Sleepy Hollow: Children of the Revolution E-Book

Keith A. R. DeCandido

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Seitenzahl: 320

Beschreibung

When Ichabod Crane, a soldier from the colonial army, is resurrected from his grave more than two centuries after he was killed in battle, he partners with lieutenant Abble Mills of the Sleepy Hollow Police Department to fight the evil forces that have taken control of the town. It's a cold day in Sleepy Hollow, and Ichabod visits Patriots Park for a moment of peace. Instead, he receives a disturbing vision from his wife, Katrina, in which she delivers a cryptic but urgent message: he must retrieve the Congressional Cross that he was awarded by the Second Continental Congress for bravery in action. There's just one problem: Ichabod was killed before he ever received the medal, and he is not sure where it might be. Together, Ichabod and Abbie set out to uncover the mystery of the cross and its connection to George Washington and his secret war against the demon hordes. They soon learn that a coven of witches is also seeking the cross in order to resurrect their leader, Serilda, who was burned at the stake during the Revolutionary War. Now they must locate the cross before the coven can bring back Serilda to exact her fatal revenge on Sleepy Hollow.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

One: Sleepy Hollow, New York

Two: New York, New York

Three: Trenton, New Jersey

Four: Sleepy Hollow, New York

Five: Tarrytown, New York

Six: Sleepy Hollow, New York

Seven: Mount Vernon, Virginia

Eight: New York City

Nine: Ticonderoga, New York

Ten: Sleepy Hollow

Eleven: Sleepy Hollow, New York

Twelve: White Plains, New York

Thirteen: Sleepy Hollow, New York

Fourteen: Bronx, New York

Fifteen: Sleepy Hollow, New York

Sixteen: New York, New York

Seventeen: Bronx, New York

Eighteen: Bronx, New York

Nineteen: Sleepy Hollow, New York

Historian’s Notes

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also Available from Titan Books

Sleepy Hollow: Children of the RevolutionPrint edition ISBN: 9781783297740E-book edition ISBN: 9781783297931

Published by Titan BooksA division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd.144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UPwww.titanbooks.com

First edition October 201410 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Sleepy Hollow © 2014 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.All Rights Reserved.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

To Sterling, Jezebelle, and Louie, three noble cats. While I was writing this book, the former two died and the latter joined our home. All three enriched my life in so many ways, mostly by lying around looking cute and demanding to be scritched.

ONE

SLEEPY HOLLOW, NEW YORK

JANUARY 2014

THE GREAT CONTRADICTION of Ichabod Crane’s life was that he was constantly surrounded by people, yet had never been more alone.

The number of things to which Crane had been forced to adjust since awakening in the early twenty-first century—subjectively mere moments after his death at the hands of an enemy soldier he’d beheaded in the late eighteenth century—were legion. At times, though, the adjustment that vexed him the most was the sheer number of people around him. In his previous life as a soldier, first for the British Regular Army and then for the Continental Army, he was an aristocrat. Rarely did he find himself surrounded by strangers, and such occasions were fleeting, and often on the battlefield.

Indeed, the number of people he could have been surrounded by was negligible. The entirety of the colonies contained barely more than two thousand souls at the time of his alleged death. As the calendar changed from Anno Domini 2013 to 2014, Sleepy Hollow alone had an order of magnitude more people in it than the colonies had had in toto, and it was one of the smaller of what Lieutenant Mills had once called “bedroom communities” that dotted the Lower Hudson Valley, north of New York City.

Once he could go a full half year without encountering a single person with whom he was not at least acquainted enough to shake hands and exchange pleasantries. Now every day he was awash in strangers, wearing absurd clothing, occupied with pursuits Crane found impossible to fathom.

He took only small solace from the fact that those same folk would find his own pursuits even more baffling.

On this cold winter day he found himself drawn, as he often was, to Patriots Park, which lay on the border between Sleepy Hollow and the adjoining village to the south, Tarrytown. The park had been constructed around a monument to John Paulding, one of three Continental Army soldiers who captured a spy named John André. Crane recalled the incident, though he’d been elsewhere at the time. He was fairly certain that the actual capture of André, a confederate of Benedict Arnold, was in truth a quarter of a mile from this spot. His months in the twenty-first century, however, had taught him that history only remembered his time dimly when anyone bothered to remember it at all.

The park was quiet on this winter afternoon, for which Crane was grateful. Snow covered much of the grass, though the smoothly paved oval-shaped passageways were cleared. He heard the sound of children across the thoroughfare known as the Broad Way (an odd appellation, as it was not significantly wider than any of the other nearby boulevards). The Paulding School was just letting out, having apparently concluded the day’s lessons.

Crane strode, lost in thought, past the monument and wandered around the pathway that took him onto one of the two stone bridges that overlooked the brook.

One of the few people in the park was a woman of Oriental descent, who was strolling with a very small dog of indeterminate breed. The woman wore plastic spectacles of the type that were fashionable in this era, and wore an animal-hide jacket that seemed insufficient protection against the cold, particularly given the number of frays and holes that dotted her dungarees.

Having learned the hard way that the people of this century did not always appreciate a simple greeting, Crane said nothing to the woman.

She was less restrained, to his surprise and delight. “I love that coat. Where did you find such a hot vintage piece?”

“This topcoat was a gift.” It was, Crane had found, the easiest method of explaining his clothing.

“Ooh, love the accent. And I bet it keeps you warm—the coat, not the accent, I mean. This winter has been just awful.” The dog chose this moment to make a detailed olfactory survey of the bridge.

“Has it?” Crane smiled. “I’ve endured far worse winters in this very region. Indeed, I find this particular season to be quite bracing by comparison.”

“If you say so, but I just wanna go back home to Cali.”

“Who is this Cally you speak of?”

“Not who, hot stuff, where. California? That’s where I’m from?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t had the privilege of visiting.”

The woman glanced at her dog, who was still attempting to sniff the entire bridge, then smiled back at Crane. “I adore the way you talk. Anyhow, I’m from L.A., and it’s always summer there. Much better than this. I’ve been freezing my ass off.”

Crane resisted the urge to glance at the woman’s posterior to see if it was still attached, as the last time he heard that particular phrase his doing so had resulted in an open-handed blow to his cheek. Instead, he simply said, “It amazes me that the people of this time, with such wondrousness as central heating and insulation, still wax rhapsodic on the subject of how awful the cold is. But then it seems the denizens of this century are never happier than when they’re complaining.”

“This century? Dude, you can’t be that much older than me.”

Crane’s smile widened. “You have no idea, miss.”

The dog chose that moment to continue its examination on Crane’s boots.

Chuckling, the woman said, “Guess Puddles likes your boots as much as I do. Were they a gift, too?”

“Indeed.” Crane stared down at Puddles. “I hope your pet’s name isn’t indicative of how he intends to express his affection for my footwear.”

“Nah, he only pees on trees. Only dog in the world that avoids fire hydrants. That’s why I like to bring him here. Well, that, and it’s a nice park. I love the history, y’know? The monuments to the people who died in the wars.”

Crane nodded. Near another entrance to the park sat three monuments, one each for those local residents who died in the three of the wars that plagued the world in the previous century.

“Although I don’t think it’s entirely fair,” the woman added.

The list of things that Crane considered unfair was considerable, but in the interests of politeness, rather than volunteer suggestions for what she meant, he instead asked, “What isn’t?”

“Well, the brook—it’s named André Brook. Why name it after the bad guy?”

“One wonders why it is named at all. The obsession with nomenclature is mind-boggling. I recall—” Crane stopped, reminding himself that actually stating he was from another time tended to send conversations in a direction that ended poorly for him. “There was a time when this brook had no name, nor had it need for one.”

“Well, I’d rather it had no name. I mean, c’mon, André was the one who was the friggin’ spy. Paulding gets the statue and the school named after him, and André gets the brook. What about Williams and van Wart?”

“I believe Militiaman Paulding receives the lion’s share of the accolades because he was the only one of the three who captured Major André who was literate. It was he who read the papers André carried, and therefore found him out as a traitor.”

“Huh.” The woman considered Crane’s words. “I didn’t know that. Go fig’.”

Puddles then decided to start running toward the other end of the bridge, eliminating the entirety of the slack on the lead the woman used to guide him. As she allowed herself to be pulled along, the woman waved with her free hand. “Well, it was nice meeting you! Happy new year!”

“To you as well, madam!” Crane even waved back to her, finding her conversation to be oddly stimulating, despite her unnecessary complaints about the cold.

Crane leaned on the side of the bridge, listening to the hypnotic rustle of the brook as it flowed across the channel that served as the border between the two townships.

For a moment, he closed his eyes, enjoying the noise of the water. With his eyes shut, he imagined the sound of meat as it cooked on a pan over a fire.

That, in turn, made him realize that he had not yet had his afternoon repast. His stomach made odd noises as a further reminder. With a sigh, he opened his eyes—

—only to find himself no longer in Patriots Park.

He had not moved, yet he stood in an expansive forest. It was darkest night. No sign of the sun peeked through the gnarled, wizened trees that choked the landscape for as far as Crane’s eyes could see. The air had transformed from the crisp cool of a Sleepy Hollow afternoon to heavy and thick. Taking a breath had gone from bracing to laboring, and he found it difficult to stand upright.

No stars dotted the sky, yet Crane could spy a full moon through one of the few gaps amid the branches. Not that Crane needed further proof, but it was early January and the next full moon wasn’t until mid-month. This meant either he’d traveled forward in time—again—or this was a magical realm.

All things considered, the latter seemed the most likely. He’d received visions in dreams from Katrina, and both he and Lieutenant Mills had received waking visions from various sources, from Katrina to the evil Moloch to his friend the Sin-Eater, Henry Parrish. This was very much like those, and Crane was getting rather impatient with them.

“Whoever is responsible, show yourself!”

Crane considered exploring the region. But no, he’d been taken to this place for a reason. If this was the spot he was brought to, he was supposed to be here. If not, he was hardly about to oblige his host by stumbling about in the dark.

Again, he cried out, “Show yourself!”

Suddenly, he was no longer in the forest, but in the van Brunt mansion, sharing a drink with Abraham van Brunt. They were awaiting the arrival of a messenger who would provide them with their next task to perform on behalf of the Continental Congress.

“I have to say, Ichabod, this brandy is simply awful. Where did you find it?”

Without thinking, Crane responded now as he had then: “Your liquor cabinet, Abraham.”

“What a pity, I was hoping I had better taste than this.”

Crane shook his head, trying to force himself to speak to his best friend once again. They had shared this drink several nights prior to when Katrina van Tassel broke off her engagement with van Brunt and declared her love for Crane. That action sundered their friendship, and led to van Brunt selling his very soul, allying himself with evil to enact revenge on Crane and Katrina both.

But van Brunt and his sitting room disappeared then, replaced by General Washington and an outdoor location. Crane stood now with the general and several of his aides at the site of a massacre near Albany, New York, surrounded by torn tents, ruined fires, rotting food, broken weaponry, and corpses that had been burned in a manner not possible by any weapon Crane was familiar with.

“I have been expecting something like this since Trenton,” Washington said. “We both won and lost that day.”

Before Crane could even respond, the vista altered yet again. This time it was the Masonic cell where he, Lieutenant Mills, and Captain Irving had trapped Death, the Horseman of the Apocalypse, who was embodied by van Brunt after he felt himself betrayed. Mills’s deceased comrade, Lieutenant Brooks, was speaking for the Horseman, taunting him.

“I took you! I took you on the battlefield! I slayed your Mason brethren, I hung their heads like lan-terns! I killed her partner, and I will kill you.”

Another change in scene, this time standing over the golem that Katrina had given to Jeremy. The doll had been imbued with tremendous destructive power in order to fulfill its mission to protect their son. Crane had been forced to kill the creature with a blade stained with his own blood.

Again Crane spoke the words he spoke to the golem as it died on the sands of the strange carnival, while holding its misshapen hand: “You have endured enough pain. Bear it no more.”

Then another change, to a bitter cold winter day at Fort Carillon, which had just been taken by the Continental Army. Crane stood with Caleb Whitcombe and Henry Knox, tasked with moving several of the fort’s cannons to Boston.

Whitcombe was saying, “Are you sure this is wise, Knox? This place was hardly a model of efficiency before old Captain Delaplace surrendered. Shall we make it less fortified by taking their cannon?”

“We’ve been over this,” Knox replied now as he had in 1775. “Boston is of far more import than Two Lakes.”

Crane smiled at the use of the English translation of the region, which the Iroquois called Ticonderoga—and then the scene changed yet again, to a meeting of the Sons of Liberty in New York, led by Marinus Willett. Crane sat in the gallery, surrounded both by members of the Sons and those like himself who were sympathetic. Next to him sat van Brunt.

Willett was speaking: “The regulars are tearing down the liberty poles almost as fast as we may put them up. Perhaps it is time to attempt a different tactic.”

Another man, whose name Crane never did learn, said, “No! Our poles of liberty will be like the heads of the hydra! If they tear down one, we put up two to take its place!”

Willett smiled. “Very well.”

Then he was back in the forest, alone. A half-moon now illuminated the night sky through the gnarled trees.

Crane’s pulse raced when he saw that Katrina now stood before him. The red hair and magnificently steely features of his wife was the most glorious sight he could imagine. For months, he had suffered through life in a bizarre new century, conscripted to fight a war he barely even understood, while the one thing that grounded him, that kept him from completely succumbing to utter madness, was the knowledge that Katrina was trapped in purgatory and there was a possibility that she might be freed and they would, at last, be reunited.

He’d seen visions of her before, caught glimpses, been given messages, and every time it happened, his heart broke a little bit more.

Like so much of what he’d seen since coming to this place, Katrina was ever-changing. At first she was dressed in the elegant gown she wore the night she ended her engagement to van Brunt, but then that changed to the simple Mennonite dress and bonnet she wore when first they met, and then the nurse’s raiment she was clothed in on the battlefield, including the day of his fateful encounter with the Horseman.

She stood a yard away from him.

“Katrina!” He moved toward her, but always she remained a yard away.

Urgently, she cried out, “You must retrieve the medal you were awarded!”

And then she once again disappeared, leaving Crane alone in the forest, forcing him to lose her all over again.

“Katrina!” he cried more loudly this time.

He started running toward where she had been, but suddenly he found himself surrounded by more trees that cut off every avenue of escape.

No longer did he see an image of a person from his past, nor could he even see the trees, though the half-moon still illuminated the sky. Then, suddenly, there were eight half-moons.

“Katrina!”

“Dude, who the hell’s Katrina?”

Whirling around, Crane found himself blinded by the sunlight. Shading his eyes with his hands, he blinked the odd-colored shapes out of his eyes and eventually focused on the woman with the dog from earlier, who was gazing upon him with obvious concern. She was still walking Puddles, who was now making high-pitched barking noises at Crane’s feet.

Crane shook his head. “My apologies, miss, I did not mean to—” He took a breath.

The look of concern modulated into a smile. “It’s okay. I’ve been there, too. You stand here, sun shining on your face, the sound of the brook flowing, and you just go all daydreamy, am I right?”

“So it would seem,” Crane said lamely. While he was sure this young woman had ample charms in her own right, he needed to speak to Lieutenant Mills immediately.

She put a hand out. “Well, my name isn’t Katrina, it’s Lianne, and I came back here because I realized I didn’t introduce myself. My mom taught me better than that, especially when the other person in the conversation is as polite as you are. Seriously, you’re the nicest guy I’ve met since I moved here for college.”

Crane immediately took Lianne’s hand and bent forward in a proper bow. “The pleasure has been entirely mine, Miss Lianne. My name is Ichabod Crane, and I remain at your service.” He returned her hand to her and stood upright. “I’m afraid, however, that my—my daydream has reminded me of a pressing matter to which I must immediately attend. If you will excuse me.”

Lianne was just holding the hand he’d kissed, in a state of befuddlement that Crane might have found amusing under different circumstances.

Giving her another bow and taking her stunned silence for assent to his request to be excused, Crane turned and headed off the bridge down the stone path that would take him to the Broad Way. Reaching into the pocket of the coat that Lianne had so admired, he pulled out the device that was referred to as a “cell phone.” He assumed the modifier “cell” was a joke referring to how much modern humanity was imprisoned by such devices, as it seemed that the citizens of the twenty-first century relied on them to an appalling degree.

Still, Crane could not help but be impressed by the accomplishment. By simply entering a prearranged code into this object that appeared to be a simple block of refined metal, Crane could, theoretically, communicate with anyone in the world. It was a capacity that Crane found unimaginable, and he often mused on what the Continental Army could have done with such communicative powers.

Then again, the Regular Army would have had access to same. If nothing else, they might have communicated to Lord George Germain that Jonas Bronck’s River could not accommodate a vessel any larger than a rowboat, which would have saved his lordship a certain amount of embarrassment when he ordered gunboats to sail up that river passage.

Crane managed to navigate the phone’s code system to connect himself to the lieutenant.

Abigail Mills answered after only one sounding off of the phone’s bell. “Talk fast, Crane, I’m in the middle of a call with the ADA about the Ippolito case.”

“Who is this Ippolito gentleman?”

“Before your time—Ippolito’s a guy Corbin and I busted for B-and-E. The case is finally going to trial after a ton of delays, so I’m going over my testimony with Czierniewski.”

Crane only followed about half of what Mills said, but he didn’t bother to inquire further, as he had more pressing matters to discuss. “I need to see you immediately, Lieutenant. There is another crisis brewing, though I’m afraid the nature of said crisis remains a mystery that you and I must unravel.”

“Which means it’s another day ending in Y for us Witnesses,” Mills said dryly.

Crane frowned. “Every day ends in—” He sighed. “Ah, yes, I see. Very droll.”

“Look, I’ve got at least another ten minutes with Czierniewski. Why don’t I meet you across the street in fifteen?”

“Very well.”

By this time, Crane was walking down the Broad Way and headed for the armory that the local constabulary had converted to an archive. After the previous sheriff, August Corbin, was murdered, his personal files were sent there. Corbin had collected a great deal of information about the supernatural happenings in and around Sleepy Hollow, so Crane and Mills had, with the blessing of Corbin’s replacement, Captain Frank Irving, taken over the armory as their de facto headquarters in the ongoing battle against the mystical forces that were arrayed against them.

Irving had proven a valuable ally, as had Jenny Mills, the lieutenant’s sister, who had aided Corbin in his quest to learn all he could about the battle they were all enmeshed in. Miss Jenny had taken to referring to the armory as “the Batcave,” a reference that Crane had found impenetrable.

The armory itself was one of the few structures that remained from Crane’s time. According to the histories he’d read over the past few months, the village received an influx of new residents both rich and poor after the invention of the railroad, and another after the invention of the automobile. Both waves of population expansion were accompanied by new construction, much of which replaced the existing farmhouses. By the turn of the twentieth century, the agrarian village that Crane knew was all but gone.

A few exceptions remained, such as the Old Dutch Church, which had already been standing for a century when Crane first visited it, and this very armory, in which several of the strategies enacted in the Battle of Lexington and Concord had been plotted.

It was a short, brisk walk up the Broad Way to Beekman Avenue, the thoroughfare on which both police headquarters and the armory lay.

He entered the latter, nodding to the uniformed officer who sat behind a metal desk reading a copy of the Journal News, the newspaper that serviced this vicinity.

“Afternoon, Mr. Crane.”

Crane blinked, not recalling having been introduced to this particular constable. “Good afternoon. I’m afraid you have the advantage of me—” He glanced at the nameplate on the woman’s chest. “—Officer Marble. Have we met?”

She folded the newspaper and put it down on the desk. “No, but trust me, everyone knows who you are.”

“Do they?” Crane was a bit nonplussed by that.

Marble snorted. “C’mon, Corbin gets killed, Abbie decides not to go to D.C., and you and her spend all your time holed up in here. Plus, she ain’t been in the rotation, and Irving’s covering both your asses.” She grinned. “It’s a small town, and we don’t have that much to talk about, least till baseball season starts.”

“Ah, you are a fan of baseball, then? I’m afraid I did not acquire a taste for the sport until Lieutenant Mills took me to a game.”

“Yeah, well, don’t let her fool you into thinking the Mets are a good team. You wanna see real baseball, go to Yankee Stadium.”

“I will bear that in mind,” Crane said diplomatically, though he followed only part of what Marble said. “If you’ll excuse me.”

“You bet.” She picked the paper back up. “Good luck with whatever you guys are doing back there.”

Crane reached into his coat pocket to retrieve the metal band that contained the ever-growing collection of keys he’d accumulated. It took him a moment to find the configuration that matched that of this particular door, and then he allowed himself ingress.

A few minutes after he settled into one of the chairs of dubious comfort that had been placed in the room, he heard Mills conversing with Officer Marble. They seemed to be discoursing on the subject of gentlemen by the names of Harvey, Tanaka, Sabathia, and Wright, as well as someone with the appellation “Ayrod.”

Finally, Mills joined him, shaking her head. “I don’t know who’s crazier, Liz Marble for thinkin’ the Yanks aren’t gonna suck again this year or Johnny Ippolito for not pleading out. If he’d just taken the plea that Czierniewski offered him when Corbin and I busted him a year and a half ago, he’d already be back on the streets.” She blew out a breath. “So what’s our latest mystery?”

After providing Mills with a précis of his vision, Crane concluded with “I can only surmise that Katrina was forced to keep our contact brief as a consequence of my sojourn to visit her in purgatory.”

Mills nodded. “Yeah, Moloch’s probably keeping the bonds pretty tight on her after that. So what medal do you need to retrieve?”

“I’ve no idea.” Crane shook his head and rose to his feet. He told Mills the story while seated, but now he felt restless. “I received no medal from either the Crown or the colonies.”

“Did she give you any kind of hint?”

Testily, Crane said, “The sum total of her words to me were what I quoted to you: ‘You must retrieve the medal you were awarded.’”

“Maybe it wasn’t just words. What else did you see?”

“I saw flashes of people who are in some way involved in our conflict, either present-day or during the war: General Washington, van Brunt, you, Moloch, and—” Crane blinked. “Wait—of course! I also saw Willett!”

“Who’s that?”

Crane shook his head. “Marinus Willett, the leader of the Sons of Liberty. The Continental Congress awarded ten of us with the Congressional Cross. It was a citation for bravery in the struggle against the Crown. It was one of several decorations that were distributed—they also issued elegant swords to some soldiers, as well as the Fidelity Medallion, which John Paulding and his compatriots received after capturing Major André.”

Mills smiled. “Kinda surprised Mr. Photographic Memory forgot that. What happened to the cross after you died?”

Tartly, Crane said, “Mr. Photographic Memory did not forget it, because he was never issued the cross. While the Congress did declare that ten of us were to receive the honor, the actual crosses were commissioned to be created by a French silversmith. But they had not been completed by the time of my semi-fatal encounter with the Horseman.”

“I like ‘semi-fatal.’ Okay, so usually when someone’s awarded a medal posthumously, it goes to a family member.”

Crane shook his head. “Hardly an option. Katrina was on the run after she cast her spell upon my corpse, and our son was not publicly known to be my heir.” Crane shuddered involuntarily. The recent revelation that Katrina had birthed a son by him had shaken him to his very core. She herself had been unaware of the pregnancy until after Crane’s battle with the Horseman. Katrina had left young Jeremy in the care of trusted comrades, but after they were killed, he was raised in an orphanage. “I’m afraid the only other family I had was my father. I doubt the nascent United States government would have issued such a citation to a member of the British aristocracy who disowned the recipient of that citation when he switched sides.”

“ ‘Here’s a medal your dead son got for rebelling.’ Yeah, probably not, no.” Mills sighed. “All right, I think the first thing we need to do is find out everything we can about the Congressional Cross. Who else got them?”

“I’m afraid I couldn’t say. Marinus Willett, van Brunt, and I were informed of our honors together after the fact. I was never informed of the full roster of ten.”

“Too bad.” She went over to the laptop computer in order to utilize the invisible library that was the Internet.

After several manipulations of the keyboard, Mills found herself on a page that provided some information. “Looks like that silversmith you mentioned was named Gaston Mercier, and he finished the crosses in 1785. They were shipped to the United States. George Washington awarded them to the surviving recipients or to their families.”

Crane shook his head. “As we’ve established, that is not applicable to all who received it. Does this webbed page provide a list?”

“Web page, and there’s only one other name besides Willett and van Brunt: Tench Tilghman.” She looked up. “What kind of parent names their kid ‘Tench’?” Then she shook her head. “And why am I asking the person whose parents named him ‘Ichabod’?”

Crane raised an eyebrow. “In fact, Lieutenant, my given name derives from the Book of Samuel. As for Mr. Tilghman, I’m afraid I never met him, though I do know that he was one of Washington’s most trusted lieutenants.”

She leaned back in her chair. “Well, there isn’t much online about these crosses. I’ll keep digging, but if that’s all Katrina gave us, I’m not sure what else we can do.”

“Indeed. I love Katrina more than life itself, Lieutenant, but with each passing day I realize that I knew her far less than I should have. We can only hope that my ignorance does not prove fatal for us all.”

TWO

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

JANUARY 2014

BEFORE THE ACCIDENT, Frank Irving had paid very little attention to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

He was aware of it, certainly. If nothing else, when he was a uniformed rookie in the New York Police Department, his sergeant would sometimes task him with ticketing duty, telling him to paper cars that violated parking ordinances. He often wrote citations for vehicles parked in handicapped spots without proper tags or ones that blocked the lips in sidewalks to accommodate wheelchairs and strollers. And he was occasionally guilty of using the elevators in the subways when he just didn’t feel like climbing the stairs.

But it wasn’t until after the accident, after Macey was released from the hospital, after the doctors made it clear that she would never walk again, that Irving was able to truly appreciate the kindness that Congress had done his family with that law.

Macey herself took it for granted, which was easy for her, not having been born yet when the law passed. If Irving had been confined to a wheelchair when he was Macey’s age back in the 1980s, he’d have had a much harder time of it: fewer elevators and ramps, fewer lips in the sidewalks, fewer parking spots set aside, and so on.

Then again, he’d been thinking a lot lately about how things had changed over the years. Having a displaced Revolutionary War soldier in his life had that effect….

He and his teenage daughter were working their way up Fifth Avenue toward the ground-floor entrance to the Metropolitan Museum of Art that sat opposite East Eighty-First Street, passing the street artists and food and drink vendors that dotted the crowded sidewalk.

“Here we go, Little Bean,” he said with a smile as he held the large metal door open for her. “I ever tell you that my earliest memories are of coming here?”

“Only a thousand times, Dad.” Macey grinned indulgently. They went through this routine every time he brought her to the Met.

“You sure?” Irving asked with mock confusion. “I really told you about the time I was four years old?”

“Yes, Dad. You don’t remember the whole trip, just quick images like pictures. Standing in the main entrance, looking at a Rembrandt, staring down at all the pennies in the wishing well at the Temple of Dendur …”

“And the pigeons, don’t forget the pigeons.” Irving shrugged out of his coat, then helped Macey slide out of hers as they got in the coat-check line. “Dive-bombing me on the steps. It was like being in an Alfred Hitchcock movie. But even after that, I’ve been coming back here my whole life.”

Macey smiled. “Didn’t you tell me that you were the only cop in your precinct who had a membership to the museum?”

“Yeah, I was. Least I only made the mistake of asking the guys to come with me once.” Cops and art generally didn’t mix, and Irving took some serious ribbing after making that request. “Took me ten years to get them to stop calling me Picasso.”

Once they checked their coats, they went to the membership desk and got the stickers with the Met’s logo and the date. Wearing those on their shirts would permit them access to the museum for the rest of the day. While waiting for the elevator, Irving asked his daughter, “Where you wanna visit first?”

“Can we go to the Astor Court? One of the kids in the anime club went there, and I’m dying to see it!”

Irving frowned. “When did you join the anime club?”

“Like, forever ago, Dad. Remember, I went to that Miyazaki marathon?”

“Sure, right,” Irving said quickly, though he recalled no such thing. He silently admonished himself for not paying near enough attention to his daughter’s life and made a mental note to look up the name Miyazaki later to make sure his oeuvre was suitable for a teenager.

Murphy’s Law being what it was, the Astor Court was all the way on the other end of the museum, an edifice that took up four city blocks. They took the elevator to the first floor, then moved slowly through the Greek sculpture, the main lobby with its high ceilings, wooden benches, and large crowds, then through the Egyptian wing before reaching another elevator.

When they went through the lobby, Macey noticed the much longer line for the coat check up here, and grinned. “See? There are benefits to being crippled.”

Irving winced. He and his ex-wife, Cynthia, had gone to great lengths to never use the word crippled in Macey’s presence, so naturally their daughter had decided one day to embrace the term. Part of it was an attempt at empowerment, something Irving could get behind. Certainly lots of the people he came up with in the neighborhood would embrace racial slurs for their own use, not to mention gay people similarly embracing queer. But Irving also had a sneaking suspicion that Macey used the word precisely because it made her parents uncomfortable. Just a little something to remind him that, whatever else she’d been through, Macey was still a teenager.

The elevator deposited them on the second floor right opposite the moon gate, the circular entryway to the Astor Court. First opened in 1981, the space was a re-creation of a Chinese garden, with a small body of water with koi swimming about, several plants, a small gazebo, several rock sculptures, and a skylight. Irving’s first visit had been the year it opened, when he was thirteen.

Even at its most crowded, the place exuded calm.

Since the accident, Irving had gotten in the habit of walking behind Macey. At first, it was to push her wheelchair, but even after she started manipulating the chair herself, he remained behind her in order to keep an eye on her.

But halfway through the moon gate, he stopped, unable to continue forward.

It took Macey a moment to notice, and then she glanced back over her shoulder. “Dad?”

“Sorry, Little Bean, I just—” He shook his head and then finally went the rest of the way in, staring at the rock gardens and plants and simple-yet-ornate window designs and floor patterns.

Macey wheeled herself down the ramp onto the main part of the floor. “You okay, Dad?” she asked as he followed her.

“I just realized that I haven’t been here since—since the accident.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know, I—” He smiled ruefully. “This used to be my refuge. Back when I was a kid, I used to come up here to get away from it all. Whenever I was having problems in school or with my family or with the kids in the neighborhood, I’d come here. It was always quiet and peaceful, and it helped me make sense of things. After I joined the force, I came here a lot, too.”

“By yourself, I take it?” Macey grinned when she asked the question.

Irving chuckled, grateful for the tension release of his daughter’s teasing. “Yeah, by myself. Helped me deal with some stuff. And every time I came here, I felt better. Until the accident.”

Macey wheeled the chair around so that she could put her hand on his. “Dad, I’m fine. I mean, I’m not fine, but I’m okay.”

“I know that, Little Bean, but I didn’t know that when I came here. You were still in the hospital, the doctors didn’t know if you’d ever walk again—they weren’t even sure how far up your body you’d be paralyzed.”

Now Macey’s face fell. “I didn’t know that.”

This time Irving broke the tension for his daughter. “Yeah, well, you were on the really high-quality painkillers at that point. You were having trouble remembering your own name.”

She grinned. “So what happened when you came here?”

“It still didn’t make sense. This place always made me feel better before, helped me get my thoughts in order, but when you were hurt—” He shook his head again. “Then I stopped coming. Didn’t even realize it until now.”