Jo and Nessa met Josh at the dock, and the three of them walked out to the boat where Celeste and Harriett stood waiting. Celeste had traded her nautical attire for a black T-shirt and leggings. Harriett looked fabulous in a sleeveless shift that appeared to have once been a sack of some sort.
“Oh my God,” Josh muttered under his breath. “Who the hell is that?” The awe in his voice left little doubt that he was talking about Harriett.
“That’s our friend Harriett. She was with us when we found the girl,” Nessa said. “If you saw the news coverage of us, you must have seen her, too.”
“If that’s the woman who was with you guys, she’s changed since then,” Josh said.
“Has she?” Nessa squinted in the sunlight.
But Jo could see it now. The transformation had been so gradual that it had gone unnoticed, but the woman standing on the prow of the boat with one dirty bare foot propped up on the railing was not the same person who’d accompanied them to Danskammer Beach on that terrible day in May. Her skin was bronze and her hair had grown longer and wilder. Even from a distance, her eyes seemed golden. She was becoming something else, but the process hadn’t yet reached completion. What would Harriett be, Jo wondered, when all was said and done?
“Hello,” Harriett greeted their guest. “You must be Josh Gibbon. I’m Harriett Osborne, and this is my friend Celeste Howard. I’ve been listening to your podcast.”
“Thank you.” Josh’s smile was a study in faux humility. He seemed to wait for the praise he expected to follow. His smile dimmed as he realized there would be no kudos coming from Harriett.
After that, Jo noticed Josh never quite let his guard down or allowed his eye to wander away from Harriett for longer than a second or two. He seemed utterly captivated by her. She, on the other hand, appeared completely uninterested in him. While Celeste bustled about the boat like a woman embarking on a life-and-death mission, Harriett calmly watched the water. Jo got the sense that for Harriett, their plan was just one step toward a conclusion she’d long anticipated. How detailed was Harriett’s foresight, Jo wondered? Did she know what would happen at each step of the way? Or had she simply picked up on a familiar pattern?
When they reached the right spot, Nessa asked Celeste to bring the boat to a stop. The vessel rocked on the waves as Jo lowered her mask. She tied the end of a rope to her waist while Josh handed her a GoPro mounted on a floating hand grip. She had her flippers on and a knife in a scabbard hung from her weight belt. She saw Nessa’s mouth open to tell her she didn’t need to do this. Before her friend could get the words out, Jo rolled backward into the water.
Her dive suit couldn’t spare her the shock of the cold. She treaded water for a minute until she acclimated. Then she went under. Toward the surface, the water was a mossy green. It grew darker the deeper Jo dove, until she could see only what passed through the cone of light that issued from the tip of her flashlight. The water was filled with tiny specks that glowed like motes of dust in a sunlit room. She told herself not to imagine what might swim past. If the water was deep enough for a whale, there was no telling what could be lurking beneath her.
Jo descended farther into the depths, the only sound that of her own breathing. She checked her depth gauge and saw that she was already at forty feet. Even in Florida, she hadn’t gone deeper than eighty. Never before had she felt so alone or so terrified. But she couldn’t think of any other way to protect the child she loved more than anything else in the world. The little girl she’d put in danger. She remembered the look in Lucy’s eyes as she lay bound and gagged in her striped pajamas. Whatever it takes, Jo reminded herself. As tears of fear and frustration rolled down her cheeks, her mask started to fog. Within seconds, she was blind. Then she felt herself being pulled farther down, as if by an unseen hand. The condensation inside her mask began to clear, and there, in the light of her flashlight, stood a mountain of lobster traps.
There had to be thousands of traps in all, some made of wood and others of wire, and all were clogged with seaweed. Even though most had been abandoned two decades earlier, they continued to catch and kill. Jo freed a crab and a fish before she felt a tug on the rope. Back on the boat, her friends were watching the feed from the GoPro, and now they were sending her a message: Get moving. She knew they were right. There wasn’t enough time to liberate every trapped creature. She swam around the mountain of traps, aiming her flashlight beam into each one she passed. Then she spotted a trap lying on its side at the bottom, as though it had tumbled from the top of the pile. Only a few fronds of seaweed clung to its wires, but still she couldn’t see into it. As she swam down for a closer look, she realized there was a black bag crammed inside.
Jo pulled out her knife and sliced open a small section of the plastic. A lock of long red hair floated up from the opening and undulated in the water like a flame. The skull to which it was still attached peeked out, as if the girl to whom it belonged was too shy to emerge. Her eyes were gone, as was her flesh. Jo hovered there, the GoPro held out in front of her. The girl remained perfectly still, looking back at Jo from two empty eye sockets as though patiently waiting for her picture to be taken.
Jo felt a hard yank on the rope attached to her belt, a signal for her to come up. But she kept on going. Now that she knew what to look for, it would be easier to locate the second girl. And it only took a few kicks of her flippers to find another trap, this one seemingly newer than the last, with a black plastic bag stuffed inside. Jo made an incision between two of the wires, revealing the bones of a hand with patches of flaking flesh still attached to it. Jo made sure the camera lingered for a moment on the long, pale fingers. Then she began her slow, careful ascent to the surface.
When she climbed up the swim ladder onto the boat, she was met with grim faces. She didn’t need to tell the others what she’d found; they’d seen it all, too. She took off her mask and waited silently as her friends removed her flippers. As she turned to let them take off her air tanks, she spotted a slab of gray in the water nearby.
“It’s the whale,” she marveled. It was hard to believe she’d been so close to such a magnificent beast. “I didn’t see her when I was coming up.”
“She was right there the whole time,” Nessa told Jo. “It’s almost like she was sent here to watch out for you.”
Jo glanced at Harriett, who claimed her innocence with a casual shrug.
That evening, they turned Nessa’s dining room into a podcasting studio, with three chairs around the circular table and a microphone carefully placed in front of each seat. Harriett watched them set up the equipment but turned down the chance to be interviewed on the podcast. Her part would come soon enough, she informed them. In the meantime, she had gardening to do, and her compost heap needed tending.
Before she left, she approached Josh. He was an average-size man with an average-size paunch. But standing before Harriett, he resembled a small, furry animal. When she reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder, he glanced down at it in awe. “In this war, there isn’t a Switzerland,” she told him. “There is no such thing as neutrality. You have to choose sides. You are very lucky, Mr. Gibbon. You have a chance to decide how you’ll be remembered, and I’m now certain you will make the right choice.”
As Harriett walked down the street on bare feet, her silver strands of hair sparkling in the moonlight, Josh watched from Nessa’s front window. When she vanished around a curve in Woodland Drive, he drew in a deep breath as though a heavy weight had been lifted off his chest. He turned back to Jo and Nessa, who were waiting by their chairs at the table. His skin appeared waxy and white.
“She says shit like that all the time. You’ll get used to it,” Jo said.
“Shall we start?” Nessa asked politely.
They all took their seats at the table. Nessa and Jo waited while Josh, head bowed and brow furrowed, fiddled with the controls on his computer. When he looked up again, he’d become a different person. While the podcast was recording, he was in his element, and his cocky confidence returned.
“Hello, justice seekers. This is Josh Gibbon, and tonight we have a very special edition of They Walk Among Us. I’m recording the show live this evening, and for reasons that will soon become clear, it will be posted in its entirety, unedited, immediately after recording.
“I’m in Mattauk, New York—a place many of you will recognize as the beach town where a young woman’s body was recently discovered wrapped in a black plastic trash bag. I’m joined by Nessa James and Jo Levison, two of the women who made that discovery, and tonight they have explosive new information to share with us. Not only do they have proof that a serial killer has been at work here in this picturesque place, they believe they now know the killer’s identity.” He paused and shifted into earnest mode. “Honestly, folks, I thought by this point I’d seen and heard everything. I never imagined I could be shocked anymore. But these women’s story, and the evidence they’ve provided, has shaken me to my very core.
“We’ll start with you, Nessa. On the morning of May sixth, you made a gruesome discovery on Danskammer Beach.”
“Yes.” Nessa’s voice came out as a whisper, and Josh gestured for her to speak louder. She cleared her throat nervously. “Yes,” she repeated.
“What was it?”
“It was the body of a young girl wrapped up in a garbage bag. She looked to be around seventeen years old, and she was nude.”
“How did you happen to come across the body?” Josh asked.
“My friends and I were walking down a trail from the road to the beach, and I spotted the bag in the scrub. I’m a nurse practitioner, and I used to work in a hospital. I’m familiar with the smell of death. I knew there was something terrible in that bag. And there was.”
“The police claim the young woman was a prostitute who died of an overdose.”
“They still can’t tell us who she is, but they know she was a sex worker?” Her indignation came through clearly, though Nessa kept her tone polite. “What difference would it make if she was? Is it suddenly okay to kill sex workers?”
“Of course not.” Josh looked taken aback. “I didn’t mean to suggest that.”
“If the police said she was a cashier at CVS, would you have brought that up, too?
“No. Probably not,” Josh conceded.
“The police claim the girl died of an overdose while with a client, who panicked and got rid of the body. But that doesn’t fit with what I saw. The bag hadn’t been tossed out of a car. Someone had taken the time to wrap the girl up like a present and carry her down the trail. The bag’s drawstrings were tied in a neat bow.”
Josh lifted a finger to have Nessa pause for a moment.
“The pictures Nessa took of the bow are up on our website and will remain there until we’re forced to take them down. Nessa, you and your friends called the police. But when they arrived, there was something you didn’t share with them. Is that right?”
“Yes. I had a feeling there were other bodies nearby.”
“Are you talking about ESP?”
They’d discussed how to handle the subject of Nessa’s gift. Josh felt it was best to keep it vague.
“You can call it whatever you like. I’ll call it women’s intuition. Every lady listening right now knows exactly what I’m talking about. I had a feeling that I just couldn’t shake. I mentioned it to my daughters that night when I got home, and they reminded me that a girl their age had disappeared along Danskammer Beach two years ago.”
“A girl named Mandy Welsh.”
“My friends Jo and Harriett met Mrs. Welsh. She told them she was convinced her daughter had been murdered. But two years later, police were still writing Mandy off as a runaway.”
Josh turned to face the microphone. “We tried to reach Mandy Welsh’s mother for this podcast, but we were unable to locate her.”
“A few weeks back, Amber Welsh and her kids disappeared overnight,” Nessa said.
“Overnight?”
“Literally,” Nessa confirmed. “In less than twenty-four hours, a woman, three little boys, and an entire trailer disappeared without a trace. When we found out they were gone, Jo and I went right back to the police.”
“And what did they say?”
“They said the disappearance wasn’t surprising, considering the Welshes’ background.”
“Which was?”
“In a word? Poor.”
“Nessa, what do you believe happened to Mandy Welsh?”
“I believe she was murdered by the same person who murdered the girl I found—and her body was dumped in the ocean off Danskammer Beach.”
“When Nessa first came to me with her theory, I was skeptical. So this afternoon, with the help of a local scuba diver, I was able to take some video of the ocean floor off Danskammer Beach. That video has been posted to our website. The entire area is littered with hundreds of old lobster traps that were abandoned back in the nineties. Most of the traps are empty. Two are not. Inside those traps are heavy black plastic bags like the one in which the first girl was found. When the diver cut those bags open, we were able to see what we believe to be the remains of two girls inside. A link to the video has been sent to local law enforcement and the FBI. Do you know what this means, Nessa?”
“Yes,” Nessa said. “It means there’s a serial killer at work on the island.”
“And you think you know who it is.”
“Yes, we do,” Nessa said.
“I’m going to turn now to Jo Levison, the owner of a popular gym here in Mattauk, and one of the two women who was with Nessa James the morning she discovered the body by the beach. Ms. Levison, news footage from that day showed you and your two friends down by the beach, is that correct?”
Jo slid forward in her seat and leaned toward the mic. “It is.”
“In fact, that’s how you and I first met, isn’t it? I saw you on the news, and the next day I approached you about doing an interview.”
“That’s right.”
“And you told me to go to hell.”
“That’s a nice way of putting it,” Jo said.
“So why have you decided to speak to me now?”
“Because no one else will listen,” Jo said. “We’ve gone to the police. We did all the right things, but we can’t get the authorities to take any action. We don’t want more young women to be killed.”
“You recently discovered a clue that you believe could identify the murderer of the three girls.”
“Yes. As you mentioned, I own a gym here in Mattauk. One of my clients was killed in a car crash on the sixth of June. Inside a locker I believe she’d been using was a nude Polaroid of the girl whose body Nessa discovered by Danskammer Beach.”
“And do you know who the locker belonged to?”
“Yes. She hadn’t officially rented it. But I know the locker belonged to my deceased client because she’d given me the combination to the lock. My client’s name was Rosamund Harding.”
“The Olympic diver?”
“Yes.”
“And you say she gave you the combination?”
“She gave me an apple with the word FAITH carved into it. At the time, I had no idea that the letters were the combination to a lock.”
“When did you figure out that’s what it was?”
“After Rosamund died. The same day, the police came to empty out a locker she rented by the month. There was nothing in there but her gym clothes and supplies.”
“Wait—the police came to clear out her locker?”
“Yeah, I thought that was unusual, too. Why would it be so important to empty her locker the same day she died? I wondered if they were looking for something specific. When they left, it occurred to me that Rosamund could have had something hidden in another locker—one of the day-use lockers that wasn’t rented under her name. So I took a look, and sure enough, there was an unrented locker with a five-letter combination lock on it. I almost went out to buy a pair of bolt cutters until I remembered the apple. I tried the word FAITH, and the lock opened right away.”
“And the Polaroid of the girl found at Danskammer Beach was the only item in the locker?”
“Yes. And in the picture, the girl was nude.”
Josh stopped and cleared his throat. Jo realized they were about to pass the point of no return. Most people wouldn’t have had the guts to keep going. But Josh did. “Just to be clear—you found this nude photo in a locker you believe was being used by Rosamund Harding, the recently deceased wife of Spencer Harding, the noted art dealer?”
“Yes. I’m convinced that Rosamund hid the photo at my gym to keep it safe. I think she was afraid of her husband and the men who worked for him.”
“Do you believe Spencer Harding may have had something to do with the death of the girl whose body was found on Danskammer Beach?”
“I can’t think of any other reason for Rosamund to have the picture.”
“Did you call the police when you found the photo?”
“Of course,” Jo said. “They say there’s not enough evidence to look into Spencer Harding.”
“Have they questioned him?”
“Not to my knowledge,” Jo said.
“Why wouldn’t they question him?”
“I don’t know,” Jo said. “What I do know is that after I found the photo, a man broke into my house in the middle of the night. I caught him in my daughter’s room. He’d—” She stopped to wipe away tears. “She was bound and gagged when I found her. Now the man responsible is sitting in the Mattauk jail, refusing to say a word.”
“Why do you think he broke into your house?”
“I’m convinced Spencer Harding sent him there to kidnap my daughter. I believe he wanted to scare me and my friends away from looking into the death of the girl at Danskammer Beach.”
“Is your daughter safe now?”
It was a simple question, but it hit Jo hard. Nessa reached over and took her hand as Jo choked back a sob.
“For now. The only way to keep her safe for good is to send Spencer Harding’s evil ass to jail, and I’m not going to rest until it happens.”
“Neither will I,” Josh Gibbon told her. “And I won’t rest until the girls at Danskammer Beach have names. To all of you out there, thanks for listening. There’s obviously much more to this story, and we’ll be putting it all together in the days to come.”