Each conversation was unfeasibly long and involved endless explanations. She hadn’t kept in touch in recent years and, presented with an unexpected call, everyone wanted to catch up. (‘Good lord, girl. We haven’t heard from you in a dog’s year …’)
Conversations had to be guided gradually around to the questions she needed answers to, and that took time and patience.
Most of the discussions went much like the one she had with an artist friend of her mother’s.
‘Hello, Mrs Carney, this is Harper McClain …’ Pause. ‘Yes, that, Harper McClain.’ Pause. ‘Yes, it has been a while.’ Pause. ‘My dad is fine, thanks. Living in Connecticut.’ Pause. ‘I know. Miles away.’ Pause. ‘Well how wonderful. A doctor! Hasn’t he done well! And in Florida. How nice. I’ll bet you have lovely vacations down there.’ Pause for a very long time. ‘Mm-hmm.’
Eventually, after what seemed like forever, she’d guided her around to a point where it was safe to explain the reason for the call. ‘I’m looking for an old friend of my mother’s. A police officer. I wondered if you knew him back then. What? His name? Oh, Blazer. Larry Blazer. Does that ring a bell?’
Over and over again, in call after call, the answer was the same: ‘No.’
It was late in the evening when Harper reached the Ls. The only name on that list was Larson – Bonnie’s mother.
Mrs Larson laughed merrily when asked about the possibility that Harper’s mother might have been friends with a detective.
‘Oh, Harper, your mother was an unreconstructed hippy. She thought cops were the enemy. Her friends were all artists and musicians. I always thought she was so exotic.’ Her voice grew wistful. ‘I’m sure she thought I was a boring housewife, with all those kids and no career. But, gosh, I adored her.’
When Harper assured her that wasn’t true, Mrs Larson shushed her.
‘It’s all water under the bridge, now, isn’t it, honey?’ She’d paused then, a thought occurring to her. ‘Now, if you’re looking for someone who knew cops, you should ask your dad. He was always hanging out with them, as I recall.’
Harper had been so surprised, she had to work to keep that out of her voice.
‘Dad? Really?’
‘Well, of course,’ Mrs Larson said. ‘He was good friends with that young district attorney and his wife – what was her name? The Andersons, that’s who they were. Anyway. He went to all those police events – fundraisers and so forth.’ She chuckled. ‘Your mother hated those parties. She was always complaining about how dull they were. She said everyone drank too much and all anyone talked about was work.’
Sitting at her desk in the mostly empty newsroom, Harper scrawled a quick note to herself: ‘Did Dad know Blazer? Did he introduce him to Mom?’
Next to her computer monitor, her scanner had begun buzzing a series of excited messages but Harper barely registered it.
She was close to something here, she could feel it.
She turned the scanner down.
‘Did Mom ever mention a detective – a blond guy named Larry? He would have been in his thirties then.’
Mrs Larson considered this thoughtfully. ‘I’m sure she didn’t,’ she said after a while, adding apologetically, ‘But maybe I’m forgetting. I’m getting old, Harper.’
They talked about other things then – about Bonnie’s work at the college, and how one of her brothers had gotten a job in Dubai and they never saw him anymore but, ‘at least he’s got a job’.
Eventually, Harper found an excuse to end the conversation. When she’d hung up, she stared out the dark window.
First the angry letter and now this. Everything was leading her to her father.
She’d been sixteen when he moved away. At first, he’d tried to stay in touch – calling her every couple of weeks. But their conversations were uncomfortable and, over time, they called each other less and less.
He and Jennifer had two small kids now – both boys.
Her father came to Savannah occasionally on business; each time he’d take her to dinner and they’d spend a couple of hours in stilted conversation that was most memorable for the things they didn’t say.
It had been a couple of years since his last visit.
Every Christmas Jennifer sent a card with a picture of them all, standing on skis on some snow-covered mountain, or splashing in turquoise water, always smiling broadly.
The cards were how she knew her dad had started losing his hair. And that Jennifer looked less like a nubile young conquest these days, and more like a normal busy mom.
She could have tried to get closer to him, as time passed, but she couldn’t seem to make herself do it. Her father was a reminder of everything she’d lost. Distance was the only weapon she had.
Now, though, she had no choice.
With slow reluctance she reached for the cell phone and dialed his number.
‘Hello?’
Her father sounded brusque. Harper glanced at her watch – it was after ten.
‘Dad? It’s Harper.’
‘Harper?’ Puzzled concern filled his voice. ‘Has something happened? Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Sorry to call so late.’
‘Oh … Well, that’s fine …’
Despite his words, the confusion was clear in his tone.
Why are you calling? I thought you hated me.
‘Look, I’m sorry to bother you,’ she said. ‘It’s just … Look. I’ve been going through Mom’s things, and I need to ask you a few questions.’
Silence.
There was no easy way to do this. Gritting her teeth, Harper forged ahead. ‘I wondered if you knew any police when you were in Savannah.’
‘I knew a few through work.’
A new note of caution entered his voice.
‘Did you know a detective named Larry Blazer?’
A pause. She could almost hear him trying to figure out what she was after.
‘Harper, what is this about?’
She pressed her fingertips against her forehead. This was even harder than she’d expected.
‘I know this is coming from out of nowhere, but I need to know for … something I’m working on. Did you know a detective named Larry Blazer? It’s important.’
‘No … I don’t know. Maybe? I knew a lot of people.’ He sounded irritated, confused. But Harper sensed obfuscation as well.
He was hiding something.
Her instincts hummed. She’d interviewed hundreds of people over the years. Her father had no idea how good she was at this.
Relaxing her posture, she made her voice calm. Unthreatening.
‘I know you did, and it was a long time ago. No one could blame you for forgetting. So you don’t know if you knew him or not?’
‘The name sounds familiar,’ her father said reluctantly. ‘I might have known him.’
Harper’s chest tightened. She had to fight to keep the interest out of her voice.
‘Through work or … Were you friends?’
‘We weren’t friends,’ her father’s voice was dry. ‘I remember my friends.’
‘Is it possible,’ Harper asked with a kind of preternatural calm, ‘you might have introduced him to Mom?’
The phone went so quiet she thought the connection had been lost.
Then he spoke again.
‘Harper, what is going on?’
His voice was crisp and professional now. A lawyer questioning an investigator.
Looking out the darkened window, Harper bit her lip. Maybe it was time for some truth.
‘There’s been another murder,’ she said finally. ‘Exactly the same MO as Mom’s.’
‘Oh.’
It wasn’t a word so much as a gasp. As if she’d punched him with the information.
It took him a few beats to recover.
‘Do the police think …?’
There was something in his voice she hadn’t expected – grief. And hope. As if he, too, had been waiting for someone to be caught.
&n
bsp; She didn’t know what to feel.
‘The police don’t know,’ Harper said simply. ‘They’re investigating.’
‘What does this Blazer have to do with it?’ He still sounded winded, but he was recovering. Using logic to pull himself to the surface, the same way she did.
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted, bracing herself. ‘I’m fishing here – trying to figure out what they think, where they’re looking. Blazer’s a cop – they don’t think it’s him. But there are some things about him that make me suspicious.’
‘You think a cop might have done this?’ He sounded doubtful. ‘Alicia was never much of a fan of the police.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘But she could have met him through you. If you knew him, it might answer some questions.’
‘I’ll look through my records,’ he said, after a brief pause. ‘But if I knew him, I didn’t know him well enough to remember him. And that probably means Alicia didn’t either. Look, Harper, shouldn’t you let the police handle this?’
An impatient note had entered his voice. Her call was unexpected and unwanted, and now he was ready for it to be over. She was a nuisance. A reminder of a former life he wanted to forget.
Harper thought of the furious letter she’d found among her mother’s things. And suddenly wondered why he’d packed it up for her to find later, instead of throwing it away.
That blew away the clouds of sympathy that had begun to swirl.
‘Actually, I’m trying to keep the police away from you, Dad.’
This wasn’t true at all, but she needed to hurt him to throw him off balance. Get more truth out of him.
It worked as well as she’d hoped.
‘Away from me? What the hell— What do I have to do with this?’
He sounded panicked. Scared. His carefully cultivated calm evaporating.
‘Nothing, Dad,’ she said. ‘Except, I found a letter among Mom’s things.’
‘What letter?’ His voice rose. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘A letter you wrote to her a few months before her murder. She suspected you were having an affair. You threatened her. It looks bad, Dad. If the police got their hands on it …’
Harper was ruthless now. Every word a bullet. But it hurt more than she’d thought it would.
‘Harper.’ Disbelief filled his voice. ‘What are you saying?’
‘Nothing, Dad,’ she said coolly. ‘I’m asking you: do you know a man named Larry Blazer? Have you heard of a woman named Marie Whitney?’
There was a long silence. The scanner on her desk buzzed its unheard message.
‘I’ve never heard of the woman you mentioned.’ His voice was so cold it could be carved from stone. ‘I’ve already told you, I can’t remember if I ever met a man named Blazer.’
He took a breath and seemed to gather himself. ‘If the police need me, they have my number. And I think I want you to stop calling me.’
The phone went dead.
Harper pressed the cool plastic receiver against her forehead and closed her eyes. There’d been precious little love left between her and her father for a long time.
But he was family. And what she’d done felt like betrayal.
Slowly, carefully, she set the phone down and turned to her notebook.
She was now fairly certain her father did not know Larry Blazer. And there’d been no reaction to Whitney’s name.
Mention of the note – and the implicit threat of exposing it – had roused anger and hurt. Not cold calculation.
And he’d seemed genuinely upset by the news that there’d been another murder.
He’d batted a thousand.
On her desk, her scanner was buzzing constant messages about ambulances and backup. Harper stared at it blankly, her mind replaying the conversation over and over.
Her dad knew nothing about what was going on here, she was willing to bet on that. So where did that leave her? Aside from feeling suddenly terrible.
Baxter’s voice soared across the empty room, shaking her from her reverie.
‘Harper! Get over here.’
Harper blinked.
‘What’s up?’
Baxter was behind her desk, the remote control in her hand, staring at the TV mounted on the wall.
Following her line of vision, Harper saw Natalie Swanson’s perfectly formed face on the screen. She was standing in front of a row of police cars, their lights turning her blonde hair a flickering blue.
Harper’s stomach dropped.
Shoving her chair back, she tore across the newsroom.
When she reached the editor’s desk, the words at the bottom of the TV screen read, Three shot in southside brawl.
‘Detectives tell us they’re looking for two shooters,’ Natalie explained somberly. ‘All young men. All are considered armed and dangerous. One is possibly carrying an automatic weapon. It’s a scenario that’s become all too familiar to residents south of Broad Street. And tonight the violence claimed three new victims. Back to you, Bob.’
The image on the screen changed to the newsroom, where the dark-haired anchor shook his head.
‘Thank you, Natalie. Stay safe out there.’
Muting the sound, Baxter pointed the remote control at Harper.
‘Did you know about this?’
Harper stared at the TV over her shoulder as if it might hold the answer to that question.
‘I don’t …’
This must have been what was on the scanner. She’d been so caught up in her phone calls, she hadn’t heard the codes for shooting, or for sending ambulances, or for backup.
She felt sick.
She’d never missed a shooting before. Not once. How could this have happened? Why hadn’t Miles phoned to warn her?
‘I’m really sorry, Baxter,’ she said finally. ‘I didn’t hear my scanner.’
‘You didn’t hear your …?’ The editor looked baffled. ‘How did you not hear your scanner? It’s sitting on your desk. Harper, I can hear your scanner.’
‘I don’t know,’ Harper admitted helplessly.
Baxter’s expression was thunderous. ‘What the hell is going on with you? In all the time you’ve been at the paper I’ve never known you to miss anything. Lately you’ve been coming in late, disappearing for hours, missing stories … I can tell you’re not really here. Where are you?’
‘I am here,’ Harper insisted. ‘I’ve had a lot on my mind. Family stuff.’
‘Family stuff?’ Baxter stared. ‘You don’t get to have a family when you are on my clock. Miles doesn’t have a family. I don’t have a family. No one here has a family when there’s a triple shooting.’
Harper opened her mouth to defend herself but Baxter wasn’t finished.
‘You work here eight hours a day – sometimes more.’ Seeing the look on Harper’s face, she added the last two words hastily. ‘All I ask is that for those eight hours you do your job.’
Flipping her wrist impatiently, she looked at her watch.
‘I don’t have time for this now. You’ve got a news article to write.’ She pointed at the television screen. ‘You’ve got an hour. Get on the phone and get me this story.’
She delivered her final words with icy precision.
‘Fix this, Harper. Or don’t bother coming in tomorrow.’
Chapter Twenty-four
The next day, Harper made a point of showing up for work half an hour early.
She’d hardly slept. She’d stayed up most of the night, listening to her scanner. Every time the cool voice of the dispatcher sent police to a reported break-in, a stolen purse, a drunk wandering in the middle of a street, she tensed.
By dawn, she was exhausted – sitting on the sofa clutching a cup of coffee like a weapon.
She still couldn’t believe she’d missed the shooting.
In the end, she’d gathered enough basic facts about the incident from a few phone calls to police contacts to cobble a story together by deadline.
It turned out Mile
s had called her to tell her about the shooting. Five times, in fact. But she’d been on the phone.
His messages had grown progressively apocalyptic.
‘Are you trying to get yourself fired, Harper?’ he’d asked at one point, in a message she listened to much later that night. ‘Baxter will lose her shit if you miss this.’
Thanks to his pictures and Harper’s contacts, no readers would suspect she hadn’t been on the street last night, reporting live. But he was right about Baxter.
Harper was quite certain she was going to hear more about it today.
Luckily, the editor wasn’t at her desk when Harper arrived. The room was busy, with the daytime crew still filing their last stories. Gray afternoon light flooded in through the tall windows. The room smelled faintly of burned coffee.
She plugged in her scanner, displaying it prominently near her keyboard.
Every move she made was rife with purpose and grim determination. She had her head in the game and she was determined to keep it there. From now on, her mother’s case had to be her personal project, done on her own time.
Nonetheless, it had filled her thoughts during the sleepless night.
She’d kept hearing her father’s voice: I think I want you to stop calling me.’
He’d sounded as if she disgusted him.
She was disgusted with herself. It wasn’t necessary to be so cruel.
But what was done, was done.
‘Harper.’ Baxter’s voice cut through the newsroom buzz. ‘Get over here.’
When Harper looked up, the editor was standing at her desk with a face like a firing squad.
Setting her shoulders, Harper rose to her feet.
She could feel the other reporters watching as she crossed the room, until she stood uneasily in front of Baxter.
Baxter fixed her with a cold stare.
‘Last night was a shitstorm,’ Baxter told her. ‘Missing that story was inexcusable. I’ve worked at newspapers where you’d be gone already. I know editors who would have fired you on the spot.’ Resting her hands on the desk, she leaned forward. ‘What’s going on, Harper? I have never known you to miss a story. And a triple shooting? That’s your bread and butter. What the hell happened? And, if you want to keep your job, don’t say “family troubles”.’
Harper had spent much of the night preparing for this moment. Now she launched into the explanation she’d crafted in the heavy darkness at three in the morning.
The Echo Killing Page 20
