Heather Graham - The Betrayed

The day was darkening; it was going to rain.

The breeze quickened and Aidan felt an urge to hurry. He walked across the hill, looking around. So many graves. So many years of men living in this region—and dying here.

He noticed that a new flag marked the grave of a Revolutionary soldier. He passed a general on horseback—a tribute to the men of the valley who had fought in the Civil War.

He walked over graves and by monuments, past mausoleums and vaults, and then he peered into the distance.

And saw a man. Or the shape of a man. The area suddenly seemed very dark, even though it was almost seven-thirty and the sun had surely risen. The breeze was now a wind; the sky roiled.

“Hey!” he called. There was no answer.

Was he imagining the man? The figure leaned against a free-standing vault with great pillars before it.

The wind seemed to be against him as he hurried over. He was fighting to get there.

The man didn’t disappear.

As he struggled forward, he paused at the sound of a dog barking. He turned.

A massive animal was racing toward the other figure, straining at his leash, which was held by a young woman in a black trench coat. He had the rather irrelevant thought that she resembled Cousin Itt from The Addams Family, since the wind had covered her face with her long brown hair. She and the dog—the wolfhound, obviously—were threading their way through crooked tombstones and monuments listing at different angles.

He heard voices. The dog and the woman were being followed.

He ran forward, too. The dog was in a rush—not after him, but intent on something else. Or someone else.

The figure leaning by the vault. The young woman tripped on a broken headstone but found her footing.

He continued forward himself, realizing that dog and woman were headed for the man—and at the rate the dog was going, they might well knock him over.

“Rollo! Slow down!” the young woman commanded.

Rollo passed Aidan and skidded to a halt within ten feet of the figure.

Running, Aidan barely managed to stop himself from toppling over onto the woman.

Then she came to a standstill so quickly that she lost her balance and fell back.

Into Aidan’s arms.

She gasped and he righted her.

She turned to apologize, pulling strands of hair away from her eyes. They were like crystals, gray-green and shimmering with flecks of both colors.

She didn’t speak but her beautiful eyes widened, as if wondering what she’d seen just before she’d fallen backward—into his arms.

Their eyes met briefly in that confusion.

Rollo, the giant wolfhound, kept barking.

And as they both turned to look at the man—the figure by the tomb—a horde of people came panting up behind them.

They were mostly men in uniform.

Aidan ignored them. So did the young woman and the dog.

They were still staring at the man who’d been propped against the vault. He wore a long billowing coat and black boots, and might have been casually waiting there.

He just didn’t have a head.

But something else about the scene didn’t seem right.

“Oh, my God!” someone shrieked behind him.

Aidan noticed that the headless man stood as if he were about to enter the vault—or perhaps ask someone to join him.

It was staged. It was staged to be horrific.

One of the newcomers stopped about three feet from the young woman.

“Well, I believe you’ve found the rest of Mr. Highsmith, Mo.” He stopped speaking. Perhaps, under the circumstances, all their minds were working a little slowly. The man frowned, then gave Aidan a thorough look and said, “This is a crime scene, sir.” He paused, his expression grim. “But...”

Aidan was in a suit and trench coat, certainly not clothing worn by any of the others here. He guessed—hoped—that he wore it with a certain authority.

“You’re with the federal government?”

Aidan nodded and presented his credentials. The older man studied him again. “Took them long enough to get you here,” he said. “I called last night.”

“Sir, I got the word about an hour and a half ago,” Aidan said.

The older man didn’t offer his hand; he seemed to be an old-time lawman. “Lieutenant Robert Purbeck, Agent Mahoney,” he said. “Glad you made it. Things like this don’t happen in Tarrytown. Except in stories, of course.”

Someone next to him was on a radio, telling someone else to get the M.E. and crime scene techs up the hill.

The wolfhound barked.

“Shh, Rollo,” the young woman said.

“Agent Mahoney, meet my lead men on the case—Detectives Lee Van Camp and Jimmy Voorhaven. And—” he gestured to the young woman and the dog “—Maureen Deauville. Mo...we have a Fed here. Agent Mahoney of the FBI. Oh, and that’s our wonder dog, Rollo.”

Aidan nodded in acknowledgment. The other cops, a weary-looking lean guy and his younger partner, watched him curiously as they shook hands but they didn’t appear to resent his presence.

“God help me,” Purbeck muttered. “I hope that’s the rest of Richard Highsmith. If not...”

He didn’t finish his sentence.

But Aidan knew what he meant.

They’d found Richard’s head.

And if this wasn’t the body that went with the head...

Well, there might be headless bodies and bodiless heads all over the Hudson Valley.

But, as he stood there, staring at the form, Aidan saw that the loose coat had fluttered open—and he understood what was wrong with the scene.

And he knew their worst fears were realized.

“I’m sorry to say this,” Aidan announced, “but that’s not Richard Highsmith.”

“What?” Purbeck demanded. “How the hell do you know that?”

“Take a closer look,” Aidan said. “That’s not a man’s body. It’s a woman’s.”

“What?” Purbeck demanded again. “Rollo found a body, a woman’s body? But...he was on Richard Highsmith’s scent!”

“He sure as hell found something,” Aidan said.

The young woman, Maureen Deauville, spoke quietly then.

“Rollo is— Well, he’s really a sight hound, but—” She paused, glancing around. “He’s never wrong. Richard Highsmith is nearby,” she said. “The, um, rest of him.”

Aidan looked at her, then at the headless body by the tomb. Ms. Deauville seemed very certain. In a second, he’d pulled on a pair of neoprene gloves.

Then he stepped forward.

There was an iron gate that guarded the tomb. Beyond that was some kind of heavy metal door.

Aidan pulled at the gate; it creaked, but gave.

He pushed at the iron door. It groaned on its hinges but opened.

Taking a penlight from his pocket, he flashed it over the inside of the vault. He saw a stone sarcophagus or tomb in the center.

And on the stone tomb, a body. In a suit.

“This, I think,” Aidan said, rigidly controlling the emotion that ripped through him, “is Richard Highsmith.”

2

Purbeck 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.