by CJ Lyons
“Nate makes things better,” Emily said. “But then I get him in trouble—by accident. And then the kids or teachers pick on him and it’s not fair.” She blew her breath out in a sigh that made her sound even older than the centuries-old farmhouse beside them. “It’s not fair. Daddy should be here. I should have won a ribbon because my truffles were excellent tasting—even if they weren’t pretty with all the decorations the other candies had. People shouldn’t judge on what they see on the outside but on what’s inside.”
Leah suppressed a chuckle. If only… “Your dad would be very proud of you, teaching yourself how to make your truffles, experimenting with flavors.”
“I did it exactly like he taught me. Imagine one change at a time, then try it and see how close to your imagination you come. It’s like when we wrote computer games. We had so much fun.” Another long-suffering sigh. “If he were here, I wouldn’t even need to go to school. He could teach me everything.”
This was exactly what Ian had argued for before they enrolled Emily. He’d volunteered to cut his work hours in order to homeschool her, but Leah had wanted her to have the chance to socialize with other kids her age. It was one of the few arguments during their marriage that Leah had won—and now she wondered if she’d been wrong about everything.
They lay in silence, the stars multiplying as the night grew darker. So many stars. “You know your dad’s up there, watching over you. Always. Even when you can’t see the stars, they’re always still there.”
“Just the sun hides them. And the sun is a star, too. And we have stars inside us, right? Because of the elementary—”
“Because of the elemental particles,” Leah corrected. “Atoms, like the carbon that builds your muscles and bones and that made the flowers and trees and—”
“And diamonds! Daddy taught me that—I read it in one of his books.”
“And diamonds. All those particles, they came from stars.”
“So Daddy came from the stars. And now he’s back with them?” She nestled closer and Leah wrapped her arm around her, hugging her tight.
“Exactly.”
“Mommy, can it stay like this always? No more school, Nate can come and play—”
“Not sure when Nate would want to come and play. You owe him an apology. For acting out when it was his turn to celebrate. That made his hard work and winning his prizes seem not as important and special as they are.”
“I’ll tell him I’m sorry. Maybe we can throw him a party? I can make truffles.”
“Maybe. Except for that, you’re grounded. It’s okay to share your feelings, but kicking and screaming when I’m driving the car isn’t the right way.”
Emily considered that. “Yes, ma’am. So I’ll be grounded tonight and then Nate can come tomorrow and we’ll use Daddy’s computer to look at all his pictures from the fair. I want to see more of the baby lady.”
“The baby lady?” Leah asked with trepidation, praying that Ruby hadn’t allowed Nate to capture photos of Beth in labor.
“Yeah. I remember seeing her a few times. Near the horse barn and at the corndog stand and near the Ferris wheel—that they said I was too short to ride. That’s not fair.”
“Wait, so you saw Beth earlier? What was she doing?”
Emily shrugged one shoulder. “Talking on her phone. She was angry. Then she threw it.”
Leah sat up. “Beth had a phone and threw it out? Do you remember where? Was it into a trash bin?” She could ask Luka to send an officer out to retrieve it before the trash was hauled away.
Emily shook her head. “No. It was into some trees. I’ll bet Nate took a picture. He takes pictures of everything.” She tugged Leah back down. “Look at the stars, Mommy. Can you teach me how to take pictures of the stars? Then I can teach Nate. That would be fun, wouldn’t it?”
Leah suppressed her urge to search for Beth’s phone—and identity—forcing herself to relax and concentrate on Emily. After all, how many more nights like this would they have before Emily grew too old to cuddle with her mother and share all her secrets?
First thing tomorrow, she promised herself. She’d deal with Beth and the kids and the dreaded Ms. Driscoll and the budget due at work and the bills to be paid… they could all wait until tomorrow. Tonight Emily needed her.
Nineteen
Harper had spent the rest of the night trying in vain to find anyone who saw Lily before her death or knew how to contact her next of kin. She’d bought numerous coffees and burgers for street kids and even tried to wheedle intel from the few pimps and drug dealers who protested at her scaring off their customers.
She’d learned that Lily hadn’t been on the streets for a while. She had first shown up in Cambria City when she was sixteen, lasted a little more than a year working for Freddy, most of it spent in a haze of oxy and then heroin addiction, before vanishing sometime last year. Harper hadn’t been much older herself when she’d been thrown out of college and her family’s affections. She remembered the constant fear of navigating life on her own: juggling bills because her scant waitress’s wages wouldn’t allow her to pay them all at once; depending on the kindness of strangers to tip her well—sometimes forced into playing a role, rewarding their not-so-subtle harassment with a bitter smile.
As much as she’d like to think her survival was the result of some special hidden strength inside herself, Harper knew that it was as much about luck as anything else. Hearing the vague accounts of Lily’s short-lived time in Cambria City left Harper wondering what more she could have done to help Lily during their several brief encounters. She’d steered Lily to Jonah’s mission and, from what he said, she’d taken advantage of the services he’d offered, and yet, somehow, she’d still been lost: another anonymous victim of the streets.
No one admitted to seeing Lily recently; most assumed she’d died of an OD last year. No one knew where she came from, who her family was—or where they were—or, worse, seemed to care. Other than Macy, that was. But Macy was nowhere to be found Sunday night, so Harper eventually headed home for a few hours’ sleep.
Monday morning, after showering, changing clothes and grabbing a bottled protein shake in lieu of breakfast, Harper headed back out. She had an extensive to-do list, including requesting a court order for Lily’s rehab records and continuing her search for Macy. First, though, she had a far worse duty to attend to: observing Lily’s autopsy. On her way to Good Sam she called Maggie Chen to let her know she was running a few minutes late.
“Didn’t Luka tell you?” Maggie said. “He still wants you here, but not for the Lily Nolan case.”
“Why?” Harper felt a fool, out of the loop on her own case. “Did you already finish? What did you find?” Lily’s autopsy was her last chance to find any evidence Lily’s killer might have left behind.
“Haven’t had a chance to start. Lily’s autopsy has been rescheduled.”
“Rescheduled? To when?”
“To follow. Which means whenever the medical examiner has time to get to it. After we finish the Spencer Standish postmortem.”
Harper bit her lip, trying to curb her anger. “Some rich idiot dies and my victim is dropped to the bottom of the list? Who’s the ME assigned? I want to talk to them.”
“It’s Ford.”
Great. Ford Tierney would never upset his schedule simply because Harper asked. He was the most rigid, punctilious, and brilliant of the three forensic pathologists who worked with Craven County’s coroner as well as the other four surrounding counties, none of whom could afford their own qualified medical examiners. Consolidating their unique, specialized services saved money, provided faster results, and was a huge help to law enforcement—especially as they happened to be quartered at Good Sam, making them especially convenient for Cambria City’s police department. But covering such a large swath of the state meant they were always juggling which case took priority. And clearly a prostitute killed in an alley took a back seat to the suspicious death of a millionaire who’d confessed to a Ponz
i scheme.
“Can you at least give me any preliminary results from Lily’s case?” Harper hated to beg, but something was better than nothing. She couldn’t afford to lose momentum now, not when she had so little of it to start with. No witnesses, no exact time of death, not even a next of kin to interview to learn where Lily had been for the past year and why she had suddenly resurfaced back in her old neighborhood.
“Writing it up now, but it’s not much,” Maggie told her. “Tox screen negative—”
“Wait.” Harper had assumed there would be traces of drugs in Lily’s system. “Nothing? No oxy or heroin?” Lily’s previous drugs of choice.
“Not even alcohol. She was clean.”
So Lily hadn’t returned to the streets because of a relapse. If she hadn’t needed cash to fuel her addiction, why had she returned? “Okay. What else?”
“There’s no evidence of recent sexual activity,” Maggie said. Which also meant Lily hadn’t been working the streets—so what was she doing in an alley at three in the morning? “Oh, and Ford will need to confirm, but from the X-rays it looks like the lethal blow was a blow to the back of the head. From the bruising, I’d guess it was one of the first blows, if that helps.”
“Are you saying the majority of her injuries were inflicted after she died?”
“Yes. Again, preliminary, we need to examine the tissue, but yes. She was dead or at the very least unconscious after sustaining the lethal blow.”
They were both silent for a moment. “That’s an awful lot of rage.” Harper couldn’t help but visualize the beating Lily had taken. “I mean, it must have taken several minutes to beat her like that.”
Maggie’s voice dropped. “I counted over twenty blows based on the external contusions. All from the same weapon. The wound patterns suggest it was one of the wooden slats from the alley, if that helps.”
Harper knew it was almost impossible to lift fingerprints from rough lumber and there was no way the CSU budget would cover testing every length of wood for touch DNA, given that there’d been a dozen or more in the alley. Besides, with the amount of traffic that the alley saw, any DNA they found could be explained away as transfer from an innocent bystander.
“So she was punched in the face, then hit on the back of her head—” She stopped. One step at a time, she heard Luka’s voice of caution. “Was the blow to the head inflicted with the same weapon as her other injuries?”
“Looks like it, but we’ll need microscopic comparisons to be sure.”
Which meant they needed the autopsy completed before Harper would have more than a working theory—but at least it was progress.
“Did you locate next of kin yet?” Maggie asked.
“No. She didn’t have a driver’s license, and every time she was arrested she used a slightly different name: Lily, Lilian, Lili with an i, Nolan with an a, i, or e, and Dolan—”
“With an a, i, or e,” Maggie finished for her. “These kids, they leave their families for a reason. They aren’t looking to be found. With no official government ID, it’s like they don’t even exist.”
“I know. I ran her photo and details through every missing persons database, but so far no matches.”
“She’d only be in the database if someone cared enough to report her missing,” Maggie said.
“Right now, that’s just you and me.”
“Maybe it’s good that her autopsy is delayed.”
“Why’s that?”
Maggie hesitated. “We don’t have space to keep unclaimed bodies for long, so it means the clock hasn’t started, since we haven’t completed our examination.”
Suddenly the protein drink Harper had gulped was threatening to turn rancid. “Do me a favor? Call me before that happens. I can’t stand the idea of her being cremated, her ashes tossed in the back of some storage closet.”
“You know I’d never let that happen.”
“Thanks, Maggie.”
“No problem. I’ll call you once we have Lily’s autopsy on the schedule. I’m headed home now, but you’ll have Ford and Joel there for the Standish case.” She hung up.
Harper kept driving. Hopefully she could get some work done on Lily’s case while she was observing the Standish autopsy—there was always a lot of downtime while the medical examiner did all their routine stuff, especially when the ME was Ford Tierney.
She thought back to the first cases she’d worked with Luka when she was still a patrol officer. What would he say when faced with a case full of dead ends and no active leads? He’d tell her to start with the victim: understand the victim’s life and you’ll understand why they were targeted, how their world and the killer’s intersected. Even if she knew nothing of Lily’s life now or before she initially arrived in Cambria City, she could still try the rehab facility where she’d been last year. Except it might take hours to days to get a court order for medical records.
Her phone rang. Rachel. Harper cursed—she really didn’t have time to deal with one of her mother’s guilt trips. She’d already told her that she wouldn’t betray her badge to get the Reverend inside information on the Standish case. She almost ignored the call, but finally relented. Maybe Rachel was calling to apologize.
“Are you all right, Naomi?” Rachel asked. “You didn’t answer when I called back last night.”
So. No apology for asking Harper to compromise her morals. Only denial that anything had happened at all. Typical Rachel. “Sorry, Mom. I got tied up.”
Rachel paused as if waiting for Harper to say something more, but Harper had no idea what. Surely Rachel wasn’t expecting Harper to be the one to apologize. “So what are you doing?” Rachel finally asked. “Following a juicy lead? Tailing a perp?”
Her attempt at slang left Harper smiling. “You’ve been watching too much TV.”
“Don’t tell your father; he thinks I never watch anything that’s not rated PG. But it is rather exciting. Can you tell me anything?”
For the first time, Harper realized exactly how boring her mother’s life must be. Especially now that all the children were out of the house and the Reverend no longer needed her help running Holy Redeemer. Funny, she’d never thought what it must be like to live in the shadow of a larger-than-life man like the Reverend. What had her mother wanted for herself? Harper knew Rachel had never gone to college—had she ever thought of a career or any life other than the one she had?
For some reason Harper thought of Lily. Rachel and Lily’s lives couldn’t be more different, yet she had an intuition that both felt trapped by their circumstances. She shook off the idea—how could she possibly compare Rachel’s life of privilege to Lily’s life on the streets?
“Right now, I’m actually on my way to the morgue—” she answered Rachel.
“Your prostitute killed in the alley, of course.” Rachel sounded disappointed. Harper was about to explain that she was attending the Standish autopsy, but then she realized that was exactly the kind of information Rachel was trying to wrangle. Was she actually interested in Harper’s life at all? Was she merely bored and looking to Harper for distraction? No, Harper didn’t believe that. Rachel was acting as she had Harper’s entire life, doing whatever was needed to help the Reverend succeed.
“Sorry, Mom. I don’t really have time to talk.”
“Well, perhaps you could come to dinner or call me later? We’d love to hear more about your big case. It was even on the news last night.” Her mother didn’t say it, but it was clear: all she really cared about was Spencer Standish’s case.
As she hung up, Harper couldn’t help a wave of anger. Why was it that no one placed any value on time spent solving the murder of a teen prostitute? Lily had had her whole life before her; surely she meant as much as some middle-aged corporate conman. Or at the very least, she deserved not to be forgotten, her killer allowed to walk free.
Well, Lily had Harper on her side, if not the rest of the world. No way in hell was Harper about to give up on her. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.
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Twenty
In his prior life as a childless bachelor—aka six months ago—Luka would have been at his office hours before dawn after a weekend on call. In fact, he might never have bothered to go home other than for a quick shower and change of clothes.
Now, here he was, having an actual sit-down breakfast with his grandfather and Janine. He was exhausted—the leg had kept him awake all night and he’d been up all of the night before that working cases. He deserved to simply sit for a few minutes and enjoy a cup of Janine’s excellent coffee along with her equally excellent eggs and sausage. But despite his throbbing leg and the damn crutches that hurt his arms, Luka itched to get to work.
“What are we going to do about Nate?” Janine asked as she joined him and Pops at the circular table. This table was where all the important decisions regarding Jericho Fields had been made for two centuries, from new types of apples to cultivate, to planning Luka’s wedding before his fiancée had been killed. They’d also planned Luka’s parents’ funeral here—him, Pops, and his gran. Then after Gran passed, and then after Luka’s sister, Nate’s mother, died, it’d been just him and Pops alone at this table. But now it was the place where they discussed the family’s future: Nate. “School starts next week. And you know that vice-principal, Driscoll, is going to make his life hell.”
Pops made a small grunt of disgust. “I say we teach him how to fight back, give those bullies a taste of their own medicine.”
“Which will get him expelled,” Luka said.
“Or arrested,” Janine added. “Did you see how they took a six-year-old away in handcuffs, put him in a jail cell, all because he had a tantrum? Ever know any six-year-old who never had a tantrum? They didn’t even try to understand why he acted out.”
“Was he Black?” Pops asked.
“Yes.”
“That’s all they need to know. Don’t care about the rest. Probably claimed he was a danger to the teacher or other kids, that he was out of control—”