He knocks back what he has in his glass, almost gasping from the hit but needing it. “Who else have you told?” he whispers.
“No one but you. There’s no way she came up with that on her own. But that’s not the weirdest part.”
“I don’t know if I want to hear this.”
“You need to,” Harper says. “Stu, you need to hear this.”
“Alright.”
She takes a deep breath. “She detailed the bullet wound you got. The way you wear the bullet around your neck. And how we talked about it the first night we slept together.”
Stu gets up, walks to the door without another word. Harper goes after him. The night air has a chill to it. Chasing a stiff drink, it’s refreshing for Stu to feel it on his face, filling his lungs. He fumbles for a cigarette from his jacket pocket.
“I thought you quit?” Harper asks him.
“I did.”
He lights up. Harper can see he’s about as unnerved as she was. “You okay?”
Stu blows smoke out into the night. It meets the black and comes apart. “I don’t know. You?”
“I’m getting there. Freaked me out, I have to say. It was just so unexpected. And uncanny. How can she know this stuff if she doesn’t have some kind of gift?”
Stu doesn’t say anything. He smokes and chews it over.
“It happens when she touches things. Her mother’s body. My hands,” Harper says. “Her grandfather hung himself. When she touched the rope, she saw him committing suicide. It’s connected to physical contact.”
“Okay.”
“You alright with this so far?”
He shakes his head, blowing smoke. “Yes. No. I don’t know, Jane.”
“Well, you haven’t heard the nutty part yet.”
Stu’s eyebrows rise. “I haven’t!?”
“I want to take Ida to the morgue, to see what she can get from Alma Buford.”
Now Stu shakes his head for real. He drops his cigarette, stubs it out on the concrete. “Absolutely not, Jane. I can’t let you do it.”
She holds his arm in a firm grip and forces him to look at her. “I want you to help me get in. You know one of the guys there, right?”
“Damn, Jane . . . you realize that not only is it completely immoral, we could lose our jobs because of it?”
“Yeah, but we won’t. Anyway, she’s only going to put her hands on Alma’s body. Just to see what she picks up on,” Harper says. “Please, Stu. Help me do this. I’m convinced Ida has something, something we can’t explain, something that is some kind of gift. I think she’s meant to help solve these murders.”
He looks away. Harper grabs his chin, turns his face back to hers, and plants a long, hard kiss on his lips.
“What was that for?”
“For being you, and trying to steer me right.”
“And have I?” Stu asks her.
She smiles. Gives him one more quick peck. “Nope. But you keep trying and that’s what matters, stud.”
“Listen, Jane, I don’t know when they’re moving the body. Or when I can get us in there, if I can at all. But I’ll try my best,” Stu tells her.
Harper opens the door to the Snap. “Come on stud, let’s go back inside. I’ll buy you a nightcap.”
“I think I need it.”
She stops. “Stu, you should meet her. Make up your own mind. I’m skeptical, but . . . there’s that part of me that believes what she’s saying. That believes her as a person.”
Stu leads the way to the bar. “Yeah, okay, let’s have a drink first, though, eh?”
The sun has not yet risen. A faded band of light has crept in on the horizon, revealing the hazy green smudges that delineate stretches of woods. Above that, the sky is still dark blue and, directly overhead, it is darker yet. The stars are burning bright, making the most of their moment to shine before the dawn forces them back.
Gerry Fischer gets out of his truck, flashlight in hand. A half hour before, he got a call from a friend passing through. He mentioned seeing a truck parked at the side of the road, thought it was suspicious—he drove past it so fast he never got a good look at the make, model, or plate. Gerry has worked his land for close to twenty years; it’s not the first time he’s gone out in the early morning to see about trespassers. He stands at the edges of the field, endless rows of soybeans, waist-high and lush green. Gerry reaches out with his flashlight. The light lands on something at the edge of its beam.
He walks through the soybeans, making straight for it. Most likely some kids were out here, fucking around. It’s probably a beer can or a packet of condoms.
How can kids these days go through a packet of condoms? What’s the world coming to, Gerry wonders, approaching the object where it lies on the soft soil. Only it’s not a single object. It’s a shoe . . . It’s attached to a leg.
Harper wakes, looks at the time on her phone: 3:15 a.m.
She groans, sitting up, rubbing at her head. She can’t sleep for any real length of time. Her head hums from the drink, from the conflict of her own heart saying good-bye to Stu last night outside her apartment building. The way he swooped in for a kiss and she pulled back, telling him her head was all over the place, it didn’t feel right, she didn’t know what she wanted. The little pecks she gave him at the bar were not meant to be taken as anything but a friendly gesture. Stu thought they were building up to something more impressive—and he can’t understand why she’s blowing cold with him.
What do I want?
Harper goes to the kitchen and fetches a glass of water from the tap. She chases it with a few aspirins, and washes those down with more water. Harper stands by the sideboard, wanting to sleep, knowing she can’t.
It feels as though she’s led Stu on, giving him hope that what they’ve been doing would lead to something deeper. Sleeping with him, getting close, but never once telling him that she loves him. She has feelings for him, misses him in her bed, misses his touch . . . but at the same time, there’s something pulling her away, keeping him at arm’s length. Harper craves his affection, the comfort of being intimate with him. And yet she knows that’s different from wanting to be in a relationship.
There are times she wishes she’d stayed in San Francisco. Her whole reason for leaving in the first place had been to flee her broken marriage.
What will I do if Stu and I don’t work out? Run to another town? Another city? Pull up stakes and take off every time a relationship goes south?
The clock on the kitchen wall ticks away, keeping the tempo of the time slipping from her grip, running like sand through her fingers.
Her cell phone rings, making her jump out of her skin. Harper swipes the screen and answers, pressing the cell to her ear.
Thirty minutes later, she and Stu are on the road.
The rain has stopped and the dawn is setting the horizon ablaze, but neither detective is in a mood to appreciate it. Stu rubs his forehead.
“Hey, why don’t you take the aspirin in the glove compartment?” Harper asks him.
“I don’t like takin’ pills,” Stu says obstinately.
Harper rolls her eyes. “Christ, Stu. They’re not pills. Not like that, anyway. They’ll help with the headache.”
He straightens. “What headache?”
Give me strength . . .