Page 95 of The Change
“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 hadpositioned 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 havenotgathered here to talk about the man who killed Mandy Welsh. You willnothear 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 agoodgirl. 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 walkingfive milesout 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 ofallgirls, 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 wecan 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 kidnappedfor 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.
Newsnight
The evening after Mandy’s funeral,Newsnightaired a special episode devoted to the Danskammer Beach murders. For a week, sensational promos had teased exclusive details and never-seen-before evidence. At showtime, Jo, Nessa, and Harriett gathered in front of Jo’s giant television. The police had been uncharacteristically tight-lipped since Spencer Harding’s death. The investigation was still ongoing, they said, whenever the media asked. Now they’d grantedNewsnightaccess to their case files. At least that was what Jo, Harriett, and Nessa assumed. No one from the show had contacted the three of them. Even Josh Gibbon, who’d been busting his ass to keep investigating the case, had no idea what the revelations would be.
The show started with a picture pulled from a magazine. It showed Spencer Harding standing in his art gallery. Hanging on the walls were paintings worth millions, but Harding seemed oblivious to their presence. His suit screamed power, as did his stance. He glared at the camera with his arms crossed, as if warning it to keep its distance.
This evening onNewsnight: Spencer Harding was the undisputed king of the New York art world. Over the course of two decades, he rose from obscurity to become the most powerful and influential dealer in Manhattan—some might even say the world. Brilliant, handsome, and phenomenally wealthy, he counted the world’s richest men as his friends and clients. Those who worked with Spencer say he was gifted with impeccable taste and an uncanny eye for talent. None of his colleagues or clients ever suspected Spencer Harding was hiding a sinister secret—or that the beachside mansion where he threw glamorous parties also doubled as a slaughterhouse, to which he lured innocent young women before robbing them of their lives.
“Jesus Christ. They’re making him sound like a James Bond villain,” Jo groaned as the show’s title sequence rolled. “Do we really have to watch this shit?”
Nessa paused the television and turned to Jo. “Yes,” she said. “We do.”
“Here.” Harriett passed her joint to Jo. “This will help.”
Jo took the joint. Art would recognize the smell when he got home from the movies with Lucy, but under the circumstances, she knew he wouldn’t hold it against her.
Jo inhaled deeply as the show’s host appeared on the screen. The wind tousled his silvery hair as behind him waves crashed onto Danskammer Beach.
Spencer Harding’s downfall began on a sunny morning in the final days of spring. That’s when three local women stopped here on this lonesome road that runs along Danskammer Beach, just outside the picture-perfect town of Mattauk, New York. They told police they were out for a walk by the shore. What theydiscovered, just off a narrow trail that snakes down to the water, would shake two communities to their core. By the end of the summer, both Spencer Harding and his wife, famed diver Rosamund Stillgoe Harding, would be dead. The bodies of three young women would be lying in the county morgue. And headlines would be fixated on the man who’s become known around the world as the Collector.
“What?” The pot hadn’t done much to mellow Jo’s mood. “The only paper that called him the Collector was the fuckingNew York Post.” Other media hadn’t dared follow suit. Jo, Harriett, and Nessa had made it clear from the beginning that they would only grant interviews to outlets that agreed to a set of conditions Jo had typed up. Condition number one: No comic book nicknames.
“I’d prepare myself for a few more unpleasant surprises, if I were you,” Harriett told her.
“Why?” Jo demanded. “What do you know?”
“I know how the world works,” Harriett responded.
