Hope's Peak (Harper and Lane)

by Tony Healey

  13

  Barnie looks at the three people standing in front of him, less than impressed.

  “What’s up?” Stu asks him. “Same arrangement as always, right?”

  “Aaah, I’m afraid the stakes have gone up, Detective,” Barnie says, drawing a sharp breath as he says it. “I’m risking my job letting you in with a civilian. Maybe I need a donation to my retirement fund.”

  Stu regards him incredulously, as if seeing him for the first time. “Are you fucking kidding me, Barnie?”

  “Nope,” he says, shaking his head. “I’ve had reporters trying to get in here. For all I know, they could be a test from management. See if I’m dirty. I don’t want the extra risk without, you know, extra compensation, man.”

  “Yeah? That so?” Stu asks, walking around Barnie’s desk to the other side.

  Harper watches the exchange with growing alarm. “Stu, what’re you doing?”

  “Arresting this son of a bitch for attempting to extort a police officer,” Stu says, pulling out his cuffs. Barnie tries to dodge him, but Barnie’s too big.

  “Hey! What the hell, Detective?” he cries as Stu slaps the cuffs on him, holding his arms behind his back. “Damn, that hurts.”

  “Sit down,” Stu snarls at him. “We’ll be quick, and if you keep your mouth shut, I won’t mention this to your boss.”

  “Come on,” Harper says, looking back at the front door. “Make sure they’re locked.”

  Stu checks the control panel. “Yeah, they are.”

  Ida walks ahead of them—she knows the room. Her stomach pulls tight into a knot when she gets to the door, knowing what’s behind it, picking up on the atmosphere of the place, the emptiness of it. They go inside, and Harper checks the board on the wall to find out who is where. Stu pulls Julie’s body out, unfolding the sheet away from her face as if revealing an ancient artifact. Skin, milky white, looking like a snow queen lying there, her lips a startling shade of electric blue.

  Harper’s hand falls to Ida’s shoulder. “Are you ready?”

  Ida swallows. “Yes. But bring that chair over, so I can sit when I’m done. Save me from hitting the floor like a bag of feed.”

  “Got it,” Stu says, fetching the office chair from the other side of the room.

  Ida places her hand on the woman’s forehead and sinks into the woman, sinks into her skin.

  That telltale warmth fills the room and the low lights dim further.

  That voice. There’s something about that voice. Julie tries to scramble to the side, but the man is quick. He steps in her way, a little chuckle coming from beneath the mask. Julie lashes out as he grapples to control her, dropping to his knees, and she somehow snags his head covering. Julie pulls and it rips, separating from the section pinned by the belt.

  She knows him. His ugly, brutish face is red-hot and flustered from battling her on the bathroom floor. She is about to say his name when his right arm goes back, and Julie knows what is coming. His fist hits her and it’s like a million-watt bulb explodes in her brain.

  Her vision swims. The mask hangs from the belt around his neck, and he glares at her.

  “That wafn’t nife.”

  “Listen . . . what are you doing?” Julie murmurs, half dazed from the blow.

  He grabs her hair and forces her to turn around. “On your kneef.”

  “No!” Julie struggles, but his iron grip on her hair stops her. He’s not letting go.

  A part of her speaks up: Let him do what he’s going to do. You might live. Cooperate and you might live.

  Sobbing, Julie has her back to him, and she lowers herself forward, exposing her rear end to him. She hears him deal with his jeans. His breathing comes hurried, almost snorting with excitement. The pain of him forcing his way inside makes her cry out, makes her try to fight him off again. He shifts around behind her, pulls her head back by her hair. Julie screams.

  He holds her hair with his right hand, and reaches around with his left. He finds the soft, delicate flesh of her bare throat and caresses it with his fingers, all the while forcing himself into her.

  “You gotta know when to keep your mouth fhut.”

  His left hand closes on her throat and he grits his teeth, growling like an animal as he crushes Julie’s windpipe. Taking the spark of life and crushing it in his hands.

  Shutting out the light.

  Ida flops back, the connection broken, and her backside finds the chair. She sags into it, exhausted. Stu hurriedly pushes the body back into cold storage and closes the door. Harper squats next to Ida. “Are you okay?”

  She has one hand to her head, as if it threatens to blow apart. “Yes . . . yes, I’ll be fine . . . Just give me a minute . . .”

  “What did you see?” Stu asks her.

  Ida swallows. “You know what he did. Beat her. Raped her from behind. Strangled the life out of her. But she knew him. She tore his mask off.”

  “You saw his face?”

  Ida frowns, remembering. “Vaguely. It was a blur. But I know one thing. He has some kind of problem with his mouth. He speaks with a lifp. He’s got some kind of facial deformity.”

  “This is great, Ida. Any name?”

  She shakes her head. “Sorry.”

  “No, no, no.” Harper holds Ida’s hand. “You did great.”

  “I don’t think we’ll be able to do this again,” Stu says.

  “Not with Fat Ass at the counter, we won’t.” Harper checks outside the door. There’s no one else there. “Ida, can you stand, do you think?”

  “I can try.”

  Harper waves Stu over. “Get her other side. We’ll walk her out.”

  They position her arms around their shoulders and steer her into the hall. When they get near the desk, Stu sets about freeing Barnie from his handcuffs while Harper continues with Ida toward the car.

  Barnie rubs his wrists. “What’s to stop me from reporting you for this?”

  “Nothing,” Stu admits. “But just remember, I know where you live, Barnie. It wouldn’t be a very good move.”

  The fat man looks down at the floor.

  Stu taps the side of Barnie’s flabby face. “Lesson learned. Don’t get greedy.”

  “Ida, let me drop you at my place. You can rest there. I don’t want you driving home in the dark the way you are,” Harper says, looking at her in the backseat. She looks worse than she did the first time around, after doing a reading of Gertie Wilson’s body. Drained.

  Ida shakes her head. “No . . . I’ll be fine to drive. Honestly.”

  “No offense, but you look like death,” Stu tells her as Harper starts the engine.

  “Trust me, sugar, I feel like it,” Ida concedes.

  “Then it’s settled. I’ll drop you at my apartment; then I want to head to the station,” Harper says.

  “Really? You know what time it is?” Stu asks. “It’s late!”

  “Yeah, well, doesn’t matter. We need to search the records, Stu. And we can’t do that in the daylight because we’re not supposed to be there.”

  Stu shrugs. “Point made.”

  “What about my truck?” Ida asks.

  “Stu can drive it back. His car’s parked at my place.”

  “Okay,” Ida says.

  Stu hisses: “Thanks for volunteering me.”

  “Anytime,” Harper says with a smile.

  Harper ushers Ida into her bed, pulling the covers up over her.

  “Do you want a light on?” she asks her, but Ida is already asleep. She closes the bedroom door and goes to the kitchen, where Stu is hunting in the fridge for a drink.

  “You don’t have a Coke in here?”

  Harper shakes her head. “I don’t buy them.”

  “You don’t? What do you drink?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t know . . . water?”

  Stu pulls a bottle from the fridge. “Too early for Chardonnay.”

  “Come on. Let’s get going. I’ll buy you a coffee later,” Harper tells him, holding the front door
to her apartment open for him.

  “You say it like that, but it’s really because you want to buy a coffee for yourself, isn’t it?”

  “Well I don’t want to leave you out,” she tells him.

  There is minimal staff on duty, and no one takes any notice when Harper and Stu walk into the station, heading straight for the basement. Down there, they use the computer access terminal in the corner—better to do it out of sight than at one of their desks, where they might draw attention. It allows them to gain access to the same generic files as anyone with limited clearance throughout the entire building.

  Harper hovers over Stu’s shoulder as he pulls up hospital records for the immediate and surrounding area.

  “So how old do we think this guy is?”

  “When he killed Ruby in nineteen eighty-five, he probably was in his twenties or thirties at least. Ruby was twenty-four years old when he murdered her,” Harper says.

  Stu does the math, sounding it out so that Harper can chime in if needed. “If he was twenty back then, that’d make him fifty now. Even saying he was forty, he’d be seventy now. I think at the extreme end of the scale, he’ll be eighty—although the fact he’d need strength and a certain physicality to carry out these murders rules out the possibility of him being that old, I guess. So, fifty years old in nineteen eighty-five, which means he would have been born nineteen thirty-five.”

  “Make the search range from thirty-five onwards to, like, the late sixties. Let’s see what we come up with,” Harper tells him.

  Stu taps the search range in, selects the criteria, and lets it run.

  “Ah, seven names,” he says, leaning toward the screen. “All born with facial irregularities between nineteen thirty-five and nineteen sixty-nine.”

  “Send it to the printer,” Harper tells him, walking back and forth. “I feel like we’re finally closing in now.”

  Stu finds the hospital record for each name and does a quick check. “Three of these are deceased. That leaves us four. I’m printing their addresses and physical attributes now.”

  “Great. But I think it’s a bit late now to go knocking on doors.”

  “Yeah I’m with you. We’ll hit it first thing tomorrow,” Stu says. “Not that I’m not eager to find this bastard.”

  “We’re really close now.” Harper takes his face in both hands. “I’m so thrilled I could kiss you.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  She leans down, presses her lips hard against his. Stu gets to his feet and grabs her around the waist, picking her up. He walks with her in his arms, her legs hooked around his waist, the two kissing passionately. When Stu’s knees hit one of the research desks, he lowers Harper to it. The printer spews out paper in the corner as he wrestles Harper’s pants down to her ankles, then off, and drops them on the floor. Harper yanks his belt from the buckle and unbuttons his fly.

  There is nothing to say, just the urgent need, the sudden slapping of skin on skin, the two of them grunting, carnal and primitive. It’s over in less than a minute, Stu holding her legs together, her feet pinned by the side of his face. Harper panting from the sudden rush of her orgasm, the risk of getting caught only heightening the experience.

  Catching his breath, Stu looks at her.

  Harper reaches down, slaps his behind. “I think the printer’s stopped.”

  The body the body the body.

  Lester goes to the car and pops the trunk. The smell that rises from Ceeli’s body is overwhelming, but nothing he hasn’t dealt with before. He reaches in, lifts her onto his shoulders, and carries her. She has baked in the trunk of the car, and her body is swollen, but she’s still light.

  He carries her through the backyard, to the shed. The door is open and he’s set a chair in there. Grunting, he stoops down and deposits her in it. Ceeli immediately flops to one side, but with a bit of maneuvering, he gets her sitting in it just right.

  As she died, he took her, clamping the cushion down on her face so hard she was unable to take a breath. He built to his climax, grunting with the effort, and Ceeli suddenly relaxed around him. That was how he knew she was gone. Her hands stopped fighting him, stopped scratching at his arms. Her legs fell slack on either side of his hips.

  Remembering the sensation makes him groan, makes him ache all over, fills his head with brain sparkle.

  Lester admires her, sitting there with her chin resting on her chest, her ashy color, her swelling, the stink rising from her dead body. And the horror frozen on her face.

  “There you are,” he says, grinning, already feeling the stiffening in his pants at the prospect of having her there with him. “You’re home.”

  He doesn’t know why he didn’t get started before, but then it was never his plan to take Ceeli for his own. It just happened naturally, like a dribble of water breaking away from the main stream to become a tributary of its own. Lester walks around the side of the house, and down through the long grass that borders the house and the woods. He feels the supplejack with his fingers, determining whether they’re what’s needed. He selects the best, the process a calming one. Lester gathers them together and thinks, These will make an excellent crown for Ceeli. Something Mack should have done for her. Now I’m here to make her my princess.

  Harper parks her car in front of her house. She and Stu get out, and Harper glances at his car, parked across the street. “I’d invite you in, but . . .”

  “I know,” Stu says. “Another time.”

  “Definitely,” Harper says.

  They kiss, Stu holding her by the waist. “We take two names each, yeah?”

  “Uh-huh. You’re sure we shouldn’t involve the rest of the department in this?” Harper asks him. “At least Captain Morelli. Surely we should get in touch with him, let him know what’s happened.”

  “Not yet. Let’s be sure, first. Smoke him out, Jane. Make him blow his own cover.”

  “Damn, Stu. You’re talking like a real detective!”

  Stu crosses the street, turns back to look at her. “See you tomorrow.”

  Harper waves him off, then goes inside. The apartment is how she left it. She checks on Ida, who is lying in the fetal position in her bed. She pours herself two fingers of scotch and sits on the sofa. She doesn’t even touch the drink before she’s asleep.

  14

  It’s approaching midday when Stu leaves the home of the first name on his list. David Jenson. Born with a severe cleft lip that was corrected when he was eight, leaving a scar, but very little warping of his facial features. He phones Harper.

  “One down, one to go.”

  “How did you make out?”

  “He’s about the right age, but there’s no way he’s the killer. He had a stroke and lost all strength in his arms, besides the fact that his sister can vouch for his whereabouts. To rape and kill a young woman, it takes a fair bit of strength.”

  “You’re beginning to sound experienced in this area, Stu.”

  “I am, pretty much. Not that I’d like to be,” he says, climbing into his car and firing up the engine. “I’m gonna go visit Lester Simmons, see what I turn up. This one will probably be missing his arms and legs, dragging his ass around all day on a goddamned skateboard.”

  “Be careful, partner.”

  “I will.”

  “As it turns out, I’ve got my last one, too. I’m convinced—one of these names must be the killer.”

  “Well, looks like we’ll find out real soon.”

  “I’ll let you know, soon as I’m done here,” Harper tells him.

  “Roger, roger.”

  Harper parks the car. “Ida, why don’t you wait here, okay?”

  “You don’t need me?” Ida asks her.

  “I don’t think so. I have a good nose for this stuff. Besides, I’ll be able to tell from what he has to say,” Harper explains. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Mind if I listen to the stereo?”

  Harper laughs. “Of course not.”

  It’s hot out. Harper wear
s a light-blue shirt, rolled up at the sleeves, as open at the chest as she dares—though she wears a thin vest beneath. She has a notebook in one arm, a file. Her gun bulges in its holster at her right hip.

  The house is pleasant enough, nestled among a row of similar houses, a well-kept lawn in the front. The whole street is nice, she concludes, though sometimes it’s the brightest houses that hide the darkest interiors.

  Harper rings the doorbell and waits. She is about to ring it again when a woman in her fifties, hair going to gray, answers the door. “Yes?”

  “Hello, I’m Detective Jane Harper. I’d like to speak to George Armistad? Is he home?”

  The woman swallows. “I’m afraid not.”

  “Is he out? Any idea how long he’ll be, or when he’ll be back?”

  “No,” the woman says, shaking her head. It’s now that Harper notices the bags under her eyes, the pale complexion of her skin. Her short nails that look bitten rather than clipped. “I’m afraid George is no longer with us.”

  Harper feels the wind rush out of her. “What?” she says softly, voice barely a whisper.

  Tears come to the woman. “He passed away in his sleep not two nights ago. I’m really very sorry, Detective.”

  “Right,” Harper says, looking down at her notebook, just to be able to look away from the woman in her grief.

  “I’m really not in the right frame for questions right now, Detective. So . . .”

  She starts to close the door. Harper nods, steps back, and the door shuts. She turns and heads back to the car. There’s a distinct difference between dealing with a dead body and the family of the dead. The survivors who have to bear the pain and anguish.

  Back in the car, Ida has found a station playing “Wicked Game” and is sitting in the passenger seat, singing along to it. Harper gets behind the wheel, but before she starts the engine, the realization hits her—the man Stu is going to meet may very well be the killer.

  “What’re we doing now?” Ida asks.

  Harper calls Stu on the hands-free. It goes straight to voice mail. She turns the key, handing Ida her cell. “Keep trying him, Ida.”