Chapter One
She was there to help her ex-boyfriend bury his mother in an unmarked grave. Mae “Moon” McFadden waited in her county-issued Dodge Grand Caravan at the cemetery as a chilly June rain poured straight down stripping petals from headstone flowers leaving the stalks like skeletons.
She checked her phone. St. Peter & Paul at 10:00 a.m. It was the right cemetery and the right time, but she didn’t see any other cars. Moon shifted in her seat. She dreaded being anywhere near a cemetery.
She could see the dead.
She watched the ghost of a woman kneel in the dirt in front of a new headstone. The ghost traced her fingers across the engraved name, then leaned forward and kissed the stone. Moon watched other departed souls wander the grounds pointing at various headstones or staring up at the gray sky as though it held the answers. Even when she didn’t see them, Moon could feel them. She knew how each person buried there had lived and died. Thankfully, none of the departed realized she was there, or they would have clustered around her van to try and communicate with her.
Rain patterned the windshield. Moon took a deep breath to steady the butterflies. Finally, Matthew pulled up and parked behind her. Seeing him in the side-view mirror, her heart skipped. Matthew Benson. They had been high school sweethearts. Prom king and queen with a romance that trickled into college. It had been ten years since she had seen him. She watched him get out of the car and huddle under an umbrella. He looked the same. Blond curls. Dimple smack in the middle of his left cheek.
He caught sight of her in the side mirror. Moon straightened in her seat and checked herself in the rear-view mirror. She wore her long, dark hair in a loose bun at the base of her neck. The one side had lost gravity, and a wayward curl tickled her cheek. A gentle mix of her mother’s African American and her father’s Scottish genes, she had light brown skin and dark almond-shaped eyes. Freckles peppered the bridge of her nose. She looped the runaway curl behind her ear, pressed her lips together, and got out of the car.
“Hey.” She opened an umbrella and walked over to him. She reached under his umbrella and hugged him. “I’m so sorry about your mom.”
“Thank you. I appreciate you being here.”
“Where is Julie?”
“Let’s not talk about that right now.”
Matthew opened the back door of his rented Buick Lincoln and pulled out a shiny wooden box. As they trudged through the wet grass, the departed spotted Moon and walked in her direction. Unseen by Matthew, a half dozen souls followed closely behind them. Puddled water here and there shimmered black and gray. They all made their way over to where a man stood under a small green tent beside a wheelbarrow filled with dirt. The man, Jack Phillips, was tall and lean. Everything about his face was vertical. Deep creases in his cheeks made his thin mouth appear as an em dash in between parentheses. He held a shovel, and at his feet was a deep, shoebox-sized hole in the ground.
“Where’s the headstone?” Moon asked.
“Julie and I are still arguing about which type to get.”
They closed their umbrellas and ducked under the tent. Matthew shook the man’s hand.
“Mr. Phillips, you know Mae McFadden.”
“Yes.”
“Hello,” Moon said, extending her hand.
Mr. Phillips looked at her hand, cleared his throat, then gave her a curt nod. He had blue eyes, though they weren’t aimed at her but at the ground. Moon slipped her rebuffed hand into her raincoat pocket but kept her gaze on Mr. Phillips. Living in a small town had its disadvantages. People knew Moon and her grandmother and aunt, and many had long considered them outcasts. Some thought they were evil. Still others believed they were crazy. Some in town thought they possessed mythical powers. What they didn’t know was that Moon inherited the ability to see and communicate with the dead from her grandmother and aunt. As a young girl, Moon often sat in the dark stairwell late at night with her face pressed against the balustrades, listening to the lovestruck women who snuck up from town looking for answers in the tarot cards her aunt revealed. Moon learned from an early age that people often distrusted things they didn’t understand.
“Shall we begin?” Mr. Phillips asked, still not making eye contact.
Moon looked around to see if anyone else was coming. Matthew nodded to Mr. Phillips who then balanced the shovel against his leg and pulled a small Bible from his pocket.
“I’d like to start by reciting Psalm 23.” Mr. Phillips opened the Bible and pulled on a ribbon bookmark. The well-worn pages fluttered open. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil—”
Moon held up her hand. “Hang on a second. Can we have a minute?” She pulled Matthew aside.
“What are you doing?” Matthew whispered.
“Why am I the only one here?”
“There’s a good reason, I promise. I’ll explain everything to you later. Trust me.”
He gave her a look. That look, from those soft blue eyes the color of jeans that had been washed a thousand times. That man could radiate charm at will. He motioned for her to follow him back over toward Mr. Phillips. The departed gathered respectfully behind the couple with their hands folded and heads bowed, and Mr. Phillips resumed. Matthew stood close to Moon as though they had both swallowed magnets.
After reading a few verses, Mr. Phillips closed the Bible and put it back in his pocket. Matthew stepped forward and knelt beside the grave pit. He reached down to place the wooden box on the bottom of the pit. He stood and brushed dirt and wet grass from his pant legs. Mr. Phillips handed Matthew the shovel. He scooped dirt from the wheelbarrow and poured it into the hole. A hollow thud ascended as earth clapped the lid of the box. One of the departed, an old, distinguished-looking Black woman in a pink flowered dress, came forward and shuffled over to the grave pit, leaned over, and peeked inside.
Matthew held the shovel out to Moon. She hesitated but took the shovel from him and scooped some dirt. She glanced down into the hole. The old woman nodded encouragement. Moon shook the dirt from the shovel into the grave, then handed the shovel back to Mr. Phillips.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Matthew,” he said.
“Thank you.”
Moon and Matthew walked back to their cars. When they reached her van, she closed her umbrella, and they stood face to face under his umbrella. Her cell phone vibrated in her raincoat pocket. She reached in and read the text.
“Can I buy you lunch?” Matthew asked.
“I can’t.” She flashed the phone. “I’ve got to go to work.”
“Oh, gosh, I’m sorry.”
Moon took the keys from her pocket. “When someone dies, I go to work.”
He embraced her for a moment, then kissed her cheek and opened the door for her. She got in and rolled down the window. He leaned in on his elbows.
“Dinner then. I’m staying at the Hilton. I’ll explain why you’re the only one here.”
“That sounds nice. I’ll call you when I’m done.”
She plugged a GPS into the cigarette lighter and entered the address from the text.
“Seriously, a GPS? I didn’t think they made those anymore. Why don’t you just use Apple Maps on your phone?”
“What can I say? I’m old school.”
“Okay, old school. I’ll see you later.”
He took a step back, and she rolled up the window. It was then she noticed that his cologne had brushed her raincoat. It was a scent memory from long ago yet still present—fresh and sexy with hints of lemon, Italian bergamot, and cedarwood. She took the cologne in with a deep breath then turned over the ignition. As she drove away, she glanced in the rear-view mirror. Matthew was standing in the rain circled by the departed. They all watched her pull onto the side road that led to the highway.
Moon dialed her boss, Police Chief Larry Quinn, as soon as she turned onto the side road that led to the highway.
“We got us one,” Chief Quinn said. “You’ll see the cars four miles up Whiskey Hollow Road.”
“Yes, sir.”
She drove east on Route 17. The rain was relentless, and she found herself trapped in the vortex of a semi as it barreled down the highway. The wipers slapped at the spray with little effect. She tried to slow down to get away from the semi, but a pickup truck was on her tail, and there was no hope of passing. After suffering through miles of near-blind driving, she took the exit that led to Whiskey Hollow Road.
Although this wasn’t too far from home, she had never traveled this particular country road. Asphalt soon turned to mud and gravel that snaked up the hill. The rain turned to a frayed and raveling mist, but the sky remained gray and discouraging. Small rivulets flowed diagonally from ditch to ditch. As she rounded a curve, she spotted the line of black and white cruisers and pulled off to the side of the road behind Chief Quinn’s car.
Moon got out of the van and opened the back hatch where she kept her crime scene gear in a duffel bag. As she pulled items from the bag, she heard growling. She spun around and saw the wind rustle the tall grass across the ditch. The growling grew louder. As the grass parted, she saw a big mean farm dog, its ears laid back against its broad head. The dog was emaciated, and the hair on its hackles was raised. Its head was lowered, but its eyes were locked onto her. It snarled, then wrinkled its nose and opened its mouth wide, baring its teeth.
She averted her eyes and stood perfectly still. She had read somewhere that making eye contact with dogs was a sign of aggression. She remembered a story her father once told her about the time he and a friend were out deer hunting. They had taken a break and were sitting on a log on the edge of a field eating a sandwich when they saw a German Shepherd chase a deer across the field. The friend lifted his rifle, took aim, and shot the dog.
“Why did you do that?” her father asked.
“The dog was ruined. He had turned—got a taste for blood. If it chased deer, it’ll chase humans.”
“That’s a damn shame. That was a good-looking dog. I wondered who owned it.”
“I owned it. That was my dog.”
Moon wondered if the dog staring her down had ever tasted blood. She swallowed hard. She could feel her heartbeat in her ears. She took a deep breath and gathered her gear. She closed the back hatch and slowly backed away from the ditch with her eyes on the ground. Once she had crossed the road, she glanced back at the field. The dog seemed to have melted back into the tall grass.
A policeman waved to her from behind yellow crime scene barrier tape about 30 feet away. She hopscotched over a puddle and paused under an old red maple tree just before the yellow tape. She kept her eyes on the ditch as she slipped a hairnet under her bun and over her head to her forehead. She pulled the hooded overalls over her black slacks and blouse. She stepped into rubber boots and looped the camera bag around her neck, then punched gloves into her pocket and clipped a tripod to her belt loop.
Her eyes swept the area. A gust of wind caused a handful of leaves to cartwheel across the road. After the heavy rain, the air was weighted with the smell of ozone and worms. There didn’t seem to be any neighbors for miles. No sounds of traffic. It was something she missed from her days in Manhattan. She craved the constant hum of energy.
Moon had been back in the small upstate New York town of Clivesville a few years. The city covered 3.3 miles and was bisected by the murky waters of the Chemung River that slithered west to east through the middle of the town.
Clivesville seemed to have safely cupped itself within the narrow hands of a vast range of hills deeply scarred with ridges about 40 miles above its junction with the Susquehanna River. Home to the Fortune 500 company MacKinley, Inc., it was also home to blue-collar factory workers, working-class teachers, firefighters, and police officers, and to white-collar engineers, attorneys, researchers, and physicians. It was also home to sex traffic ringleaders disguised as dentists, white supremacists and militia groups, pedophiles, and kitchen meth lab operators. The nearby Amish built sturdy roofs and carports for the townies. The countryside was filled with McMansions enfolded by meticulous landscaping, wild lilac trees, and rolling pastures. Farther down the road were rusted trailers scattered throughout the hollows like thrown dice, their summer lawns littered with deflated snowmen leftover from the holidays, angry dogs chained to trees, and ravaged car bodies cast onto cinder blocks. The countryside was peaceful, idyllic even, but at times, danger buzzed the air. The serenity of an afternoon hike in the woods could be shattered by the sound of gunfire. Was that a responsible sportsman target practicing at the local gun club? A hunter out of season? A group of beer-drinking buddies in a nearby field target shooting the neighbor’s cat with an AR-15?
Aunt Maisie was Moon’s only living relative. When Maisie got sick, Moon quit her job in Manhattan as a forensic photographer, sold her apartment on the Upper East Side, and moved back home to take care of her. Moon wasn’t used to small-town silence. She closed her eyes and listened to the murmur of police voices beyond the crime scene tape in the nearby field. And the wind. She cast one last look over her shoulder at the ditch, then ducked under the yellow tape.
Moon trudged up the hill about 40 yards alongside the muddy path made by the police to the field on the edge of the woods. By the time she got to the top, her calves were burning. Police Chief Quinn and District Attorney Richard Mendoza huddled side by side on the edge of the field. Their umbrella canopies made a figure eight.
In his late 50s, Chief Quinn was well-built and tanned from hours in his Lowe fishing boat stalking smallmouth bass in Keuka Lake. He rarely wore his uniform. Instead, he preferred to wear jeans, a button-down shirt, and on chilly days an old navy cardigan that looked as though it had left Ireland before the famine. The permanent crease between his eyebrows made him appear unapproachable, serious, but he was the first man to rush into traffic to help an old lady safely across the street.
District Attorney Mendoza sported silver temples and a strong body. He had a deep voice, a reassuring fireside chat voice. He had just stepped into his 60th year and had lost very little to time. He looked to be the type who played football or some other sport in college, and his current gym habits kept his body in shape.
Chief Quinn waved Moon over. Three policemen stood a few yards away on the edge of the field. One of them was bent over with his hands on his knees studying the ground. Moon took photos of everyone standing on the edge of the field. She always took photos of the spectators knowing that many times, the perpetrator would return to the scene to observe the police and even offer to help in the investigation. It also allowed her to identify any reluctant witnesses who could be identified and interviewed at a later date.
“Who’s that with Newman and Patterson?” Moon asked, snapping another picture of the bent-over man.
“That’s the new kid, Stevens,” Chief Quinn said. “He was the first responder and secured the scene.”
Stevens threw up, and the other two policemen placed their hands on his back.
“Is he going to be okay?” Moon asked.
“He’ll be fine,” Chief Quinn said. “He just needs to get his sea legs. A hiker found the body while crossing the field.”
“Was the body moved or anything altered?”
“Nope.” Chief Quinn gave a slight smile like he appreciated the question. He flipped a small spiral notebook shut and tucked it and his mechanical pencil into his shirt pocket. “She’s all yours.”
Moon snapped on surgical gloves in a puff of talcum powder. Latex gloves have a particularly offensive smell caused by residual chlorine that gets trapped in the molecules of the latex. Moon hated the smell of latex because she associated its scent with the dead. She pulled a Canon EOS 5D Mark IV DSLR camera with a wide-angle lens from the camera bag. She scanned the waves of hay and turned in a 360-degree circle to get an idea of the overall scene using a three-step approach. Before she began shooting, she always took in the entire crime scene. She thought, why here? Why this field? She started photographing at eye level in a clockwise direction working from the outside perimeter of the scene toward the body. As she tightened the circle, she replaced the wide-angle lens with a normal lens and snapped mid-range photos. She shined a flashlight on the ground at an oblique angle. Even in the daytime, this was a good way to catch evidence.
Moon had a feeling that she was traipsing through a battlefield where the wrong side had triumphed. She spotted something white in the middle of the field among the tall stalks. It was the naked body of a woman. As she spiraled closer, she switched lenses again, this time to a close-up lens. As she approached the body, Moon averted her eyes for a moment, more from the indignity. The victim lay face up in the trampled straw and mud. Legs akimbo. Her nipples and areolae had been removed from her breasts.
Moon studied the hay looking for traces of blood. Footprints. Anything. As she got closer to the body, she took pictures of the victim from five angles—both sides of the body, both ends of the body, and straight down from overhead. She started from the head working her way down to the feet. She snapped pictures of the torso, breasts, and ligature marks. The bottom of the victim’s feet had cut marks. There was an abrasion on her chin and the front of her shoulders. She snapped on a macro lens and took close-up pictures of the wounds. Moon crouched down and snapped pictures of both the victim’s profiles including her ears which are as unique as a person’s fingerprints.
She took photos of the woman’s face and focused on the eyes. Many people believe a person’s eyes are a window into their soul. The eyes are the most sensitive part of the human body. In life, the pupils are round and equal in size. Once a person dies, the muscles that control the pupils relax, causing them to lose their symmetrical shape. The eyelids become flabby. If someone opened them, they would remain open. After death, the eyes no longer react to light, touch, or pressure. A dead person’s pupils will be dilated. Moon looked at the woman’s cornea. That clear part of the eye will become milky or cloudy within a half hour to several hours after death. The degree of change in the eyes after death depends on many factors: temperature, air currents, humidity, and weather. If someone was experienced in reading the condition of the eyes postmortem, they could pretty accurately pinpoint the time of death simply by looking at the person’s eyes.
Moon needed a moment alone with the victim. To be still. To observe. To listen. To let unseen things in. She crouched down in the tall stalks beside the right side of the woman’s face, which was drained of everything, pale as birch. The victim’s empty eyes were frozen on the gray sky, and her mouth was open in a silent scream. Moon snapped a photo. She peered over the camera and watched as the dead woman slowly turned her head and gazed directly at her. She saw a vision of the woman running naked through the woods with her wrists zip-tied tightly behind her back. Tree branches slapped her body. A lock of her long beautiful honey-colored hair was ripped from her head and dangled from a branch. When the woman looked back at whoever was chasing her, she tripped on a tree root. She fell hard onto her chest and chin. She struggled to get her footing, to get up and run. She heard footsteps and the snapping of branches just a few feet away.
“I’ve got you now,” the male voice said. His steps, his voice, were unhurried. Proud. Smug.
The victim’s eyes left Moon and drifted back up to the sky.
