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.
Chapter Twenty
When Harper returned to the newsroom half an hour later, it was empty except for Baxter, who was typing furiously.
‘You got anything?’ the editor called without looking up.
‘Nothing much,’ Harper said, heading straight to her desk.
She hoped her confused emotions didn’t show on her face. The last thing she wanted was Baxter getting curious.
But her editor was too involved in whatever she was writing to notice the stiff set of Harper’s shoulders, or the terse tone of her response.
That signature had jarred her. Despite everything, until she’d seen that name, she’d doubted her own theory.
It simply seemed too unlikely that Blazer could be the killer. Or any cop she’d ever met.
Now, though, after everything she’d learned in the last twenty-four hours, things felt different.
Still, she knew she needed to calm down. To think rationally. To make her case.
Pulling out her notebook, she flipped to a clean sheet.
What did she have?
She wrote down:
Murder scene professional – killer knew how cops work
Blazer connected to investigation of both murders
Blazer possibly associated with Marie Whitney before her death
If true: Blazer covered up his connections to Whitney
Her pen paused above the paper as she tried to summon more facts that might point to Blazer.
There weren’t any.
When she wrote it down like that, it didn’t look like much. In fact, it didn’t look like anything at all. Nothing connected him to her mother – not one thing.
It seemed as if each piece of evidence she found left her more suspicious of Blazer, and yet nothing came together as a cohesive case. There was no killer proof here.
She needed something absolutely solid. And she didn’t have it.
In fact, what did she really know about Blazer?
She knew he was a detective, he’d risen through the ranks fairly smoothly, he was close to Smith. Some saw him as next in line for head detective.
Beyond that, though, she knew almost nothing. She didn’t know anything about his personal life. Was he married? Kids?
The realization steadied her. This, she could work on.
Logging into the computer database, she se
arched for his name.
Hundreds of articles came up. Many of them by her, others by the former police reporter, Tom Lane.
Most detectives avoid the glare of media attention. Being an unknown entity is important when you’re questioning a killer – the less they know about you, the more dangerous you seem. But Blazer wasn’t like that.
He liked being interviewed – particularly by TV reporters. He’d walked right by Harper at crime scenes on more than one occasion, and presented himself to the cluster of TV cameras – hair perfectly combed, tie dead straight.
Most of the articles were quotes about crime cases, brief and to the point. She found nothing personal. Not a word about his background, his age, his education.
For that, she’d need access to police records. And as soon as she started poking around there, word would get out.
Dropping her pen, she raked her fingers through her hair.
Normally, Lieutenant Smith was the first person she’d call on something like this. She trusted him to be honest. But he’d known Blazer for twenty years. How could she tell him she thought his friend might be the psychopath who murdered her mother?
Besides, his reaction when she’d merely suggested the same person killed Whitney and her mother had been so negative, she couldn’t imagine him receiving this latest theory of hers positively.
Leaning back in her chair, she turned to the window. Night had fallen. On the river, a container ship sailed slowly by, lights blazing. The ship was enormous, dwarfing the riverfront buildings so completely that, for a moment, it created the optical illusion that the ship was sitting still as the city sailed serenely away.
Out of nowhere, Camille Whitney’s tear-stained face came into her mind. She wondered where she was. If someone was taking care of her. If she’d begun to understand how completely her life had changed.
On the desk, Harper’s phone buzzed. Tearing her gaze away from the ship, she picked it up.
It held a text message from an unrecognized number:
Seems to me, we have some unfinished business.
Her brow creasing, Harper read the sentence twice.
It could have been from anyone. A source. Someone who read one of her articles in the paper and somehow tracked her down.
The Echo Killing Page 17
