their way. But when he looks back there’s a flicker of movement. Through the rear window he sees the boy sprinting across the tarmac.

‘Jesus,’ the woman hisses. ’I thought the doors were locked.’

The man’s heart thuds as he spills out on to the road, his skin feverish. The boy has vanished. His gaze skims over houses and empty front gardens. At the junction he comes to a halt, heaving for breath, frustration flooding his system. Thank God the child didn’t see their faces. The mother will be killed once she provides the information they need, but her son is beyond their reach.

© HarperCollins

Saturday 11 October

The trees on Clapham Common are aflame with autumn colour. A couple are holding hands on a park bench, watching the leaves turn from red to gold in the early sunlight. They’re sitting in a deserted copse, the path ahead shrouded by thickets of hazel.

‘Maybe they won’t come,’ the man says, the chill already sapping his strength.

‘Give them time. Not panicking, are you?’

‘Of course not. It was my idea, remember?’

She leans over to kiss him, face shadowed by the collar of her black woolen coat, but the moment of intimacy soon passes. The man strains forward as he hears footsteps crunching on gravel – someone racing towards them through the trees.

‘Now,’ he whispers. ‘Let’s put it right.’

The first jogger is a slim brunette in a blue tracksuit. A young boy drifts in her wake, his smile wide and unquestioning, frame so slight that his sweatshirt flails in the breeze. The man steps out from the shadows and grabs the jogger from behind; she fights hard, a look of stunned recognition on her face. Her elbows gouge his ribs as she yells at the boy to run, but the woman has already caught him. The child goes down fighting, thin form collapsing as he inhales the anaesthetic, a blindfold covering his eyes. A chloroform pad is pressed to his mother’s mouth, before she’s dragged into the bracken.

The couple lift the victims’ inert bodies on to the back seat, their car camouflaged by thick foliage. The man’s hands fumble as he covers them with blankets, morning traffic thickening as the woman slips into the driver’s seat. The most dangerous stage is over; all they have to do now is deliver mother and son to the laboratory. When the man peers under the blanket, Clare Riordan’s face is pale as candle wax, the child’s body curled behind the driving seat. His gaze shifts to the road ahead.

‘Not far now, almost there.’ He repeats the words like a mantra.

Close to their destination they pause on a side street, a delivery van blocking their way. But when he looks back there’s a flicker of movement. Through the rear window he sees the boy sprinting across the tarmac.

‘Jesus,’ the woman hisses. ’I thought the doors were locked.’

The man’s heart thuds as he spills out on to the road, his skin feverish. The boy has vanished. His gaze skims over houses and empty front gardens. At the junction he comes to a halt, heaving for breath, frustration flooding his system. Thank God the child didn’t see their faces. The mother will be killed once she provides the information they need, but her son is beyond their reach.

© HarperCollins

There never seems to be a train lighting up the tunnel when you need one in a hurry, but today one is there and the doors close just as the red message at the turnstile commands me to swipe my MetroCard through again. And again. Damn! I drop my MetroCard and get shoved by someone behind me. I turn around to give whoever it is a dirty look and see a dark-haired young girl wearing a pleated white dress. Late for her confirmation or something like that, I’m thinking. How long is that dress going to stay pristine down here? She looks dazed. I pick up my MetroCard and get through the turnstile on the next swipe, then step out of her way. She swipes hers, too, her hand shaking.

I head for the public phone to my right to call the school I’m supposed to be at to say I’m running a little late. Nobody answers. I’ll apologize profusely when I get there. When I turn back toward the platform, the girl is on her knees, her head bowed. She must really be late if it’s come to this. I’ve never seen anyone kneeling on a subway platform before. She closes her eyes. Commuters make a part around her. A street person starts singing “The Greatest Love Of All” in front of the newsstand, palm extended, asking for handouts. Commuters make a part around him too. They’re just obstacles, like the red, white and blue poles along the length of the platform. I turn back to look at the girl. Behind me I get a whiff of cheap cologne. The same cologne I smelled in Sachi’s bedroom. I whirl around. Anyone here could be wearing that cologne. And a lot of it too. I’m at a disadvantage. I don’t know who I’m looking for. Who here would be Sachi’s type? Do I know Sachi’s type?

I go over to the newsstand to get a bag of M & Ms, sniffling so much from the cologne that the news-vendor gestures to a pile of pocket tissues. “You got a cold? You want these too, miss?” I shake my head. My feet sense the vibration of the approaching train first and I start dropping change in my hurry to pay the vendor before I miss this train too. A scream punctuates the approach of the train. Trains don’t make noise like this. I whirl around and see a man with his hands extended in front of him. I can’t tell if he’s been grabbing at something or pushing something. The girl in the white dress literally flies in front of the train as it hisses to a stop. I cover my eyes for a split second and then force myself to look around me. A crowd forms around where the girl was kneeling just moments ago. More people scream. A couple of people lean over the platform and gag. I turn away again. I don’t want to believe what I think just happened actually happened.

“She jumped.”

“She was trying to get away from that person who grabbed her elbow.”

“It looked to me like he was trying to keep her from jumping.”

“It looked to me like he pushed her toward it.”

“Well, she’s gone anyway.”

“Call nine-one-one, someone, hurry!”

All of these accounts turn out to be soliloquies because nobody’s here to question these people, not yet. I take several deep breaths. I’ve lost the urge to sneeze. Whoever was wearing that cologne is gone. I take a good look at the faces on the platform. Quite a few of them have a distinct greenish tinge, blending well with the mosaics of beavers on the subway wall. I imagine mine must look that way too. I hear the squawk of police radios on the stairway. Suddenly blue uniforms swarm the platform and start buzzing orders. “Okay, everybody, stay back, give the EMS guys a chance to get through.”

“She’s beyond EMS,” one onlooker says.

“You a doctor, sir?”

“Uh, no…”

“Well then, stand back with everyone else and let someone qualified make that determination.”

A few people back up toward the turnstiles. Another officer stops them. “No one’s going nowhere just yet. We got a report this girl was pushed.”

“She wasn’t pushed. Looked to me like she was trying to get away from somebody and lost her footing.”

“That ain’t all she lost.”

“People, I’m going to have to ask you to stay over there by the newsstand out of our way till somebody asks you some questions about what happened here.”

A man standing next to me clears his throat. “I didn’t see anything, can I go?”

“No one’s going nowhere,” the officer snaps.

“Candy, gum, magazines,” the newsstand vendor chants in a heavily accented voice. “Get something to pass the time.”

“We want to talk to you too,” the officer says to the vendor.

I can’t see beyond the wall of blue lined up along the platform. I realize I still have the bag of M & Ms clutched in my hand. I’ve lost my craving for them and it’s so hot on the platform that I’m sure they’ll have melted before I leave. I look around for a trash can to throw them in and see more scuffed shoes descending the stairs. Then I see someone that makes my hand squish the life out of that bag of M & Ms altogether.

“Delilah,” Quick says as he starts toward me. “Did you see anything?” I have a distinct feeling just from the tone of his voice that he would rather I didn’t see anything.

It may be more a question of what I smelled. I shake my head. “I’m not sure. I don’t know if what I noticed would be very helpful.”

“Try me,” he says. Under other circumstances there is nothing I’d rather do. “Wait here. I’ll want to talk to you at the station.”

“I have to wait here?”

He nods. “Afraid so.” He mumbles a few asides to a uniformed cop to his right and then turns back to me. “I can’t say how long we’ll be. We’ve got to talk to a lot of witnesses.” He looks around. “As you can see. We want to talk to anyone who’s handicapped and elderly first, so they can go. We don’t want anyone having heat stroke down here.”

Another detective saunters up to him. “Girl did an Anna Karenina, from what I understand.”

Where did he come up with that? I wonder if an all points bulletin is going to be posted for someone named Vronsky. The uniforms start beckoning potential witnesses away from the platform, toward the benches against the wall and through the turnstiles. A detective sidles up to the newsstand behind me. A baby begins to wail loudly. “I got to nurse,” his mother protests, pulling at one of the policeman’s sleeve with her free hand.

He whirls around. “Hey, don’t do that.”

“I got to nurse. My baby hungry.”

“Sit over there,” he points to the row of benches behind me, next to the newsstand.

I look over at the pay phone, thinking I better call the school to say I’m not going to be able to make it, period, that they’re going to need a substitute for this substitute, and probably call Heidi Obermeyer, too, to tell her to get another model, but the line is longer than the line to cash checks in banks the first of the month. I hate doing a no-show but expect everybody will understand. At least I hope they will. The girl on the tracks is never going to show up for anything again. I’m beginning to smell vomit. I don’t know how long it takes for a dead body to start to smell and I don’t want to find out. I look over at Quick who’s deep in conversation with yet another witness. How can he stand this, dealing with death all the time? I start to walk farther down the platform, as far away from the mayhem as I can, until I can’t go any further.

“Miss, where you going?” someone calls out. I ignore him.

Then, “Delilah!”

I reel around. Quick waves me back and points to the congregation of witnesses clustered around the newsstand. “I need air,” I whisper to him, clutching my stomach. “I feel like I’m going to be sick.”

“Okay, hold on, I’ll get someone to escort you.” I wish I could hold on to him, witnesses be damned. “I want to talk to you at the house, not here. I’ll be there as soon as I’m finished up here.” He keeps watch on me as he takes a uniformed officer aside and then says something to him I can’t hear and gestures for me to go with him. I’d gladly follow someone into a cell as long as it meant getting away from this. But I’d rather it be Quick.

CHAPTER ONE

Tuesday, May 31

Nessa Donati was going to have to sell her brand spanking new car. And all because the rear-view mirror hung in the perfect position to display an accidental glimpse of her reflection whenever she reached into the back seat. Typically she prepared herself before facing a reflective surface. But when she was caught off guard, without fail, her mother’s disappointed, sour Resting Bitch Face stared back at her.

It wasn’t that her mother was unattractive. She was, in fact, far more beautiful than Nessa could ever hope to be. It was that her mother had always used Nessa as a mirror in which to see herself without ever truly seeing Nessa.

So the new black Chrysler Pacifica would have to go.

It was nearing sunset when Nessa parked it on Crestview Drive by the Randolph Bridge, which spanned not only the Big Blue River but the northern tip of Tuttle Creek Lake as well. This was the last stop on a four-day camping trip, just Nessa, her three-year-old son Daltrey, and their Wheaton Terrier, Declan MacManus.

She checked on Daltrey, asleep in his car seat, listing to starboard, mouth open. He’d be okay for a moment, and she was glad she wouldn’t have to explain what she was about to do. She felt silly enough about it already.

Nessa and Declan MacManus exited the Pacifica, the dog running ahead, while Nessa locked and shut the door.

She walked the eighth of a mile to the river’s edge beneath the bridge as sparse traffic droned by overhead, tires making that phut phut phut sound as they traversed the seams in the asphalt. Nessa stood and watched the water flow past, appearing deceptively tranquil until a tree branch rushed by at break-neck speed. Declan sniffed happily around, pausing to mark every object he encountered with a lifted leg.

Nessa looked around to make sure she was alone, then reached into her pocket and withdrew the six-inch-long braid of her husband John’s hair. He’d cut it before their wedding five years ago. She had kept it in a velvet box all this time, never dreaming this day would come. She looked at the sky and the water, remembering all their good times on the river. This was the right place to let John’s braid go.

The water lapped against her tennis shoes as she wound up and let the braid fly. She watched it arc through the air, hit the rushing water with an inconsequential splash, and disappear. She watched for a moment and let herself cry a little. She needed this sort of closure ritual to move on with her life, like spreading his ashes. Except he wasn’t dead. Yet.

Nessa trudged back to the car, Declan MacManus meandering behind her. She unlocked and opened her door, and the dog jumped in and settled in the passenger seat. Nessa noted that Daltrey hadn’t even changed position while she was gone.

Nessa started the car, put it in gear, and headed toward home.

Forty minutes later, she parked in the converted hay barn garage behind her house and decided she’d wait until morning to unload the camping gear.

Declan MacManus jumped from the car and ran, whining, toward the other outbuildings, hops vines, and woods beyond, as Nessa climbed into the back to struggle with Daltrey’s carseat restraints. She draped him over her shoulder, and took him inside and upstairs to his big-boy bed. There, she pulled off his sandals and kissed his fat little feet before slipping him between the sheets. Good. He was out for the night. She left his door ajar, and went downstairs and out the back door to get their suitcase from the Pacifica.

Outside it was full dark, and the woods buzzed with late-spring insects. When she hit the bottom step, she saw Declan MacManus curled up in front of the outbuilding they called the boathouse. He sprang to his feet as if he’d just noticed royalty entering the room. This slowed Nessa down—what was he doing?—but she continued on to the garage, where she retrieved their luggage. When she closed the garage door, the dog jumped to his feet again, in the exact spot she’d left him.

Nessa stood staring at him, and he gazed expectantly back at her.

And then she saw it. The wooden carriage-house door’s lock was gone. In its place was a jagged hole, as if God himself had punched a massive fist through it in a fit of righteous anger.

Nessa froze, her breath captive in her throat.

She set down the suitcase and, after a moment of indecision, pulled out her phone and dialed.

Marlon Webb didn’t say hello, just, “With a student.” This was his way of saying he could be interrupted only for a very specific kind of emergency.

“Call me back,” she whispered. “I’m rethinking that whole restraining order thing.”

Cairo, Egypt
Tuesday

Rick Weiland floored the accelerator as the looming hulk of the tractor-trailer bore down on the diplomatic car. Ben Rosen, the other personal-protection agent, rode shotgun. In the back seat, Christine Needham, special ambassador for Middle Eastern affairs, had been mulling over the gravity of going against the president’s orders, when the impromptu car chase derailed her thoughts. Dan Krumholtz, her assistant, continued to format notes from the morning’s meeting on his MacBook from the seat beside her.

Traffic in Cairo was a nightmare, and Christine couldn’t wait to get back stateside, if only for a week or so. Just a few days before, she had been in Tel Aviv, and though the infrastructure had been much better there, attacks on the city had caused enough chaos to fracture that orderly façade. Hamas had fired a series of rockets into the outskirts of the Israeli capital from the Gaza Strip hundreds of miles to the south, one of which had slipped through the nation’s famed Iron Dome missile defense system and hit a primary school, killing twelve. Long-range rockets, the sort that Hamas didn’t usually have access to, which meant another regional power, perhaps Iran or Egypt, was supplying them.

Egyptian President Faraj al-Qassim had denied any involvement in Hamas’s newfound armaments, both publicly and to Ambassador Needham’s face, but then, of course he would, whether he was involved or not. Politics in the region was full of duplicitous moves and countermoves, with a thousand sub-alliances shifting and shaking on a daily basis. Public perception, power, and what you could get away with often held more sway than integrity, the truth, or the public good.

Kind of like Washington, Christine mused.

Despite the difficult nature of negotiating with many of the leaders in the Middle East, she had been sent here for a purpose, and she wasn’t going to let a few egotistical, compulsive liars get in the way. And though she was a woman in a part of the world where testosterone reigned supreme, she had the chops and experience to succeed where her male counterparts had failed. Or so she hoped.

Israeli Prime Minister Elijah Shihmanter was livid at the attacks on his capital city and was proposing the building of more housing developments in Gaza Strip to more fully colonize the occupied territory. The violence was escalating daily, and international opinion was steadily turning in the Palestinians’ favor, despite the recent aggression against Israeli civilian targets.

Beyond the Palestinian question lay a pair of even more far-reaching issues: regional terrorism and a nascent nuclear arms race. From Syria to ISIS to Iran to Yemen, the Middle East was a powder keg threatening to consume the lives of millions and—considering the resources that came from the region and the global nature of the modern-day economy—the livelihoods of billions more.

This was her area of expertise. After spending the bulk of the so-called War on Terror helming a Washington-based think tank that the previous two administrations had used for insights into the fractious and turbulent world of the Middle East, she had been tapped as a special envoy by the current president, giving her the position of special ambassador for Middle Eastern affairs. Fending off critics decrying the appointment as vaguely nepotistic, owing to the close relationship he and her father had shared during their long senatorial career, President James Talquin had created the position to deal with the increasingly important—and increasingly volatile—region with fresh insight and understanding.

Having lived in the region, as a military kid whose family was stationed throughout the region during the seventies and eighties, and as a Peace Corps worker during the early nineties, she had grown to love the region and its people. For much of the Clinton era, she had served as a business consultant for several corporations looking to expand into the region, while also serving as a consultant for the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, over which her late father had presided.

Then the towers fell, and the world changed. The region that had long been near and dear to her heart, from Israel to Iraq to Iran and back again, was suddenly thrust into the spotlight again. Not since Desert Storm a decade earlier had the general populace cared a lick about what happened in the Middle East, except to the point where it affected their oil prices. Now the region was on everybody’s radar, but for all the wrong reasons.

She founded the Lawrence Institute for Middle Eastern Studies, named after British diplomat and archeologist T. E. Lawrence, popularly known as Lawrence of Arabia. Though the parallel only held up so far, she appreciated Lawrence’s ability to befriend and live among the Arabs, even while he ultimately sought his own nation’s best interests. Through the Lawrence Institute, Christine sought to bring some of that much-needed understanding to policymakers in Washington who were now laser-focused on the Middle East, many for the first time in their lives. Though not all of her recommendations were heeded—the Lawrence Institute, after all, was hardly the only think tank offering advice on the subject—there were quite a few key strategic victories in both the War on Terror and on rebuilding foreign relations in the region that stemmed from her advice.

President Talquin, having campaigned against the warmongering proclivities and the apologetic weakness of previous administrations, had brought Christine on board to help steer a new path in the Middle East. Though he had plenty of real-world experience and was a decade her senior, Christine still felt he was a bit starry-eyed and overly optimistic when it came to achieving a lasting peace in the region. People had been splitting into groups and killing each other for the reason du jour since Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden, and she didn’t foresee any outsider-initiated agreement changing that. In fact, considering how polarized and fractious many of the religious, ethnic, and political groups had become, she doubted even the ability of a native Arab or Muslim to make that change from within. And yet, some peace was better than full-scale terror and anarchy, so she was determined to do her best for the administration.

That was why she was making this unauthorized visit to Dubai. Her direct supervisor, Secretary of State Lyle Molina, had been working behind the scenes with state leaders across the Middle East to reach some sort of lasting peace agreement on Israel. A comprehensive, long-lasting peace that not only answered the decades-old Palestinian question, but also provided for a universal recognition of Israel’s right to exist. Needless to say, it wasn’t an easy task and had met heavy resistance from camps in the Middle East, Israel, and even at home in the US.

One party that wanted nothing to do with the prospective peace deal currently being floated was Sheikh Abdelrahman bin Rashid al-Futaim, president of the oil-rich United Arab Emirates. The country, like most in the region, currently did not officially recognize Israel, but rather saw the Jewish nation as an illegal occupier of Palestinian lands. The West-friendly UAE hadn’t called for the complete eradication of Israel or held Holocaust denial conferences as had their Persian neighbors to the north, but its policies and viewpoints were decidedly hostile to Israel nonetheless.

With Needham’s strategic insight, Molina had succeeded in bringing several previously anti-Israel nations on board with the administration’s plan, most notably the new regime in Iraq and a hesitant but influential Saudi Arabia. Pundits had speculated that it had been the anti-terrorism and the anti-nuclear elements of the three-pronged approach to the talks that had appealed to most of the parties, as the twin specters of ISIS and a nuclear-armed Iran posed more of a real threat to their homelands than the existence of Israel. Many key holdouts still persisted, though, including Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and the United Arab Emirates.

Iran had obvious objections to both the Israel and nuclear element, and, as they were key supporters of myriad paramilitary groups throughout the region that the US considered terrorists, they were unlikely to see eye to eye on any of the three components in the near future. Talquin, Molina, and Needham hoped that, by bringing most of the rest of the region in on the talks, Iran would be forced to choose between considering the offer or risking even further isolation from its neighbors.

Syria was entrenched in its own endless civil war, while Lebanon counted anti-Israel Hezbollah members among its parliament and would be hesitant to make a move hostile to a small but powerful minority within their community. Plus, neither nation had forgotten decades of war and hostility with their Jewish neighbors. But while there wasn’t much Needham could do about resistance from Iran, Syria, or Lebanon, she might be able to exert some influence in the United Arab Emirates.

She was a woman, with Jewish ancestry on her mother’s side. This normally would have presented two strikes against her abilities as a front-line negotiator in most of the Middle East, which was a key reason for taking a mostly advisory role during her brief but important tenure under Talquin’s administration. But her bargaining chip in Dubai was something that only she could bring to the table: her late father.

George Needham had been heavily invested in Middle Eastern oil from the sixties through the nineties, and he had maintained relationships with some of the key figures in the Arabian Peninsula until his death in 2010. One of the men he had been particularly close to was Sheikh Khalid bin Rashid al-Futaim, head of the emirate of Dubai and second in command to Sheikh Abdelrahman himself. It also didn’t hurt—the United Arab Emirates being an absolute monarchy— that Khalid was Abdelrahman’s brother. If she could convince Khalid of the benefits of greater, region-wide stability stemming from a comprehensive peace deal, then maybe he could convince Abdelrahman. And if Abdelrahman was on board, the rest of the Emirati sheikhs would likely follow. Getting another Islamic nation on board could be just the momentum shift the peace accords needed.

Molina had rebuffed her plan, as had President James Talquin when Needham ignored her boss’s admonition and asked the commander in chief directly. If word got out of her subterfuge, they argued, and, even worse, if Sheikh Khalid didn’t want to play along, it could not only destroy any hopes for reaching a region-wide peace deal, but it could also hurt American relations and interests throughout the Middle East, they argued. Tensions were already high between the US and the UAE owing to the deaths of two Emirati citizens at the hands of a CIA agent covertly operating in Dubai the month before. The UAE was one of the few stalwart allies America had left in the region, and neither Molina nor Talquin would sign off on any plan that might undermine whatever trust remained between the two nations.

But neither of them was on the ground every day, seeing the growing tension and increasingly bold attacks against the isolated Jewish nation, feeling the aftershocks of the countless brewing conflicts between Sunni and Shia, between frustrated extremists of all stripes. She was daily confronted with stark evidence that the status quo could not hold for much longer. So, for the first time in her professional life, she was disobeying a direct order from her superiors. She was flying to Dubai to talk with Sheikh Khalid, face to face.

She didn’t pretend that this would be an easy endeavor. The Middle East was a man’s world and, despite Western nations’ attempts to be more progressive by pushing female appointees to ambassadorial roles, the truth was that many opportunities were closed to her simply because she was a woman. It could be hard to negotiate with foreign diplomats whose culture for centuries had taught that women were second-class citizens, mentally and morally inferior to their male counterparts. And while Israel was among the more forward-thinking countries in the region when it came to gender-equality, the nations and communities with which Israel held its tenuous armistice generally were not.

Moreover, she didn’t even have an appointment to speak with the sheikh. Advance notice of such an unorthodox request would give Khalid time to contact Talquin or Molina about her visit, and that could prove a death knell for her mission. Better to ask forgiveness than permission, she rationalized.

The tractor-trailer switched lanes and went around their black Audi, but the rest of the motorists that afternoon wanted to get to their destination just as badly. Rick had been driving her since her appointment to the post three years ago, and he had proven more than adept at maneuvering through the often unpredictable streams of traffic in cities from Beirut to Baghdad. Even now, in rush-hour traffic, he was making good time while still maintaining his cool. Allowing for traffic, they would be at the airport inside an hour, and then she’d have another host of travel issues to inwardly complain about.

A sheaf of documents sat on the seat beside Christine. She picked up the folder, paused in thought, and put it down again. She had gone over her notes from the most recent meeting with Prime Minister Shihmanter a dozen times already, as well as the casualty and damage reports, the latest briefings on the Palestinian situations in Gaza, the West Bank, and Golan Heights, and developing sentiments about the crisis from both the Israeli government and the Israeli public. She would likely be studying the reports during her upcoming flight as well, looking for an edge in her negotiations with Sheikh Khalid, demonstrating how peace in Israel and Palestine benefitted everyone. For now, her last few minutes on the ground for the next several hours, she simply looked out the window, enjoying the scenery, even if most of it at present was bumper-to-bumper traffic.

She glanced at the drivers and passengers of the cars next to hers. Cairo was a massive city, a metropolitan area home to more than 80 million people. Millennia of history, from the Pharaohs to Alexander the Great to the heyday of Coptic Christianity to the rule of the Calilphs, the colonization of the British, and the rapidly changing span of the twentieth century. Her own ancestry had once found refuge from famine here, then had to rely on Yahweh’s wrath and mercy to extricate themselves from slavery. The infant Christ had been hidden here from Herod’s massacre of the innocents. And yet, as her mind did now, her ancestors had always returned to Israel.

Still staring out the window at the glut of Egyptian traffic, she found herself reflecting on her ancestral homeland, where a similar commute to the airport had taken place less than 48 hours ago. As Rick had navigated the evening traffic through the Tel Aviv streets, she had studied the faces of Israeli citizens driving home from work, from the store, to their families and their lives. Tel Aviv was a modern city, yet it continually lived under the shadow of fear. It was perhaps unique in the world today, excepting isolationist rogue states like North Korea, in that all its neighbors either barely tolerated its presence or called for its outright destruction. And the Palestinian question was one of the major catalysts for anti-Israeli campaigns throughout the Middle East. Most Israelis simply wanted to live out their lives in their ancestral homeland. So did the Palestinians. The fact that that land was one and the same presented a no-win situation for two sides which refused to budge, particularly when Israel’s Muslim neighbors throughout the region continued to spew vitriolic rhetoric, calling for the young nation to be wiped from the map. Hackles were raised on both sides, as Holocaust denials and an absolute refusal to recognize Israel’s existence—even in textbooks or newspapers—by Islamic nations was met with Israeli muscle flexing as they bulldozed another Palestinian community or shelled another Hamas or Hezbollah leader’s neighborhood. It was a chest-beating, geopolitical shouting match that neither side could win. And so an ever-shifting stalemate had taken over, with occasional armed conflicts boiling over the borders into Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt. Thus far, Israel had been successful in staving off attacks from without, but their policies toward Palestinian territories under their control had done little in recent years to endear them to the international community.

The United States’ relationship with Israel had always been close, owing as much to America’s role in helping end the Holocaust as with its own Judeo-Christian origins and heritage. No matter what party controlled Washington and no matter what international sentiments were currently in vogue regarding the embattled nation, Israel had long been able to count on the support of the world’s number-one superpower. Part of Christine’s job as special ambassador to the region was not only to maintain this relationship, but also to ensure that American interests were represented properly. Right now, she felt that the relationship was going the other way.

The sun was low in the sky, continuing its descent westward, Osiris’ daily death ritual, only to be resurrected at sunrise the next morning. The day after tomorrow she would be watching the sun rise over the Chesepeake, a glimmering spectacle of light and water that reminded her of everything she admired about the United States. Despite all the trouble the nation had endured over the past few years, from the War on Terror to the financial collapse to an increasingly divided populace, she firmly believed there was something special about America. She loved her country and what it stood for, and she loved its people, even when they had trouble standing for much of anything. But in her time in the region, her admiration for the Israeli people had also grown. Like Americans, they were resilient in the face of adversity. For better or worse, each modern nation had been built on the backs—and corpses—of those who had lived there before. And each nation’s citizenry was often held hostage to the overbearing policies and rhetoric of its government. The only problem was that here, those policies might well get the citizens killed.

She turned from the window to face forward, just in time to see a passenger bus three cars ahead explode into a ball of flame. A split second later, the shockwave hit their car, jolting the vehicle and finally jarring Rick’s cool demeanor.

“Off ramp,” Ben said, pointing to the beginnings of a clover leaf interchange to the right.

Rick spun the wheel to the right and began swerving through traffic, receiving a barrage of horns from angry drivers. “You all right back there, Madam Ambassador?”

“Fine, Rick, thank you,” she responded with a slight tremor in her voice. No matter how much violence she had seen during her time in the region, it still affected her. She supposed that was good, all things considered. It meant she wasn’t becoming desensitized and losing another part of her humanity. She watched the flames lick skywards from the shattered windows as the bus’s momentum carried it through a rolling crawl. She could swear she saw a face in a window, the skin half-melted, its expression twisted in agony. But then it was gone, replaced by billows of black smoke, carrying the stench of melted vinyl, nitrate fuel, and burnt human flesh.

She shuddered and faced forward again as the off ramp took them out of view of the burning bus, flashing back again to a few days ago in Tel Aviv. The Israeli and Palestinian people were the real victims in a new cold war that was raging throughout the streets and villages of the Levant. Despite its rich history and natural beauty, the region had been stricken by war and conflict since its earliest historical accounts, from the armies of Joshua overtaking Jericho to the Israelites defeating the Philistines under King David; from the invasions of Israel by Assyria and Babylon to the final Jewish revolt against Rome in the first century AD. The conquests of Islam and the Crusades left the area in conflict for the better part of a millennium, and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after World War I and the area’s post-war British mandate forged the way for a modern-day Jewish state in the land that was once their forefathers’. But three full-scale wars and innumerable armed conflicts in its nearly seven decades of existence had shown modern Israel’s short history to be even more contentious and conflict-ridden than that of its forebears. Many of her more religious countrymen would find something prophetic in the conflicts affecting the region today, but while Christine believed that religion was a huge element in the equation—the land, and Jerusalem in particular, were sacred to the three great monotheistic religions, each believing it was “promised” to their tradition and must be kept pure in the hands of the faithful—she recognized the very human element to what was going on: power, territory, safeguarding your homeland. The problem was that those policies ran over other people who had very similar desires: the Palestinians.

There were no easy solutions, she had long ago realized. If an elusive peace deal was ever reached, neither side would be completely satisfied with the results. For the better part of a century, Israelis had built homes, families and lives in this land. Before that, so had Palestinians. Uprooting either would only serve to further the injustices served upon these two peoples. And both sides wanted the whole pie. Though Israel was a nation friendly to the US, Christine had often been haunted by the probability that, one day, their unflinching support of the Jewish state would rope them into a massive and unwinnable war across the Middle East—possibly even spiraling into a third world war.

Her religious countrymen would have seen something prophetic in that too. Armageddon itself was named for a battlefield in Israel—Har Megiddo—that was to be the site of the final battle between good and evil. However, as ambassador—and as a human being—her goal was to avoid a world-ending war whenever possible.

When Rick finally pulled the car up to the VIP wing of Cairo International Airport, the sky had turned deep orange, with the setting sun’s power magnified by its reflection across the desert dunes to the west. Christine grabbed her folder, tucked it into her briefcase, and then exited the car. Ben retrieved her wheeled suitcase from the trunk, as well as his and Rick’s bags, and they made their way through the concourse and onto the tarmac, where the chartered flight awaited them. The Gulfstream was idling on the pavement with its runway stairs lowered for entry. Beside the stairs, an anxious-looking young man in a blue shirt and red tie was hopping from one foot to the other, as though he was trying to stave off an impending trip to the restroom. When Christine drew closer, she recognized the man as Dennis Moore, a courier employed at the American embassy.

“Madam Ambassador, a package came for you. Marked urgent. I was instructed to get it to you before you left the country.” Moore handed her a padded manila envelope with the embassy’s address written in poorly scrawled English.

“This has been screened already?” asked Ben, always the more brash and outspoken of her bodyguards, as he plucked the envelope from her hand and held it at arm’s length away from her.

“Yes, sir, it has,” Moore nodded hastily. He seemed to be breathing a little more slowly now that he had managed to make his delivery on time.

“Thank you, Dennis,” Christine said with a smile. Even at forty-four she could still turn heads and she recognized the gleam in the courier’s eye as one she had seen in the eyes of countless men before him. “Now, if there’s nothing else, we need to get going. The president awaits.” A small lie, as she was sure she would be flying back to Washington to meet with Talquin as soon as Sheikh Abdelrahman voiced his support for the peace deal—and hopefully not before.

The mention of the president seemed to jerk Moore back to reality. Perhaps he was a little starstruck, too. Not many people, after all, were able to get a private audience with the most powerful man in the world.

“No, ma’am, nothing else.” He stepped back and gave her a little salute, but then screwed up his face and turned away, kicking himself inwardly since hers was not a position to which one salutes. Still, the kid was cute. She gave him another smile as she began to climb the stairs. He got an A for effort.

Two minutes later, she had settled into her seat, their bags stored in a closet at the front of the plane. Rick was adjusting his headphones as he prepared to watch The Bourne Ultimatum for the millionth time on his portable DVD player. Ben, who had been chatting with the pilots up front, returned to his seat as the plane’s engines whirred to life. He would likely be burying himself in Brad Thor’s latest thriller for the duration of the flight to Dubai. Dan, meanwhile, stared at his hands while biting his lower lip. He didn’t like flying—or the take-off and landing parts, at least—and he had voiced his concerns about going behind the president’s back on this mission, which she had noted. It was his job on the line too, after all, but Christine believed what they were doing—what needed to be done—was bigger than any of them. Hopefully, Dan would look back on this and realize that the risk was well worth the return.

Christine took a deep breath and sighed to herself. She was on the way at last, heading for what could be one of the greatest strategic coups of her career.

She picked up the envelope next to her and opened it, dumping the contents into her hand. Out spilled an unmarked Micro SD card and a single, typewritten page. She recognized the name of the law firm on the letterhead, an Amman-based group she had consulted on multiple occasions during her work with the Lawrence Institute. As she read the message, her chest tightened as a nightmare scenario began to take shape in her mind. Once she was done, she read it again, just to make sure she hadn’t misread something. She hadn’t. With a now-shaking hand, she picked up the Micro SD card between thumb and forefinger and looked at it in terrified awe. It had to be a hoax. That was her mind’s only recourse to sanity. Because if it wasn’t…

The plane accelerated down the runway, and she felt the wheels leave the tarmac as they ascended into the sky. She shook her head in disbelief. She knew she had to verify whatever information was on the memory card, but her hands quivered with fear at what sort of terror-laden rabbit hole she had stumbled upon. These allegations, if voiced without the requisite evidence to back them up, could destroy everything she and the administration had worked so hard for, perhaps preventing the chance for a comprehensive peace agreement for decades to come. But if the allegations were true, the consequences could be infinitely worse.

Christine normally hated hyperbole, but she realized that it was no stretch to say that the she quite literally held the future of the world in her hands.

Coming Soon!