He glanced at her.
‘You still think it’s the same guy killed Whitney and your mother?’
Harper hesitated.
‘I’m not sure any more,’ she said. ‘But I don’t see how it’s a coincidence. And if it’s a cop doing the killing, they’re all going to protect him. Even Smith.’
‘What if it’s not a cop?’ Miles asked. ‘What if you’re wrong? And you just put your whole career on the line for nothing.’
‘Honestly? I hope it’s not a cop. That’s not the point of any of this. I’m not out to get anyone. But I have to know if the same person killed Whitney and my mother.’
‘And you’re willing to risk everything for it?’ His eyes were cool, assessing.
‘I already have,’ Harper said.
Miles leaned back on the sofa.
‘What’re you going to do now?’
‘I’m going to talk to Camille Whitney.’ Her voice was resolute. ‘Find out what she knows. She was there that day. No one was closer to Marie Whitney than her.’
Miles gave a slow, disapproving headshake.
‘You talk to that child, Blazer will get your press pass pulled so fast your head’ll spin. You won’t be suspended. You’ll be through.’
But Harper was ready for this.
‘I’ll use a fake name,’ she told him. ‘Dress differently. Do something with my hair. She’s a kid. She’ll never know who she talked to.’
Miles considered her gravely.
‘It’s a bad idea, Harper. You know that, right?’
Harper tried not to let him see how disappointed she felt. She knew she wasn’t at her best – she’d had no sleep, and too many hours alone to go over and over her situation in her mind. Still, she was confident this was the only option she had left.
‘I’m running out of leads,’ she said. ‘She’s the last piece on the table. If she gives me nothing, I’m done.’
He looked down at his hands, thinking it over.
‘You shouldn’t do this, and I think you know that.’ His voice was low. ‘You have to stop before you’ve got nothing left to lose. You’re this close, Harper.’ He held his thumb and index finger an inch apart. ‘This close to blowing up your whole career.’
She couldn’t seem to tear her eyes away from that small empty space. She hated that some part of her believed Miles was right.
But the rest of her had to know if Camille Whitney knew who killed her mother.
Seeing that on her face, Miles shook his head in disgust.
‘If that girl gives you nothing, you swear that’s enough? You’ll end this? Get back to normal work?’
In her heart, Harper didn’t know if she could ever give up. Not as long as her mother was in the ground and the man who killed her was out there, somewhere. But if the Whitney child knew nothing, the simple truth was, she was out of ideas of where to go with her investigation.
‘I promise.’
On the table across the room, Harper’s scanner crackled a message.
‘All available units: Code Twelve with multiple Code Fours. Intersection of Broad and White Streets. Four vehicles involved. One vehicle is Code Eleven. EMTs and Fire en route to the scene.’
Harper’s brain translated each code into images of everything she was missing: A four-car accident with multiple injuries in the middle of rush hour. One car was on fire.
Miles stood up, his eyes taking on that hard focus they got when something big happened.
‘Got to go.’
Harper followed him out.
On the front steps, he stopped and looked back at her.
‘If you meet that little girl it will haunt you all your life, you know that, don’t you?’ he warned her. ‘She’s you, in a way. That’s why you want to see her. This isn’t about finding a killer cop. Or even solving your mother’s murder. You’re still trying to help your twelve-year-old self. But you can’t, Harper. Not like this.’
He headed to his car, his last words hanging in the air.
‘For God’s sake, let this be the end of it.’
Chapter Thirty-three
With Miles’ warning still ringing in her ears, Harper went back over everything she knew. Again, she came to the same conclusion – the two unplayed pieces on the board were Camille Whitney and Sterling Robinson. Whitney, she would get to but, in the meantime, she had to know more about Robinson to understand how he fit into this.
She’d already done basic research on him, but there had to be more. Grabbing her laptop, she began searching for every combination of words she could think of: ‘Robinson and Whitney’, ‘Robinson and crime’, ‘Robinson and court’.
By the time night fell, she knew more about Robinson than she did about herself. She knew he grew up poor. Went to college on a scholarship. Got more scholarships. Went to an Ivy League grad school. Started his first publishing company with friends from school, and made his first fortune before he was thirty.
She’d found nothing to connect him to any crime. And no articles that featured both him and Whitney.
The Savannah branch of his empire was primarily charitable – he employed twenty-five people in an office building downtown, and they oversaw his donations. She remained convinced that the charity was what connected him to Whitney. But there was no proof.
By midnight, the sofa was surrounded by her scattered notebooks, and her eyes stung from exhaustion. It had been several days since she’d last had a good night’s sleep.
She felt light-headed. She’d eaten nothing but those Pop-Tarts all day and, when she forced herself off the sofa to feed Zuzu, she discovered there was only one can of cat food left in the cupboard.
She needed coffee. She needed fresh air. She needed sleep too, but that wasn’t going to happen.
‘I’m going out,’ she announced.
Zuzu didn’t look up from her bowl.
Grabbing her keys, Harper headed out the door.
The air outside was muggy and heavy – the humidity settled on her skin like a too-warm blanket.
The street was still. Nobody was out at all.
And yet the skin on the back of her neck prickled a warning.
Her instincts told her she was not alone.
Her brow furrowing, she stood at the top of the steps, scanning the street. The only movement came from insects darting through the glow of the streetlights.
She hurried to the Camaro and climbed inside, fumbling with the keys in her haste to start the car.
She didn’t know what was wrong with her – there was nobody there. But she felt watched.
She kept her eyes on the rearview mirror as she pulled out on to the street. Nothing moved.
You’re getting paranoid, she told herself.
She pulled to a stop in front of the 24-hour shop and ran inside, her bag bumping hard against her hip.
In the brightly lit store, she shoved cat food, coffee and random packages of food into the basket. She couldn’t imagine cooking – or even eating real food. But she bought it anyway.
Talk radio poured unhappiness out of speakers she couldn’t see, and the man at the register was so focused on it, he barely glanced at her as he rang up her purchases.
‘That’ll be thirty-two dollars and ninety-eight cents,’ he said, pushing the card machine towards her without meeting her eyes.
After paying, Harper grabbed the bags and headed out to her car.
The street outside was empty when she dumped her purchases unceremoniously on the passenger seat, and started the engine.
As she pulled out smoothly, she saw the black Mercedes pulling out, too.
‘Shit,’ Harper breathed, staring at the dark reflection in the rearview mirror.
This was no coincidence. Someone actually was following her. And they didn’t mind her knowing.
The car was keeping its distance – far enough behind that she couldn’t read its plates. Whoever it was knew what they were doing.
Her gaze flickering between the mirror and the road, Har
per turned left, then right again, then left, but her mind was racing. Where should she go? Home? The paper? The police station?
In the end, she decided she had no choice. There was no place else to go. She wasn’t welcome at the paper or the police station. And she couldn’t drive forever.
She’d go home. And she’d get that license plate.
Meticulously, she signaled before turning off of Habersham Street. A few seconds after she made the corner, the Mercedes appeared behind her again.
She turned a few minutes later, and then once more, on to Jones Street.
The Mercedes did the same. Only, this time, it didn’t follow her down Jones. Instead, it stopped at the corner.
Cutting the engine, Harper sat in the car for a second, staring at the headlights behind her. She still couldn’t see the plates from here – the lights blinded her.
She had to have those numbers.
She unhooked her seatbelt and cracked the door, preparing herself. Then she leapt out of the Camaro and, in violation of every logical rule, ran straight towards the Mercedes as fast as she could.
At first, the driver didn’t react – the lights and the tinted windows made his face impossible to see.
When she drew closer, though, the Mercedes suddenly began to back away from her, keeping enough distance so she couldn’t make out the plates.
Frustration roiled Harper.
‘Who are you?’ she screamed, her voice splitting the quiet night. ‘What do you want from me?’
There was no reply.
Instead, the car backed smoothly and quickly around the corner and then, just as she reached the intersection, sped away, tires screeching.
Harper ran after it for half a block before giving up, panting.
As she stood in the street, hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath, she was already narrowing down the list of suspects. Only two people in the Whitney case would have the wherewithal to have her followed – the lawyer and Sterling Robinson. She’d never heard from the lawyer again after that one phone call. There was no logical reason for him to suddenly decide to do this. He thought he’d scared her off.
That left the elusive millionaire Sterling Robinson.
And she had had enough of this.
Straightening, she stormed up the steps to her apartment.
Inside, she hurried to the kitchen, skidding into a seat at the table in front of her laptop.
Opening the email she’d received from Robinson several days ago, she hit reply and typed a rapid, furious message.
Are you having me followed? Tell me yes or no so I know whose bastard I just chased down the street. You’re a coward, Sterling Robinson. And cowards have something to hide. If you’re hiding something, I will find it. I promise you that. You do not scare me.
Before she could change her mind, she hit send.
Harper didn’t know when or how she fell asleep. After sending the email to Robinson, she’d paced the kitchen imagining what would happen when he got the message. Most likely, he’d go straight to Dells. Show him the threatening email and insist that she be fired.
She was too angry to care.
At some point, she’d worn herself out and ended up back on the sofa with her notes and a glass of whiskey. That was the last thing she remembered until she woke with a gasp.
At first, she was disoriented – trying to figure out what had woken her. A sense of movement – like someone was in the apartment.
It wasn’t morning yet. Darkness still pressed against the windows.
Something hard had lodged itself under her shoulder. Reaching back, she pulled a rumpled notebook from behind her, open to the page with James Whitney’s address.
She sat up slowly, dropping the notebook on the floor.
Something wasn’t right.
The empty whiskey glass sat on the coffee table. The lamp by the couch was on, but the rest of the room was cast in shadows.
Stiffly, she rose from the sofa and took a step towards the door.
A blinding white light burst through the front window, pinioning her in its glare.
Bewildered, Harper froze, her heart pounding.
For a moment the light held her. Then it swung erratically across the room. First left, then right, in a slow smooth sweep.
Suddenly, her mind grasped what she was seeing.
She sprinted for the door.
Flipping open the locks, she rushed outside.
The air was cool and smelled of rain. No moon penetrated through the thick clouds. Streetlights sent ghostly shadows through the Spanish moss, which hung in the trees like small, limp corpses.
An unmarked police car was parked in front of her house. Luke stood by the open door, his hand resting on the searchlight mounted next to the side mirror.
Their eyes met, and he switched the light off.
Without pausing to put on shoes, Harper raced down the front steps in her bare feet. She hated how relieved she was to see him.
Then he spoke.
‘I’ve been calling all night.’ His voice was as cold as the ground. ‘Your phone broken?’
Harper stopped a few feet away. Unable to bring herself to talk to him, she’d turned her phone off hours ago.
‘Luke, I’m sorry.’ She kept her voice low – the last thing she needed was for the neighbors to wake up. ‘I … didn’t know what to say.’
‘Ten times,’ he said. ‘I called you ten times.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said miserably. ‘I couldn’t face telling you.’
‘I gathered that.’
Silence fell. His eyes held hers.
‘Did you do it?’
Harper swallowed hard, hands tightening into fists at her sides.
‘Yes.’
He closed his eyes.
‘Harper …’
She’d expected him to be angry. Instead, he sounded hurt.
Panic gathered in her chest.
‘I had to know what they knew.’ Her eyes searched his stony face. ‘You understand that, right?’
‘How can I understand?’ His voice rose. ‘You broke the law. You did everything I asked you not to do.’ He held up his hands. ‘Why, Harper? Did you want to ruin everything? Was that your goal?’
‘Of course not.’ She took a step towards him, the sidewalk damp and rough beneath her toes. ‘All I wanted was to see what they had on the Whitney case. That’s all.’
‘But you don’t have that right.’ He ran a tired hand across his jaw – he hadn’t shaved. A shadow of whiskers covered his cheeks. ‘You’re not a cop. Sometimes, I honestly think you don’t realize that.’
That stung.
‘I know I’m not a cop,’ Harper said. ‘It’s this case – this murder …’
He wouldn’t listen.
‘You keep blaming this case for your own actions. Like the killer’s making you do stupid things. Nobody made you break the law. You did that yourself.’
He sounded as tired as she felt.
‘Luke,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t be angry.’
She held out her hand. ‘Come inside, OK? We can talk there.’
He shook his head slowly, like he hadn’t heard what she said.
‘You know what’s funny?’ he said. ‘I always thought the rule about cops not dating the press was stupid. Now, I finally get it. We’re different. We’re on different sides.’
Harper’s heart contracted.
‘Stop this,’ she said. ‘That’s not true.’
‘Isn’t it?’ The look he gave her then was so wounded it was unbearable. ‘I asked you not to go digging around. I practically begged you. And you did it anyway.’
‘Luke …’
‘Do you want to know why I asked you not to do that?’ He didn’t wait for her to answer. ‘Because I knew if you did there could be danger. For both of us. And I didn’t want to lose you.’
Harper’s mouth went dry.
‘Luke.’ She breathed his name. ‘What happened?’
‘Funny
you should ask.’ His lips twisted into an angry interpretation of a smile. ‘Today Smith called me into his office for a talk. He told me he knew we’d had an affair. Those were the words he used: “an affair”. He threatened to have me knocked back out to uniform if I continued to see you. He told me you were using me to get information about official police work. He said there were suspicions I helped you break into the archive.’ His voice thickened. ‘He said I was a fool for letting myself be used.’
He pressed his fists against his forehead.
‘Goddammit, Harper. Why did you have to go into that room?’
Harper was so stunned, she couldn’t seem to form words.
Smith had always been on her side. Always. She couldn’t picture one second of what Luke was describing.
‘I didn’t … Smith really said that?’
‘Every word.’ His voice was ragged. ‘Now do you realize what you’ve done? No one trusts you now. No one trusts me. I get seen with you ever again, my career is over. We’re finished.’
‘No.’
The word escaped Harper’s lips against her will. But Luke wasn’t listening.
‘It’s all messed up, Harper. We had something, but now it’s over. Because of your obsession. Because you can’t let go.’
He drew a ragged breath. And delivered the final blow.
‘They’re sending me back undercover.’
Harper froze.
‘What … Now?’
He gave a curt nod.
‘But you said you had to wait six weeks …’
‘There’s a case in play outside Atlanta.’ He cut her off. ‘State police. They’re sending me on temporary transfer. Smith said …’ He looked over her head at the open door of her house. ‘He said he thought getting back to work would clear my head.’
Harper didn’t like this at all. There was a reason they kept undercover officers off the street for large chunks of time after an operation – to keep them safe. There were people out there looking for them. Really terrible people.
‘Wait. How can he do this?’ Her voice quivered. ‘It’s too dangerous.’
Luke gave her a bitter look.
‘It’s all arranged,’ he said. ‘I’m heading out at dawn.’
For the first time since she’d started investigating the Whitney case, Harper felt truly afraid. She was losing too much all at once. The police, Luke, Smith, maybe her job.
The Echo Killing Page 28
