The Hollow Ones(27)

The Little Brook Town Hall Annex was an old stone building shouldered by retail shops and a CVS. New York State Police cars ringed the street entrance but no flashing lights, no taped cordon. A female officer in a reflective vest worked the traffic detail, waving cars past. Odessa rolled down her window and badged her way to the curb next to a white van she recognized as an “aftermath” biorecovery service vehicle, or a crime scene cleaner.

There was no officer at the door. Odessa entered the lobby. A plainclothes detective talking on his cell phone eyeballed her, distracted by his conversation. Credentials in hand, she walked past the clerk’s window and into the interior of the town building. Cleaners in white bodysuits and rubber gloves were sponging a bloodstain off the wall, the spatter having been dissolved into a wet pink bloom. Farther down the hallway, state police crime laboratory specialists were photographing another bloodstain, this one on the wall and floor where a body must have fallen.

There wasn’t much here, and little she could learn. She approached the crime scene techs and was pointed to an office around the corner. There, a local police officer eyed her with suspicion until she showed him her badge.

“Special Agent Hardwicke?” he said, reading her credentials, suddenly energized. “What can I do for you, Agent?”



The suspect’s home was a midsize Colonial with an attached garage at the bottom of a sloping street. A New York State Police cruiser was parked in the driveway, Troop L, Suffolk County. Probably a captain or a major sitting with the widow. Odessa parked down the street a bit—the CR-V did not profile as FBI—and walked back to the house, determined to see this through.

She introduced herself to a pair of troopers on the lawn, offering her creds, feeling their eyes on her as she walked to the door. Dogs barked plaintively somewhere inside the house, probably locked away in a bathroom or basement. The widow sat alone on a large sofa near an old grand piano topped with photographs of her grown children. Her name was Louise Colina and she was probably sixty, older than Odessa expected, though it was likely the photograph of her husband, Edwardo, known as Eddie, on the town website was many years out of date.

The Troop L captain stood when Odessa entered, his wide-brimmed hat in hand. He was a good foot taller than she. But Odessa did not flinch, allowing her badge to lead the way. She shook his large hand firmly.

“Have we met?” he said. “You look a little familiar. What office are you out of?”

“Newark,” said Odessa quickly. “But I’m on special assignment to Kew Gardens.” She pivoted to Mrs. Colina before the captain could ask another question. “Mrs. Colina, I just want to offer my condolences. This must be an incredibly trying time for you.”

The woman looked lost in her own body, the way some nursing home residents appear. She would not recover from this shock for many weeks. “Thank you,” she said.

“I cannot imagine what it would be like to watch someone walk out the door one day and…then this happens.”

Mrs. Colina nodded. “There was no indication,” she said. “I keep thinking it’s all a great mistake.”

“No indication whatsoever?” said Odessa.

The captain said, “He had gotten into a car accident earlier in the day, struck a stone wall, one-car accident. Didn’t report it.”

Mrs. Colina said, “Maybe he hit his head. Eddie would never do something like this.”

“I am so sorry,” said Odessa, again taking the widow’s hand, then backing off. “I don’t want to interrupt your conversation. I’ll just take a quick look around. Captain.”

The trooper nodded back to Odessa, curious, but sitting back down, unable to leave Mrs. Colina’s side.

Odessa stepped back outside, avoiding the pair of troopers there, following the front walk to the driveway. The garage door was open, the interior cluttered around an old Subaru. She poked through bins of outgrown athletic equipment, storage cartons, a tool bench, a rider lawn mower. She was looking for an iron cauldron like the one Agent Solomon had described. She found an old umbrella stand and a few planters, but they held only dead moths.

Back outside, she climbed four brick steps to the side yard. Angled before a line of trees separating the property from the neighbor’s was a garden shed: not one of the prefabricated resin toolsheds sold at Home Depot and Walmart, nor the fancy, cottage-shaped custom sheds, but an old, dark pine wood shed with an old iron clasp, probably built by one of the previous property owners.

Odessa pulled open the door, smelling grease and sawdust. Light from the only window—a single pane of cracked glass—fell over an old hand mower, bicycles, a croquet set and other lawn games, and a cracked bird fountain. She lifted aside a rusty bicycle pump, looking at the cobwebby rear of the shed.

She would never have given it a second glance if she hadn’t been looking for it. A fat black pot with a curved rim set in the back corner. It was full of trash: sticks, a string of colored beads, and string. Tufts of brown hair that could have been mistaken for clumps of dead grass. The plastic handle of a long knife set upside down.

She turned on her phone light, wishing she had a pair of gloves. What she had dismissed as sticks…they were bones. Grayed with age. Human or animal, she could not tell.

“Agent?”

The trooper’s voice startled Odessa. She saw part of a hat brim through the cracked window.