In the newsroom that afternoon, Harper went through the paces of a normal day. She wrote up short pieces on the day’s crime for the back pages, and made a few calls. All the time her mind was going over and over the things DJ had told her.
By the time she finished, the newsroom was empty. Baxter was in a meeting with the copy desk. She was alone.
Pulling out her notepad, she sketched out everything she knew about Whitney, Blazer and her mother. It barely filled a page.
Whitney had a complex sexual background, with multiple partners. She was resented by many wounded ex-wives and girlfriends, and the wrecked men she left in her wake. Any one of them could have motive to kill her. She also may have, as recently as a few months ago, been dating a detective who looked like Blazer.
Her own mother, as far as she was aware, had no such sexual proclivities. She was in an unhappy marriage but she seemed loyal.
Seemed.
Harper tapped the pen softly on the notepad.
Her dad had been cheating on her mother when she died – was she aware of that? Did she consider finding someone of her own, as revenge, or to soothe her wounded pride?
Could that person be the one who killed her?
The idea of Blazer as a roving psychopath on the lookout for lonely, beautiful women in Savannah, fifteen years apart, seemed too much of a stretch.
Still, Harper made a tentative note: ‘Did Mom cheat on Dad?’
After a second, though, she scratched the words out roughly.
Even writing it felt disloyal.
She’d been so young when her mother died, their relationship was frozen forever at the time when she was twelve. Her father had been away a lot for work, so it was her mother she’d turned to for advice, for help. They’d never had a chance to grow apart; find their independence. Share adult confidences.
For the first time it occurred to her that she actually knew very little about her.
She was so lost in reverie that Baxter’s sharp voice jolted her.
‘What are you doing? Waiting for the newspaper to write itself?’
The editor stood at the front of the newsroom, looking at her from across the banks of empty desks. Outside, the sun had set while Harper was lost in thought. The windows reflected back her own image – oval face pale, her hair tangled. She looked tired.
Reaching for her scanner, Harper said, ‘I’m waiting for the shooting to start.’
Right on cue, her scanner crackled. ‘All units, we have a report of Signal Nine at Broward Street and East Avenue. Be advised we’ve had multiple calls from witnesses. Ambulance is dispatched.’
‘There you go,’ Harper said. ‘First shooting of the evening.’
‘You are making this up,’ Baxter said accusingly.
‘You heard the lady.’ Standing, Harper gathered her things. ‘They’re sending an ambulance.’
‘This is witchcraft,’ Baxter grumbled.
Ignoring her, Harper hooked her scanner on her waistband and grabbed her notebook, flipping pages until the lines about her mother disappeared.
Somehow the thought of going to a shooting scene was cheering. This was exactly what she needed – something straightforward and immediate. No baggage. Just a gun, a bullet wound and a story to tell.
‘Is Miles on it?’ Baxter asked.
Harper headed across the newsroom. ‘I’ll call him from the car.’
The Camaro was parked outside the front door. Harper slid into the driver’s seat and put the scanner on the dash. The engine started with a rumble of pure power.
Putting her phone on speaker, she dialed Miles’ number. To her surprise, it went straight to voicemail.
Harper’s message was terse: ‘Shooting on Broward. Baxter wants you there. I’m on my way.’
As she dropped the phone on to the passenger seat, she frowned.
Miles always picked up.
Broward Street was on the south side of town, not far from where the shooting had occurred the other night. In normal traffic you would get there in fifteen minutes. Harper covered the distance at speeds that were not at all legal, and saw the flashing blue lights ahead of her in ten.
Parking the Camaro a block from the scene, she half-ran the rest of the way.
It was an uncomfortably warm night – the pavement had soaked up the sun all day and was still pumping out the last of that heat. The air had a harsh smell of exhaust and overcooked garbage.
Two ambulances were parked at rough angles to the curb, blocking the road; four police cars were clustered in front of them. A crowd of about thirty onlookers had gathered on the sidewalk, watching the action.
‘I said get back,’ a sweating patrol officer shouted at the crowd as she walked up. ‘Take three giant steps back. Or else.’
Skirting the group, Harper slipped around the side to see what was happening.
Two men lay on ambulance gurneys. Both wore baggy, knee-length shorts and T-shirts, both were young and skinny, and both had the same shocked expression. Like until this moment they simply hadn’t believed bullets worked.
Paramedics bustled around, strapping them to tubes and bags, cutting their shirts open to get at their wounds.
‘Damn,’ Harper heard a teenage boy say in the crowd. ‘That’s a hundred-dollar shirt.’
Her eyebrows shot up.
Now, the reason a guy would wear a hundred-dollar shirt in a neighborhood where weekly rent was only slightly more than that was pretty clear.
Harper eased her way over to the boy who’d spoken.
‘Hi,’ she said brightly. ‘I’m a reporter from the Daily News. Did you see what happened?’
He studied her from beneath a lowered brow. Seeing only a woman holding a pen, he shrugged.
‘Everybody saw it. They was fightin’ in the street. Then they started shootin’.’
‘Who were they fighting with?’ Harper asked.
‘Each other!’ the reply came from three people at once.
Harper looked around the crowd. ‘What? Those two guys got in a fight and shot each other?’
‘Yes.’ A small black woman with gray hair pushed her way through the crowd to reach Harper. ‘Those two have been nothing but trouble for months. I called the police and they didn’t do a thing. This was bound to happen.’
Her spine was as straight as a dancer’s as she peered at Harper through glittering glasses. ‘Are you the police? Because we called many times.’
The crowd around her nodded and murmured.
‘I’m not the police, ma’am,’ Harper said politely. ‘I’m a journalist.’
‘Journalist.’ The woman looked, if anything, less pleased about this. ‘From the newspaper?’
‘Yes.’
‘The newspaper ignored it, too.’ The woman announced this condemningly.
‘I’m sorry about that,’ she said. ‘Could you tell me now? Who are they?’
‘Boy on the left is Jarrod Jones,’ the teenage boy offered before the woman could reply.
‘Other one’s Lashon Williams,’ someone else said.
Harper made quick notes.
‘And you say they’ve been fighting?’ Harper looked around, encouraging more.
‘They’ve been fighting for six months,’ the elderly lady informed her disapprovingly. ‘One says this is his block. The other says it’s his. Back and forth. Back and forth. I told the police someone was going to end up dead.’
‘Tonight it all kicked off,’ the teenage boy explained, with a hint of delight.
This was all Harper needed.
‘Thanks very much,’ she said, making the last of her notes. ‘Could I use your names in my story?’
The crowd recoiled.
‘Hell no.’ The boy looked so horrified she might as well have asked if she could boil him alive.
‘I can’t believe you would even ask that,’ the elderly woman admonished.
There was something so authoritative about her demeanor, Harper found herself backpedaling.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean …’
‘For heaven’s sake,’ the woman said, shaking her head.
The crowd of onlookers seemed suddenly less friendly.
‘She’s trying to get people in trouble,’ someone muttered, and the others agreed with growing enthusiasm.
Still muttering apologies, Harper beat a tactical retreat, trying to fade into the shadows. When she’d left the crowd behind, she made her way closer to the crime scene, where the two victims/criminals were being treated.
Standing to one side, she squinted at the scene, cast in sharp relief by flashing blue lights.
On the sidewalk, two bloodstains darkened the paving no more than five feet apart.
The crowd was right – it looked like they’d shot each other at point-blank range.
‘Harper!’ Clad in green scrubs, a clear, plastic IV tube in one hand, Toby jumped out of the back of the ambulance and bounded over to her like a man-shaped puppy. ‘Look at me, back on the night shift.’
She eyed him dubiously. ‘Did you hijack the ambulance? Does anyone know you’re here? Should I tell the police?’
‘No stealing was involved,’ he assured her amiably. ‘I put myself on the replacement rota and someone called in sick tonight.’
He held up his arms, the tube dangling from his hand.
‘I’m beating the system.’
‘You’re insane, Toby,’ she said, but her tone was indulgent.
‘Yeah, in a good way, though. Right?’
‘Right …’ She gestured at the two victims. ‘Hey, is it true these guys shot each other?’
‘Hells to the yeah,’ he enthused, pointing at the gurneys. ‘You’re looking at a real-life circular firing squad. Genius on the left thought genius on the right was invading his drug territory, so he pulled his gun. Genius on the right already had his gun in his hand. They fired at the same time.’
‘Anyone else hurt?’
He shook his head. ‘This is what you call divine justice, my friend.’
A paramedic working on the one on the left signaled to Toby.
‘Hang on a minute,’ he told her. ‘I’ll be right back.’
Harper stood to one side while he raced over to connect the IV to the cannula in the man’s arm.
A minute later, he returned, snapping blue rubber gloves from his hands.
‘Is he going to live?’ Harper asked.
‘Oh, yeah,’ he said, shrugging. ‘He’s leaking now, but he’ll stop.’
With dizzying speed, he changed subjects, nudging her with his shoulder.
‘Hey, you and Walker disappeared from the party last night.’ His tone was arch. ‘Is there something going on there that I should definitely know about?’
Harper winced. So, they had been spotted.
‘No, Toby.’ She kept her tone uninterested, with a touch of irritation. ‘We left at the same time. Nothing more.’
Grinning, he nudged her again, harder this time.
‘Walker’s good people, Harper. You could do worse.’
‘I know that,’ she snapped, hoping the grumpiness disguised the panic rising in her chest, ‘but I’m not doing anyone.’
The gurneys jangled as the paramedics slid them onto the ambulances and braced them in place.
‘Load up, Toby,’ someone shouted at him.
He took a step back.
‘Maybe you aren’t. But I, for one, hope you are,’ he said impishly. ‘The man is pure sex. I’d do him myself but I don’t swing that way. Besides, I’m taken.’
Jumping up into the open door of the ambulance, he flung out his arms and looked up at the dark sky.
‘God, I’ve missed this.’
Seconds later, the shriek of its siren split the night and the ambulance pulled away from the curb. Its flashing blue lights lit up a group of officers who, up until now, had been hidden behind the emergency cars.
Right at the center of it was Detective Larry Blazer.
Harper’s mouth went dry.
Deep in conversation, he hadn’t noticed her yet. Taking a hurried step back into the shadows, she studied him with surreptitious interest.
She tried to imagine him dating Marie Whitney. Growing enraged at her. Killing her.
It didn’t seem possible. And yet.
Normally, she’d ask him for a quote about the shooting, but tonight she turned and walked away. If there was even a slight possibility that Blazer was involved in the Whitney murder then there was also a possibility he was involved in her mother’s murder.
She wasn’t ready yet to pretend everything was fine.
She was nearly to her car when she spotted Miles standing under a streetlight, checking shots on his camera screen.
‘Hey,’ Harper said. ‘Where have you been? Why didn’t you return my texts?’
He looked up from his camera, unsmiling.
‘I finally had a meeting with my coroner friend.’ His tone was dark. ‘We need to talk.’
‘What have you got?’ Harper asked.
She and Miles were sitting in the Mustang, a block from the crime scene. The only illumination came from the blue lights of the police cars in the distance. It gave everything a strobe-lit, unreal feel.
Miles hadn’t turned on the air conditioner, and it was uncomfortably warm in the car. Harper was conscious of her top sticking to her back.
The scanner on the dash was on, but the sound was turned down so the uneven hum of voices formed a backdrop to their conversation.
‘My coroner friend looked into the Whitney case,’ he said. ‘She told me some things didn’t seem right.’
‘Like what?’
‘The scene was forensically clean,’ he said. ‘No fingerprints on any surfaces. Everything was pristine. Even Whitney’s hands had been cleaned.’
Harper frowned. ‘Her hands?’
He nodded. ‘Someone had wiped her hands down, even swabbed under her fingernails. Her skin smelled of rubbing alcohol – my friend said it appeared he even cleaned her face.’
Harper didn’t know what to think.
‘Is that normal?’
He shook his head. ‘My coroner friend has never seen it before in her entire career.’
‘The detectives are saying it looks like a professional killer,’ she said.
‘This must be why.’ Miles shifted in his seat, turning to face her. ‘Get this – Whitney was naked when her daughter found her, but clothing fibers were found inside her wounds.’
Harper’s forehead creased. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means she was wearing clothes when she was killed,’ he explained. ‘But the killer took them when he left.’
The skin on the back of Harper’s neck prickled.
‘Whatever you’re thinking,’ she said. ‘Say it.’
His eyes met hers.
‘Harper, as far as I can understand it, everything the coroner would normally use in their investigation is missing. Clothes gone, weapon gone, victim’s hands cleaned, nails scrubbed, face wiped. The killer even wore surgical shoe covers so he’d leave no prints in the blood.’
Harper felt oddly calm – like she’d already known this was what he had to tell her. Everything was pointing in one direction.
‘No ordinary killer would know what forensics would look for,’ Miles concluded. ‘This guy knew everything.’
Harper looked down the street at the flickering blue lights.
‘Like a cop,’ she said softly.
‘Like a cop,’ he repeated.
She turned to him. ‘There’s something I have to tell you.’
Quickly, she explained what DJ had learned at the college, including the description of the man wearing a badge. She didn’t tell him who that description reminded her of, though. She wanted to see if he would draw his own conclusions.
When she finished, Miles sat back in his seat.
The scanner crackled with ambulance dispatches, police checking in, a burglary on East 27th Street.
‘It sounds like Blazer,’ he said finally.
Harper was surprised by how relieved this made her feel. She wasn’t going crazy.
‘Or it could be someone else,’ he continued, a cautioning note in his voice. ‘We can’t draw conclusions. Lots of jobs give you a cheap suit and a badge. It could be a security guard.’
‘A security guard who knows to swab her face?’ Harper asked, her voice rising. ‘To take her clothes? To clean under her nails? To wear shoe covers?’
Tension sharpened her tone.
‘He would be the best damn rent-a-cop in America today.’
‘I hear you,’ he said calmly. ‘I’m just saying, we can’t jump to conclusions. There are a lot of factors at play here.’
Seeing her rebellious expression he held up one hand.
‘But,’ he said. ‘Yes. This looks like a cop. Or like someone who really knows police business damn well. And that is not good.’
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘It’s not.’
He stared through the windshield. ‘You feel like this is something you could take to your buddy Smith?’
Harper shook her head hard.
‘They’re friends,’ she said. ‘They’re both cops.’
There was no need to say more.
Heavy silence filled the car like water.
Harper felt lost. Where did she go from here? She’d never investigated the police for something like this. Everything she knew about rogue cops she’d learned from movies – they were dangerous. They were out of control. People got killed investigating them.
‘Now that you know more,’ Miles said, glancing at her, ‘you still think the same guy that killed Whitney killed your mother?’
Harper had been thinking about this all day, and she still didn’t have a great answer.
‘Maybe.’ She could hear the doubt in her own voice. ‘I need to know more before I can be sure about anything. All I have are my memories. I need to get my hands on the original crime reports from my mother’s case. See how those compare with what we know about the Whitney murder.’
‘Most of those records aren’t public,’ he reminded her. ‘You can only see the original incident report.’
‘I’ll find a way.’ Twisting in her seat, she turned until she was facing him. ‘But, Miles, what if it is Blazer? I mean …’ she paused. ‘Let’s say it is him. What the hell are we going to do then?’
Across the shadowy car, their eyes locked. The worry in his face mirrored her own.
‘I don’t have an answer to that,’ he said. ‘But I know this case is very dangerous. Are you ready for this, Harper?’
At the end of the road the police were packing up their cars, tearing the crime tape from the light posts, closing the scene. She could see the shadowy figures hurriedly preparing to move on to the next shooting. The next stabbing.
The swirling blue lights switched off one by one.
By the time she spoke, the street was dark again.
‘I have to be ready.’