The next day at four o’clock, when Harper arrived at police headquarters, only a handful of people lingered in the lobby, waiting for appointments.
Her steps felt stiff and careful, but she tried to keep her expression neutral. If she looked strange, no one seemed to notice.
She passed two traffic cops she knew, helmets tucked under their arms, mirrored sunglasses hooked to the top buttons of their dark blue uniforms.
‘Hey, McClain,’ one said.
She waved and said something pleasant she couldn’t remember a second later. It was a hot day, but she felt strangely cold as she slowed her steps, waiting until the two were out of the building before continuing on to the reception desk.
She forced her facial muscles to smile cheerfully when she reached the front desk.
‘Well, Harper McClain.’ Darlene eyed her with interest. ‘What’s got you all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ Harper said brightly. ‘I’m just thrilled to be at work.’
‘Mm-hmm.’ Darlene’s voice dripped sarcasm. ‘Ain’t it great?’
Sliding the police report folder over to her, she leaned her elbows against the desk.
Harper opened it and forced herself to focus on the words in front of her as nerves fluttered in her stomach.
Burglary, burglary, burglary, sexual assault, gunshots reported, gunshots reported, noise disturbance, burglary, burglary, burglary …
Pulling out the sexual assault report and two armed robberies, she busied herself making notes.
‘Harper.’ Darlene tapped a page with a long, multi-hued nail. ‘I’ve been hearing some gossip about you.’
Harper’s heart sank. Still, she kept her head down and her tone dismissive.
‘Oh great. What has the rumor mill got on me this time?’
‘Something about that murder last week. The lady from the college.’
Harper looked up at her. ‘What about it?’
Darlene lowered her voice. ‘They’re saying you spied on the crime scene with one of those telephoto lenses, and the lieutenant was not happy about it. Even the deputy chief got involved. Is it true?’
The muscles in Harper’s shoulders relaxed.
‘Now, Darlene,’ she chided, resuming her note-taking. ‘Does that sound like me?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Darlene nodded.
‘Then it’s probably true. But it wasn’t so much me as Miles, and how am I supposed to control an inspired photographer?’
‘That Miles.’ Darlene’s voice took on a dreamy tone. ‘He’s a long drink of cool water, isn’t he?’
‘Mmph.’ Harper kept her response vague.
‘A photographer,’ Darlene continued wistfully. ‘A true artist. And a gentleman, as well. Every time he’s in here he’s so polite and patient.’
She stared down the long lobby.
‘You should tell him I’m single,’ she announced suddenly.
Harper gave this serious consideration.
‘I’ll do that,’ she said.
The conversation took the edge off her nerves. By the time she finished making her notes and slid the blotter back to Darlene, she was ready.
She stopped, mid-move, as if a thought had struck her.
‘Oh, by the way, I’m working on an article about old crimes – murders from ten, fifteen years ago. Even older. A kind of retrospective.’ She blinked at Darlene hopefully. ‘Where could I get my hands on some old crime reports? You know, the big cases. The ones that really made headlines back in the day.’
Darlene, busy putting the folder back in its holder, barely glanced at her.
‘Well, those are in the archive, down in the basement,’ she said. ‘Haven’t you been down there?’
Harper had been to the archive many times. She’d worked down there as an intern. She also knew perfectly well that journalists needed approval from the deputy chief to go down there.
What she was banking on was that Darlene didn’t know that.
‘Oh yeah. How could I forget?’ Giving a wry smile, Harper shook her head. ‘Could you buzz me through?’
‘No problem, honey.’ The phone at Darlene’s elbow began ringing, and she reached for it. ‘Head on down. Good afternoon, Front Desk …’
Casually, Harper crossed to the security door. She kept her steps unhurried – betraying none of the tension she felt. Like it was any other day.
Still chatting on the phone, Darlene buzzed her through without looking up.
When Harper told Miles she intended to get her hands on the old records, he hadn’t pressed her on how she was going to get them.
This was how.
The long, windowless corridor leading past the detectives’ offices was busy at this hour. She joined the flow of uniformed cops, detectives and assistants going about their work. She’d been back here many times – there was no reason for anyone to mind.
Still, anxiety swirled in Harper’s stomach as she passed the 911 room. One of the dispatchers spotted her through the window and waved, still talking into her headset.
Harper lifted a hand in reply and hurried away, lowering her gaze.
About halfway down the corridor between reception and the lieutenant’s office was a wide, utilitarian staircase. Relief coursing through her body, she turned into it and dashed down the stairs.
When she reached the basement level, she paused.
From this point on, she was breaking the rules.
The police department required all civilians to be escorted at the basement level. For good reason. There were holding cells down here, as well as weapons storage rooms. This was a high-security area.
It was often busy. All she could hope for was that the same dynamic that had just played out upstairs would happen again. Nobody thought of her as a normal civilian.
Squaring her shoulders, she turned right, down the narrow concrete hallway.
Almost immediately, three uniformed patrol officers emerged from the men’s changing room right ahead.
Harper’s heart began to pound.
She kept her eyes straight ahead, her stride confident. But she knew that wasn’t enough. Surely one of them would stop her and demand to know what she was doing down here.
They were deep in conversation, and none of them noticed her until they drew close.
One of them – middle-aged, balding, with a bit of a paunch artfully disguised by his heavily laden utility belt – looked up and caught her eye. His brow creased.
Harper’s mouth went dry.
He had the alert, narrow gaze of someone born to be a cop.
‘Oh,’ the officer said, smiling, ‘I’m sorry, ma’am.’ Turning, he motioned to the others. ‘Make room for the lady, will you?’
They squeezed to one side, waiting for her to pass.
Harper’s frozen lips somehow formed a polite grimace.
‘Thank you,’ she said hoarsely.
But they had already forgotten her.
‘You get that same unit again? They fixed the brakes yet?’ one of them asked.
‘No,’ the balding one said, glumly flipping his hat in his hands. ‘I think the sergeant might be trying to kill me.’
‘Well, just stick a foot out when you need to stop,’ someone suggested.
Their laughter echoed as they turned into the staircase.
Harper let out a breath and hurried her pace, hurtling past the changing rooms, from which emanated the faint scent of masculine body wash (chemical pine and something like cloves) and the sound of showers splashing. Then around a sharp corner.
She was half-running by the time she reached the archive room.
The door swung open at her touch.
A vast, warehouse-like space sprawled in front of her. With a concrete floor and rough walls, the harshly lit room held long rows of cardboard boxes stacked on open steel shelves that reached the ceiling.
By law, basic police incident reports are public information. The police are required to show them to the press and any member of the public who requests them. These brief forms were the documents the police kept on the front counter for Harper to look through every day.
Police investigation files are a different matter altogether.
These are lengthy – sometimes dozens of pages long. They contain information compiled by detectives and forensics investigators over weeks, even months of work. They include crime scene photos, interviews with suspects and witnesses, all their research – a play-by-play handbook for each major crime.
These are not shown to anybody.
And they were all stored in this room.
Each box held all that remained of weeks, months, even years of police work. Cases investigated down to the molecular level and then filed away, solved or unsolved, in cardboard boxes in this chilly, ugly, harshly lit room.
All the boxes were labeled with a series of numbers and letters and a barcode. That was it. No names, no dates.
The system was ruthlessly logical and impenetrable.
The box she was looking for would be easy to find … as long as she knew the box number … Which she didn’t.
She hadn’t dared ask Darlene for case numbers, as that would have raised attention she didn’t want. Without a case number, she’d have to open thousands of boxes.
Unless.
At the center of the room, a single computer sat alone on top of a metal desk.
Once upon a time, there would have been an archivist in charge of all these files. That person would have handled locating boxes – making sure everything that was removed was put back. That person would have taken one look at Harper and called the lieutenant.
Luckily, that person got laid off a long time ago.
When she touched the mouse, the screen lit up, and a Savannah PD badge filled the center of the blue screen. The legend beneath it read ‘To protect and to serve’. At the bottom of the screen was a narrow box and the command: ‘Enter ID’.
Harper put her hands on the keys and hesitated, trying to remember a series of numbers and letters she hadn’t used in a very long time.
When she’d interned for the department, she’d been issued a police ID number so she could work in the system. Police computers timed out anytime they went unused for more than five minutes, so she’d had to enter that code about a thousand times a day. It was in her memory somewhere.
What she didn’t know for sure was whether or not it would work.
The police IT department was small and over-worked. Issuing new ID numbers and deleting old ones from the system was one of those jobs that tended to get overlooked. In fact, the department often reused old ID numbers from former workers rather than go through the hassle of requesting a new one. That’s what they’d done when she worked there. She’d never had a new ID number – instead she’d used the number of some guy who hadn’t worked there in years. If she was right, nobody would ever have bothered to delete that ID from the system.
The only problem was, she wasn’t sure she could remember it. Also, there was always the chance they might have cleared out the system at some point in the intervening years.
The only way to find out was to try.
Closing her eyes she imagined typing the number without thinking about it. Fingers moving without any planning.
She tried to clear her memory of her work login, her email passwords, her banking passwords – all the clutter of modern computing.
815NL52K1
Holding her breath, she hit ‘enter’.
For a second the PC churned. Then the image on the screen changed to a white background fronted by the message: ‘Welcome Craig Johnson’.
Harper gave a triumphant air-punch.
Good old Craig.
Her euphoria was short-lived, though. Because, from this point on, she was breaking the law.
It took her a few minutes to remember how the police system was arranged, but it came back to her. Hunched over the computer, she worked with nervous speed, constantly listening for footsteps in the hallway outside or voices that could be heading her way.
After what seemed like a lifetime she found the records section and typed in ‘McClain, Alicia’.
Instantly, a folder appeared, the cursor blinking beside it methodically.
Taking a deep breath, Harper clicked on it. The folder opened to reveal dozens of files.
None of the file names made sense, so she started at the top, opening each one. The first few were random bits of paperwork – scanned in notes that had long ago lost their meanings and other routine paperwork.
She clicked on file after file until at last she found what she wanted: ‘Official Case Report HOMICIDE McClain, Alicia’.
Pulling her notebook out of her pocket, she read the file rapidly, letting words jump out at her. Deceased. Stab wounds. Assailant unknown. Weapon not recovered. Her old address. She scribbled quick notes, fingers cold on her pen.
Then the screen filled with sickening images – photograph after photograph of her old kitchen. The table where she’d eaten Cheerios for breakfast shoved violently to one side. The chair where she’d sat, upended. A naked, pale body lying face down on the floor, one hand flung out in a silent plea.
Exactly as she’d remembered it. Exactly like Marie Whitney.
Harper made herself look at it. Forced herself to look for anything she had missed then.
She could see signs of herself there – the long mark where her sneakers had skidded in the blood. But there was nothing there – not one thing – that wasn’t already branded on her mind forever.
She closed the file.
The next file held more emotionless description of horror, and a mention of herself (‘Body found by daughter, Harper, 12’).
She scanned it quickly, pausing on two lines. ‘No fingerprints at the scene.’ And then, a side note: ‘Coroner reports clothing removed posthumously.’
Her heart jumped.
She read the words again and again.
Clothing removed posthumously.
That was precisely like Marie Whitney. Precisely.
Surely this was proof?
Somehow, though, the knowledge didn’t make the situation any clearer.
What more did the detectives need? How could they say the two cases weren’t connected?
They couldn’t. It was a lie. They were protecting someone.
Protecting Blazer.
She was clicking through the last of the files when she heard voices approaching the door.
Swearing under her breath, she fumbled with the mouse, rushing to close the files, trying desperately to remember how to log out of the system.
‘Please, please, please …’ she whispered, as she frantically clicked on everything until finally finding the option buried in the menu.
As soon as the files disappeared, and with the computer still churning, she jumped away from the desk and dashed between the long rows of boxes.
The voices were drawing nearer. A deep male rumble of words she couldn’t quite make out over the hammering of her heart.
Pressing herself back into the shadows, Harper searched her brain for an excuse. She’d only come in here looking for a file. She hadn’t found it. She was sorry.
The voices were right outside the door now. She dug her fingers into the cold steel shelf behind her.
And then … they kept going.
Whoever it was walked by the archive and continued down towards the armory. The sounds gradually faded.
Harper sagged back against the nearest box until her panicked breathing returned to normal.
Then she grabbed her notebook and started looking for her mother’s records.
Most of what she’d needed had been on the computer, but she had to know everything now. Everything the police knew.
Using the case file number she’d acquired from the computer, she soon found the box she sought on the fourth row at the back of the room, on the middle shelf. Plain manila cardboard, exactly like the others, with no name.
Gingerly, Harper slid it towards her. It was disturbingly light. She’d imagined it filled with the heavy weight of a long murder investigation, but she pulled it from the shelf easily and set it on the floor.
Kneeling next to it, she carefully lifted the lid.
As the lightness of it indicated, it was only half full. Mostly it held papers – originals of the documents she’d already seen on the computer.
Beneath those, a stack of plastic envelopes contained evidence collected at the house.
Harper lifted them out, examining each one. A broken plate, some old envelopes. Unexpectedly, her own white tennis shoes, stained brown with blood.
She’d always wondered what happened to them.
In an instant, she could remember the last time she’d seen them. Sitting on a plastic chair at the police station. Someone kneeling in front of her, swabbing her hands, unlacing her shoes.
Smith had sent an officer out to get a new pair. She’d been in such a daze she’d barely understood what was happening as the unfamiliar shoes – stiff and uncomfortable – were slipped onto her feet.
‘Where are my shoes?’ she’d asked.
‘We have to keep them,’ Smith told her. ‘But these are better.’
Now, as she turned the plastic bag in her hands she saw that, true to his word, he had kept them all these years.
Reluctantly, Harper set the shoes down and turned her attention to the box. There was only one plastic bag left.
This one held her mother’s paintbrushes.
Her throat felt suddenly tight.
They were so familiar. Her mother used only one brand of brushes, with plain, unvarnished wooden handles. She was always leaving them around the house – in the living room. In the bathroom.
They were as much a part of her as her skin, her hair.
Harper held the bag holding the brushes up to the light – two of the brushes had dried paint on the bristles, caked and flaking – vivid vermilion, and pure white.
She couldn’t imagine why the police would have been taken these for evidence. Maybe her mother had been using them when the killer arrived. Perhaps she’d dropped them at the scene.
Either way, she hated that they’d ended up here, in a cardboard box, on row four of twelve beneath a cold fluorescent light.
She had to force herself to put the bag aside. But she’d come here to see everything, and she wasn’t going to stop looking now.
She dug through the rest of the box, increasingly aware that she was pushing her luck staying in here so long.
At the bottom of the box was a short stack of random pieces of paper.
Kneeling on the hard concrete, her knees beginning to ache, Harper skimmed the pages quickly, her bottom lip caught between her teeth.
Several of them were cover notes that had accompanied forensic evidence from the crime scene to the detectives to forensics. The last one was an official forensics request form that had accompanied blood samples sent for further testing. It was dated one month after her mother’s murder.
The terse, handwritten instructions on the form read: RI-check blood type/DNA.
The handwriting was spidery and narrow, written with a strong, left-hand slant.
The signature at the bottom was clear and unmistakable:
Larry Blazer.