Gritting her teeth, Harper wrote the non-quote down, in case it was all he gave her.
‘Have you questioned any suspects?’
‘At the current time,’ he said again, ‘we are pursuing all possible leads.’
‘Have you received the coroner’s report on the Whitney case?’
‘I might have,’ he said, ‘but I’m certainly not sharing it with the press.’
He was enjoying this now. He thought she’d get angry or give up. This was because he didn’t know her very well.
‘Listen, Detective,’ she said quietly. ‘My editor’s in a crappy mood. She wants me to write one of those articles about how a good woman died in a town that’s supposed to be safe and now the murderer’s getting away with it. I could call Smith and get him to give me this information. But from what I hear, he’s on your back already and you probably don’t want that. So I’m asking you one more time.’ She took a breath. ‘Do you have the coroner’s report on the Whitney case?’
It shouldn’t be possible to sense how much someone loathes you from the quality of their silence on a phone line. But it is.
‘I have the report on my desk,’ he said finally. ‘And there are several things in it that I cannot share for investigatory reasons.’ He paused. ‘However, I can tell you that Mrs Whitney was killed with a common household butcher knife – one found in most people’s kitchens. No such knife was found at the scene, so we believe the killer took the knife with him.’
His tone was bitter. As if she’d pulled the words out of him with pliers. But she’d take it however she could get it.
Tucking the phone against her shoulder, Harper wrote quickly.
‘How many times was she stabbed? How many of those wounds could have caused her death?’
‘Mrs Whitney was stabbed seven times,’ he said. ‘She also had shallow, defensive wounds on her hands and forearms, indicating she struggled with her assailant. One strike with the knife severed her carotid artery, and that is the one that ultimately caused her death.’
‘Can you give me any description of the killer, based on the wounds or evidence from the scene?’
‘The killer was a man with a knife,’ Blazer said sardonically. ‘Come on, McClain. How can I describe a man no one saw?’
Harper didn’t rise to the bait.
‘Does the height or angle of the wounds give you an idea of the height and weight of the killer?’ she asked calmly. ‘Were any hairs found at the scene? If so, what color hair does he have?’
‘We believe the killer was a man, given the depth of the wounds and the strength required. The angle of the wounds indicates a muscular man, at least six feet tall, possibly taller. I have nothing beyond that.’
‘Was she sexually assaulted?’ she asked.
‘There’s no evidence of that.’
Harper wrote fast; she kept up with him easily. When he’d finished talking, she leaned back in her chair. She had a feeling this was the last question he’d answer and she wanted to choose it carefully.
‘Why is the investigation moving so slowly?’ she asked. ‘Is there anything you want to tell the public about the investigation? Should they be afraid that a killer is walking around, free?’
‘What the hell kind of question is that?’ Blazer’s voice rose. ‘Off the record, McClain, if you think you can do this better, get on it. On the record: The investigation is going smoothly, but the killer took measures to hide his identity. We believe he wore gloves and other protective gear. We are still in the early part of the investigation but there is no need for the public to fear.’
Harper thought of what Smith had told her – that Blazer knew about her mother’s murder.
‘Do you have any reason to believe this killer has killed before?’ she pressed. ‘Have there been other, similar murders?’
There was a pause.
‘I cannot get into that,’ Blazer said.
‘But—’
He spoke over her. ‘The lieutenant told me to brief you, so I’ve briefed you. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m getting back to work.’
The phone went dead.
It was after nine by the time Harper had finished filing her story and things calmed down enough for her to remember that DJ had wanted to talk to her.
She punched the number of his cell phone. It rang five times before he picked up.
‘Hello?’ He was somewhere noisy – she could hear voices and laughter, the sound of a television.
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘It’s Harper. Can you talk?’
‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘I’ll go outside.’
She heard him fumbling around, getting up, then the noise receded and she heard a door open and close.
‘Where are you?’ she asked, leaning her elbows on her desk.
‘At Rosie’s. Watching the game with some of the sports guys.’
Harper wrinkled her nose. ‘Gross.’
‘This is why I don’t invite you to things,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you called, though. What I tried to tell you earlier was I went back to the college looking for information about Whitney. You’re going to want to hear what I found out.’ She heard the sound of pages flipping – he must have taken his notebook to the bar with him, in case she called.
‘Marie Whitney was not a popular woman. Or rather, she was too popular.’
Harper’s brow furrowed. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Basically, a lot of people were surprisingly eager to tell me she was a slut,’ he said bluntly.
‘You’re kidding.’
She could almost hear him shaking his head.
‘Husband-stealer. Nymphomaniac. You name it, I heard it today.’
Harper was stunned. Whatever she’d expected him to find out, it wasn’t this. She reached for her notebook, but she wasn’t sure what to write.
‘I don’t get it. What does her sex life have to do with her murder?’
‘If you ask the professors and grad students at Savannah University, she finally slept with the wrong guy and he killed her,’ DJ said. ‘They think they’ve got this thing solved.’
‘Well,’ Harper said. ‘It’s not an unusual motive for murder. Did anyone have any names? Someone she was going out with lately?’
‘Yeah, about that. When I asked people if she was dating someone new before she was killed, they laughed at me,’ he said. ‘One grad student said, “She only liked them new.” He sounded particularly bitter. I got the feeling maybe he’d been the new one once.’
‘Ouch.’ Harper was taking notes now. ‘Did you get any names at all? It might be good to track some of these guys down.’
In the distance, Harper heard a crowd cheer. Someone must have scored.
‘I’ve got a couple of names,’ DJ said. ‘But nobody knew how recent these guys were. Seems Whitney liked to date multiple guys at once and she moved through them fast. Some she kept secret. Some were more public. People said she liked to play them off against each other. Make them jealous.’ He drew a breath. ‘The information I got was consistent. The woman was a player.’
‘And none of these guys raised any alarms with anyone? No axe-wielding weirdos among them?’ Harper asked hopefully.
‘Far as I can tell, it was the opposite,’ he said. ‘She went out with a few arty types, but mostly she went for men in positions of authority. She liked lawyers, politicians and cops.’
Harper’s pen skidded across the page.
‘Wait. DJ, did you say cops?’
‘Yeah, I thought that might interest you.’ She could hear the grin in his voice. ‘Apparently she had a thing for guns and the guys who carry them.’
Harper’s stomach tightened. Her mind spun through everything she knew about the Whitney case. A clean crime scene. No mistakes. A professional.
A cop could do that.
‘Holy shit,’ she breathed. ‘I need to see those names.’
Chapter Sixteen
Harper almost didn’t go to the party that night.
After she
got off the phone with DJ, he’d texted her the names he’d collected. She’d rushed to do basic searches on all of them. They were certainly high-profile enough – a former city manager, a state senator, and a CEO.
None of them were cops, but DJ told her he thought there were more names to be gotten.
‘Lots more,’ he said. ‘I’ll keep digging.’
Certainly, no one on his list shouted murderer at her. Much less, murderer of two women, fifteen years apart. She ran quick searches on all of them. None of them had criminal records. None had a known history of violence.
She fretted about it all the way home. For a moment there, she’d thought DJ had found what she was looking for. Now, an hour later, she wasn’t sure.
It was only when she’d parked and got out of the car that she remembered Toby’s invitation.
She wouldn’t have even considered going if Riley didn’t live eight blocks away.
He was the only cop she knew who lived in the historic district. All the rest lived in the suburbs, as far from the city as possible. But he was different in a lot of ways.
He was vegetarian, incredibly buffed, went to yoga classes, didn’t drink alcohol¸ and threw the most insane parties.
He lived in a cute, turn-of-the-century cottage, and Harper heard the party before she saw it. A low roar of voices, the thump-thump-thump of a bass.
Tuesday might seem a strange night for a party, but weekends are the busiest nights for police, and lots of beat cops get Tuesdays and Wednesdays off.
When she walked up the front steps, the door was ajar. It looked like everyone had turned out for it. Music – mostly rap and pop – blared from the speakers. The furniture had been pushed out of the way, and a couple of people were already dancing.
There’s something weird about seeing cops out of uniform, being normal people. It’s like seeing a priest in jeans. Or spotting your doctor wearing tennis shorts at the supermarket. Even then, it’s not the same, because their inherent copness is unmistakable. The military haircuts, the rigid posture, the subtle, unspoken anxiety about rules being broken – it’s obvious once you’re aware of it.
Seeing no one she knew, Harper threaded her way through the crowd across the living room and dining room to the kitchen at the back of the house. It was a long, narrow space, old-fashioned but in an arty way, with glass-front cabinets and one of those trendy pastel refrigerators that look like 1950s ice-boxes.
She found Riley leaning against the wall next to the back door holding a glass of club soda and arguing good-naturedly with Toby and his wife, Elaine. As soon as he spotted Harper, he cut himself off.
‘Hey, Harper!’ He waved his beer. ‘I didn’t know you were coming.’
‘Toby talked me into it,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I love your parties. They’re so calm and formal.’
Riley found this hilarious.
‘Formal …’ he sputtered. ‘Yeah. Right. Grab yourself a beer and come set Toby straight. Turns out he’s wrong about everything.’
The sink had been filled with ice and beer, and was acting as a de facto cooler.
Popping the top off a cold Corona, Harper walked over to join them.
‘What’s Toby wrong about today?’ she asked.
‘I was explaining to the officer that getting a suspect to the hospital when his eyes are rolling back in his head from an overdose of crystal meth might be more important than taking him to prison,’ Toby said.
Riley grinned. ‘And I was explaining to Toby that one out of every two suspects pretends to be overdosing when we arrest them hoping we’ll make this particular mistake. Those hospital beds are more comfortable than the ones in the county jail.’
‘Dear God,’ Elaine said, turning to Harper. ‘Make them stop bickering.’
Elaine was tiny, with wavy brown hair and doll-like features that led some to underestimate how brilliant she really was.
Harper wanted to be her when she grew up.
‘Hey,’ she said, ignoring the debate, ‘I didn’t think you’d be here. I thought you were on days.’
‘I am,’ Elaine said. ‘But I’ve got Wednesday off this week, so I thought, what the hell. I’m hoping this will convince Toby that working normal human hours is not a prison sentence. It’s still possible to have fun.’
Toby gave her a pitying look.
‘Nice try,’ he said.
In the next room, someone cranked up the stereo. Riley leaned in to be heard above the music.
‘I can’t believe you guys gave up the vampire hours. What’s it like being normal people? Honestly. Is it better?’
Elaine glanced at Toby, who raised one eyebrow.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘having regular hours is great. I get more sleep. When I go to the supermarket it’s people buying groceries – not a bunch of drug addicts stealing candy bars, which is what it’s like at three a.m. And I can go to the gym, go to dinner with friends …’ As she spoke, Toby’s expression grew more outraged, and she hurried to finish before he could interrupt, resting one hand on his arm. ‘But I’m not going to lie, the work is less fun. There’s no adrenaline rush when you’re doing a pre-scheduled gallbladder removal.’ Her tone was wry. ‘God, it’s so twisted. I never thought I’d miss gunshot wounds.’
‘I’m going back on nights,’ Toby said firmly. ‘I can’t take any more normality. Bring on the shootings and overdoses.’
He raised his beer and clinked bottles with Harper and Riley.
After a brief hesitation, Elaine raised her beer to join theirs.
‘Oh, what the hell,’ she said.
They talked for a while by the open door, drinking too fast. The beer went straight to Harper’s head, and she was glad. Someone handed her another and she drank that one, too.
After the last few days, it felt good not to think.
When Riley described a case he’d worked the night before in which an elderly woman called 911 because she couldn’t find her cat, she found herself laughing helplessly.
‘I told her, “I’m sorry, ma’am. Spangles is not an emergency,”’ he said, adopting an earnest tone. ‘And she said, “She is an emergency until you find her, young man.”’
‘What did you do?’ Harper asked.
‘I looked for the damn cat,’ Riley confessed to raucous laughter, adding defensively, ‘That woman was very persistent.’
At that moment, a song everyone loved came on, and Toby and Elaine ran into the living room to dance. Riley tried to convince Harper to join them but she shook her head.
‘I can’t let anyone see me dancing,’ she insisted. ‘It’ll ruin my credibility.’
Grabbing her hand, he pulled her close, thrusting his leg suggestively between hers and moving her body in smooth circles with his hips.
‘I could teach you,’ he said, waggling his eyebrows.
Laughing, she pushed him away.
‘Go find yourself a nice rookie to dance with,’ she told him. ‘You’re too good for me.’
He backed away, still holding out one hand.
‘Don’t pass up on this, baby,’ he begged. ‘It would be so good.’
When she didn’t back down, he gave in to the beat, joining the others bouncing around the living room.
For a while Harper stood watching them, but it was hot in there, even with the windows open, and she felt a little dizzy. She shouldn’t have drunk that last beer so fast.
The breeze blowing in from outside felt good – so she slipped out the back door to catch her breath. It was a warm, humid night but, after the crowded kitchen, it felt cool.
A path of pale stone led from the house through the long, narrow garden. The waxing moon cast a pale blue light over the yard.
Harper closed her eyes, letting the breeze dry the perspiration on her face.
‘Better be careful,’ a voice said behind her. ‘I hear there’s been a lot of crime in this area recently.’
She spun around.
Luke Walker stood a few feet away, leaning against a tree, watch
ing her with unnerving steadiness.
Harper’s heart kicked. She hadn’t noticed him arrive.
‘I’ve got 911 on speed dial,’ she informed him.
‘Yeah, but police response times are shit.’ He walked closer. ‘I read it in the paper.’
‘That rag?’ She smiled. ‘Don’t believe a word. It’s full of lies.’
Unlike the others, Luke looked normal in street clothes. In dark jeans and a button-down shirt that showed off a triangle of smooth, tanned skin at his throat, he looked dangerously good.
Something about this moment in the moonlight, with the air soft against her skin, felt inevitable. On some subconscious, instinctive level, she’d known he’d be here.
In fact, hadn’t she been waiting for this, ever since that night he’d appeared behind her with a gun like a six-foot-tall guardian angel?
‘I didn’t see you inside,’ she said. ‘Were you dancing?’
He gave a dry, sardonic laugh.
‘Just got here. Went to the kitchen to get a beer and saw you sneaking out.’
‘I wasn’t sneaking,’ she clarified, unnecessarily. ‘I was walking.’
His shrug said it didn’t matter.
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I’ve been looking for you.’
Her eyes darted up to his.
‘You scared the shit out of me the other night,’ he said. ‘I still don’t understand why you put yourself in that situation.’
For Harper, the shooting seemed like a lifetime ago and, while she didn’t like being told how to do her job, she really didn’t want to argue about it anymore.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘I miscalculated. I got too cocky. Won’t happen again.’ She smiled darkly. ‘You know what’s funny? Everyone was pissed off about that except my editor. She practically gave me a medal.’
He nodded, as if this didn’t surprise him at all.
‘I hear you. The more you risk your life, the more the boss likes it. It’s not like they’ll have to pay for your funeral, after all.’
His voice was sharp. Harper’s brow creased.
This bitter side of him surprised her. Luke had always loved his job. Something had changed.
‘Hey,’ she said hesitantly. ‘Is everything OK with you?’
The Echo Killing Page 13