A Beautiful Corpse

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‘She’s in a meeting.’ The assistant’s tone indicated she wasn’t the first to call. ‘I’ll ask her to get back to you.’

‘Make it quick, would you? We’re in a rush.’

‘As I said,’ the assistant sounded unmoved, ‘she’s in a meeting.’

While she waited for the mayor to call her back, Harper opened an internet search engine and typed: ‘Naomi Scott’.

A flood of false returns filled her screen. A blogger with 40,000 Twitter followers dominated, along with a Chicago attorney.

When she added ‘Savannah’ to the search, though, she found what she was looking for.

It was a social networking site for students at the Savannah State College. The picture on Naomi’s page was arresting. Her shoulder-length black hair hung loose in waves. Her unblemished skin, high cheekbones and huge, cinnamon eyes gave her an ethereal beauty.

Harper stared at the familiar face for a moment.

‘What did you get yourself into?’ she murmured.

The short bio beneath the image said: ‘Young, free, and ambitious. Ready to change the world.’

It listed her area of study as criminal law. The only other information was a phone number and a student email address.

Leaving the landline open for the mayor’s call, Harper picked up her cell and dialed Naomi’s number.

It went straight to voicemail.

‘Hi. This is Naomi. Leave a message.’

Hearing the dead woman’s familiar voice was chilling.

Harper hung up and then immediately dialed another number. This one she knew by heart. As it rang, she stared at the picture of the vibrant young woman with her challenging eyes.

The ringing stopped abruptly. ‘Savannah Police Public Information.’

The voice was male and breathless – as if he’d snatched up the phone while running in search of a fire extinguisher. She could hear other voices in the background and people typing – the sounds of a busy office.

‘This is Harper McClain,’ she said. ‘I’m looking for whatever you’ve got on the Naomi Scott murder from last night.’

‘You and everybody else,’ he said. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘The basics. Got any suspects?’

‘Nothing I can tell you on that.’

‘You looking for the boyfriend?’ she tried, already knowing the answer but also suspecting he wouldn’t verify it on the record.

He snorted a laugh. ‘Is this some sort of hoax? Or do you have any real questions?’

Harper tried a new angle. ‘Could you verify that her wallet was found in her bag?’

She heard him typing something.

‘That’s affirmative,’ he said.

‘Money in the wallet?’ she asked, propping the phone under her chin as she made notes.

‘Affirmative.’

In that case, it definitely wasn’t a robbery. Miles’s source had been right.

‘But her phone was MIA?’ she pushed it.

‘That is what it says on my screen,’ he said, adding, ‘Right now we don’t know if she lost it, left it at home, or got shot for it.’

Harper knew she hadn’t left it at home. Bonnie had seen Naomi take a call less than an hour before she left work.

‘Any witnesses?’

There was a pause, and she heard him clicking keys on his computer.

‘Negative,’ he said, after a second. ‘No witnesses have come forward. The body was found by two members of the public, walking home from a party at the Hyatt hotel.’

‘Can you give me their names?’ she asked.

‘Oh sure,’ his tone was sarcastic. ‘And would you like perfume on your birthday, or do you prefer flowers?’

‘Please?’ Harper begged. ‘Just one name?’

He made an exasperated sound. ‘You know I can’t tell you that, McClain.’

Through the line, she could hear another phone ringing.

‘Is that everything?’ His voice was impatient. ‘I’m a popular man today.’

‘I guess that’s it –’

Before she’d even finished the sentence, the phone went dead in her hand.

Well, at least, thanks to Bonnie, she had the father’s name. And the internet had given her his phone number.

She dialed the number and waited as it rang and rang. After eight rings, she hung up.

If she couldn’t reach family, she’d need to find someone else. But she had enough for the website now.

Turning to her computer, she quickly wrote up a short, sparse news story about the shooting.

Murder on River Street

By Harper McClain

The city was shaken in the early hours of this morning by news of a murder at the very heart of the city’s tourism district.

The victim was Naomi Scott, 24, a law student who also worked as a bartender at the Library Bar on College Row. Police say she was shot twice, at around two o’clock Wednesday morning.

No motive has been determined at this time, although robbery is unlikely.

As this story was being written, detectives were still looking into the details of the crime.

The body was discovered minutes after the murder by two members of the public. Police say no witnesses to the crime have come forward.

Calls for comment to Mayor Melinda Cantrelle’s office were not immediately returned.

She’d just sent the story across to Baxter when her phone rang.

‘McClain,’ she said, throwing her empty coffee cup in the bin.

‘Now look, Harper, my office will be issuing a statement at ten thirty. Don’t you dare write that I’m not replying, or that I’m trying to dodge this murder case.’

Mayor Melinda Cantrelle had a distinctive voice – rich and resonant, made for television. In fact, twenty years ago, she’d started her career anchoring the morning news on a local station. That experience gave her an air of cultivated calm most of the time, and she had a made-for-TV smile. But today she was talking fast, her words short and clipped.

Harper fired a quick message to Baxter: ‘Hold the story. Mayor on phone.’ And then leaned back in her chair, propping a notebook on her knee.

‘Of course not, Mayor Cantrelle,’ she said sweetly. ‘But the first story will go up on the website any minute now and I can’t have our readers think I didn’t try to reach you.’

‘Oh come on, Harper …’ The mayor did not sound happy.

‘Can’t you give me something small?’ Harper cajoled. ‘What does this murder mean for tourism? And will you be sending more police downtown? Anything like that would be enough to get that “no comment” out of my story.’

There was a long pause, during which Harper suspected the mayor was fighting to control her temper. She’d taken over the city leadership a year earlier, and Harper almost liked her – she had a blunt approach that, if nothing else, gave the appearance of honesty. At forty-five, she was younger than the gray-haired men who normally served as mayor, and she was still new enough at her job to pick up the phone at times like these.

‘The police have informed me they are searching for a suspect,’ the mayor said smoothly. ‘We believe this to be a family incident. It would be inappropriate for me to comment further while the investigation is underway. But we intend to get to the bottom of this, I can promise you that. I consider it my number one job to keep visitors and residents here safe.’

Harper wrote as she talked, pen skidding across her notepad.

‘A family incident? Can you be more specific?’ she asked, not looking up from the page. ‘You’re not saying her father had something to do with it, are you?’

‘This is off the record.’ The mayor lowered her voice. ‘But I’m told the detectives are looking for her boyfriend. They think this was a personal thing.’

Someone spoke in the background, and the sound suddenly became muffled. When Cantrelle returned she sounded rushed.

‘Look, I’m afraid I have to go. We’ll be issuing a full statement in an hour. Cathy will email it over. Call her if you need anything else.’

When she’d hung up, Harper read over her notes.

As she’d suspected when Daltrey questioned them last night, they thought it was the boyfriend.

She flipped through her notepad until she found his name: Wilson Shepherd.

It wasn’t a surprise. The vast majority of murdered women are killed by someone close to them – husband, boyfriend, friend. No more than one in ten murdered women are killed by someone they don’t know.

Harper had long thought women were afraid of the wrong thing. Women are scared of the hooded teen at a gas station, or the unknown man walking down the dark street late at night.

They should be afraid of their husbands.

When you get right down to it, if you’re a woman, being killed by someone you love is the most ordinary murder of all.

This was bad news. The paper hardly covered domestic violence.

‘There’s nothing there,’ Baxter had said, more than once. ‘No one wants to read about that stuff.’

She wasn’t wrong.

A random murder is a threat to everyone. It’s lawlessness in the streets.

But if a woman’s ex-boyfriend shoots her? Well. She should have made better choices.

If Naomi Scott was killed by Wilson Shepherd it would move the story to page six within a couple of days.

Harper kept trying to remember if she’d met Naomi’s boyfriend. Her mind summoned an image of a serious, chubby-cheeked guy, neatly dressed, sitting quietly at one end of the bar.

Otherwise, she knew nothing about him.

Before she’d gone to sleep last night, she’d asked Bonnie what she knew about him. All she’d said was that they met at school. She’d been so worn out Harper hadn’t wanted to push it.

She’d still be asleep now. But later today, she could see if she remembered more.

For now, she searched his name in the newspaper database and came up empty.

Staring at the empty screen, she tapped her fingers against the desk. She’d done all she could in the office. It was time to go hunting.

After typing up a quick update with the mayor’s statement and sending it through to the editor, she grabbed her scanner and stood up.

DJ glanced at her enquiringly.

‘I’m heading out,’ she said, stuffing a fresh notebook in her pocket. ‘If Baxter comes looking for me, tell her I’m off to find a killer.’