Jo woke to the sound of the doorbell. She shoved back the duvet that a kind soul had draped over her after she’d passed out from exhaustion. Looking around the tidy living room, she concluded that she was on Nessa’s couch. She hadn’t even made it to the guest room the previous night. She’d dreamed of a mountain of bodies at the bottom of the ocean, all of them girls. One by one, she’d carried them up to the surface. The last one had been her own daughter, her limbs tied and a stuffed pig crammed into her mouth. Jo felt more tired than she had when she’d laid her head down.
According to her phone, it was just short of nine o’clock in the morning. Jo stood up and stared at the front door, wondering if she should chance a look out the peephole. Then a knock at the window behind her made Jo leap to her feet. The curtains were open a crack, and Jo could see a woman through the gap. She stood with her hands cupped around her eyes, peering in through the glass.
Sorry! she mouthed, and gestured for Jo to open the window.
Jo grabbed her phone and began to dial 911.
The woman rapped again. When Jo looked up, she was pinning a copy of the New York Post to the window with one hand. A photo of the same woman accompanied an article’s byline. She was a reporter.
Jo walked to the window, but didn’t unlock it. “What do you want?” she demanded.
The woman glanced over her shoulder as though she didn’t want to be overheard. Instead of answering, she fiddled with her phone, then placed the screen against the window. A news broadcast was playing, and the chyron at the bottom was crystal clear. It read Spencer Harding Presumed Dead.
Jo unlocked the window and lifted it. “What happened?”
“Spencer Harding’s helicopter crashed into New York Harbor late last night. It’s believed he was the only one on board. Would you care to comment?”
Jo had no comment. Only questions. Had his death been painful enough? Had he known the kind of fear she and her daughter had felt? “Me? Why?”
“Given the seriousness of the allegations you made against him yesterday, it’s hard to believe his death and your story aren’t related in some way.”
Jo resisted the urge to let out a whoop of joy. “Holy shit,” she marveled instead.
“Is it okay if I quote you?” the reporter asked.
“No,” Jo said, trying to remember the response she always heard people give on TV. “I have no comment at this time.”
She slid the window shut, locked it, and pulled the curtains. Then she raced upstairs to Nessa’s bedroom. She rapped once on the door but didn’t wait for an answer.
“Wake up!”
Nessa sat bolt upright. She was still wearing the outfit she’d worn out on the boat. Apparently, she hadn’t found the energy to change into her nightclothes. “What is it?” she said. “Is everyone okay? What’s happened?”
“Spencer Harding is dead,” Jo said.
“Jesus.” Nessa flopped back down on the bed. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”
“Someone just rang the doorbell, and when I got up, there was a reporter at the window. She said Spencer Harding is dead and people think it might have something to do with the podcast.”
“There’s a reporter outside?” Her curiosity piqued, Nessa hauled herself out of bed and went to the window. She let out a snort when she peeked out the blinds. “You said there was one reporter outside?”
Jo joined her. The street in front of Nessa’s house was jammed with television vans. “They’re going to ruin my damn yard,” Nessa said.
“If it makes you feel any better, I’m sure Harriett can fix it. You mind if I turn on the news?” Jo asked.
Nessa sighed. “I’d say that’s probably a good idea.”
The local news was filming live in front of Nessa’s house. When they pulled up the blinds and peered straight down from Nessa’s bedroom window, they could see the blond reporter standing in the middle of the lawn.
“These folks got a lot of nerve,” Nessa grumbled as Jo turned up the sound on the television.
“. . . the stunning allegations made against Harding have sent local police scrambling. Divers are currently scouring the ocean floor off Danskammer Beach in search of the two bodies filmed by Josh Gibbon, host of the true crime podcast They Walk Among Us. Detective Franklin Rees, the lead detective on the Jane Doe case, says that despite the compelling story told by Ms. James and Ms. Levison, it is still too early to draw conclusions.”
The program switched over to an interview that had been taped at Danskammer Beach while the sun was still rising in the east. Franklin stood in front of the camera with bags under his eyes and a coffee cup in his hand.
“From the beginning, the Mattauk PD has been diligently searching for evidence that will lead us to the truth about what happened here in Mattauk this spring. While we take Ms. James and Ms. Levison’s allegations seriously, they wouldn’t stand up in a court of law. We must have proof to back them up before we can take action. We are looking for that proof as we speak.”
The camera returned to the reporter in Nessa’s front yard. “That interview was filmed early this morning, and it now appears as if the proof they’ve been searching for has at last been found. I’m going to hand it over to my colleague, Frances McDaniel, who’s reporting live from Danskammer Beach.”
“Thank you, Madeline. What you’re seeing behind me are two lobster traps being raised from the ocean floor. They appear to be the same traps we saw in the video posted last night by Josh Gibbon of They Walk Among Us, which quickly went viral. According to the podcast, the traps contain the bodies of two more girls—and may be evidence that a serial killer has been at work here on the island. The lead suspect at this moment is Spencer Harding, whose Culling Pointe mansion can be seen in the distance. Late last night, in the hours after the latest episode of They Walk Among Us was released, Mr. Harding’s helicopter plunged into New York Harbor. Authorities do not think the crash was due to a mechanical failure. Harding announced a mayday situation shortly before the aircraft went down, and it’s believed he may have experienced a medical emergency while piloting the craft.”
The show switched to footage of the crash that had been filmed by a passenger on the Staten Island Ferry. A tiny red light in the sky grew larger and brighter until the aircraft materialized out of the night sky and plunged into the water a few hundred yards away. The videographer must have been knocked over as waves rocked the ferry. Once they were back on their feet, the only signs of the helicopter were the bubbles rising to the surface.
Jo felt Nessa’s arm slip around her. “It’s over,” Nessa told her. “You found the bodies when the rest of us couldn’t. You got our story out. Who knows how many lives you may have saved? You’re a hero, Jo Levison. You’ve done Lucy proud.”
Jo threw her arms around Nessa and buried her face in her friend’s shoulder. For two days, she’d been fighting back the tears. Now they came flowing out all at once. Never before had she felt so terrified. But with Spencer Harding dead, her family could come home. There was nothing on earth that she wanted more—but the things she’d been willing to do to bring them back had surprised even her.
“Hey,” Nessa nudged her. “Looks like Harriett just showed up.”
“Harriett?” Jo wiped her eyes on her sleeve and glanced out the window. A barefoot woman in a burlap sack was walking down Woodland Drive toward Nessa’s house. The crowd parted for her as she made her way to the front door, the reporters struck dumb by the sight.
Downstairs, the doorbell rang, and Nessa hurried to answer it with Jo on her heels.
“It’s a little early for a lawn party, don’t you think?” Harriett said when Nessa opened the door.
“Come in, come in,” Nessa quickly ushered Harriett through the door as cameras flashed behind her. “Did you hear? Spencer Harding is dead. It’s over.”
“Spencer may be dead,” Harriett said, “but it’s far from over.”
Jo felt her heart sink. “What do you mean?”
“You think Spencer Harding put the girls in those lobster traps and rowed them out to sea? There had to be other people involved.”
Jo must have looked crushed.
“I didn’t mean to upset you.” Harriett sounded serious and sober for once. “No one’s going to tip their hand by coming after us right now. We’re safe for the moment. You can bring darling Lucy home.”
“What should we do about the others?”
“Those who deserve punishment will receive it,” Harriett assured her.
“I’m getting pretty sick of waiting for justice,” Jo said.
“Justice may be relentless, as Franklin says, but she’s also hobbled by rules,” Harriett noted. “That’s why I choose vengeance. She’s the only mistress I serve.”
At the beginning of July, they buried Mandy Welsh. The Hereford County medical examiner had not been able to determine her cause of death. Mandy’s father was the only family police had been able to locate, and he gave Nessa permission to arrange the service and to have his daughter interred beside the girl in blue. With two years left on his sentence at Sing Sing, he wouldn’t be allowed to attend the funeral. Since the Welshes hadn’t gone to church, Nessa held the service at hers. Over a thousand people attended. She’d asked for all seats to be reserved for members of the community, but to her consternation, there appeared to be reporters in the pews.
As soon as the pastor finished his prayers, Nessa rose from her seat between her two daughters and made her way down the aisle. She’d attended her share of funerals over the years, but she had never given a eulogy before. When Jonathan died, she’d been too grief-stricken to speak. When her parents passed, Breanna and Jordan had spoken for the family. At the girl in blue’s funeral, she’d felt it wasn’t her place to say anything. But now she knew she’d been wrong. This time, she planned to stand before the whole town and speak for Mandy Welsh, whose family wasn’t there to see her off.
When Nessa looked out over the podium, her fear vanished. Not only was it gone, she couldn’t imagine how it had ever weighed her down. Nessa adjusted the microphone, which the pastor had positioned too high. Then she scanned the somber crowd, cleared her throat, and began.
“Let me make something clear,” she told those sitting in the pews and clustered in the aisles. “We have not gathered here to talk about the man who killed Mandy Welsh. You will not hear me say his name today, and I ask that you all avoid his name, too. We are here to talk about Mandy. I’ve spoken with dozens of people who knew her—you’ll hear from some of them later—and they all told me the same thing. This was a good girl. The kind of girl who started taking care of her brothers when she was barely more than a baby herself. A girl who, despite having nothing, always had love and kindness to share. Mandy may have been sweet and soft-spoken, but this girl was strong—so strong. Mandy crammed more work into each of her days than most of us could bear in a week. The afternoon she was abducted, she was walking five miles out to Culling Pointe to interview for a job that could help her family make ends meet. Mandy had just turned sixteen, but she was already supporting three little kids.
“And yet when this girl, this best of all girls, went missing, no one but her mama went looking for her. They said, with no reason to support it, that Mandy must have run away from home. Now we know, two years later, that she’d been stolen and abused. After that, she was murdered and tossed into the sea. If she’d been rich, they would have sent out a search party. If she’d lived in one of the mansions on Culling Pointe, they would have had every officer on the island knocking on doors. But Mandy was poor, and her dad was in jail, and to them, that meant she wasn’t worth their time.”
Nessa paused to wipe her tears with a handkerchief. “There is nothing we can do for Mandy now. The damage has already been done. But there are two ways we can honor her memory. We can identify the other girls found near Danskammer Beach, and we can make absolutely certain that this never happens again—to any girl, no matter who she is or where she comes from.”
As she was walking back to her pew, her eyes panned the crowd. Lucy waved to her and Jo gave her a proud thumbs-up. Art had taken his glasses off to dab his eyes and missed the exchange. It wasn’t until Breanna and Jordan jumped up to greet her with hugs that Nessa spotted the person she’d been seeking. Franklin stood by the church doors, tall and stoic. She hadn’t spoken to him since the day she’d asked him to leave her house. He met her gaze and held it until she turned to sit. When the service was over, she looked for him again, but he’d already gone.
The angel’s trumpet Harriett had planted on the girl in blue’s grave had grown to a height of six feet and burst into bloom. Its enormous flame-colored flowers could be seen from the highway below. It had become known in town as the burning bush. After Mandy’s coffin had been lowered into the ground and the other mourners began making their way to their cars, Harriett and Lucy filled in the grave and planted another angel’s trumpet on top of it.
“It’s going to look like the whole hill is on fire,” Lucy noted.
“That’s the idea,” said Harriett. “Let it serve as a warning.”
Jo stood silently, holding her husband’s hand as their daughter finished burying Mandy Welsh. One story may have ended, but her own family’s remained far from resolved. The man who’d broken into their house had managed to retain one of the best criminal defense lawyers in Manhattan and post a two-million-dollar bail. He was currently under house arrest, with an ankle monitor that kept track of his movements. Worried what Jo might do, Art had begged her not to make any housecalls.
Though the man continued to keep his silence, there was no doubt now about what had happened to girls who were kidnapped for Spencer Harding. When the police searched Harding’s beach house, they’d found a safe filled with Polaroids. The photos showed, in lurid detail, the crimes he’d committed. Jo and Art knew their daughter might have narrowly avoided the same fate. And they’d both agreed to let Harriett punish those involved in whatever way she saw fit.
The third victim remained in the Mattauk morgue, waiting for someone to claim her. With Nessa’s guidance, a forensic artist had created a digital portrait of the girl, and Nessa swore it was her spitting image. She’d been a stunning girl with features experts thought might suggest Chinese ancestry. The media coverage had remained intense for weeks. The story had made every major website, magazine, and newspaper. But no one stepped forward to claim the girl as their own. It was as if she had fallen right out of the sky.