‘You sure you don’t mind?’ she asked.
‘For you?’ he said. ‘Anything.’
DJ’s grin was endearingly crooked – his front two teeth crossed just a little, putting everything charmingly off-kilter.
Harper grabbed her bag. ‘Did I ever tell you you’re my hero?’
‘Stick with me, kid,’ he said as they headed for the door. ‘I’ll show you the ropes.’
When they pulled up at the university, the campus was quiet. The football field-sized parking lot held only a scattering of cars.
‘Where is everyone?’ Harper asked.
‘It’s nearly five o’clock,’ DJ said as if this explained everything.
Seeing the puzzled look on her face, he said, ‘They’re in a bar, Harper. It’s happy hour. Don’t you remember being a college student?’
Harper shook her head. ‘I’ve blocked it all out.’
The earlier sunshine was long gone now, the sky was overcast. The first drops of rain fell as they reached the administration building.
The nineteenth-century structure surrounded on all sides by rows of stone columns looked as colleges should – grand and eternal. Like most universities, though, the campus was largely modern, with mismatched buildings scattered across endless green acres.
Harper looked around, trying to remember the layout. It must be in her memory somewhere. After all, she’d studied here for more than two years before dropping out to work at the paper.
What she really recalled of her time here was feeling out of place. She’d been eighteen, like all the other freshmen. But she’d felt a century older.
The worst part was: Bonnie wasn’t with her.
In her last years at high school, she’d more or less lived with the Larson family. Her grandmother had done all she could, but Bonnie lived much closer to school, so after a while, it made sense for Harper to stay with the Larsons during the week.
The two of them were always as close as sisters – closer in some ways, because they’d chosen each other. Naturally, Harper had always assumed they’d go to college together, too. They’d never really discussed it, but it seemed the obvious next step. Until Bonnie won a full scholarship to an art school in Boston.
When she announced her news, brimming with excitement, Harper hadn’t been able to hide her shock.
Bonnie had always been there. Always.
Clocking her expression, Bonnie’s own enthusiasm had evaporated.
‘I won’t go,’ she’d said instantly. ‘I … I’ll turn it down.’
When she said it, though, Harper saw the joy go out of her eyes.
Seeing her deflated like that made Harper more aware of what she was asking.
After her divorce, Bonnie’s mother had raised four kids on the small salary she earned working as a secretary. She couldn’t begin to pay for college. Without the scholarship, Bonnie would have to take out student loans that could cripple her for the rest of her life. And she’d be giving up her dream school.
She couldn’t ask her to do that.
‘Don’t be an idiot,’ Harper had told her. ‘We can’t spend our whole lives together. You have to go to that school and suck up all the free learning. I’ll be fine.’
Bonnie must have known she was lying – she always knew. But, this time, she let it go.
‘I’ll come back for Christmas and I’ll be here every summer,’ she promised. ‘I’ll email you constantly. You’ll never notice I’m gone.’
That September, she’d loaded up her car and headed north. Harper said nothing, even as her heart fractured.
No matter what she told herself about how it was temporary, and it was only for school, in her soul she believed her best friend was deserting her.
Why shouldn’t she? Everyone else already had.
Her mother was dead, and her father lived hundreds of miles away. She had no siblings, and her grandmother was, by then, in her seventies.
So, no. She couldn’t relate to the other students, who had families back home, places to go on spring break, people to cheer them on when they did well. She had no idea what that was like.
Alone and unmoored, she’d floated into Savannah University in a dark cloud of misery. The other students took one look at her and veered away to the nearest sane alternative.
She didn’t know what to study – she didn’t care. Still, on the first day at registration, she was told she had to choose a major.
‘You can change it later,’ the uninterested woman on the desk said, adding, when Harper hesitated, ‘Close your eyes and pick one, honey. There are a hundred people in line behind you.’
Under pressure, Harper selected journalism almost at random. It sounded interesting. It wasn’t anything her parents would have chosen. It wasn’t what Bonnie would choose.
No one was more surprised than her to find out she was a natural.
She chased the university president up the stairs to ask about racism in fraternities. She spent three weeks following candidates for student body president around as they campaigned.
Those anarchic, rough-and-ready days in the newspaper’s tiny office, pounding out articles on old computers with a handful of other student volunteers were her only happy memories of that time.
In her second year, on the suggestion of one of her professors, Harper showed up at the Savannah newspaper with an article she’d written about a fracas between frat boys at a bar popular with students.
It wasn’t Baxter she’d met with, but a junior editor. With an expression that indicated he was humoring her, he’d taken out his red pen and read the article.
When he finished, he’d removed his glasses to look at her more closely.
‘How old did you say you were?’
The newspaper offered one internship each year. That year, they gave it to Harper.
She’d worked hard – showing up twice the number of hours required for the role. Without being asked, she made herself useful around the newsroom, writing obituaries and birth announcements, doing research for reporters. Making coffee runs.
Eventually, the editors gave her more challenging assignments, covering local meetings when the usual reporters were busy. The meetings often happened at night, so it was Baxter who edited her work on those occasions.
Harper absorbed everything with voracious hunger. Never questioning the editing. Never complaining about the hours.
Baxter rewarded her with more assignments.
When the next year began, the paper didn’t choose a new intern. Harper stayed on. She signed up for fewer classes so she’d have more time to work.
On quiet nights, Baxter quizzed her about her work, her background. Harper evaded personal questions, but mentioned that, when she was in high school, she’d had a part-time job at the police station for three years.
When Baxter casually asked who she’d worked with, Harper reeled off the names she could think of, including Smith, the deputy chief, and several detectives.
The next evening, Baxter announced that Harper would begin shadowing the crime reporter, Tom Lane, on his rounds.
Lane objected virulently. He and Baxter had it out on the newsroom floor.
‘This is ridiculous,’ he complained, gesturing at Harper. ‘I don’t have time to babysit at a crime scene.’
‘Tom, it’s not optional,’ Baxter informed him. ‘This is part of your job. I think the girl has chops and I want to see what she’s made of.’
‘The girl has chops?’ His voice rose. ‘She’s a teenager. She’s not allowed to have chops.’
Harper, who was twenty, bristled, but knew better than to intervene. She kept her head down, pretending she wasn’t listening to every word.
‘Tom, she worked at the police station. She knows these guys. They’ll share information with her they wouldn’t share with someone else.’ Baxter’s voice had been measured but unyielding.
Tom’s face reddened.
‘What are you suggesting? That police don’t share information with me? If yo
u’re not satisfied with my work, Emma, say the word.’
‘Pull yourself together, Tom.’ Turning her back on him, Baxter walked back to her desk. But he wasn’t about to let it go, and he followed her, still complaining.
‘She’ll slow me down. She’ll get in the way. I don’t have time for this.’
‘I don’t know why you’re still talking,’ Baxter told him briskly. ‘You won’t win. Take McClain with you. Show her the ropes. I’ve got plans for her.’
Harper’s heart leapt to her throat. Baxter had plans for her. This meant real reporting. No more obituaries and school-board meetings.
In the end, Lane gave in to the inevitable and allowed her to shadow him.
At crime scenes, they made an uncomfortable pair – Lane was several inches shorter than her and wiry, with thinning gray hair. Harper looked younger than her age, with auburn hair hanging nearly to her waist, usually wearing jeans and a T-shirt, clutching a reporter’s notebook as if her life depended on it.
At first Lane barely spoke to her. He seemed to think if he ignored her eventually she’d go away.
He was overly protective of his beat – it drove him crazy when a detective at a scene recognized Harper and stopped to chat with her.
‘If you want your quote in the paper,’ he’d tell them, ‘come to me.’
But the cops still looked out for her.
Once, after Lane drove off without her in a particularly dicey part of town, she hitched a ride back to the newspaper in Smith’s car. As revenge against Lane’s treatment of her, the lieutenant gave her insider information about a shooting that no one offered the older reporter.
After that, Lane finally seemed to realize there was no point in fighting anymore.
From then on, he was a useful if sometimes dour font of information.
It was Lane who explained what to look for in the crime reports each day.
‘If it bleeds it leads, girl,’ he told her one night at police headquarters. ‘Murder, armed robbery, stabbing, shooting, interesting burglaries – that’s it. The end. Anything else, it’s a waste of your time writing it. Baxter doesn’t want it and the public won’t read it.’
‘What’s an interesting burglary?’ Harper had asked, looking over his shoulder as he flew through the stack of crime reports so fast she barely had time to see what he was rejecting.
‘Celebrities, athletes, politicians.’ He ticked them off without looking up. ‘Someone rips them off, readers care. Everyone else better get some insurance because I’m not going to write about them.’
This was precisely the system Harper employed today. She was so finely attuned to which crimes were news and which weren’t, she could reject a case after reading the first line of the crime report.
At shooting scenes, she’d follow him closely – mostly because she didn’t want him to drive off and leave her there, but also to see how he operated.
When the hour got late and the streets turned ugly, Tom was fascinating to watch, weaving through crowds of witnesses like a dancer, finding exactly the right person to talk to. The one who’d seen it all and had a pithy quote ready to tumble off his tongue.
Those nights, Harper absorbed the danger and excitement like oxygen. By the end of the first month working with Tom, she knew what she wanted to do with her life.
And it didn’t involve college.
Over the course of the first year they spent working together, Harper showed up less and less at class, until she was so far behind she received a warning letter from the dean.
Baxter hadn’t missed any of this. One day, without warning, she told Harper she was putting her on the regular payroll.
‘Looks like you’re part-time at college anyway,’ she’d said. ‘And you’re useful.’
A short while later, Harper dropped out of school altogether.
The transition was easy. She worked a few day shifts, and on Tom’s nights off she covered the police. It was a good system for everyone.
Harper, by then, had found the apartment on Jones Street. Her only furniture was a mattress and a bookshelf, but she felt like she’d finally found her place in the world. Everything seemed to be coming together.
So when, on his sixtieth birthday, Tom announced he’d decided to retire, she couldn’t believe it.
‘What are you going to do?’ she’d asked him.
‘I’m going to go live with my brother in Jacksonville.’
‘That’s it?’
Harper – then twenty-two – couldn’t imagine giving up a job as a crime reporter for a boatload of nothing in Florida.
‘Look,’ Tom growled, ‘the guy’s an asshole, but he’s an asshole with a condo and a fishing license. And I’ve had enough. I deserve to sit on my butt for a few years before I kick the bucket.’
Seeing the look on her face, he’d softened.
‘Don’t worry,’ he told her. ‘Baxter was right – you’re a natural. You’ve already got half the PD wrapped around your little finger.’
It was the only compliment he ever gave her.
On the day he left, he gave her his scanner – the one she still used today.
‘Don’t listen to this thing too much,’ he told her gruffly. ‘It’ll eat your life.’
‘We’re going over here.’ DJ’s voice was a lifeline, pulling her out of the past.
Blinking hard, Harper turned to see he was pointing towards a small, glass-and-steel building surrounded by azalea bushes.
Clearing her mind of memories, she followed him down a sidewalk that angled sharply between perfectly mowed lawns. In the distance some guys were throwing a Frisbee. She heard one of them laugh and shout something, but the words were lost on the breeze.
They were so young.
She’d never been that young.
DJ opened the glass door and she followed him into a small modern lobby. It was icy cold inside – the air conditioning was set for a hotter day.
‘Hola, Rosanna,’ he called to the tiny, dark-haired woman at the desk.
She laughed, dimples deep in her round cheeks, and said something brief in Spanish that made him smile.
‘Harper McClain,’ DJ said, gesturing for her to step forward, ‘this is Rosanna Salazar. She knows everyone who’s anyone in fundraising.’
Rosanna giggled. ‘Oh, David,’ she said. ‘You’re such a sweet-talker.’
The two of them joked around but, from the way she was looking at DJ, Harper got the distinct impression Rosanna had a crush on him. She was probably five or six years older than him, but really cute.
She made a mental note to mention it to him later. It would be just like DJ not to notice.
‘Harper is another reporter from the paper,’ he explained. ‘She’s the one who wrote all the articles about Marie Whitney.’
‘Oh.’ The smile evaporated from Rosanna’s face.
‘It’s very sad,’ Harper kept her tone solicitous. ‘Were you friends with her?’
Rosanna hesitated – her eyes darting to DJ, who nodded encouragingly.
‘Not exactly,’ she said. ‘Marie … she kept to herself.’
Behind her desk, the office was modern and open-plan, with a scattering of desks and low file cabinets. The walls held arty black-and-white photographs of elegant people in ballgowns and tuxedoes that seemed out of place in such a workaday environment.
‘Have you heard anything from the police?’ Rosanna searched their faces. ‘Do they have a suspect?’
DJ motioned to Harper, who shook her head.
‘They’re not saying much,’ she confided. ‘I know they’re looking at people she knew. People she dated.’
She moved closer, closing the distance between herself and Rosanna. Inviting confidences.
‘The police must have been here interviewing her co-workers?’
Rosanna glanced over her shoulder to make sure they wouldn’t be overheard. But there was no one near.
‘They went through her desk and took everything to the police station,’ she
whispered. ‘Even her computer is gone.’
‘That makes sense,’ DJ assured her. ‘They’ll want to check absolutely everything.’
He leaned casually against the counter. The three of them were now a tight unit. Close together, sharing conspiratorial whispers.
‘Did Marie have close friends?’ Harper asked. ‘People she went to lunch with?’
Rosanna pursed her lips. ‘Can I be honest with you?’
‘Of course,’ Harper said.
‘Marie was strange,’ the receptionist said. ‘You couldn’t trust her. She’d be nice to your face, then you’d find out she was saying bad things about you behind your back. To your boss. She got ahead by knocking everyone else down. Does that make sense?’
She seemed almost relieved to be telling someone. As if she’d bottled it all up in the days right after the murder, when criticism of the dead would have been unforgivable.
‘I know the type,’ DJ said. ‘Is that how she got promoted? She was young to be vice-chair.’
Harper had to admire how he was working Rosanna. He was patient and friendly, never intimidating. It felt like a normal chat among friends. It was working – Rosanna was bursting with secrets she wanted to share.
‘OK, so, the woman who had the job before her?’ Rosanna whispered confidentially. ‘Marie told her boss she was lying about her expenses. She was. But when she left, she told me she only did it because Marie encouraged her to do it. She said everyone did it.’ Her dark brown eyes were wide. ‘She said I should never trust Marie. So I never did.’
Harper was increasingly fascinated by the two sides of the dead woman. Her perfect, polished exterior, and her hidden life of lies.
‘What about her boyfriends?’ Harper asked. ‘You told DJ … I mean, David, she dated powerful men. Did you really see her with a cop?’
Rosanna nodded so hard her curls bounced.
‘He came to meet her several times this spring. I’m sure he was police, although he didn’t wear a uniform. He always waited for her outside. He wore a badge on his belt. And once, the wind blew his jacket open and I saw his gun, here.’
She gestured under her arm, where a shoulder holster would be.
Blazer had a shoulder holster. Most of the detectives did.
The Echo Killing Page 23