Onyx Webb 10 Read online

  When Onyx married Ulrich at the age of twenty-nine, she was running from things. From the bayou. From her father. From her boredom. From her fear that the life she’d lived until then was all there was—and all there would ever be.

  But with Noah, she was running to something.

  To happiness.

  To love.

  To him.

  Sometimes Onyx felt almost alive when she was with him. In those unguarded moments when she’d forgotten the truth of her reality—the reality that she was dead.

  But now, six days later, she was seeing things differently—all because of something Tara had said.

  “It’s so nice that Noah is willing to give up a normal life for you,” Tara said. “You know, having a family, that whole thing…”

  Onyx was stunned by the statement, but did her best not to show it, looking away and starring out the car window.

  “I’m sorry,” Tara added. “It’s just the champagne talking.”

  But it hadn’t been the champagne. It was what Tara really thought. Worse still, Onyx knew Tara was right. Things said in jest...

  “Forget I said anything.”

  But Onyx couldn’t forget. The truth was the truth. Some bells couldn’t be un-rung—especially wedding bells that Onyx shouldn’t have allowed to have rung in the first place.

  Onyx had been selfish in the truest definition of the word: putting her needs before Noah’s.

  Of course

  he would want to have children someday—children Onyx knew she could not give him. Not without running the risk of expending all her energy in the process and disappearing like her mother had, leaving Noah with a child and no wife.

  The question now was, what to do about it?

  Onyx glanced over at the bed where Noah lay asleep—yet another difference between them. His ability to drift off into hours of golden slumber, while Onyx could not. It had been so long since Onyx had slept she could barely remember what it was like. It reminded her of a famous line from Hamlet.

  “To sleep, perchance to dream.”

  That was the version most people quoted, but it wasn’t the complete, true text from the play. Onyx knew because she’d read Hamlet a hundred times. What Shakespeare really wrote was:

  “To die, to sleep—to sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub. For in this sleep of death, what dreams may come?”

  Hamlet was asking himself if it’s better to give up and die rather than face his troubles. But Hamlet was frightened—frightened that even in death he would still never escape from his earthly problems.

  Onyx also knew that the beginning of that same speech from Hamlet began with the famous words “To be, or not to be.”

  Again, the words didn’t mean what people thought.

  Hamlet was asking if he should live or die.

  Onyx did not have that option. She was dead already. There was only one question for her now.

  To stay, or not to stay?

  Yes, that was the question.

  QUANTICO, VIRGINIA

  JANUARY 22, 2011 – 10:22 A.M.

  NEWT WAS SEATED in the conference room with his feet up on the table, tossing a tennis ball against the wall and catching it on its return—something he’d been doing for the past twenty minutes to help him relax.

  Newt was working his way through the list of items that still bothered him about the Leg Collector situation—first and foremost of which was the man’s real name. The only thing Newt knew for sure was that the Leg Collector’s real name contained the following seventeen letters:

  AEEEGHLM NNNORSTTU

  Newt knew the various ways the Leg Collector had rearranged them.

  GLENN OREN MATTHEUS

  GLENNA THOMSEN-TRUE

  SERGENT ELTON NAHUM

  SOUTHERN GENTLEMAN

  He simply didn’t know which came first.

  Once Newt knew that, he would be able to answers the questions he’d been asking himself for seventeen years.

  Where did he grow up? Was there a specific event—or events—that caused him to become the way he was? In other words, how was he broken? No one cuts off the legs of forty-three women and preserves them in glass jars without something being broken inside.

  And how was the Leg Collector connected to the Mulvaneys? Whatever the connection was, it had to be a strong, compelling one. Why else would the man go out of his way to buy the house next door?

  Newt was also interested in the mystery surrounding Tommy Bilazzo—a.k.a., “Uncle Tommy.” Other than the fact that he and Declan Mulvaney went way back, they knew nothing else.

  A search in the FBI’s computers for the name THOMAS BILAZZO turned up nothing. The only thing Newt knew for sure was that the man was dead.

  Uncle Tommy was a ghost.

  Thirty minutes passed, and the door to the conference room swung open and Maggie came in.

  “No coffee?” Newt said.

  “I’ve got something better than coffee,” Maggie said as she pulled her hand from behind her back and tossed a manila file folder on the table at Newt’s feet.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Newt asked.

  Maggie nodded.

  Newt dropped his feet to the floor and snatched the file from the conference table and opened it. “What am I looking at?” Newt said.

  “It’s an invitation from Marquette University Medical Clinic to participate in a clinical test on the latest prosthetic leg technology in 1973.”

  “Okay,” Newt said. “There’s more, I hope.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Maggie said. “Get this. In addition to being provided a free set of prosthetics, participants were also given a four-year, free-ride scholarship to the university.”

  “That seems pretty generous,” Newt said. “I’ve never heard of a clinical test offering anything like that.”

  “Right,” Maggie said. “You ready for the punch line?”

  “Hit me,” Newt said.

  “There was no clinical test being conducted by the university at the time.”

  “That’s interesting,” Newt said.

  “Interesting? No, here’s what’s interesting,” Maggie said. “There was only one participant—Stanton Lee Mungehr from Mayville, Wisconsin.”

  Newt closed his eyes and pictured the list of possible anagrams he’d compiled a year earlier. The name was on the list, third from the bottom. He’d been lazy. He should have had someone run down every one of the names.

  “That’s how I found the Marquette connection,” Maggie said. “And guess what Stanton Lee Mungehr majored in.”

  “Sadism?” Newt said.

  “Funny,” Maggie said. “No, he got his degree in photographic journalism. Photography.”

  It fit, Newt thought. “How did he lose his legs? Do we know?”

  “Farm accident. That’s all I know so far,” Maggie said. “I’m still running down the details. But I do know who was behind the donated legs and the scholarship.”

  “I thought you said it was the university,” Newt said.

  “The university was just a front to hide the identity of the real donor—a woman named Emmeline Fausil-McCabe.”

  “And why did she—?”

  “No idea,” Maggie said. “That’s what we need to find out, among other things.”

  “Did you tell Pipi yet?”

  “No, not yet,” Maggie said. “I thought you’d like to do it. You are the lead on the case.”

  “No, it’s all yours,” Newt said. “You did the work. All I did was sit here and bounce a ball against the wall.”

  IN PIPI ESPERANZA’S OFFICE – 1:05 P.M.

  Newt sat back and let Maggie present what she’d learned to Pipi, just like he said he would. When he’d told her that she had done all the work, he really meant it. She deserved the limelight.

  Newt also realized whatever animosity he had been carrying was gone. Things between him and Maggie didn’t work out, and now she was going to marry a guy named Chad. Chad. But he wasn’t angry about it. As Geor
ge Harrison had famously sung, all things must pass to live.

  The pain had finally passed.

  “Well, I’ve got some news for the two of you also,” Pipi said once Maggie finished. “The DNA results came back on the third body.”

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s Nisa Mulvaney,” Pipi said.

  Maggie’s mouth fell open.

  Newt didn’t flinch.

  “You don’t seem surprised,” Pipi said, looking at Newt..

  “I would have been surprised if it wasn’t her,” Newt said. “I always felt Nisa Mulvaney was one of his, even if he hadn’t left the body in public for us to find.”

  “So what’s next?” Maggie said.

  “Newt, you go to Wisconsin. Visit the college. See what you can find out.”

  “What about me?” Maggie asked.

  “I want you to work on—”

  “I’d like to go with Newt,” Maggie said, cutting Pipi off. “I think we’ll get a lot more accomplished with the two of us there.”

  Maggie and Pipi’s eyes met, and Pipi did everything she could to repress a smile. So much for Maggie and Chad, Pipi thought.

  “Fine,” Pipi said. “I’ll go down to Charleston and deliver the news to Bruce and Koda, while the two of you head north. Bring a coat. It’s freezing in Wisconsin this time of year.”

  CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA

  JANUARY 24, 2011

  BRUCE MULVANEY’S PLANE landed in Charleston and was met by a limousine that took him directly to the FBI field office in the suburban city of Mt. Pleasant. He found Koda and Robyn sitting in the waiting area.

  “Did anyone tell you why we’re here?” Bruce asked.

  “Hello to you too,” Koda said.

  “Sorry,” Bruce said. He leaned forward and gave Koda a hug, and then shifted his attention to Robyn. He gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Hello, sweetheart.”

  “To answer your question, Dad, no—no one said a word,” Koda said. “They just said to be here.”

  “When we came down last time, I told Koda it was probably just routine,” Robyn said. “But now—”

  “Wait. What do you mean, when you came down last time?” Bruce asked.

  “I got a call to come here just before Christmas,” Koda said. “They wanted a DNA sample.”

  “What?”

  The hallway door opened, and Special Agent Robert James appeared. “Thanks for waiting,” James said. “Come into the office.”

  Bruce, Koda, and Robyn stepped forward, but James held up his hand. “Robyn, I’m going to have to ask you to wait out here. I’m afraid it’s family only this time.”

  Bruce and Koda followed James into his office and found Pipi Esperanza seated in a chair waiting for them.

  “Good to see you both,” Pipi said, rising to her feet and shaking hands with Bruce and Koda. “I’m sorry if coming up here was an inconvenience.”

  “Well, that depends on why we’re here, doesn’t it?” Bruce said.

  “Please, everyone, sit,” James said, sliding into the chair behind his desk.

  Pipi and Koda took seats. Bruce didn’t.

  “Please take a seat, Mr. Mulvaney,” Pipi said.

  Bruce exhaled and lowered himself into the chair, clearly agitated. “Okay, I’m sitting.”

  “We’ve identified the man who lived in the house next door to yours—the one who stabbed your father and grandfather,” Pipi said. “His name is Stanton Lee Mungehr.”

  Bruce felt the blood drain from his face.

  Stanton Lee Mungehr.

  Stan Lee.

  The person his father mentioned on the cassette—his half-brother.

  “Does that name mean anything to either of you?” James asked.

  “No,” Bruce said. “Why? Should it?”

  “Are you sure?” Pipi asked. “Take a moment to—”

  “I said, we’ve never heard of Stan Lee Mungehr,” Bruce said. Pipi and James exchanged a look.

  Bruce felt like his heart was going to beat out of his chest, realizing Stan Lee had been living next door to them—right under their noses, stalking them—for thirty years. He also knew he should have shared the information from the cassette, but he wasn’t going to now.

  “What about you, Koda?” James asked. “Does the name Stanton Lee Mung—”

  “Jesus, you people just don’t quit, do you?” Bruce snapped. “We don’t care what his name is. All we care about is that you catch the bastard.”

  “We’re on it,” James said.

  The four of them sat in silence for several seconds, and then Pipi leaned toward Bruce. “There’s something else,” Pipi said. “We discovered three sets of remains in the tunnel. One of them belonged to a woman who went missing thirty years ago, a real estate agent named Lullaby Logan.”

  “What?” Bruce said. “I think I remember hearing she’d killed herself. Jumped from a bridge or something.”

  “And the others?” Koda asked.

  “The second set of remains was the upper torso of a young girl who went missing about the same time,” James said.

  “Juniper Cole,” Koda said.

  Pipi nodded.

  “You said there were three,” Bruce said. “Who was the third?”

  Pipi reached out and placed her hand on Bruce’s arm. “The third body is the reason we had Koda come down here and provide us with a DNA sample, Mr. Mulvaney. The third set of remains belongs to your wife.”

  CRIMSON COVE, OREGON

  JANUARY 25, 2011

  ONYX FINISHED WRITING what she knew would be the final entry in her journal and placed the leather-bound book in her red keepsake box and slid the box deep into the corner of the closet where it would not be seen.

  Writing in the journal had become a less-frequent activity since meeting Noah, which made her realize the journal had been a way to express her feelings of longing and loneliness. With Noah there, she simply had little need for the journal.

  Now, however, the overwhelming feeling of sadness she felt created a desire to make the one final entry.

  Telling the truth, if only to herself, provided the cathartic release she needed before she did what was, until just a few days ago, unthinkable.

  She was going to leave Noah.

  Not because she wanted to—she didn’t—but because it was the right thing to do.

  For him.

  Now it was time to write the letter that—when Noah read it—would break his heart.

  Onyx exited the lighthouse, wearing a nightgown and in her bare feet. She left her wedding ring on the piano.

  Onyx looked out at the ocean and could see a storm on the horizon making its way to land. Onyx liked storms, if for no other reason than the realization that—like herself—even the sky felt the need to cry sometimes.

  Onyx turned and started across the clearing, heading toward the gravestones at the edge of the woods, using every ounce of her will to avoid looking back for fear she would change her mind. But just before she reached them, she heard the door to the caretaker’s house open in the distance behind her.

  “Onyx, where are you going?” she heard Noah call out.

  Onyx turned and saw Noah standing in the doorway. God, how she wished she could have gotten all the way into the woods without him noticing.

  Onyx didn’t speak. She didn’t have to say anything. She could tell from the look on Noah’s face that he knew something was wrong.

  “Onyx?” Noah said, taking several steps in her direction.

  Onyx took a step backward.

  “Onyx?” Noah said again. “Where are you—?”

  Onyx took another step backward and then another, until she was at the edge of the trees.

  “I will always love you,” Onyx said softly—too softly she knew for Noah to hear, but she said it nonetheless.

  Then she turned and entered the woods.

  “Onyx!” Noah shouted out as he sprinted across the clearing. By the time he reached the edge of the forest, she had already dis
appeared into the trees.

  Noah walked a few feet and scanned the forest. Onyx was nowhere to be seen. He began walking through the trees, the branches cutting into his arms as he pushed through them, small rocks and roots beneath his feet making every step unsteady and slow.

  “Onyx!” Noah yelled again.

  She was nowhere to be seen.

  Onyx was gone.

  MAYVILLE, WISCONSIN

  JANUARY 26, 2011

  YOU HAVE A beautiful house, Ms. McCabe,” Maggie said.

  “Thank you, and Emmeline will do just fine,” the petite seventy-four-year-old woman said from her seat on the sofa in the enormous living room.

  “It’s a very unusual house for the area,” Newt said.

  “By that, you mean it’s not a farmhouse,” Emmeline said.

  “Yes. It’s rather—”

  “Gaudy?” Emmeline said, finishing the thought. “My husband’s family had money, and they believed in spending it.”

  The house wasn’t really a house at all, but more like a castle that could just as easily been placed on the edge of a set of cliffs in the Scottish Highlands.

  The conversation paused as a young woman came in and placed a silver tray with a pot of tea and three cups on the coffee table. The woman poured tea in each of the cups and left.

  “We appreciate you taking the time to speak with us,” Maggie said.

  “I’ve often wondered when someone would show up inquiring about Stan Lee,” Emmeline said. “His full name was Stanton, named after his grandfather, but everyone called him Stan Lee—said together, as if one word. Stanley.”

  “What made you think someone would be coming to ask about him?” Newt asked.

  “Just a feeling,” Emmeline said, raising her cup to her lips and taking a sip of the tea. “Let’s just say that Stan Lee was clearly—troubled. Of course, with the things he’d been put through, how could anyone expect anything else?”