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‘And there’s a daughter?’ Harper asked.
The woman nodded so hard her gray hair bounced.
‘Camille is how old now? Maybe eleven or twelve years old?’ The woman glanced at the others for affirmation. ‘But she should be at school today. She’s doing that special program this summer.’
‘Not now,’ floral dress reminded her. ‘It’s nearly three.’
The realization sent a shiver through the group like a breeze.
‘Oh, it’s horrible,’ cardigan woman said, pulling her sweater more tightly across her plump shoulders.
‘Did anyone hear anything at all?’ Harper tried to refocus them. ‘Or see anything?’
‘I thought I heard a sound.’ The voice came from the back of the group. Everyone shifted until Harper saw a woman, thin and pale, her hair cotton white. ‘At first, I thought it was a scream but it was so brief. I decided it was a crow.’ Her shoulders drooped and she looked around for forgiveness. ‘I truly thought it was a crow.’
‘No one can blame you,’ cane man said gruffly. ‘Nothing like this ever happens around here. We all would have thought the same.’
Harper asked a few more questions, then, pulling out her notebook, convinced a couple of people to give her their names. As she’d suspected, this put an end to the discussion.
She was jotting down notes from the conversation when Miles appeared at her side.
‘I got a name from the neighbors,’ Harper told him. ‘Marie Whitney. You got anything?’
‘All I know is she was code four when the police arrived.’ Glancing around to make sure no one could hear him, he whispered, ‘A patrol cop I know told me it’s a bloodbath in there.’
‘Do they have a suspect?’ she asked. ‘Neighbors say there’s an ex-husband.’
He didn’t get a chance to respond. At the other end of the crime tape, the news teams had swung into motion, lenses focused on something happening further down the street.
In tandem, Harper and Miles rushed forward, leaning across the tape to get a better look as the front door of the house opened and a group emerged.
Miles raised his camera and focused, firing off a round of shots.
Harper saw Blazer first – his smoothly carved face and cold eyes were impossible to miss. Nearby, Ledbetter and Daltrey stood at the edge of the group, talking somberly – no mocking smiles today.
A familiar tall figure stood behind them.
Harper’s brow creased.
‘What’s Lieutenant Smith doing here?’
If he heard the question, Miles was too busy shooting to respond.
As Harper watched, the group stepped slowly out of the yellow house. When they reached the street, the cluster parted enough for her to see who was at the center.
It was a girl, about twelve years old. Her thick, dark hair had been plaited into a long glossy braid. Her small fingers held tightly to Smith’s big hand. With her free hand, she wiped tears from her cheeks. She stumbled towards a parked car, the stunned look on her face clear even from a distance.
Harper couldn’t hear the breeze in the trees anymore. Or the low murmur of the crowd behind her. All she was aware of in that instant was her.
This scene was torn from her own tormented childhood. She’d been that girl once, standing in front of her house with Smith holding her hand.
The pen dropped from her nerveless fingers. She took a slow-motion step forward, bowing the crime tape. An official voice barked a complaint at her but she barely noticed.
The girl, her attention caught by the angry words, looked up. For an electrifying instant, their eyes met.
Harper stared at her own twelve-year-old self – pale freckled face surrounded by tangled russet hair, hazel eyes filled with tears.
Then she blinked and the dark-haired girl returned.
Leaning over, Smith said something and the girl turned to climb into the car. Harper knew how it felt to do that – hands so numb it was hard to feel the rough fabric of the seat. Small body moving clumsily, knees suddenly forgetting how to bend.
The lieutenant closed the door behind her.
Seconds later, he and Daltrey got into the car with her, before it sped to the other end of the lane and disappeared around the corner.
Harper let out a long breath.
In the aftermath of this incident, the gathered gawkers were hushed enough for Harper to hear Natalie whisper to her camera operator, ‘You get that?’
‘What a tragedy,’ Miles said, flipping his camera over to look at his shots. ‘I hate to see kids at these things.’
Harper, still studying the yellow house, didn’t reply.
Miles glanced up at her. Seeing the look on her face, his eyes sharpened.
‘Something wrong?’
‘It’s nothing.’ She kept her gaze fixed on that front door. Seeing that girl’s eyes.
This was too familiar. The house. The girl. The time of day. The time of year. A woman alone. Murdered.
Something was coming together in her mind. Something unthinkable.
‘Miles, I need to get inside that house.’
He stared at her, incredulous.
‘Oh sure,’ he said. ‘The cops won’t mind if you step into the middle of their homicide scene. As long as you make it quick.’
Harper opened her mouth and then closed it again.
This was going to be hard to explain.
As far as she knew, Miles wasn’t aware of what had happened to her mother. Few people were. It wasn’t something she ever discussed. Miles had only lived in Savannah seven years – he wasn’t here back then to read about it in the paper, or see smiling pictures of her mother on the TV news.
Still, she didn’t need him to understand everything, she needed him to help.
‘This is going to sound weird,’ she said slowly. ‘But I need to reassure myself about something. Literally, I need two seconds in that house.’
Miles still looked perplexed.
‘Harper, don’t be ridiculous. Every cop in the city is in that house.’
It was true. Four patrol cops stood out front, guarding the door. Two more were on the crime tape, stopping anyone from getting in.
After Smith and the girl had gone, Blazer and several detectives had gone back inside, along with the coroner – whose van was parked in the middle of the street.
She thought for a minute, studying the neighborhood. There had to be some way to at least see what had happened in there.
She’d grown up on a street a lot like this one, with houses lined up, backyard to backyard. Her street had been more modest, but the layout was more or less the same.
‘I only need to see in a window,’ she said, thinking aloud. ‘That would do it. I don’t have to actually go inside.’
The look Miles gave her told her he still thought she’d lost her mind.
‘What the hell is this about?’
She hesitated. She had to tell him something, but this wasn’t the time for long explanations.
‘Look,’ she said finally. ‘I have a hunch. I think I’ve seen a crime scene a lot like this one a few years ago. A mother dead. A girl coming home after school. I’m probably wrong. It’s probably nothing. But that killer was never caught. If I’m right …’
She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t need to. She’d already seen the light dawn in his eyes.
‘We could be dealing with the same killer,’ he said slowly.
Their eyes locked. Neither of them had ever covered a serial killer before.
‘You sure about this?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘Not at all. In fact, I’d be willing to bet if I take a look at the crime scene, it’ll be completely different. And I’ll come back here feeling like a fool.’
‘Why is this so important, then?’ Miles asked. ‘Why not call Smith and ask what he thinks?’
It was a good question. Smith had been at both crime scenes. He would certainly know.
But this time that wasn’t enough. She had to see for herself. To know for certain whether there was any connection at all between this crime scene and the one on that day, fifteen years ago, when her childhood ended.
Because no one ever caught that murderer.
That little girl never got justice.
‘Please, Miles,’ she pleaded. ‘I just … I have to do this. I need two seconds looking through a window.’
He held her gaze, his expression a complex mix of doubt and worry.
Harper thought he’d refuse. His relationship with the police was important to him. Ever since he’d been laid off he’d had to tread a fine line with the newspaper, the police and his work. He did not want her to mess that up.
But then, shaking his head, he held up his hands in surrender.
‘Tell me this before we throw our careers away. How do you propose to illegally cross that police line and get into that house without the cops and detectives and their merry band promptly arresting you?’
Harper pointed at the houses peeking out through the trees behind the crime house.
‘Through the backyard.’
Chapter Nine (#ulink_c3c381a3-8e4d-5ef5-8ada-c5cb4f877bfe)
Here’s a thing about crime scenes most people don’t know: they’re boring.
The vast majority of any reporter’s time at a crime scene is spent waiting around. First you wait for the detectives, then you wait for the forensics team, then you wait for the coroner. Sometimes, hours will pass before you’re even told what you’re waiting for.
At a crime scene this high profile, Harper knew she had time to burn. The forensics unit had just begun putting on their white moon suits when she stepped away from the crime tape. Nothing would be announced until they’d had a chance to examine the house.
As she hurried down the street, nobody noticed her departure. Everyone was still focused on the yellow house.
Around the corner, away from the gawkers and journalists, the neighborhood seemed calm and peaceful. But Harper wasn’t.
Despite her bravura performance with Miles, she was so nervous her stomach burned. She had to force her hands to unclench. She’d always pushed the limits but she’d never done anything like this before.
For one thing it was wildly, profoundly illegal.
If she got caught, the police would undoubtedly arrest her. The newspaper would be unlikely to bail her out because breaking the law was not part of her job description. Not overtly, anyway. Oh, they were happy to take advantage of it when she broke the rules and got a good story, but if she were ever truly busted for it, they’d let her hang.
And yet, she didn’t stop. She had to know.
In her mind, she kept seeing that girl in her school clothes, standing dazed and shocked in a protective phalanx of police.
She looked so small. So vulnerable.
Was that how she’d looked that day?
And Smith – what was he doing there? A single homicide, even in a neighborhood like this, ordinarily merited his oversight from a distance but not his physical presence. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him at a crime scene. Certainly not since he was promoted to lieutenant four years ago.
‘I’m a paper-pusher now,’ he’d told her at the time, pride in his voice. ‘I’m off the street at last. Got a chair that cost as much as I make in a week and a great big office, and by God, I’m going to use them.’
He’d been true to his word. Until now.
What if he was here because he had seen this once before?
The next street along was a perfect mirror image of Constance Street. The same brightly painted, over-priced houses with lush gardens behind low fences.
The blue paint on Number 3691 was perfect and its front garden was lavish. Fat, pink roses spilled over the glossy black bars of the wrought-iron fence in a fragrant tumble.
It was directly behind the murder scene.
If she stood on her toes, Harper could see the yellow house from the sidewalk.
Given the well-maintained look of the house, odds were ten to one the lawyer or banker who lived here was at work and the place was empty.
