‘May.’ She spat the word out.
‘Wait here,’ he told her. ‘We’re going to figure this out.’
He disappeared behind a screening wall, returning a moment later with his laptop.
Setting it on the long oak table, he flipped it open and started it up.
‘Tell me more about the party. Where was it?’
Harper watched him narrowly.
‘All I know is it was at City Hall. Spring fundraiser.’ She thought back to what Rosanna had told her. ‘The governor was there.’
He paused – his fingers hovering above the keyboard.
‘I remember that night,’ he said slowly. ‘There was a champagne fountain. And a pretty good jazz band.’
He typed something fast, peering at the files.
‘May, you say?’
Looking over his shoulder she saw hundreds of folders, organized by month. May had been busy for him – it was packed.
‘Wait a second,’ he said suddenly, ‘I think I found it.’
He’d opened a folder dated May twenty-second. It held hundreds of images – one-inch black-and-white squares of elegance and candlelight.
He opened one at random and they both squinted at it. It was clearly a grand party – but there was nobody in it she recognized.
‘Hard to tell,’ Miles added.
Sliding into the chair next to him, Harper leaned closer to see the screen.
He opened another picture, and another, and then Harper saw Marie in that recognizable white dress, at the back of one of the images.
‘There,’ she said, pointing. ‘That’s her. That’s the dress.’
Now she could see why Miles might not have remembered Whitney was at the party. It had been a crowded event – everyone dressed to the nines. Everyone wearing jewels. Everyone holding champagne flutes.
Miles had taken hundreds of pictures that night of many glamorous women.
‘Good,’ he murmured.
His attention was on the image, searching the background, looking at faces.
‘I want to see if she’s with a man.’ Harper’s anger had ebbed. She was utterly focused on the images on the screen. ‘In the image I showed you, she’s laughing with a man but you can’t see his face. I need to see if you took any pictures of her with him, or with any other men who might be our guy.’
Nodding, Miles began clicking through the pictures – opening and closing them one after another. Almost all of them were of local dignitaries – people Harper could vaguely remember seeing on the news, or in the paper.
Their smiles, fixed and fake, or relaxed and happy, blurred together.
Over and over again, Marie flitted across the lens, sometimes at the edge of the picture, sometimes at the center of the action.
Each time, Harper’s heart jumped. But there was never one with a good image of the man.
They were both beginning to lose hope when Miles opened a familiar-looking shot.
Harper’s hand jerked up.
‘That’s him. The man she’s with in the picture I showed you.’
They both leaned closer.
The picture had been taken toward the end of the night. The crowd was growing sparse. Marie was dancing with a broad-shouldered man. The way he held her was intimate – a hand brushing the side of her breast, another resting on the curve of her hip. She was smiling up into his eyes.
‘There’s something familiar about him,’ Harper murmured, looking at the picture. ‘Something about the posture … I can’t place it. But I feel like I know him.’
Miles zoomed in on the two of them.
‘I can’t see his face,’ he said. ‘But you’re right. There is something about him.’
Closing the picture, he looked back at the folder. ‘I think I took more shots of them dancing. Let me see.’
Clicking fast, he opened eight pictures at once. They appeared to have been taken in sequence.
The man was spinning Marie slowly. Neither of them seemed to have noticed the photographer shooting them from a few feet away.
They were too into each other.
In the first image, they saw the back of his head.
In the next, he’d turned more towards the camera, Harper could make out a square jaw, and sturdy but not prominent nose.
In the third, he was sideways to the camera, smiling down at Marie.
Harper stared in disbelief at the craggy face she knew so well, the solid jaw, thick, salt-and-pepper hair. The broad shoulders she’d always relied on.
‘I’ll be damned,’ Miles said, stunned. ‘That’s Lieutenant Smith.’
Chapter Forty
Harper couldn’t seem to breathe. Miles was huddled over the computer, his jaw set, grimly opening one image after another, while she kept staring at that single incriminating photo.
Yesterday, Smith accused her of betraying him. He told her she’d ruined his career.
And there he was, dancing with the murder victim in his arms.
None of it made sense.
Maybe they met that one night, she told herself. Maybe, like Miles, he didn’t remember her. After all, they were only dancing.
Only they weren’t. It was much worse than that.
Working in near silence, she and Miles searched for more images of Smith from that elegant party in May. In the end, there were so many of them that, using the time-stamps, they could piece together most of the night.
Smith first appeared on camera shortly after nine o’clock in the back of a shot of some local dignitary. He appeared to be walking in the door of the ballroom, his eyes searching the room.
A shot taken fifteen minutes later had him in a shadowy corner, talking with Whitney, their heads bent close together, backs to the camera.
An hour later, they found him in the back of another shot. He was whispering in her ear, each of them holding champagne flutes. Whitney was smiling.
They kept to the corners, at the back of the room. They were hiding, even then.
A photo Miles had taken twenty minutes later, of a waiter carrying a tray laden with glasses, captured a shadowy image of the two of them in a dark corner near the kitchen, wrapped in a passionate embrace.
Miles’ lips were drawn tight as he placed all the incriminating photos in one folder.
Harper couldn’t seem to process what she was seeing. She felt no fear. No anger. Just a curious, awful emptiness.
When they’d gone through everything, Miles stood without a word. Gathering a handful of papers off the end of the table, he hurled them hard into the trash.
‘Goddammit.’
Harper stared at nothing as he crossed the apartment to stand in front of the windows looking out at the river. The sky had remained gray all day – the water looked dark and turbid.
She felt empty.
‘This is dynamite,’ Miles said, and he didn’t sound happy about it. ‘We are sitting on a stack of dynamite here, and we’re playing with matches.’
Harper didn’t reply. Her thoughts felt as muddy and slow as the river.
What were they looking at in those photos?
Harper had seen Whitney’s entire file – there wasn’t one word in there about Smith knowing her. The law required him to reveal any relationship, and to recuse himself from any investigation in which he had a relationship, however minor, with either the victim or the suspect.
But he hadn’t done that. Why not?
The obvious answer was he was protecting Pat and the boys from his infidelity. But if that were the case, all he had to say was that he and Whitney were friends. That would be sufficient.
But he hadn’t even done that.
She pressed her fingers against her temples.
‘Marie Whitney was a serial blackmailer,’ she said. ‘Smith’s married. He’s got kids. What if Whitney was blackmailing him?’
‘He cheated,’ Miles snapped. ‘Men cheat. They don’t kill their mistresses. Even if she did blackmail him, it doesn’t mean he killed her.’
‘Men kill their mistres
ses,’ Harper said evenly. ‘All the time.’
She was seeing how it might have worked, and she didn’t like how plausible it was.
‘Here’s what we do know,’ she said. ‘Smith hid a close relationship with the murder victim. The murder victim blackmailed at least three of her previous lovers. Whitney died just a few short weeks after this picture was taken. Her murder looked exactly like my mother’s murder. Smith worked my mother’s murder. He had motive. He had means.’ Her heart hurt so much she had to force herself to say the last three words. ‘He had opportunity.’
Miles looked at her, his eyes bleak.
She inhaled, a quick gasp for oxygen. ‘Please tell me I’m wrong, Miles. Please, I’m begging you. Tell me this is an insane theory.’
Miles ran his hand across the top of his head.
‘He has questions to answer,’ he said. ‘But that is all right now.’
Harper was still trying to understand.
‘How can we only be seeing this now, Miles?’ Pain put an edge on her voice. ‘First you didn’t remember seeing Whitney at that party, then it turns out you forgot seeing Smith, too? He’s in all your photos. You took pictures of them kissing. And you didn’t know?’
Miles held up his hands. He looked shaken.
‘Everyone was at that party, Harper. The police chief was there. The mayor. The governor. It would have made perfect sense to me that the head of the detective squad was there. The only picture of them kissing, they’re in a dark corner – I never even noticed them when I shot that picture. I was looking at the mayor, who was right in front of me.’ He ran a hand across his jaw, his whiskers rasped. ‘There was nothing memorable about any of it. Marie Whitney was nobody then. She was still alive.’
A heavy silence fell.
‘Oh God, Miles,’ Harper whispered. ‘I think he did it.’
Their eyes met.
‘I do, too,’ he said.
Harper felt like the ground had given way, and they were both sinking into it.
How could it be Smith?
Smith, who’d cradled her in his arms when she cried about her mother.
Smith, who’d taught her about honesty and integrity.
Dropping onto the leather sofa, Miles lowered his head to his hands.
‘We don’t have enough,’ he said, after a moment. ‘You take this to Baxter, or the chief of police, and Smith will cover his ass and tell them you’re crazy. He’ll say you’re obsessed, and you’re dragging me down with you. You and I will argue our side until the cows come home, but they’ll believe him.’
Harper thought of what Smith had told her the day before. Use this time to get the help you need.
‘I think that’s his plan,’ she said.
‘OK then,’ he said, lifting his head. ‘Before we go to anyone else with this, we need to get more information.’
‘How do we do that, Miles?’ she asked helplessly. ‘It’s taken weeks to get what we have.’
He shot her a look.
‘You’re a reporter. The simplest way to get information is to ask.’
‘What?’ Her voice rose. ‘You want me to ask Smith?’
‘It’s not as crazy as it sounds. You know him better than almost anyone,’ he reminded her. ‘Given everything that’s happened, if you were, say, to get in touch. Tell him you want to talk. Ask him to meet you after hours, I reckon he’d say yes. Then you give him the evidence, see how he reacts.’
The idea of confronting Smith made Harper feel physically ill.
‘He won’t want to meet me,’ she said. ‘We talked on the phone yesterday and it went badly.’
‘You can use that in your favor.’
Harper hesitated, thinking about Smith. How he worked.
He liked to think of himself as in charge – handling everything. No detail missed. The only time he’d lost his temper was when she’d suggested police officers might have been behind the break-in.
‘I guess I could tell him I’ve got proof his guys broke into my place,’ she said. ‘I’ll say one of them dropped something personal, and that I know who it is. I’ll threaten to go public.’
Miles bobbed his head.
‘That could work.’
Jumping to his feet, he began pacing the floor in front of the window.
‘Arrange to meet him somewhere quiet,’ he said. ‘I’ll wire you up to record the whole thing. Then you show him these pictures.’ He gestured at the laptop, still open to a picture of Smith and Whitney looking into each other’s eyes. ‘See if surprise scares the truth out of him.’
It was a good plan. Smith wouldn’t have a clue that she knew about his relationship. She’d catch him off guard.
He thought she was powerless – out of work. Out of friends. Alone in the world. He’d never suspect her of wearing a wire.
She suppressed the voice in her head that asked why, if Smith had killed Whitney, he wouldn’t kill her, too.
He wouldn’t, though. He couldn’t. This was Smith.
When she spoke, her voice was steady. ‘When do we do it?’
‘Sooner would be better than later,’ Miles said. ‘But I don’t think we should do this on our own. We need some backup here. Where’s that boyfriend of yours?’
When Harper gave him a blank look, he swirled one hand impatiently.
‘Where’s Luke? He’s the best undercover guy in the business. We need him on this.’
There was no point in asking how he knew – word got around.
‘Smith sent him to Atlanta on a job,’ she said.
‘Well, wherever Luke is and, whatever he’s doing, get in touch with him.’ His voice was tense. ‘Get him back here. We need him.’
‘He’s in the middle of a job,’ Harper repeated.
‘What we’re about to do is very dangerous.’ Miles held her eyes. ‘You tell him, if he wants you to live, he needs to get his ass back to town. Fast.’
They spent the rest of the day working out the details.
As they talked over cup after cup of coffee, Miles kept his hands busy adapting a wireless microphone transmitter to enhance its signal.
Tiny black and chrome electronic parts scattered across the white sheet of paper he’d spread on the table. His tools lay among snaking strands of wire and metal as they discussed how this would go. What she should say, how she should approach it. Where it should all happen.
They barely noticed as the sky outside the apartment’s windows turned dark gold, then pink, before darkness descended.
All evening, the two of them stayed in Miles’ apartment, going over the plan from every angle, his scanner grumbling in the background, John Lee Hooker growling ominously over the top of it.
Very late that night, as Miles dug in his storage closet for spare parts, Harper slipped into the bathroom with her phone and called Luke.
When his voicemail message started, she closed her eyes, letting that deep, familiar voice flow over her.
When the time came, she was glad she sounded calm. Talking quickly, her low voice reverberating off the cool, tiled walls, she told him what was happening. And what she and Miles had planned.
‘I don’t think we can do this alone,’ she said. ‘Please, if you can, come back.
‘And, Luke – I’m scared.’
Chapter Forty-one
When Harper woke on the sofa the next morning, a soft gray light illuminated the room. She sat up, kicking her legs out from under the blanket that covered her.
Hearing a rustling sound, she twisted around to look over the back of the sofa. Miles was at the kitchen table where he’d been when she fell asleep.
‘Test test test,’ he said quietly.
He pushed some buttons on a black metal device in front of him. After a second, his recorded voice played back to him, clear and crisp: ‘Test test test.’
‘It’s working?’ she asked hoarsely.
He glanced at her over the top of his glasses.
‘So far,’ he replied, adjusting something with a tin
y screwdriver, ‘so good.’
The shadows under his eyes indicated that, while she might have had a few hours’ rest, he hadn’t.
Throughout the day, they tested the device at different distances. First, Harper stood in the bedroom whispering as Miles recorded her. Then out in the corridor. And finally downstairs.
The system needed minute adjustments, but each time, it transmitted and recorded at impressive distances.
After that, they raised the stakes – moving outside his apartment. Harper stood in the rain at the far edge of the building’s parking lot while Miles stayed inside with his receiver, recording her talking quietly.
‘Hello hello. I’m getting drenched,’ she said. ‘Over.’
It recorded perfectly.
Later, when the weather worsened, they tried the device in wind. That was less successful – the wind cut out her voice enough to cast doubt on what she was saying.
There was only so much Miles could do about this. They would need a still night if they wanted a decent recording – clear and unambiguous enough to stand up in court.
After endless discussion, they’d chosen a location – Harper would meet Smith at The Watch.
Miles had been dead set against it at first – too isolated. But Harper had insisted.
‘Smith will know he’s safe there – he’ll think nobody could ever hear what he’s saying,’ she said.
Of course, there was more to her thinking than she let on to him.
She knew The Watch. She felt safe there.
It rained all afternoon. Harper sat near the windows, her phone in her hand, gloomily watching the water run down the pane. The storm front was due to pass in the early evening, and a dry night was forecast, but it was hard to imagine at this moment.
‘If the wind’s not blowing, we can still do this even if it’s raining,’ Miles told her as they sat on his sofa rehashing the plan for the umpteenth time. ‘If there’s a bit of light, I could even film the whole thing.’
‘I don’t know,’ Harper said doubtfully. ‘It’s pretty dark at The Watch.’
‘It is at that.’ Miles rubbed a hand across his jaw. ‘Still, there might be a way. I could go down there early, set up a camera with a night-vision lens in the trees. It would give you more protection. And I’ve been thinking more about the logistics. If I park down below the bluffs, you’d be right above me. Close enough to operate the camera by remote control.’
The Echo Killing Page 34
