When she was there, waiting for Smith to finish working, the cops would vie to entertain her. They brought her drinks and bags of potato chips from the vending machines. The traffic cops used to take her for rides around the parking lot on their motorcycles.
At twelve, thirteen, fourteen – she was their mascot. She was almost one of them.
And yet, despite all of this, and despite her long, close friendship with Smith, she wasn’t one of them. Not really.
Luke could get into real trouble.
Suddenly, everything they’d done last night seemed stupid and reckless. Anyone could have seen them together in the garden, whispering. Anyone could have spotted them leaving and put two and two together. They were cops, after all.
She’d gone still for so long, Zuzu yawned, arched her striped back, and strode away stiffly.
‘Mind your own business,’ Harper called after her.
Dragging herself out of bed, she padded barefoot down the hall, where sunlight bounced off the polished wood floors, refracting off the clean walls.
She kept the place sparsely furnished – neat as a hospital ward. It held only two gray Ikea sofas and a small television. She liked that she could walk straight lines across it without running into anything.
She’d never really thought about why – it was just the way she was.
All the walls were painted the same off-white they’d been when she moved in – it had never occurred to her to change them. The splashes of color came from the art. The wall between the living room and the tiny kitchen held a large, bright canvas featuring a field of yellow and white flowers so beautifully painted they seemed to sway in a breeze. It was Harper’s favorite of all her mother’s paintings.
Another painting hung above the fireplace – a dreamy, sun-drenched piece painted by Bonnie years ago. It portrayed a younger Harper in a white dress with flaming red hair, a delicate scattering of freckles on her cheeks, turning away to look into the golden light.
It was ironic that Bonnie had been the one with the art gene, rather than Harper. But Harper had never painted again, after her mother died.
‘I always loved watching your mom paint,’ Bonnie said when she first started studying art seriously. ‘She seemed so happy; so free. No other grown-ups in my life loved their jobs as much as she loved hers.’
Like the rest of the apartment, the small bathroom was orderly, too. Towels hung just so. Soap dish sparkling. Without even noticing she was doing it, Harper straightened the bath mat by half an inch, before climbing into the shower.
Later, clean and dressed, she turned on her scanner and brewed a pot of strong coffee. She listened absently to curt, emotionless discussions of fender-benders and sidewalk falls as she waited for the coffee to finish.
Her kitchen wasn’t big, but it had everything she needed, with a window overlooking the backyard, and tall cabinets Billy had made himself. Like the hallway, the walls and cabinet were white.
The black-and-white tiled floor was cool under her bare feet as she carried a mug of coffee to the kitchen table.
Zuzu crouched by the cat door beneath the window, tail switching, then suddenly leapt through it, as if pouncing on the world.
‘Goodbye to you, too,’ Harper murmured, reaching for her laptop.
Having a cat hadn’t been her idea.
Three years earlier, a particularly feckless crew of tenants upstairs had moved out (owing, Billy told her mournfully, two months’ rent) and left their cat behind. The skinny gray tabby showed up on Harper’s porch one afternoon, staring at her insistently with hungry green eyes.
‘No,’ Harper told her, heading off to work.
When she returned at two a.m., it was raining and the cat was still there, trying to sleep, with her back pressed hard against the front door.
Harper saw the cat flinch as the rain splashed her fur.
‘Oh well,’ she’d said to herself when she opened the door to let her in. ‘Maybe cat food isn’t that expensive.’
It turned out they had a lot in common. Both of them liked their independence. And both of them hated sleeping alone.
Sitting cross-legged, she logged into her email, but she’d only opened one message when her cell phone rang.
‘Harper,’ she said, still reading.
‘It’s DJ.’
She could hear the buzz of the newsroom in the background – low conversation, phones ringing.
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘What’s up?’
‘I’ve been digging around into this Marie Whitney thing.’ He was talking so quietly it was hard to hear him. ‘I’ve found something out. I think you’re going to want to hear it.’
‘Spill,’ Harper ordered, looking around for a pen and paper.
‘Yeah … actually …’ He sounded anxious, his voice was low. ‘Can you meet me somewhere?’
‘I could come in early?’ she suggested.
‘Not here,’ he said quickly. ‘Is there someplace else we could meet?’
Harper’s brow furrowed.
‘You don’t want to meet at the newsroom?’
‘Uh-uh.’ He was whispering now. ‘How about the coffee shop you go to? The arty one.’
There was an edge to his voice – excitement, nervousness.
He’d found something.
Harper set down her coffee so hard it splashed.
‘Pangaea? Sure. When?’
‘Half an hour?’
‘No problem,’ she said calmly. ‘See you there.’
By the time he hung up, she was running to the bedroom to finish dressing.
When Harper walked into the coffee shop twenty minutes later, DJ was already there, sitting alone at a table in the far corner under a painting of unidentifiable blue squiggles, a double cappuccino in front of him.
She ordered a large, black coffee and walked over to join him.
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘This isn’t usually your place.’
‘I thought it would be nice.’ His voice was even but, under the table, one of his legs was jittering.
‘Uh-huh. Enough already. What’s up with all the subterfuge?’
She blew on her coffee, watching him carefully. He was so nervous, she needed to exude calm to keep him from bouncing out of his chair.
DJ’s eyes skittered around the room. The place was busy with a lunchtime crowd of twenty-somethings, most glued to their laptops or smart phones, angling their bodies to block the sun pouring through the tall windows from their screens. A bossa nova tune oozed out of the speakers.
‘Nobody’s paying attention to us,’ she assured him. ‘You can talk.’
DJ took a deep breath. ‘You know how you asked me to go back to the college and nose around, see what else I could turn over about Marie Whitney? Well, I went back over there this morning and talked to some people in her office. They told me more about the guys. About her. I heard all kinds of crazy things.’
He leaned forward, moving his coffee out of the way.
‘Colleges are incredibly gossipy places, and most of it’s usually bullshit. But, the way people were talking, it sounded like there was something to this. They said she had a reputation for liking dangerous sex. She particularly liked seducing other women’s husbands. From what people were telling me it’s like …’ he paused. ‘It’s like Whitney enjoyed messing with people’s heads. The impression I got was she enjoyed hurting people.’
Harper watched him closely.
‘And you believed them? The people who said this stuff?’
‘The women I talked to, they were genuinely emotional about her. It was hard not to believe them,’ he said. ‘Everything they told me – it was so consistent. Some people were really afraid of her.’
Harper rubbed her forehead. Her image of Marie Whitney, a martyred mother so like her own, was growing hazy, replaced by Marie Whitney, swinging sex goddess. Destroyer of marriages.
‘This is so weird,’ she said. ‘Her whole profile is this together businesswoman. A single mother, raising her kid.
Now you’re telling me she was this sociopathic man-hunter.’
‘She can be both,’ DJ pointed out. ‘I think maybe she was both.’
Harper had covered many crimes where a jealous ex killed his former wife, or where a betrayed woman gunned down her replacement. But that didn’t fit the scene she’d seen in that kitchen.
‘Whitney’s death wasn’t a crime of passion,’ she said flatly.
He frowned. ‘How do you know?’
‘I saw …’ She stopped herself just in time. ‘I saw the reports on the murder. The crime scene was neat and orderly. The killer didn’t leave a single fingerprint. Not even a hair. It was carefully planned and perfectly executed. Passion crimes are a mess. Those killers aren’t thinking, they’re reacting. They trash the place, leave evidence everywhere. They’re tantrum killings.’
She paused, seeing Whitney’s body. Camille’s tearful face. That orderly kitchen.
‘This was cold-blooded. Ruthless.’
‘Well,’ DJ said. ‘That’s where this other thing might come in.’
Harper’s eyes shot up to meet his. ‘What other thing?’
‘Remember how I heard she liked powerful men?’
Harper nodded.
‘I was talking to the receptionist in the office where she worked,’ he said. ‘She said she saw Whitney holding hands with a guy with a badge a few months before she died. He wasn’t wearing a uniform, though. He was in a suit. But he was obviously a cop.’ He looked at her. ‘Harper, doesn’t that mean Whitney was dating a detective?’
Harper stared at him – her pulse began to race.
Nobody – not one cop – had mentioned Whitney was involved with a police officer.
‘Wait,’ she said, forcing herself to think it through. ‘It could be. Or it could be a rent-a-cop. A security guard. Those guys sometimes dress a lot like detectives.’
‘I thought about that, too,’ he conceded. ‘And I said that to her. But she said she asked Whitney if he was a cop. And she smiled and said, “I love a man with a badge.”’
‘That’s not a yes,’ Harper said.
‘This source, she said it was. She took it as a yes.’
‘Damn,’ Harper swore. ‘I wish she’d said yes or no.’
Under the table, DJ’s leg shook anxiously.
‘Harper, if it is a cop, this just got really dangerous.’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘And very interesting.’
‘No, seriously, Harper.’ He shot her a look. ‘These guys aren’t going to let you write about a detective who maybe killed someone. And, look,’ he shifted in his seat, ‘odds are it’s unrelated, right? She went out with this guy three months ago, nothing came of it, they broke up. This receptionist told me Whitney hadn’t been spotted with this cop in months. But if, say, a cop was involved, and he murdered a woman …’ Behind his glasses his brown eyes locked on hers. ‘He’ll gun for you before he lets you expose him.’
His worry was contagious. Harper swallowed hard.
She pushed back against the nerves.
‘Come on, DJ.’ She forced a light tone. ‘It’s not like I’ll stroll up to a detective and say, “I know you did it.” Give me some credit.’
He watched her steadily, choosing his words carefully.
‘I guess you know what you’re doing,’ he said after a moment. ‘But, still. You have to be careful this time, Harper.’
‘I’m always careful,’ she said. ‘Now, what did your receptionist friend know about this detective? Could she identify him?’
‘She doesn’t know his name,’ DJ said apologetically. ‘Apparently he never came into the office. She saw him from a distance. Tall – over six feet. In his late forties. Light hair – blond or salt and pepper.’ He paused. ‘Oh, and she said he had scary eyes. Whatever that means.’
The sounds of the coffee shop receded. The music, the conversation – all hushed.
Harper could think of only one detective who fit that description. And he was investigating Whitney’s murder.
Detective Larry Blazer.
Chapter Eighteen
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 t
he 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.’
The Echo Killing Page 15
