by Tony Healey
“Spit it out, Detective.”
“It’s the files, sir. There’s no way of protecting the men who have covered this up all these years. Stu and myself will be presenting our findings and recommending prosecution,” Harper tells him. “This could reflect badly on you, too. I thought you should know that.”
Morelli runs a hand over his face. “When bodies started showing up again, I brought you into the fold, did I not?”
“Yes sir. But if you’d presented your evidence earlier, the deaths of those two young women might’ve been avoided.”
Morelli rubs at the tired corners of his eyes. “What do you want me to say, Detective? You think I don’t know all that?”
“Sir . . .”
Morelli shakes his head. “Another time. Right now, we have a killer to apprehend. After, when the dust has settled, we can start pointing fingers at the men who have protected this town for three decades, okay? It’s easy playing the righteous card when your hands are nice and clean. Well, mine were dirty before I had a chance to start, so spare me your condemnation,” he says, storming off.
The captain’s car peels out of the parking lot. Albie and Harper let him go on ahead, not wanting to tail him the whole way. Albie starts the engine. “Doesn’t always get me like that,” he says defensively.
“Everyone gets a bit queasy now and then,” Harper says. She hasn’t felt ill at the sight of a dead body since her first corpse back when she was a newbie. Even then, she got through the experience without spewing her guts up. Albie still looks green around the gills. “You realize you’ve gotta find a way of soldiering through it, though, right?”
“I know. I find fresh air helps,” he says.
“Of course,” she says, still replaying her conversation with Morelli.
Albie backs the car out. “It’s not the smell or anything. It’s just . . . I find it hard to watch.”
“I hear you,” Harper says. “I’ve got to admit it’s never bothered me. I know the smell is there, and it’s god-awful, but I just block it out.”
It’s not just the smell . . . it’s the dehumanizing of the process. Watching another human being rendered down and filleted, little more than meat. Watching an autopsy makes you confront all the sick reality beneath the surface. An elderly woman, her wrinkled skin peeled back, the coroner’s scalpel slicing down to the bone. A young boy, so full of life and potential, stripped down to parts.
“Lucky.”
Yeah, till later, when I can’t stop thinking about them.
They head back to the station, the last of the daylight sitting out on the edges of the world, hanging in a reddish haze behind the trees. On the East Coast, the dusk is royal blue, like mist rolling out on a lake at night.
“When we get back, I’ve got something for you. CSU found a phone on her. It’s got water damage. I want you to try and get in there, see what you can pull from it.”
He cocks an eyebrow. “Not sure if I’ll be able to get anything.”
“Just give it a shot, okay? Don’t make me have to go to the asshole phone company and request their data,” Harper says.
“I can try, boss,” Albie says. He checks the mirror, changes lanes. Flexes his hands on the wheel. “You drove down to Chalmer, didn’t you?” he asks.
Harper shifts in the passenger seat. “Dead end,” she says, dismissing it. “Waste of the gas driving there.”
Albie shakes his head. “Ain’t that the way, huh?”
“I don’t suppose you’ve had luck tracking sales of DXM.”
“Not when every Tom, Dick, and Harry can go online and order it. It’s not like ketamine, which we can trace, to an extent. This crap is everywhere.”
“And readily available . . . any luck following up on Alma’s friends?” Harper asks.
“Nope. They were all pretty normal. No boyfriends that anyone knows of.”
Harper sighs. “Damn.”
“Hopefully we turn up a name for girl number three,” Albie says.
Harper thinks: girl eleven.
“Yeah. It’d be real nice to catch whoever’s behind this and put this case to bed,” Harper says. “Trouble is, I don’t think we’ll be that lucky.”
Harper walks into Captain Morelli’s office to find John Dudley sitting there.
“Oh,” she says. “It’s you.”
The corner of Dudley’s mouth lifts in what could be classified as a smile. “Last time I checked.”
She takes a seat. “Morelli running late? We were just following him from the ME’s office.”
Dudley shrugs. “Not my turn to babysit.”
They wait, the silence between them stretching out. Harper can’t stand it any longer and says something—anything—just to break it. “Hey, John? I know we don’t always see eye to eye. But you’ve been a big help on this case. Getting hold of those white supremacists.”
“Thanks. I suppose we clash sometimes. It happens. I don’t take it personally.”
It’s one of several occasions on which Dudley has surprised her. She always considered him a dick. Now she’s not so sure.
Maybe I was just a bitch for thinking it without giving the guy a chance.
“That’s good to hear,” she says.
Harper looks at the clock on the wall, ticking away, and when she turns back to him, he has a smile on his face. It should look cute, perhaps. But there’s something about it that doesn’t fit with the rest of him, as if smiling doesn’t come naturally to a man like John Dudley.
Shortly after she transferred to Hope’s Peak, Dudley made a play for Harper. They were in a car, heading to rendezvous with Stu at a crime scene. He asked her what she did outside of work. When Harper said she didn’t get out too much, he asked her if she wanted to go for a drink sometime, and before she could answer, he had his hand on her knee. Harper froze for a moment as she wrestled with what to do next. She gently lifted his hand from her leg and, in the politest terms, told Dudley she was not interested. Thank you anyway.
He didn’t take it very well—and the atmosphere between them has been frosty ever since, particularly since he caught wind that she and Stu were “seeing” each other . . .
Morelli and Stu walk in. The captain goes straight to his desk, oblivious to any atmosphere lurking between the two detectives. Stu senses it right away. He looks at Dudley, then Harper.
She gives him a look: Don’t say anything. Sit your ass down.
Thankfully, as Morelli starts to question them regarding aspects of the case, Stu does just that. He sits between Harper and Dudley.
Once the general details of their investigation are out of the way, Morelli looks at Dudley.
“If you’d give us a minute, Detective.”
“Huh?”
Morelli indicates the door to his office, his hand held out, palm up. “If you would, John.”
“Oh.” Dudley stands, looks at Harper and Raley, then leaves. The door clicks shut behind him.
Captain Morelli pops a candy in his mouth and rolls it around. “I’ve gotta do a press conference on live TV. I’m trying to hold those bloodsuckers off, but you two know how these things are. They’re par for the course.”
“Yes sir,” Stu says.
“So, at some point, I’m going to be telling the country we have a killer here in Hope’s Peak,” Morelli says. “How are you doing with those files? Are they much use?”
“Yes and no,” Harper tells him. “Raley has made a list of everyone who helped cover this up.”
“Yeah?”
Harper thinks back to her conversation with the captain at the ME’s office. “As I said earlier today, there’s going to be a lot of fallout from this. More than for the murders themselves, I expect.”
“One of the big names is that of Hal Crenna. He’s a former captain of police who worked his way up from the bottom. Now he’s about to become mayor of Hope’s Peak,” Stu says. “At least, it’s looking that way.”
Morelli nods. “I know Hal.”
“Back in t
he day, Crenna falsified two of the reports in those files you gave us. That revelation would put his career aspirations on permanent hold,” Stu says.
“You don’t have to tell me that, Detective,” Morelli snaps. “But like I said earlier to your partner here, the main focus has to be stopping these murders. Then, and only then, can we deal with the corruption in the department. If that means I have to step away from this position, then so be it.”
Harper leans forward, hands clasped between her knees. “Sir, neither of us believes you’re dirty. But there’s been a big cover-up here, and I’m not sure why. There’s protecting the town, but this goes beyond that. I think someone knew the identity of the killer, and that’s why the deaths of these girls had to be swept under the rug.”
“Well, I know one thing,” Morelli says, crunching through the candy. “Right now, in the eyes of the public, we’re chasing our tails here. We are unable to protect the citizens of this town from a sexual predator and murderer.”
“All the more reason to do a press conference, sir,” Harper tells him. “Get the word out there. If we get some exposure, it might stay the killer’s hand long enough for us to catch him.”
Morelli looks at her. “The operable word here being ‘might.’”
Leaving the captain’s office, Harper feels a hand on her arm.
Stu steers her to the left, to one of the supply closets. He yanks the pull cord, the single bulb illuminating the dingy confines of the tiny room, and shuts the door.
“What’s up?” she asks him.
He’s flustered. Red in the face. “All that about the TV interviews? I hope it’s made you rethink what you’re planning on doing.”
“What d’you mean? Taking Ida to see the body?”
He rolls his eyes. “What else? Come on, Jane. See sense here. If the press gets wind that you’ve marched a goddamn psychic into the morgue, public confidence will plummet. They’ll eat us alive. And that’s not the worst. If they put two and two together and realize she’s the daughter of a victim—”
“Look, even if that happens, they won’t make the connection. As far as they’re aware, Ruby Lane isn’t connected to the case. At least, not until we expose the truth at some point. Going on the assumption we ever catch the guy . . .”
“Ida is a soothsayer. Nothing more. Having her anywhere near the investigation makes it look like we’re relying on voodoo or some other nonsense, rather than good old-fashioned police work,” Stu tells her. He crosses his arms, looks down at the floor. When Harper reaches out and holds his shoulders, Stu looks back up at her. “What?”
“I hear you. Honestly, I do. But I can’t do this without you. I want to break this case. So far, all we have are bits and pieces. I think we’re on the verge of something here. I need you with me.”
The silence stretches out, and for a moment, she wonders if he will turn her down, but he nods once, frowning.
“Okay,” he says. “But I do this out of respect for you as my partner, not for anything else.”
That hurts, but she takes it on the chin. “Okay. You’re not letting your personal feelings get in the way. I respect that.”
“Good.”
“I just hope all this isn’t about me blowing hot and cold with you, Stu. Because I have my reasons. I’m not your ex-wife, okay?” Harper says.
“I know, I know,” he says.
Harper opens the door. “Come on, before someone wonders why we’re standing in a closet.”
7
The road is a dark river through the night and she rides the current.
Ida sits forward against the steering wheel, concentrating on the asphalt. Driving at night has never been her forte, and for once, she will be glad to be off the back roads. There’s something comfortable about joining the flow of traffic at night, the beams of opposing headlights giving a false sense of security she nonetheless buys into. She has the radio on—the station is playing an old Leonard Cohen number she knows but can’t put a name to. In that way, old songs are like old friends you meet in the street. You talk for a while, having genuine back-and-forth, all the while trying to remember what they’re called.
The detective told her to get to the Buy N Save in Hope’s Peak at eleven. She knows her watch runs five or six minutes fast, and even that is telling her she’s late.
It’s my fault.
Ida was set to go. She’d thrown some stuff in the truck, made sure everything was switched off in the house, closed all the windows, was about to leave when she was positively crippled with fear. She opened the screen door, and an invisible hand took her gut and wrenched it around, twisted it up tight. Ida doubled over in pain, stumbled back, the door swinging shut. There in the darkness of her house, she found she could not move. Could not go near the door.
Come on. One step at a time.
She tried, she really did. Yet the thought of getting out there, of heading into the night on her own, with the prospect of being in the presence of a dead body, scared her more than anything had in a long while. Even the dreams did not have the toxic effect the fear was having on her then.
More than anything, she knew what was coming. Ida had spent years revisiting her mother’s murder, over and over. Now she would experience another murder. Another little sparrow that had had its neck wrung. Laid to rest in a field, coveted as a thing of beauty and venerated as such. But they were what they were. Nothing more than strangled birds, silenced before they knew their own song.
It was the thought of them as helpless birds that got her back on her feet, that made her draw a heavy breath and charge at the door, keys clenched in her hand so hard she nearly drew blood. Those young women deserved to have their stories heard. Their songs would remain unwritten otherwise. Ida was on the road without even realizing it, gunning the engine, knuckles white on the steering wheel. She’d sped her way through a mile or two before she relaxed her grip and fell to her own anxieties of the dark night around her.
But the fire inside her had already been lit. Whatever awaited her, whatever the latest victim had to tell her, she would listen.
Harper waits while Stu dozes on and off next to her in the car.
“Keeping you up?” she asks, giving him a sharp elbow in the ribs when his head lowers, chin resting on his chest, a stifled snore coming from his crumpled mouth.
“Huh?” Stu looks around, eyes red, and wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. “Did I nod off again?”
“Either that or you were slipping into a coma, Stu.”
“Sorry.”
Harper checks the time: 11:46. She wonders if Ida will show. She sounded game on the phone when she spoke to her earlier, but something could have changed since then.
“Feeling it at the moment. I don’t know, I can’t sleep at home,” Stu says, stretching out. “Do you get that? When you’re caught up in the case?”
She knows he means “the victims” when he talks about the case. A death is like a boat cutting through water, the ensuing pain and heartache left in its wake fanning out for a long time to come. But she knows there’s something else, too.
Us.
“Stu, I said we’d have that chat. I think maybe—”
He cuts in. “D’you know me and Karen were high school sweethearts? Prom dates even? Man, I thought it was the happiest day of my life, getting married to her. Went off without a hitch. Everything was rosy. I worked my way up to detective over time. We got our first house. A place of our own. You know that feeling? When you go from renting someplace to actually owning a piece of one yourself?”
“I do.”
His eyes are glassy, looking through the windshield, lost in the fog of what he’s saying. “I thought we’d last, I really did. But you know what? Sometimes it just don’t work out. I tried giving her a kid, Jane. I tried to make the picture complete, but I couldn’t.”
“How do you know the problem was with you?” Harper asks. “Maybe she couldn’t—”
Stu shakes his head. “No. It was me.”
>
“Is that what’s eating you up? Some kind of fucking guilt?” Harper slaps him on the arm with the back of her hand. It brings him back. “Look at me. Stu, really look at me.”
Stu’s voice is only a whisper. His eyes hang heavy. “Yes?”
“You are not to blame for your marriage ending. No more than I’m to blame for mine. We make decisions—sometimes those decisions turn out to be mistakes. That’s just how it is,” Harper says.
“I know.”
“Why have you brought all this up? Because of us?”
“God, Jane, do I have to spell it out? I’ve got feelings for you. I want us to be more than what we are. I thought that was going to happen, but all I get now is a cold shoulder. You don’t want to know,” Stu tells her. “I wonder what’s wrong with me that I have this effect . . .”
“Fuck’s sake.” Harper grabs his hand, gives it a hard squeeze. At that moment a car’s headlights sweep across the parking lot. It’s Ida’s truck. “This is her. Listen to me, Stu. It’s not you. I think my own insecurities are the problem. I’ve got a history of running away when things don’t turn out the way I wanted them to. I won’t do that this time.”
“Really?”
She smiles, though there’s a sickening feeling in her gut from making such a promise—the problem is that you feel compelled to keep promises like that. “Really.”
“What about Karen?”
She shrugs. “It’ll sort itself out, I guess. I don’t know. If need be, I’ll talk to her myself. We didn’t do anything wrong, Stu. We were free agents.”
The truck pulls up alongside, and the driver reaches across to wind the passenger window down.
“Evening,” Ida calls out to her.
Harper pushes a button and her driver’s-side window slides down. “Hey, Ida. I was beginning to wonder if you’d show at all.”
“Yeah, I got caught up.”
“Uh-huh,” Harper says. “Do you want to jump in back?”
Ida cuts the engine. “Okay,” she says. Harper watches in the rearview mirror as Ida climbs in.