by Tony Healey
ALSO BY TONY HEALEY
The Far From Home Series
The Broken Stars Series
The Confederation Reborn Series
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2017 by Tony Healey
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503940956
ISBN-10: 1503940950
Cover design by Cyanotype Book Architects
For Lesley
CONTENTS
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
1
The tall corn rustles like paper. The young woman lies flat on the dry earth, arms by her sides, feet together, chin resting on her chest; her head is propped up against the thick green stalks. Her eyes are closed—at first glance, you could be forgiven for thinking she’s asleep.
Detective Jane Harper squats next to the body. “How old?” she asks, looking up at the medical examiner. “Late teens?”
Mike McNeil, the medical examiner, rubs at the gray stubble on his jaw. “I won’t know for sure till I get her back to the office, but I’d say so, yeah.”
There are purple handprints around her neck—the killer left his mark when he crushed her windpipe. A troubled frown is forever etched into the girl’s brow, a lasting impression of terror.
Wondering what’s happening . . . and why it’s happening to her.
Mike shifts from one foot to the other, the keys on his belt jingling. It’s off-putting.
Harper points to the red spread of blood on the girl’s white cotton dress, over her groin. “Raped. Like the last one.”
“Could be,” Mike says. He sighs, and Harper can’t tell if it’s from the oppressive nature of the crime scene itself or the fact that she’s holding him up from doing his job—could be either or both.
The young woman has a crown of twisted vine on her head. It has been hand fashioned, each woody twig intertwined with the next. Here and there leaves poke out. When the first victim was found, Harper had the crown on the girl’s head tested. It was identified as supplejack vine, native to the Carolinas. She has no doubt this one is the same—it appears to be.
She rubs the earth between her fingertips before getting up. “Ground’s dry. Sorta dusty. Forensics might be able to get something from it.”
“Hopefully,” Mike says, though his tone suggests otherwise.
The sun’s already turning the air to a hot, cloying soup, and Harper’s eager to get out of the corn. “Alright, Mike. Do what you do best.”
She walks back through the corn, snapping off her rubber gloves. Where the corn ends, the road is closed; the boys in blue deal with the few locals who’ve stopped by to see what’s up. The locals stand right up against the yellow tape stretched across the road, asking questions the officers on duty refuse to answer with anything more than grunts.
Harper adjusts her shades and ignores the spectators gathered at the cordoning tape. Detective Stu Raley waits for her, tie already loosened around his neck, leaning back against the side of his car. He is six feet, has blond hair, a strong chin, and has maintained the muscular build he developed in the army.
“You look flustered, Jane,” Stu says.
She nods grimly. “I could say the same about you. Got my message?”
“An hour ago. I came straight out.”
“You want to see the body before it’s moved?” an officer asks him.
“In a minute,” Stu says, turning to Harper. “I thought I’d catch you first, see if you needed anything.”
“Figures,” Harper says, managing a smile. “I know you’re never in a hurry for gore this time of the morning . . .”
“Ain’t that the truth?” Stu makes a face, his hand on his sternum. “Anyway, I’m building myself up to it.”
“Don’t worry, I got it covered,” Harper says. “Crime Scene Unit’s on the way. Mike’s going to get the body out of here once they turn up and do their thing.”
“Think they’ll pull something new?”
“Perhaps. She is in better condition than the last one,” Harper says, feeling dirty for referring to a dead person as a thing, an inanimate object. When you’re dealing with dead teenage girls, the only way to cope with what you see, with what you know, is to detach yourself. It helps to have a disconnect.
Think of that dead young woman as an object and maybe you won’t end up in a loony bin.
“Here.” Stu hands her a cup of coffee. “Drank mine on the way over.”
“Thanks.” Harper stands next to him, her back to the car, looking into the swaying corn. The gray road, the green field, the pale-pink sky turning to faded blue, the black girl . . . the killer’s handprints on her throat, the red blossom on her white dress.
Harper lifts the lid off the coffee and sips it.
“Second body in three months,” Stu says. “Same MO, too?”
“Yeah, looks like it.”
Stu faces her. “Hey.”
“Yeah?”
“Either it’s a coincidence the killer’s murdered a second black girl, or . . .”
Harper sets the coffee cup on the roof of the car and runs her fingers through her hair. “Or he’s purposely setting out to kill black girls of a certain age and type, and we’re dealing with a fledgling serial killer.”
“There’s a big possibility,” Stu says.
“You know what really gets me about this guy?” Harper asks. “The way he closes their eyes.”
Stu shakes his head, eyes narrowed. “Maybe he’s ashamed and can’t stand ’em looking back at him.”
Harper doesn’t tell him she’s already considered the prospect. “Any word on our witness?”
In the early hours, a delivery driver saw a man walk out of the corn, completely naked except for a white mask. A truck was parked twenty yards farther down the road. The driver called it in right away, using his GPS to give them the location—it’s the first break they’ve had with the case so far, if you don’t figure the killer’s DNA into the equation, taken from the previous victim. But even that proved a dead end. The Combined DNA Index System contains only known offenders—if the perpetrator has never been caught and booked, he’s not in CODIS—and that’s about as useful as having fingerprints for someone who’s never had their prints catalogued.
“The driver’s at the station. I asked him to wait.”
“Thanks, I appreciate that,” Harper says. “I’ll bet Dudley was chomping at the bit to get in there.”
“He can go kiss my ass.” Stu smiles. “If Dudley thinks he’s making lieutenant on the back of our work, he’s wrong. I asked Albie to hold the fort till you get there.”
“Oh, you’re not coming along?”
“The captain’s got me interviewing the farmer who works these fields, see if he knows anything. Owen Willard owns all this. I don’t think I’ll be long.”
Harper turns to face Stu
and straightens his tie. He looks at her the way he does when they lie in bed after a few beers, listening to her talk, one arm under his pillow, the other around her waist. It’s all she can do to look away, thinking of the broken girl in that sea of corn.
The Crime Scene Unit arrives in a white van. Harper pats the side of Stu’s face and goes to greet them. “I guess this is me. Thanks for the coffee, stud.”
“Anytime, kiddo.”
She glances back to see him walk across the road and into the corn. The shifting green stems part and swallow her partner whole.
In the little apartment Harper rents over a tackle shop in the middle of Hope’s Peak, she has a board on the wall. It’s something she started doing back in San Francisco, when she worked on her first big case—a rapist the papers christened “The Moth.” On the board, the case is a sprawl of information: the newspaper clippings relating to the murder of the first victim, a map of the local area, a pin holding a torn scrap of paper with MAGNOLIA REMY scrawled on it. Later, Harper will go to her apartment and tack another name to the board—she hopes beyond hope that it will not be JANE DOE.
When she arrives at the station, Detective John Dudley waits by the interview room. Detective Albert Goode is inside talking to the witness. “Ready to rock and roll?” Dudley asks her.
“Yeah,” Harper says stiffly. “But this is my investigation; I’ll question him with Goode, okay?”
He eyes her suspiciously. Opens his mouth to say something, but she cuts him off.
“It’s the way it is, Dudley.”
The detective shrugs. “Whatever. Your investigation. Your rules,” he says and walks off. When the first girl was found, Captain Morelli put the team together. Stu Raley and Harper running lead, with Dudley and Goode for support, much to Dudley’s displeasure.
Albie gets up, holds the door for her—he’s learning the ropes fast and is tougher than he seems, despite his soft voice and pleasant disposition. Harper doesn’t get the impression Captain Morelli is too keen on Albie. But when Morelli was younger, it was a white-male-dominated workplace. The times have changed.
The trucker pushes himself up from his chair, but Harper waves him down.
“No need to get up.”
“Man, I got a run to make. My foreman’s gonna go nuts.”
“I understand that,” Harper says. “I won’t take up too much of your time.”
“Hope not. I mean, I’m all for doing the right thing, but I’ve pretty much lost a day’s pay for this shit.”
A dead girl. A murder, Harper thinks. This shit.
She sits down, starts the recorder. “Detective Jane Harper with Detective Albert Goode interviewing eyewitness Nate Filch.” She checks the time and date, saying it aloud for the purpose of the recording.
“We really appreciate you doing this,” Albie says. “And for being patient.”
The trucker looks less than happy. He runs his fingers through his thinning hair. She guesses him to be in his early thirties. A few crummy tattoos up his arms, holes in earlobes where he used to have piercings.
Harper begins: “So, tell us where you were headed so early this morning.”
“Stock run. I work for Tripper’s Destinations. They supply about five hundred businesses around here, dotted all over the place. I drive for ’em, delivering.”
“Where are they based?”
“Farther north. Look, I already told you guys all this . . .”
Harper leans forward slightly, enough to get his attention. “This is for the official record. What you say here, we’ll use to solve a very serious crime. It’s important we cover every detail, and that you be accurate to the best of your knowledge. Okay?”
“Right.”
Albie clears his throat. “Okay. So you’re heading down that road. It’s nighttime?”
“Yeah. It’s dark, I’m rollin’ a cigarette while I hold the wheel. Ya know, the way ya do sometimes? The road’s clear, empty, the radio’s on. I can’t remember what was playing, though . . .”
Albie looks at Harper. “It’s not important,” he tells the trucker. “Go on.”
“So anyway, I’m rollin’ this cigarette, and just happen to look farther up. The headlights land on this thing walkin’ into the road. I think, Shit!, like it’s a deer or something like that? Drivin’ at night you just get in the zone, man. It takes me a second to realize it’s a guy, lookin’ straight at me.”
“Let’s slow it down a bit here,” Harper says. “Describe the man.”
Nate Filch blows air from the side of his mouth as he tries to remember. “Maybe six feet and a bit, tall gangly fella, completely buck naked.”
Harper asks, “Did you see any blood?”
Filch nods, hand on his abdomen. “Looked like he had a load of it around here.”
“Okay. Did he carry a weapon that you could see?”
“Don’t know. The guy had nothin’ in his hands, so guess not.”
“What about his head? You mentioned a mask of some kind?”
“What he was wearin’, it was like . . . a bag. A white sheet, maybe a pillowcase, with the eyes cut out. You know, to see from. Looked to me like he had a belt around his neck, holdin’ it in place. The way it was around his head, though, it looked like a white bag.”
Albie frowns. “When you say a white sheet . . .”
“Like the KKK, okay fella? Big enough to cover his head. Looked like a fuckin’ ghost, man. Just glared right at me, standin’ in the road like he didn’t care if I hit him or not. Either that, or he knew I wouldn’t. I swerved around the son of a bitch, called it right in,” Filch says. “Let me tell you, that guy spooked me.”
Harper scribbles notes on her notepad as he speaks. “That’s great. Did you see anything else that might’ve alerted you to him being up to no good out there? Apart from the fact he was naked, of course . . . and the blood.”
“No. Nothin’. I passed his car, a 1988 Chevy truck. I gave the description when I called.”
Harper leafs through her notes. “I have it. Anything else about it that you can recall? Any bumper stickers you could see, things like that?”
“Nothing specific. Just one of those trucks you see here and there. No bumper stickers.”
“No plate?”
“Sorry.”
“That’s alright. You’ve already given us a lot.”
Filch nods. “So what is it anyway? A murder or somethin’?”
“Yes and no,” Albie says. “We can’t really go into detail right now. And we’d ask you to keep this to yourself for the time being.”
“Of course. To be honest, I don’t even know what I saw.”
“On that note . . .” Harper hits pause on the recorder. She opens the door and waves someone in: a short middle-aged woman with narrow spectacles perched on the bridge of her nose. “This is Norma. She’s our sketch artist. D’you think you can work with her to give us an idea of what this guy looked like?”
“Sure. I can give it a try,” Filch says, watching as Albie gives Norma his seat. She sets out her things on the table—paper, pencils, charcoal, a tray of pastels.
“Try to recall as much detail as possible,” Norma tells him.
“Excuse us,” Harper says. “We’re gonna step out for a moment while you do that. We’ll be right back.”
“Sure thing.”
Albie follows Harper out and shuts the door behind them.
“What do you think?” he asks her.
“Could be a race thing. Given the description, the fact that the victims are black,” she suggests.
“You believe that about the KKK?”
“Stranger things have happened,” Harper says with a shrug. “It’s a stretch, I know, but we should look into it. Specifically, you should look into it.”
“Great,” Albie says, watching the man through the glass.
“Hey, it gives us another avenue to explore, at the very least. Look at all the convicted racists in the local area. See if the murders correlate to them be
ing out and about. See what you can find out about recent KKK activity in the area. White supremacists, that sort of thing.”
Albie nods. “Okay. You’re the boss woman.”
“You’re learning fast, my little apprentice.” She pauses for a moment. “It’s kind of a long shot, but let’s put out a description of the car as well. There can’t be that many of those old trucks still on the road.”
Albie rolls his eyes. Filch waves at them and they return to the interview room. “What’ve we got?” Harper asks.
She looks at the drawing Norma has made based on the trucker’s description of the man. He looks like a ghoul. Long, stringy arms. Slender body. Odd-shaped, irregular eyeholes staring right back at her. Filch hasn’t put eyes behind the mask, only darkness. It gives her chills just to look at it—a cold breeze at the back of her neck, traveling all the way down her spine.
When you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.
As ever, she feels a burning hatred for the one responsible. It’s one thing to be passionate about the job—Harper is passionate about seeing justice served. Catching the bad guys and seeing them safely behind bars. The way it’s meant to be done. But seeing these girls turn up dead, it makes her feel a different kind of cold inside. It goes beyond hatred to pure loathing.
“Jeez.” Albie peers over her shoulder at the drawing. “Looks the part, huh?”
Harper walks through the parking lot, keys in hand, the sun turning the blue sky white with heat. She inhales deeply to clear her lungs and take in the fragrance of the coast. It smells different here, not quite the same as San Francisco. She wonders briefly if it’s the climate or the Atlantic Ocean versus the Pacific.
“We’ve gotta stop meetin’ this way,” Stu says, headed toward her. “People will talk.”
Harper laughs at that. She shouldn’t, but there’s no helping it. “Let them.”
“How’d it go with the witness?”
“Good. We got some useful info. I’ve told the trucker to keep himself handy. We’ll be calling him at some point, I’m sure,” she says. “Norma drew this.”
Harper hands Stu a photocopy of the picture Nate Filch described for them.