Chapter 3

It was a tough case that ended badly, Harlow recounts. It’s the one that got away and has plagued his confidence with every new case he takes on. That was 11 years ago, but the self-doubt has never left him. Having made detective just months before the killings, he approached the scene with youthful ignorance. Sure, he had the training, but this would be his first lead investigation into a double murder. The reporters were chomping at the bit to sensationalize it and at his throat 24/7. His captain at the time had urged him to keep his focus on the investigation and not let anything slip as he fielded questions at the scene.

 

“Reporters can be ruthless and entitled, Harlow,” he’d offered. “Give them nothing they can use to scare the perp into hiding. You’ve been briefed on this. Just the basic facts. Any evidence, no matter how impressive, cannot be released to the general public.”

 

It was good advice, he remembered, but also a warning. Don’t fuck this up. The crime was violent and bloody. The residence was in shambles as the perps had ransacked the house for whatever valuables presented themselves. It seemed a classic junkie hit at first sight. Disorganized. Rushed. Probably the murders weren't planned. The couple’s lifeless bodies resulted from the murderous home invasion in 2011. Just a couple of meth-heads feeling the pull of their addictions trying front doors until one opened. In his experience, they’d push past any perceived obstacles to their next hit with reckless violence.

 

Signs of a struggle were everywhere. The broken glass dining table, the lamp, the skin recovered from under the female’s fingernails, and the classic defense bruising on both victims’ forearms. Eventually, they succumbed to the perp’s beatings and hemorrhaged from head trauma not two feet apart on the carpeted dining room floor.

 

The ensuing investigation gave up one perp’s DNA and the fingerprints of both. Neither turned up in the system, so Harlow had little to run with. As the middle-class neighborhood was canvased, others recalled their motion-sensor lights coming on. Some recounted sounds at their doors and windows that night, but no one had a security camera to identify the perps. It was a frustrating start to a brutal crime, and the newspapers were beginning to develop their own hypothesis. It was an embarrassment that stretched on for weeks.

 

It did end, however. Not with an arrest, but with another double murder. When the newly deceased were fingerprinted, Harlow realized his case was closed. Two tweekers were found in an alley in one of Detroit’s less affluent neighborhoods. It was a curious scene. Both bludgeoned to death, needles dangling from their arms. Would he open an investigation on these two murders? Who would care? The city was satisfied to know the murderers were dead. Was it a vigilante who sought out the Clement’s murderers? That never went over well at the station. So, Harlow chalked it up as a failure with a satisfactory outcome.

 

His failure was felt strongest when he delivered the news to the couple’s surviving teenager. She breathed a visible sigh of relief over the deaths of her parent’s killers, but he felt compelled to ask her about her whereabouts the night before. She offered a curt response that checked out. She berated him for the insinuation and slammed the door in his face, but not before scolding him for the time it took to find those responsible and then having the audacity to accuse her. The victim’s daughter was as disappointed in him as he had been in himself.

 

Still, he was credited as the lead investigator in a closed case. That never sat well with him, but he wouldn’t contest it. He just acknowledged the honor and moved forward with his career, one that had flourished under the tutelage of his captain and the work he put into never allowing another case to end the way that one had.

 

Presently, Harlow is content Detroit has accepted him as one homicide after another is solved through diligent investigative work backed by years of experience. He is a well-decorated detective who has seen it all. At least, that was his assumption until the calling card of a potential serial killer surfaced.