by Tony Healey
Harper looks at her watch. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll just have a shower and go to bed. I’m bushed.”
“Miss Sensible.”
“Ha! I wish.”
“You can come stay at my place tonight if you want.”
“Thanks, but not tonight. Not with Karen on the warpath,” Harper says, seeing the instant disapproval. “I’m in no mood for somebody else’s bullshit, you know?”
Not that I give two hoots what she thinks.
“Okay, okay,” Stu says and walks to the door. He turns back, hand on the knob. “You won’t change your mind?”
She smiles. “Night, Stu.”
Two hours later, Harper pads through the apartment fresh from the shower, one big towel wrapped around her body, another containing her wet hair.
In the kitchen, she makes a cup of tea—made the proper way, with leaves, stewed in a good pot—no milk, no sugar. Usually she’s a latte girl, but there’s something about tea that is so calming. She holds the cup in both hands, sipping it as she looks at the board on the wall—the only bit of decorating she’s done in there, screwing the thing to the plaster.
A map shows their little corner of North Carolina. While they were reading the files, Harper scribbled the name of each victim on a scrap of paper. Each red pin stuck into the board holds one of those names.
Over two decades of unsolved murders.
She knows that Morelli is still one of the good guys, or he wouldn’t have given her the key. But, had Magnolia Remy and Alma Buford not died, Harper doubts he would have thought to let the truth out. Like his predecessors, he would’ve let it sit in that filing cabinet, closing his eyes and grateful the responsibility never fell on him to do otherwise. Except, now it had.
Trouble is his hands were dirty before his first day in the office.
When it all comes out, Harper’s not so sure Morelli will be able to deny any knowledge of the cover-up. She got his point, though, about protecting the town. The people around Hope’s Peak are farmers and planters. Some of them in the fishing industry, but for the most part, their profession involves working the Carolina soil with their own hands. In the town, the trade’s whatever blows in on the breeze—the tourists and sightseers who keep Hope’s Peak afloat.
It has small-town charm, and plays on that to draw the vacationers looking to catch a break from the city. A serial killer who’s gotten away with what he’s done for decades wouldn’t do much for the town’s appeal.
And all the victims—so far—have been local. That’s a close call for Hope’s Peak. It would take only one outsider getting killed to have the whole situation become a national event.
Harper looks at the map. The red pins are clustered around Hope’s Peak and Chalmer just to the southwest.
The killer has to be local.
Harper sips her tea. Her cell phone vibrates. She looks at the caller ID: it’s Stu. “Hey,” she says, holding it to her ear.
“How’re you doing?”
“Oh, just chilling now. Going over today. You know.”
“Yeah.”
“What about you?”
“Drinking a beer. Trying to get my head around all this. First the body, then these cold cases. A murder and a colossal cover-up in the space of two days. It’s been a hell of a week so far, kiddo.”
Harper gets closer to the board on her wall and finds the pin holding the first murder: Ruby Lane, found strangled and sexually violated in the tall grass at Wisher’s Pond. November 14, 1985.
The next: Odetta Draw, strangled, raped. Body found in a state of decomposition in an abandoned barn outside of Hope’s Peak. January 10, 1987.
On and on.
“You listening? You’ve gone quiet . . .”
“Huh? Oh, sorry! I was looking at my board. I got lost for a second there. What were you saying?”
Stu sighs on the other end. “Never mind. I’ll meet you at the station tomorrow. I want to get on those records first thing, let you know what I turn up.”
“Okay.”
“You keeping the files at your place?”
“For the time being, yeah. But I think we should move them back to that locker. I mean, there’s only one key and we have it. No one’s going to see them but us.”
“Jane, are you alright?” Stu asks her.
“Of course. Night, Stu.”
“Night.”
Harper puts the phone down and drains the last of her tea. She looks at the files on the table. For a moment, she considers starting again on Ruby Lane, but finds she’s too tired to move. She sits back and closes her eyes.
All she can see is the young woman lying in the dirt, and the disjointed shadows from the corn giving the impression of being underwater.
4
A breath of wind and ripples fan out over Wisher’s Pond. The woman calls his name, treading through grass tall as her hip. A bird caws somewhere in the trees, which tower starkly against a sky of washed-out nothing. Her voice falters at the sound of someone approaching.
She turns. Her mouth works soundlessly, trying to scream, but there is no breath there, no voice left in her throat but a frightened wheeze. All she can do is stumble back, feeling out for something to steady her, to regain her footing. But there is only the grass, and it welcomes her with its soft embrace . . .
Ida Lane wakes, body wet with sweat, heart driving a heavy percussion in her ears. She sits, wiping away the tears that streak down her cheeks. The house is dark, the air still.
She strips out of her damp pajamas, throwing on every light to every room she passes through as she heads downstairs. She pours herself a glass of milk and switches on the TV. The clock on the wall says it’s three in the morning.
She has suffered the same dream since her mother passed those many years ago, and it plays the same way every time, without fail. Her final moments, falling into a mattress of fine grass. There is a blanket on the sofa, and Ida pulls it over her naked form as she shivers at the recollection.
The news comes on and the ticker at the bottom of the screen makes her freeze, every muscle in her body bunched up tight, knotted like a rope under strain. She grips the glass so tight she has to set it down before it smashes apart in her hand.
HOPE’S PEAK GIRL FOUND MURDERED—LOCAL PD SEEKS KILLER
Ida buries her face in her hands. She can’t stop the sobs that come—they rise from a spring of cold water deep inside. Ida thinks of their bodies, left out under the starlight, the frost settling on their skin and in their hair. Chilled, as her mother was when they found her.
She often thought of her mother during her four-year stay at Hope’s Peak Psychiatric Hospital—her mother’s murder plagued her every thought at first. In the day, she would brood, in a fog of medication and therapy. By night, Ida dreaded the shroud of sleep, and the dream that always came with it.
One night she woke, climbed out of bed, and paced her room. It suddenly occurred to her what she must do. Ida walked out to the hall and made her way to the nearest fire escape. She’d often seen the nurses disable the alarm on the door so they could stand there and smoke without having to go all the way out. It was the height of winter, and bitterly cold.
Ida thought: I will sparkle with starlight.
The key was still in the alarm panel. She turned it to the “Off” position, shoved the bar on the door. Freezing night air rushed into the hospital as Ida stepped out, hugging her body against the cold, yet welcoming it at the same time. She looked up at the night sky, at the brilliant moon above the hospital roof spilling its pearlescent light on the frozen lawns stretching into the darkness.
By the time the nurses found her, Ida had given herself to the cold night. She’d wanted to join her mother, wanted to shine under the stars. It took a long time to nurse her back to health. After that, her bedroom door stayed locked at night.
Lester Simmons moves the arm and drops the car’s hood back into place with a loud bang. He climbs in the driver’s side and starts the engine—as expected
, it starts first time. Not the choked sputtering sound it had made before, but a steady rumble. He turns the key, silencing the engine of the old Ford Granada. He wipes his oily hands on a rag, stuffs the rag into his pocket, and walks through the garage into the house.
Ceeli is out in her backyard, hanging laundry. She turns around, startled by his sudden appearance at the back door; he’s watching her in her faded housedress, the afternoon sun adding a shine to her dark-brown skin. “Jesus, Lester! You nearly gave me a heart attack!” she cries, smiling all the same.
“I fixed the problem,” he says. Lester is in his early sixties, with bushy gray hair on either side of his pale-white, bald, domed head. But he’s not old—he has long, gangly arms, the tops heavy with muscle. His body is lean. To look at him, it’s not hard to imagine Lester has naturally inherent strength. He is the sort of man who can turn a wrench on a bolt no other man can budge, but when he walks, he lumbers at his own pace, as if he hasn’t yet learned how to use his gigantic feet.
“Oh good. I did worry about it,” Ceeli says. “Now, how much do I owe you?”
He shakes his head. “No charge.”
“Come on, Lester. Let me give you something.”
“Honeftly,” he says, grinning. His cleft lip lifts to show the gum above his top front teeth. When his mouth is closed, the deformity isn’t as noticeable. But smiling, or laughing, Lester assumes a freakish appearance.
He has never said an S his entire life.
Ceeli moves close, her hand on his crotch. “Honey, you sure I can’t do nothin’ for you?”
Lester’s eyes stop on her full lips before he looks away. “Not today. Wanna get on my way. Pretty tired.”
Dejected, Ceeli removes her hand and goes to the fridge. She removes a six-pack and hands it to him. “At least let me give you these. Mack won’t notice. Probably think he drank ’em already.”
Lester bows his head in thanks.
Brightening a little, Ceeli smiles at him. “You know, you’re a good man, Lester. What would I do without you around?”
He smiles gruesomely. “Well, I better get goin’.”
“Sure, honey.” Ceeli walks him to the door. At the last moment, she blocks the way out, gets in close to him, her rank breath washing over him as she whispers in his ear. “You come by soon, you hear? I’ll call you when Mack’s away next.”
“Okay.”
She grabs his crotch again, this time giving his fruits a firm squeeze. “And keep that big ole tire iron handy.” With that she pecks him on the cheek and opens the door.
Lester goes to his truck, a late-eighties model with scuffed gray paint, starts the engine, and looks back at the house. Ceeli waves. “Thanks again!” she shouts across the street.
Lester waves back and peels away from the curb. He heads for home—the house on the outskirts east of Hope’s Peak where he has lived his entire life. At an intersection, he stops and waits for the light to change. A bus goes past, deposits several passengers at the stop to his left. An old lady, two young schoolboys, a mother with a baby carriage, and a black girl.
The girl is late teens at least, early twenties at the most, hair braided back in pigtails. Tall, slender, good-looking. Lester feels that all-too-familiar stirring within him. The same tingle you get along your forearms at the sound of a familiar song.
I told you about that girl lester that little bitch is like all them blacks not one of ’em don’t deserve what they got comin’ . . .
The light changes. The girl walks to the left, out of sight. Lester should turn right and head for home, but he turns left and follows her along the street.
She walks in a daydream, doesn’t notice him. The street leads to a road that cuts through the fields, crops on either side. A big red barn on a hill to the right. Lester drops his speed, takes his time. There are no other cars on the road, not in front or behind. He follows her as she walks on her own for a solid twenty minutes before arriving at the gate of a farm. The bus doesn’t come out here. Lester speeds up, and she half turns to watch him pass as she opens the gate and continues on toward a big farmhouse at the end of a lane. Lester looks in his rearview mirror at the farm falling away behind him, the girl.
There it is: the same tightening in the chest he gets each time. Something has stirred, touched him in a way Ceeli only wishes she could when her husband, Mack, is working. It’s lust, it’s the warm, fuzzy glow of attraction all swirled together, like the red-and-white stripes in a lollipop.
Them feelin’s you got they ain’t real they that ole black magic workin’ on ya turnin’ your head from what you been taught from how you been raised . . .
Lester finds a place to turn around, the car tires kicking up dust and dirt as he backs up on the grass. He heads back toward the farm and slows to a stop outside it, looking at the house, the chickens milling about the front. Then he gets into gear and speeds off, eager to get home now, feeling newly invigorated.
The way he always does when he falls in love at first sight.
The supplejack vine grows at the edge of an abandoned property a few miles down the road, where the woods start. Lester collects whole lengths of it, snapping them off and holding them in a bunch. He picks them for girth, for uniformity.
Back home, he sits in his shed carefully interlacing the vines, tugging at them to make them hold together, but not so tight that they might snap as they dry. He does so around a broken cookie jar his mama used to keep—it gives the perfect circumference to create a crown.
Decades before, he spent hours weaving such a crown for Ruby Lane. He didn’t know what she would think of it, or if she’d understand the hobby of a lonely boy with time on his hands. She put it on and Lester told her how pretty she looked as she circled in front of him, looking every bit the princess he thought her to be . . .
A crow caws outside.
Sweat drips from Lester’s nose and hits the vine. He holds it up. The crown is perfect. It might be the best he’s done yet. He pictures Ida’s mother standing before him once more, the crown on her head; then he pictures it on the new girl. Lester smiles at the thought of how beautiful she will look when the crown—his work—sits atop her head.
Harper pats her pocket for the key to the filing cabinet. She has already stowed the files back in there, then double-checked that it was locked.
But what will I do if I lose the key?
With that thought, Harper takes it out of her pocket, hooks it on to her car keys. She starts the car and lets it run for a moment as she puts her cell in its dock on the dash. Almost immediately, the screen flashes the first few words of a new text message. She swipes the screen.
It’s from Stu:
Call me when U R done today. Let me know how it goes.—SR
Harper smiles, tapping a quick reply onto the phone’s on-screen keyboard.
Ok. Any developments YOU call ME Btw I put the files back. I will give you the key or we can make a copy.
The land is flat, brown, and green. Every shade of nature you can imagine, all of it subdued, laid-back. A haze settles permanently upon the horizon. Dust thrown up off the roads looks like muddy smoke.
Harper crosses the railway track that borders Chalmer. An old Dean Martin number comes on the radio: “Powder Your Face with Sunshine.”
It makes her think of her childhood, something she’d rather forget. To that end, she switches the radio off and drives the rest of the way in silence. The main street feeds the rest of the little town like a major artery pumping blood to every extremity. Chalmer branches off of Hope’s Peak in such a way that Harper finds it hard to understand why it’s a separate entity from its bigger counterpart.
She parks outside the sheriff’s office.
“Hey,” Harper says to the officer at the front counter. She removes her sunglasses and sets them down before producing her ID. “I’m looking for a bit of info on one of your residents.”
“That so?”
“Yes. Ida Lane. I think she lives out on the—”
/> The deputy raises a hand to stop her. “I know Ida. She in trouble or somethin’?”
“No, no. I just want to ask her a few questions relating to a case I’m working.”
“Aha. I see. You want something . . . unofficial,” he says.
Harper glances left and right—she’s the only one in there. “Why the games? Can you tell me something or not?”
“Afraid not.”
Harper grabs her glasses, and starts to leave. She gets as far as the door.
“If you want to know about Ida Lane, you need to talk to Hank Partman.”
She turns back. “Partman?”
“Outside, turn left. He owns the little store down there, Past Times. Sells collectibles and such. Talk to him,” the deputy says, returning to whatever he was writing before she walked in. Harper opens the door and walks out, frowning back into the quiet sheriff’s office.
She gets the feeling this is very much one of those towns. Not that there’s something fundamentally wrong here—just that it’s slightly off-kilter. Like the deputy on the desk.
In her two years living in Hope’s Peak, she’s never had cause to visit Chalmer, and there’s a flavor of the weird that’s hard to miss.
Past Times is a dusty place, with a bell on the door, crammed full of merchandise. A withered old man comes out from behind a counter with a cash register on top.
“Afternoon,” Hank says, flashing a set of perfectly straight false teeth. “Can I help you with anything?”
She shows him her ID. The smile fades, just a little. “I’m looking for some info.”
“Information on what, exactly?”
“On whom. I’m told you’re a man in the know when it comes to local matters,” Harper says.
Hank Partman leans against the counter, his ego stroked. “I’ve been known to be quite knowledgeable, yes. To whom are you referring then?”
“Ida Lane?”
“Oh,” Partman says, looking down, smile nothing but a distant memory now. “I doubt there’s much I’ll be able to tell you that you don’t already know . . .”