Two hours later, Harper pads through the apartment fresh from the shower, one big towel wrapped around her body, another containing her wet hair.
In the kitchen, she makes a cup of tea—made the proper way, with leaves, stewed in a good pot—no milk, no sugar. Usually she’s a latte girl, but there’s something about tea that is so calming. She holds the cup in both hands, sipping it as she looks at the board on the wall—the only bit of decorating she’s done in there, screwing the thing to the plaster.
A map shows their little corner of North Carolina. While they were reading the files, Harper scribbled the name of each victim on a scrap of paper. Each red pin stuck into the board holds one of those names.
Over two decades of unsolved murders.
She knows that Morelli is still one of the good guys, or he wouldn’t have given her the key. But, had Magnolia Remy and Alma Buford not died, Harper doubts he would have thought to let the truth out. Like his predecessors, he would’ve let it sit in that filing cabinet, closing his eyes and grateful the responsibility never fell on him to do otherwise. Except, now it had.
Trouble is his hands were dirty before his first day in the office.
When it all comes out, Harper’s not so sure Morelli will be able to deny any knowledge of the cover-up. She got his point, though, about protecting the town. The people around Hope’s Peak are farmers and planters. Some of them in the fishing industry, but for the most part, their profession involves working the Carolina soil with their own hands. In the town, the trade’s whatever blows in on the breeze—the tourists and sightseers who keep Hope’s Peak afloat.
It has small-town charm, and plays on that to draw the vacationers looking to catch a break from the city. A serial killer who’s gotten away with what he’s done for decades wouldn’t do much for the town’s appeal.
And all the victims—so far—have been local. That’s a close call for Hope’s Peak. It would take only one outsider getting killed to have the whole situation become a national event.
Harper looks at the map. The red pins are clustered around Hope’s Peak and Chalmer just to the southwest.
The killer has to be local.
Harper sips her tea. Her cell phone vibrates. She looks at the caller ID: it’s Stu. “Hey,” she says, holding it to her ear.
“How’re you doing?”
“Oh, just chilling now. Going over today. You know.”
“Yeah.”
“What about you?”
“Drinking a beer. Trying to get my head around all this. First the body, then these cold cases. A murder and a colossal cover-up in the space of two days. It’s been a hell of a week so far, kiddo.”
Harper gets closer to the board on her wall and finds the pin holding the first murder: Ruby Lane, found strangled and sexually violated in the tall grass at Wisher’s Pond. November 14, 1985.
The next: Odetta Draw, strangled, raped. Body found in a state of decomposition in an abandoned barn outside of Hope’s Peak. January 10, 1987.
On and on.
“You listening? You’ve gone quiet . . .”
“Huh? Oh, sorry! I was looking at my board. I got lost for a second there. What were you saying?”
Stu sighs on the other end. “Never mind. I’ll meet you at the station tomorrow. I want to get on those records first thing, let you know what I turn up.”
“Okay.”
“You keeping the files at your place?”
“For the time being, yeah. But I think we should move them back to that locker. I mean, there’s only one key and we have it. No one’s going to see them but us.”
“Jane, are you alright?” Stu asks her.
“Of course. Night, Stu.”
“Night.”
Harper puts the phone down and drains the last of her tea. She looks at the files on the table. For a moment, she considers starting again on Ruby Lane, but finds she’s too tired to move. She sits back and closes her eyes.
All she can see is the young woman lying in the dirt, and the disjointed shadows from the corn giving the impression of being underwater.
4
A breath of wind and ripples fan out over Wisher’s Pond. The woman calls his name, treading through grass tall as her hip. A bird caws somewhere in the trees, which tower starkly against a sky of washed-out nothing. Her voice falters at the sound of someone approaching.
She turns. Her mouth works soundlessly, trying to scream, but there is no breath there, no voice left in her throat but a frightened wheeze. All she can do is stumble back, feeling out for something to steady her, to regain her footing. But there is only the grass, and it welcomes her with its soft embrace . . .
Ida Lane wakes, body wet with sweat, heart driving a heavy percussion in her ears. She sits, wiping away the tears that streak down her cheeks. The house is dark, the air still.
She strips out of her damp pajamas, throwing on every light to every room she passes through as she heads downstairs. She pours herself a glass of milk and switches on the TV. The clock on the wall says it’s three in the morning.
She has suffered the same dream since her mother passed those many years ago, and it plays the same way every time, without fail. Her final moments, falling into a mattress of fine grass. There is a blanket on the sofa, and Ida pulls it over her naked form as she shivers at the recollection.
The news comes on and the ticker at the bottom of the screen makes her freeze, every muscle in her body bunched up tight, knotted like a rope under strain. She grips the glass so tight she has to set it down before it smashes apart in her hand.
HOPE’S PEAK GIRL FOUND MURDERED—LOCAL PD SEEKS KILLER
Ida buries her face in her hands. She can’t stop the sobs that come—they rise from a spring of cold water deep inside. Ida thinks of their bodies, left out under the starlight, the frost settling on their skin and in their hair. Chilled, as her mother was when they found her.
She often thought of her mother during her four-year stay at Hope’s Peak Psychiatric Hospital—her mother’s murder plagued her every thought at first. In the day, she would brood, in a fog of medication and therapy. By night, Ida dreaded the shroud of sleep, and the dream that always came with it.
One night she woke, climbed out of bed, and paced her room. It suddenly occurred to her what she must do. Ida walked out to the hall and made her way to the nearest fire escape. She’d often seen the nurses disable the alarm on the door so they could stand there and smoke without having to go all the way out. It was the height of winter, and bitterly cold.
Ida thought: I will sparkle with starlight.