FRIDAY, 10:24 A.M.
CRIME SCENE AT GRANITE RIDGE
Harper hiked over to the wreckage at the bottom of Granite Ridge, her gut twisting into a thousand knots at the sight of the camper and truck, now broken lumps of blackened, crumpled metal.
Her limbs shook, but she kept moving. She had to hold it together. She couldn’t collapse to her knees and sob.
Evidence photography required emotional detachment. Impartiality. But that would be impossible.
Detective Moffett and Heath hiked alongside her until they were at the scene of the accident—the crime scene—where they stood back and let Harper work, watching her every move. To Harper’s surprise, the county’s crime scene techs had finished up their work this morning and released the scene.
As Harper studied the wreckage, she fought the nausea building in her stomach.
God, please give me nerves of steel.
She’d wanted this, after all. It wasn’t like the sheriff had hired her. He was simply allowing her to look for anything his investigators and techs might have missed. He had nothing to lose. Heath had been right about Taggart being a man who wanted the truth. Like her, he wanted to catch this killer and shut him down. The sooner that happened, the better for everyone.
Detective Moffett was present to make sure that any evidence Harper found wasn’t contaminated or even planted—so there still remained that thread of suspicion, but she understood that this precaution was only meant to preserve Harper’s findings if they were used later in a trial. Harper wondered if part of Moffett hoped Harper found nothing at all. Finding something would put the detective’s and the techs’ skills into question. Still, they were a small, shorthanded operation.
Harper had reservations, too many doubts about herself to count, but she ignored them. She didn’t have time for that. This killer had come after her personally and had included Emily in his death plans.
Drawing in a few stabilizing breaths, Harper switched on her photographer’s brain, shutting down composition mode for the time being. This wasn’t artistic photography. Crime scene or evidence photographs required a different mind-set and focus.
Fortunately, one of the techs had allowed her to use the department camera, tripod, and tools.
“So what have you figured out so far?” Harper asked. “How did he lock us in? How did he get into my truck and start it?”
Moffett’s eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses. “With this old retro Airstream, blocking the door wouldn’t have been hard. I can detail a list of ways if you need that, but nailing that down with this mangle of materials is going to take time.”
Heath stood next to Moffett. “The truck is easy. It’s an older model, so either he hot-wired it or one of you left the keys in the ignition.”
“It would have been an oversight on my part. The truck is mine. Or I should say was. The Airstream was Emily’s.”
Moffett pursed her lips. “An awful lot of trouble, if you ask me.”
As Harper listened, she took pictures of the overall scene. “What do you mean?”
“Easier ways to kill a person.”
Harper didn’t respond, even though retorts erupted in her brain. Yeah, he could have simply locked them inside and burned down the camper or shot them in the head.
“Not if he wanted it to look like Harper had been driving. That way it wouldn’t actually look like she’d been murdered. She and Emily would have been thrown from the camper as it broke apart, and with the twisted tangle of metal, investigators would not have been able to tell whether they had been in the camper or in the truck,” Heath said. “He hadn’t counted on them escaping.”
“But the person responsible couldn’t have known for certain that the RV would break apart, so if that was the plan, it was flawed,” Harper said.
Bile rose in her throat.
The conversation was distracting her from her task, so she tuned them out while she focused. Normally she would take pictures of everything before anyone else had touched anything. Or had removed even the smallest piece of evidence. She wished she knew what they had taken, if anything.
First, she started with the overview shots. Harper moved from the crumpled metal until she was a good distance away and set the Nikon D100 to capture the widest possible shots of the entire scene, including the ridge in the background. She walked around the scene and took the same wide shots from every possible angle. Done right, it could take hours, while processing a crime scene thoroughly could take days. But she would do her best with the time allotted because she might not get another chance.
“I’ll need to take shots of this from the top of the ridge too, after I’ve taken pictures of that area.”
Maybe she was pushing it and Moffett would rein her in, but she heard nothing from the detective. She took more shots to show the relation to the ridge and the surrounding area.
Then she moved in closer to take the midrange images, which normally would focus on key pieces of evidence in situ and context, but unless the techs had missed something, Harper wouldn’t have anything to photograph, so forget about the closeup shots.
But she would keep looking for something missed.
Only an hour into taking the photographs and Moffett stood closer. Growing anxious? Was she trying to intimidate Harper? The sun was high in the sky, shining directly into the ravine next to the ridge. To her credit, the detective said nothing.
“The witness said I was driving.”
“Another deputy is asking him for clarification,” Moffett said. “It was dark. He must have gotten it wrong. So that you don’t ask and insult my intelligence, yes, we have checked for fingerprints in and on the vehicle and the camper, what’s left of them. We checked the footprints and tire tracks up at the campground and near the place where we suspect the perp hopped from the truck. That jump had to have hurt. You and your sister know that from experience. We’re still checking the local clinics and hospitals for anyone reporting the kinds of injuries that could be sustained from a jump like that.”
“Okay. Thanks.” Good to know.
Harper stared at what was left of the cab. Burned. Crushed. Except part of the seat had come dislodged and rested off to the side. She knelt down and took photographs. Zoomed in. Hoped for more evidence.
“Did they already gather evidence from this seat?”
“A few hairs and fibers. Yours and your sister’s probably.”
Through the lens, Harper peered at one particular hair on the seat. “They missed one.”
“Your hairs don’t mean anything.”
“No. But a long hair that isn’t mine means something.” She lowered the camera and looked at the detective.
Moffett stared at her. “Make your point.”
“My hair isn’t this bright shade of red. Someone could have been wearing an old or cheap wig to make it look like I was driving. Take all the hairs, not some of them. Since I’m not official here, would you mind collecting, documenting, and packaging the evidence? Even better, take this whole seat to the lab.”
“You think that hair is a synthetic fiber?”
“I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure it isn’t mine.” Harper studied the hair. She’d been an evidence photographer, but she’d also worked as a tech and knew how to gather the evidence and document it. “Send all the hairs to the state crime lab to see if even one of them is synthetic. There’s a database of the types of wig hairs and the manufacturers. If it’s synthetic, that will tell us something.”
“And what if he or she wore a wig but it was made with real hair?”
“That won’t help us at all.” And would be impossible to track. Maybe Harper was trying too hard. “Unless the hair belongs to the perp. He could actually have long hair, for all we know. He could be a she.” Harper had believed the shooter had been behind the wheel of the truck, wanting to silence her—the witness to his crime—but maybe he had a partner in crime.
Moffett blew out a breath. “I’ll go ahead and have them come back and get this entire seat to the lab.”
And then Harper saw it. Admiration sparked in Moffett’s eyes as she removed her sunglasses.
What? Did Harper’s competence surprise her?
Still, Harper didn’t care all that much about impressing Moffett, even though it served to validate her effort. No. Harper cared only about what Heath thought. As she lifted her gaze to meet his, a nugget of fear lodged in her throat. Would he think anything at all? If he didn’t, that might actually disappoint her.
Why did she care? She shouldn’t . . .
Heath’s sunglasses were resting on his head and his arms were crossed.
His grin and the respect in his eyes said it all.