by Tony Healey
He walks through the soybeans, making straight for it. Most likely some kids were out here, fucking around. It’s probably a beer can or a packet of condoms.
How can kids these days go through a packet of condoms? What’s the world coming to, Gerry wonders, approaching the object where it lies on the soft soil. Only it’s not a single object. It’s a shoe . . . It’s attached to a leg.
Harper wakes, looks at the time on her phone: 3:15 a.m.
She groans, sitting up, rubbing at her head. She can’t sleep for any real length of time. Her head hums from the drink, from the conflict of her own heart saying good-bye to Stu last night outside her apartment building. The way he swooped in for a kiss and she pulled back, telling him her head was all over the place, it didn’t feel right, she didn’t know what she wanted. The little pecks she gave him at the bar were not meant to be taken as anything but a friendly gesture. Stu thought they were building up to something more impressive—and he can’t understand why she’s blowing cold with him.
What do I want?
Harper goes to the kitchen and fetches a glass of water from the tap. She chases it with a few aspirins, and washes those down with more water. Harper stands by the sideboard, wanting to sleep, knowing she can’t.
It feels as though she’s led Stu on, giving him hope that what they’ve been doing would lead to something deeper. Sleeping with him, getting close, but never once telling him that she loves him. She has feelings for him, misses him in her bed, misses his touch . . . but at the same time, there’s something pulling her away, keeping him at arm’s length. Harper craves his affection, the comfort of being intimate with him. And yet she knows that’s different from wanting to be in a relationship.
There are times she wishes she’d stayed in San Francisco. Her whole reason for leaving in the first place had been to flee her broken marriage.
What will I do if Stu and I don’t work out? Run to another town? Another city? Pull up stakes and take off every time a relationship goes south?
The clock on the kitchen wall ticks away, keeping the tempo of the time slipping from her grip, running like sand through her fingers.
Her cell phone rings, making her jump out of her skin. Harper swipes the screen and answers, pressing the cell to her ear.
Thirty minutes later, she and Stu are on the road.
The rain has stopped and the dawn is setting the horizon ablaze, but neither detective is in a mood to appreciate it. Stu rubs his forehead.
“Hey, why don’t you take the aspirin in the glove compartment?” Harper asks him.
“I don’t like takin’ pills,” Stu says obstinately.
Harper rolls her eyes. “Christ, Stu. They’re not pills. Not like that, anyway. They’ll help with the headache.”
He straightens. “What headache?”
Give me strength . . .
“You’re an ass, you know that?”
Stu looks out the passenger window. “Yep.”
They arrive at Gerry Fischer’s land, and Harper pulls in behind a patrol car with the lights running. A forensics team is already on the scene, their van in front of the black-and-white. They’ve set up lights on stands in the field to the left.
Stu and Harper climb out. The passenger-side door of the patrol car is open. One of the police officers is sitting with his legs planted on the ground, head down, looking sorry for himself. His partner waves them down and approaches with his hands on his belt, as if he’s an old-time lawman in a long-gone frontier town. “Mornin’.”
“This is Stu Raley. I’m Jane Harper.” They both show their ID badges. Harper nods in the direction of the man perched on the passenger seat. “What’s up with him?”
“He don’t handle the stiffs too well.”
Stu shares a look with her. “Uh-huh.”
The officer shakes hands with them. “I’m Weinberg. That there is Tasker.”
“Tasker, huh?” Stu asks, looking away as he mumbles something inaudible under his breath.
Weinberg leans in close. “On the job eight months. Know what I’m sayin’?”
“I see,” Harper says. “Tell me about the body.”
“Gerry Fischer works this land. All this is soybean,” Weinberg explains, indicating the rows of vegetation around them. “He got a call in the night. Something about a car parked out here.”
“Right,” Harper says, looking back to where CSU has set up the lights. “Then what?”
“Got here, found the body. Female, probably late teens, early twenties,” Weinberg says.
Stu scratches his forehead. “Coroner here yet?”
“ME’s on his way.”
Harper pats Officer Weinberg on the arm. “Alright, we’re gonna go have a look. You boys had better stick around.”
“Sure, Detective. We’ve got orders to remain here until the crime scene is secured.”
“Good.”
As they pass Tasker, the young officer looks decidedly green around the gills. Harper leads Stu Raley into the field where CSU is working. Under the intense illumination they have erected around the body, the girl looks like the centerpiece of a dramatic theater production. The soybean stalks cast spidery shadows over the girl, and, as with Alma Buford, she looks as if she is sleeping. But the bruises on her neck say otherwise; the purple handprints are so clear, Harper can make out the actual shape of fingers in the dead girl’s flesh. The crown sits lopsided on her head, as if it slipped after the killer set it there.
Stu looks visibly disturbed by the blood that has run from the girl’s privates and onto her clothes. The killer managed to close her eyes, but there was nothing he could do about her mouth—it remains agape, open in an expression of frozen terror. “Fuck.”
Harper squats down next to the girl, careful not to get near the mud. She looks at her, then up at Stu.
“We have to stop this.”
6
By the time Stu Raley catches a ride with CSU back to Hope’s Peak PD, the sun has risen and Harper wishes she could have San Francisco’s climate back—cool in the day, even cooler at night. In some way, Harper misses the fog rolling in off the bay. She misses eating out in Chinatown. But there are bad memories, too. Things she’d rather forget.
The car bounces along the dirt road leading to Gerry Fischer’s farmhouse. It’s an impressive spread of buildings against a never-ending backdrop of crops. Far as the eye can see, rows and rows of short green soybeans.
A text comes through on her cell.
Just heading to the station now—SR
Harper smiles, despite the situation. Another dead girl. There’s no stopping the killer now. Whatever it was that held him at bay in recent years is gone. He has the taste, the thirst, and needs to quench it.
Serial killers are like any other addict—they have to kill again. It’s a need.
Harper gets out and walks toward the farmhouse. Gerry Fischer opens the door and shakes her hand.
“Mister Fischer? I’m Detective Jane Harper with Hope’s Peak PD.”
“Mornin’, Detective. You can call me Gerry,” he tells her.
“Okay.”
“You want coffee or somethin’?”
As it is, Harper still feels the hum of a hangover. She didn’t get enough sleep, she drank too much the night before, the dead girl is very much on her mind, and the heat is weighing down on her. It sticks to you, makes you feel dirty and sweaty in no time at all.
“I’d like that,” she tells him. Gerry shows her inside. To Harper’s relief, he has his air-conditioning on and the house is cool. He leads her into the dining room and instructs her to take a seat at the big table in there.
“Cream and sugar?”
Harper nods her head. “Yes, please.”
“Won’t be a minute. Then I guess you’ll have some questions for me, won’t ya?”
“I’m afraid so, yes.”
Gerry leaves her alone while he goes to the kitchen. Harper scans the room. There are pictures of Gerry and his wife—some include
their kids, some solo shots of the children as they got older. She guesses that they’ve all left home and moved away by now. Gerry Fischer has to be in his late fifties.
He returns carrying two mugs of freshly brewed coffee and sets them down. “There ya are. Hope that’s to yer likin’.”
“Thanks.”
He sits. “So . . .”
Harper places her recorder on the table between them, opens her notepad, and removes the cap from her pen. “I’ll try to keep this as brief as possible, Mister Fischer. There might be further questions later on, as you can imagine.”
“Sure.”
“Let’s start at the beginning. Tell me what happened last night.”
Gerry slurps his coffee, then explains the course of events; to Harper, it is pretty straightforward. He discovered the young woman out there in the field and called it right in.
“And how long have you worked this land?” she asks him, taking notes.
“Twenty years. I have a dozen or so men helpin’ me out. My wife handles the financials, ya know. I’ve always been more the, uh, outdoors type I guess you’d say,” Gerry explains. His voice warbles in his throat and as he looks away, Harper is sure she can see tears in his eyes. “Ain’t never had nothin’ like this happen before, I can tell ya. Fucking awful thing to happen to such a young girl.”
“Can you provide me with a list of your crew?” Harper asks him.
Gerry shrugs. “Can do. I’ve got nothin’ to hide, and I know they ain’t either. They’re all good, reliable men. And anyway, if they were gonna rape and kill some young woman . . . they wouldn’t leave her where they work, would they?”
“I seriously doubt it,” Harper says. “But regardless of that, I do need to know all the facts. It’s just part of the job.”
“Yeah, I get that.”
“Good,” Harper says. She pushes the notepad to one side for the moment and lifts her coffee cup. “This won’t harm your business in any way, will it?”
“I don’t know. It’s without precedent, ain’t it?” Gerry says. “In either case, I’m more concerned with that girl. Who was she? How did she get there?”
Harper sighs. “That’s what we’re going to determine, believe me.”
After an hour, Harper has asked all the questions she can think of. Gerry Fischer shows her out, and by now the sun is riding high. Away to the left, one of the fields is bare, save for the most crows Harper has ever seen in her life. There must be fifty of them, all picking over the dirt, some flapping their wings intermittently, a few cawing.
“I’ve never seen so many in one place,” Harper tells Gerry, slipping her shades on. The sight of so many crows has sent a shiver up her spine. It’s as if they have flocked to the Fischer land because there’s been a death.
“Yeah, they get like that. That field will be planted next season. Crows peck at all the old seed.”
Harper gestures toward the other fields, all lush green with life. “Obviously, we had heavy rainfall last night, but how do you get water to all these? Especially when it’s hot like it is now. You’ve gotta have a steady supply, am I right?”
“Yeah and no,” Gerry says, walking her to her car. “Ya see, what most people don’t know is how to look at it. It ain’t about how much water you can get to the field . . . it’s about how much excess you can get rid of. Drainage is the biggest challenge we face out here sometimes.”
“Right,” Harper says, knowing what he means. Where does the water have to go when the land is so flat and featureless? “Well, thank you for your time, Gerry. As I said, any more questions, someone will be in touch.”
“Got it.”
“Please refrain from talking to the press for the time being. Though we can’t tell you not to, we’d really appreciate it if you didn’t just yet.”
Gerry shoos her off. “Get away, girl. Any of them reporter types turn up here, I just might introduce ’em to Mary Sue.”
Harper opens the car door, frowning. “Who’s Mary Sue?”
“My shotgun,” Gerry says with a grin.
One hand on the wheel, Harper swipes her phone and dials Stu’s number.
“Hey,” he says.
“I’ve finished up with the farmer. It was a bit of a dead end. I don’t believe he knows any more than what he’s told me already. I’ll meet up with Albie at the ME’s office. Mike’s doing the girl’s autopsy.”
“You want me to come along?”
“I think I’ve got it covered.”
“I might as well carry on with these files, then,” Stu says. “CSU found a cell phone tucked into her pocket. It was waterlogged, but I’m hoping Albie might be able to do something with it. Otherwise we can pull her records from the network, but that’ll take time.”
“Okay.” She drives with the fields on either side of her, crops towering nearly six feet in height, barely moving because of the lack of breeze. Deep green, the thick stems are rooted into the richest soil the United States has to offer. It feels as though she has parted the sea, headed for salvation on the other side.
If only that were the case.
“How’s the file work going?” Harper asks Stu.
“I’m keeping a list of the major differences between the official and unofficial records. It’ll help in prosecuting the men who covered this up for so long, but so far I haven’t picked up on anything substantial. Nothing that’s a case breaker.”
“Okay. Well, keep digging at it.”
“Listen. About last night at the bar—”
Harper shakes her head. “Not yet, Stu. We’ll talk about it later, I promise. You have my word. But not right now. I can’t deal with that as well as watching a young girl get cut open.”
His voice is quieter. Distant. “Sure. I understand. We’ll take a rain check. Talk to you later, kiddo.”
The line goes dead before Harper can say anything else.
When Harper walks into the medical examiner’s with Albie, Mike has already set about meticulously going over the victim’s body. Captain Morelli has decided to attend. He glowers in the corner, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets.
“I don’t usually attend these, but for this one, I want to see his handiwork for myself,” Morelli says.
Not much to see, Harper thinks. Apart from jizz and hair strands, the killer’s a relatively tidy trooper.
Mike works alongside Kara to determine for certain the young woman’s cause of death, though it’s brutally clear. Strangled. The purple blossoms on her neck are proof of that. Mike examines the girl’s fingernails. He looks at Harper. “No skin this time. Just wet dirt. Her nails are clogged with it.”
The awful tragedy of the girl on the slab, her body icy cold and dull, is something Harper can’t get out of her head. When you see a cadaver, you still expect them to breathe. It doesn’t make sense that their chest doesn’t rise and fall as it should—that when you touch them there is no heat at all. Just the coolness of flesh that no longer convulses and has become heavy as marble. A room is just a room until there is the unthinkable presence of a dead body within it. Then it assumes the quiet stillness of an empty church, as if the very air around the body regards its existence there—what it was, what it is, and what it will become.
Samples of the soil will go to CSU to see if it matches the soil at the crime scene. Harper knows it will. It doesn’t fit the killer’s MO to move a body postmortem. He does what he needs to do, kills them, and leaves them. That’s it. The killer does not concern himself with moving a body from one location to another—for what point?
“Any ID on the body?” Morelli asks.
Mike shakes his head. “Dental records drew a blank, as did DNA. At the moment, she’s plain old Jane Doe.”
“Great,” Morelli says. “Let’s just hope there’s a missing person’s on file or we’re gonna end up canvassing the area. That could take time we don’t have.”
Mike starts cutting, the scalpel slipping through the girl’s brown skin as though it were deli
cate as jelly. Dark blood pools in the scalpel’s wake. Albie turns around, face suddenly green with nausea. “I’m stepping out.”
“Okay,” Harper says, privately amused.
The captain waits for Albie to clear the room before letting loose a big growly sigh. “How can you let yourself get sickened by a little blood and guts? Pussy.”
“I think it’s that the victim’s a young girl, sir,” Harper suggests.
“Can’t argue with you there,” the captain says. “Damn, this is going to cause a major shit storm.”
Harper stands next to him and lowers her voice. “The killer’s gaining momentum, for whatever reason. What used to be a dead girl turning up every three or four years has turned into three in only a handful of months,” Harper says. “This is the third victim on my watch.”
“The press is after our asses. And they’ll get them, too, if we can’t deliver a culprit,” Morelli says.
Harper watches Mike peel back the girl’s skin to explore her innards. A familiar gaminess rises from the opened cadaver; the smell of dead, lifeless meat exposed to the air is not something you get used to. But it is something you can grow to stomach, ignoring it so you don’t vomit.
She looks at the captain—he’s aged in a matter of days. His eyelids hang loose, face drawn in, body sagging with exhaustion. Some of it, she knows, due in no small part to the stress of those files. Of putting his trust in her hands and hoping she does the right thing with what she finds. “Have you slept, sir?”
He smiles. It’s weak and there’s nothing in it, a truly empty gesture. “Not much.”
Mike examines the girl’s cold heart and Harper thinks: I won’t tonight.
“Can I have a word in private?” she asks, opening the door to the corridor outside. Morelli follows her out. “Sorry, I didn’t want Mike and Kara to hear.”