“There was almost a shooting on Tybee last night,” she announced. “Would have been the story of the year given how little happens out there.”
Baxter glanced up at her. “But?”
“But it was only fireworks, cops think. No body. No blood.”
“Terrific,” Baxter said, dourly. “I’ll hold the front page.”
There were dark shadows under her eyes. Harper dropped into one of the chairs facing her desk. “You look worn out.”
“Thanks.” Baxter closed the laptop. “I’d be fine if one of my reporters would bring me a big story. Actually, I’d accept anything at this point. The newspaper building burning down, for instance. That would work.”
She leaned back in a black leather executive chair that had been hers since Paul Dells, the previous managing editor, had been fired last summer. Baxter, the night editor, had been doing both their jobs since he left, and the strain showed. But she had little choice. MaryAnne Charlton, the paper’s mercurial owner, was demanding more work done by fewer staff. The paper was profitable but there was no such thing as enough for the Charlton family.
“There was that shooting last week,” Harper reminded her. “That should’ve calmed Charlton down for a while.”
Baxter dismissed that. “It was a one-day story. Charlton’s a thorn in my side but she’s right about this—we haven’t broken anything big in weeks.” She picked up that day’s paper with its front-page image of bumper-to-bumper cars. “What gets people subscribing are crooked politicians and crime. All we’ve got is traffic. I need something big before Charlton throws us all out and opens a boutique hotel in my newsroom.”
Standing, she yanked her blazer from the back of her chair and stabbed her hands into the sleeves. “I need a cigarette.”
Harper followed her through the door into the newsroom bustle. The editor didn’t make it far.
“Hey, Baxter. Could you take a look at this?” Ed Lasterson, the court reporter, waved her over. As she turned toward him, Harper headed to her desk.
Education reporter DJ Gonzales spun his chair around as she passed.
“You’re early.” His tone was accusing. “You’re not supposed to be here until four.”
Harper smiled sweetly. “I couldn’t wait to see you … to tell you to mind your own business.” She switched on her computer and logged in with motions so automatic her brain hardly knew it had happened.
Unbothered by her sarcasm, DJ rolled closer to her. “What’s up with Baxter? She looks rough.”
“She’s tired,” Harper told him, quietly. “I don’t know if she can handle the pace much longer.”
DJ grew sober. “If she goes, who the hell will run this place?”
Harper didn’t reply. She didn’t have to. They both knew Baxter was the glue holding the newspaper together. The editor’s joke about Charlton converting it into a hotel was too close to reality to be funny.
“She’ll be fine,” she said, shortly. “All we need is a good story.”
“We’ll get one,” DJ said, without hesitation. “We always do.” He spun his chair back to his computer, somehow ending up with his hands on the keyboard.
He was right. But Harper wasn’t willing to just wait for a story to fall into her lap. Her beat was the one that sold the most papers. There was nothing people liked more with their cornflakes in the morning than a juicy glass of homicide, and the criminals of Savannah had been too quiet lately.
Or maybe she’d missed something.
Yanking open the top right-hand drawer of her desk, she pulled out a handful of reporter’s notebooks and began riffling through them for a crime she could follow up on. Something she’d overlooked.
The slim, wire-bound pages were filled with hasty scribbles that had made sense at the time.
“Nine-millimeter hollow-point shells fired six times. Casings recovered.”
“Three males last seen running west on Broad. One bleeding from the shoulder…”
“Bags tested positive for cocaine…”
When her phone rang, she picked it up absently. “McClain,” she said, not looking up from the notes in front of her.
“Um. Hi.” The voice on the phone was cautious. Gruff. “This is Officer Tom Southby from Tybee. We met last night?”
“Oh, hey,” Harper straightened. “What’s up? Is there news on the shots fired?”
“It’s not that,” he said. “I’m sorry to bother you, this might be nothing, but you did say for me to call if anything happened out here. And, well … Someone on the island’s gone missing.”
In Harper’s experience, most missing people were teenagers running away from home. Generally they came back before the news story was published. Still, it was unusual enough for a street cop like Southby to tip her off, that she pushed the old notebooks out of the way, and dug out a new one.
“Tell me about it,” she said. “Is it a juvenile? How long have they been missing?”
Southby must have been in his car—she could hear the sound of traffic during the brief pause before he spoke. “That’s the reason I’m calling you. The missing man’s kind of famous. A musician. Name of Xavier Rayne.”
Frowning, Harper summoned a vague mental image of a handsome young man with high cheekbones and light brown skin.
“I’ve heard of him. So, he’s gone AWOL?”
“So, it seems,” Southby said. “His friends called this morning. They say he hasn’t been seen since last night.”
Harper was puzzled. Normally the police didn’t consider someone truly missing until they’d been gone twenty-four hours.
“They don’t think he just went to someone’s house and crashed for a while?” she asked.
“Here’s the thing,” Southby said. “Last time his friends saw him, he was walking out to the beach with his guitar in his hand.” He paused. “We found his guitar this morning. But there’s no sign of Xavier Rayne.”
3
Now Harper was intrigued.
“You say he was at home?” She was scribbling notes as she talked. “Where’s his house?”
“On the north side of the island, not far from the lighthouse,” Southby said. “He lives right off the beach.”
“What time was he last seen?”
“Just after two in the morning,” he said.
Harper’s pen stopped moving.
“That was the same time people reported gunshots,” she said. “Do you think that’s connected?”
“Now, hold on.” Southby’s voice grew stern. “Don’t go writing anything about that. We’ve got no evidence that there even were gunshots. We’ve also got no crime scene. No blood was found. No sign of an altercation. All we’ve got is a missing person. His housemates are clear that they saw no intruders and heard nothing suspicious. They didn’t even notice he hadn’t come home until this morning.”
“And they say he walked down to the beach alone at two in the morning?” Harper’s tone was doubtful. “The storm was coming in around then. The winds were pretty high.”
“His friends say he does it all the time. They say he likes to ‘connect to the ocean.’” He sounded more bemused than concerned.
“Does it seem suspicious to you?” Harper pressed. “Rayne’s been getting a lot of press lately. Could it be a kidnapping?”
There was a telltale pause before he responded. “I wouldn’t go on the record with any theories right now. But I will say this much—currents are unpredictable on the north side of the island, especially at this time of year. His friends say he’d been drinking. Drunks make bad swimmers. But, right now, we don’t know if he ever went in the water. The wind blew the sand around all night, leaving no footprints, and then there’s the rain.” She could almost hear him scratching his head. “Basically, we don’t have much to work with. At the moment, he’s a missing person. And we need to spread the word in case anyone out there knows where he is. That’s why I’m calling.”
“I’ll do whatever I can to help,” Harper said. “Let me know if h
e turns up. And thanks for the tip. I owe you one.”
As soon as she set the phone down, she typed “Xavier Rayne” into a search engine. Dozens of headlines opened—many of them in national newspapers and online magazines. As she scanned them, Harper’s eyes widened.
Here’s your front-page story, Baxter, she thought.
The editor was no longer talking to Lasterson. Nor was she in her office. She must have finally made it outside for that cigarette.
Putting her notebook and scanner in her bag, she grabbed her jacket, still damp from the rain, and sped across the newsroom and raced down the stairs. At the bottom, she hit the green button to unlock the door.
Baxter stood on the front steps under an overhang that shielded her from the rain. Her back was to the whitewashed wall, a Marlboro Gold was between her lips. Her eyes were closed as she absorbed the smoke like oxygen. Her blazer hung loose on her bony shoulders. She wasn’t yet fifty, but right now she looked ten years older than that.
As if she sensed someone watching her, Baxter opened her eyes.
“Missing-person case,” Harper began.
“Oh terrific.” She blew out a long stream of disinterested smoke.
“The missing guy is a musician named Xavier Rayne,” Harper continued, undaunted.
The cigarette, which had been swooping back toward the editor’s mouth, stopped in midair. “You’re kidding.”
“I just looked him up.” Harper could barely contain her excitement. “His album came out this week and it’s in the top ten already. He’s supposed to go on tour in three days. And, as of right now, no one knows where the hell he is.”
The editor’s exhaustion seemed to evaporate. She stood straighter, her eyes sharpening. “How much have you got?”
Harper recapped what Southby had told her. When she finished, Baxter dropped the remains of her cigarette on the sidewalk and ground it down with the toe of her low-heeled shoe.
“Get out there right now,” she ordered. “Get your hands on the missing-persons report. Take Miles. Talk to Rayne’s friends, find out what they have to say. I’ll leave space on the front page.”
“On it.” Leaving her there, Harper ran around the building to the back lot, boots splashing in the puddles. By the time she reached the Camaro, she was soaked but she barely noticed.
She pulled out her phone and dialed Miles’s number. It only rang once.
“Nothing’s happening,” the photographer said, instead of hello.
“I’m in the city,” she told him, starting the engine. “How would you feel about a trip to the beach?”
“Please tell me you mean Bermuda.”
Harper smiled. “Not exactly.”
* * *
She picked Miles up in front of his apartment building ten minutes later. He lived at the dicey end of River Street—far from the paddlewheel boats and praline shops that were hallmarks of tourist Savannah. The warehouse conversion was surrounded by industrial buildings and empty lots. Harper hated going there at night—it sent her crime radar off the charts. But it had a hell of a view and he’d got it for a song.
Miles set his camera bag carefully in the back and climbed into the passenger seat. Harper was soaked, her hair in wet tangles. By contrast, he looked pristine in a snazzy black raincoat over a crisp button-down shirt with a burgundy print. He kept his dark hair cropped short, and he was always clean shaven. He brought style to every crime scene.
“How much do we know?” he asked, buckling up.
On the way out to the island, she filled him in. She had to take it slow: the road was nearly flooded in places.
When she’d given him the basics, he fell silent for a moment before saying, “Tell you what, if Xavier Rayne’s dead it’s a goddamn shame.”
Harper glanced at him, surprised. “Do you know him?”
“Not personally,” he said. “But I’ve been following his career since he started out, singing at open-mic nights around town when he was a teenager. He always had talent but, in the last couple of years, he found his voice.” He sounded almost reverent. “He’s the real deal. Two years at Juilliard on a full scholarship. Dropped out to go pro. His new album is something else.”
She should have known Miles would be all over this. He loved music, and had a professional’s affinity for spotting new talent in the area.
“He’s probably just passed out on someone’s couch,” she told him.
“Maybe.” Still morose, he looked out the window at the marshes. “Or else he’s feeding crabs.”
The Tybee Island police headquarters was a low clapboard structure near the beach. The street was quiet as the two of them hurried up the wide sidewalk to the front door. The rain had eased a little, but a cool breeze blew in hard off the ocean. The air smelled of brine.
Inside, pale light flooded through wide picture windows into an airy, open-plan space that felt for all the world like a luxury real-estate office. There was no one in the lobby. The reception desk was unmanned.
Harper looked around, bewildered. She’d never seen a police station that wasn’t teeming with activity at this time of day.
She stood on her toes, calling into the office behind the front desk. “Hello?”
A chair, which she’d assumed to be empty, twitched before it rolled back, revealing a woman in her thirties with short, blond hair.
“Oh my heavens,” the woman said, getting up. “You startled me. I didn’t realize anyone was there.” Her apologetic smile was outlined in pink lipstick, matching her pink cardigan. Her gaze swung from Harper to Miles and back again. “Can I help you?”
“We’re from the Savannah Daily News.” Harper held out her press pass. “We’d like to see the crime report on Xavier Rayne.”
“Oh yes.” The woman grew serious. “Tom Southby told me you might come in. I’ve got it right here.” She picked a folder up off the desk and slid it across to them, already open to reveal an official form. “It’s such a shame. That poor young man. I hope he’s okay.”
Harper and Miles bent over the document, which set out the case in stark, emotionless terms.
Missing person: Michael Xavier Rayne.
Age: 24
Height: 6ft
Weight: 160
Race: Mixed
Hair: Black
Eyes: Hazel
Last seen: Approx. 0200 hours
Last known location: 6 Admiral’s Row
Last seen: Individual had been drinking heavily at his residence for several hours. Individual announced he was going to the beach to write music. Housemates report seeing him walk to the beach with guitar and bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Housemates say they fell asleep after that point. When they awoke, individual had not slept in his bed. When he did not answer his phone or respond to messages, they searched the house and nearby beach. At approximately 1200 hours they contacted PD to report missing person.
Page two had a few additional details: basic information about the scene—house in good repair, no sign of forced entry, no evidence of a struggle.
At the end was a final entry.
Reporting persons: Hunter Carlson, Cara Brand, Allegra Hanson.
All of them listed the Admiral’s Row address as their home. Harper wrote down all three names before handing the file back to the receptionist.
“Have you had any calls at all about him this afternoon?” Miles asked. “Any sightings?”
“Nothing at all.” The receptionist looked past them out the glass wall to the swirling clouds and falling rain. “I sure hope he turns up. This is no kind of weather to be out in.”
Harper couldn’t argue with that. But all she said was, “Can you tell us how to get to Admiral’s Row?”
* * *
The receptionist’s directions took them to a short, leafy street of six grand, two-story Victorian mansions on a low bluff overlooking the ocean. The houses were identical and magnificent—each had a high, peaked roof and a spacious wraparound porch on both floors.
Number 6 was t
he last house on the lane.
Harper parked at the end of the street, and killed the engine.
“Nice place,” Miles observed, looking up at the huge windows. “I guess music pays.”
The low, menacing growl of the ocean was clear in the distance as they got out of the car.
Harper turned around, trying to get her bearings. She thought the lane was probably a mile from Spinnaker Cottage. And maybe half a mile or more from where gunshots had been reported the night before. But it was hard to tell without looking at a map. The island’s winding roads were confusing.
“What’s up?” Miles asked, glancing back at her.
“Oh it’s nothing,” she said, after a second. “Just thinking.”
It was too early to make any guesses about what was going on here. She had nothing substantial to connect this missing-person case with the gunshots. And the police didn’t believe there had even been any gunshots at all.
She didn’t want to blow a good story by hoping for a better one.
She glanced at Miles. “You want to come inside or head straight down to the beach?”
His eyes swept the impressive house. “I’ll come with you. I want to get a feel for the place.”
The front door was broad and sturdy, painted the same white as the house, with a fan-shaped transom window above it that looked as old as the building.
Harper took the lead, knocking firmly. A long silence followed. She was thinking of knocking again when the door was yanked open so unexpectedly she jumped back, bumping hard into Miles.
A man in his twenties glared at them. “What the hell do you want?”
He was tall and slim. His sandy-brown hair stood up as if he’d just raked his fingers through it. He wore a faded band T-shirt for a group called the Lumineers.
Remembering the names on the report, Harper said, “We’re sorry to bother you. Are you Hunter?”
His brow creased. “Who’s asking?”
He had a Northern accent—New England, maybe. He was trying to sound intimidating, but Harper could hear the nervousness that lay beneath his words.
Revolver Road Page 2
