In the little apartment Harper rents over a tackle shop in the middle of Hope’s Peak, she has a board on the wall. It’s something she started doing back in San Francisco, when she worked on her first big case—a rapist the papers christened “The Moth.” On the board, the case is a sprawl of information: the newspaper clippings relating to the murder of the first victim, a map of the local area, a pin holding a torn scrap of paper with MAGNOLIA REMY scrawled on it. Later, Harper will go to her apartment and tack another name to the board—she hopes beyond hope that it will not be JANE DOE.
When she arrives at the station, Detective John Dudley waits by the interview room. Detective Albert Goode is inside talking to the witness. “Ready to rock and roll?” Dudley asks her.
“Yeah,” Harper says stiffly. “But this is my investigation; I’ll question him with Goode, okay?”
He eyes her suspiciously. Opens his mouth to say something, but she cuts him off.
“It’s the way it is, Dudley.”
The detective shrugs. “Whatever. Your investigation. Your rules,” he says and walks off. When the first girl was found, Captain Morelli put the team together. Stu Raley and Harper running lead, with Dudley and Goode for support, much to Dudley’s displeasure.
Albie gets up, holds the door for her—he’s learning the ropes fast and is tougher than he seems, despite his soft voice and pleasant disposition. Harper doesn’t get the impression Captain Morelli is too keen on Albie. But when Morelli was younger, it was a white-male-dominated workplace. The times have changed.
The trucker pushes himself up from his chair, but Harper waves him down.
“No need to get up.”
“Man, I got a run to make. My foreman’s gonna go nuts.”
“I understand that,” Harper says. “I won’t take up too much of your time.”
“Hope not. I mean, I’m all for doing the right thing, but I’ve pretty much lost a day’s pay for this shit.”
A dead girl. A murder, Harper thinks. This shit.
She sits down, starts the recorder. “Detective Jane Harper with Detective Albert Goode interviewing eyewitness Nate Filch.” She checks the time and date, saying it aloud for the purpose of the recording.
“We really appreciate you doing this,” Albie says. “And for being patient.”
The trucker looks less than happy. He runs his fingers through his thinning hair. She guesses him to be in his early thirties. A few crummy tattoos up his arms, holes in earlobes where he used to have piercings.
Harper begins: “So, tell us where you were headed so early this morning.”
“Stock run. I work for Tripper’s Destinations. They supply about five hundred businesses around here, dotted all over the place. I drive for ’em, delivering.”
“Where are they based?”
“Farther north. Look, I already told you guys all this . . .”
Harper leans forward slightly, enough to get his attention. “This is for the official record. What you say here, we’ll use to solve a very serious crime. It’s important we cover every detail, and that you be accurate to the best of your knowledge. Okay?”
“Right.”
Albie clears his throat. “Okay. So you’re heading down that road. It’s nighttime?”
“Yeah. It’s dark, I’m rollin’ a cigarette while I hold the wheel. Ya know, the way ya do sometimes? The road’s clear, empty, the radio’s on. I can’t remember what was playing, though . . .”
Albie looks at Harper. “It’s not important,” he tells the trucker. “Go on.”
“So anyway, I’m rollin’ this cigarette, and just happen to look farther up. The headlights land on this thing walkin’ into the road. I think, Shit!, like it’s a deer or something like that? Drivin’ at night you just get in the zone, man. It takes me a second to realize it’s a guy, lookin’ straight at me.”
“Let’s slow it down a bit here,” Harper says. “Describe the man.”
Nate Filch blows air from the side of his mouth as he tries to remember. “Maybe six feet and a bit, tall gangly fella, completely buck naked.”
Harper asks, “Did you see any blood?”
Filch nods, hand on his abdomen. “Looked like he had a load of it around here.”
“Okay. Did he carry a weapon that you could see?”
“Don’t know. The guy had nothin’ in his hands, so guess not.”
“What about his head? You mentioned a mask of some kind?”
“What he was wearin’, it was like . . . a bag. A white sheet, maybe a pillowcase, with the eyes cut out. You know, to see from. Looked to me like he had a belt around his neck, holdin’ it in place. The way it was around his head, though, it looked like a white bag.”
Albie frowns. “When you say a white sheet . . .”
“Like the KKK, okay fella? Big enough to cover his head. Looked like a fuckin’ ghost, man. Just glared right at me, standin’ in the road like he didn’t care if I hit him or not. Either that, or he knew I wouldn’t. I swerved around the son of a bitch, called it right in,” Filch says. “Let me tell you, that guy spooked me.”
Harper scribbles notes on her notepad as he speaks. “That’s great. Did you see anything else that might’ve alerted you to him being up to no good out there? Apart from the fact he was naked, of course . . . and the blood.”
“No. Nothin’. I passed his car, a 1988 Chevy truck. I gave the description when I called.”
Harper leafs through her notes. “I have it. Anything else about it that you can recall? Any bumper stickers you could see, things like that?”
“Nothing specific. Just one of those trucks you see here and there. No bumper stickers.”
“No plate?”
“Sorry.”
“That’s alright. You’ve already given us a lot.”
Filch nods. “So what is it anyway? A murder or somethin’?”
“Yes and no,” Albie says. “We can’t really go into detail right now. And we’d ask you to keep this to yourself for the time being.”
“Of course. To be honest, I don’t even know what I saw.”
“On that note . . .” Harper hits pause on the recorder. She opens the door and waves someone in: a short middle-aged woman with narrow spectacles perched on the bridge of her nose. “This is Norma. She’s our sketch artist. D’you think you can work with her to give us an idea of what this guy looked like?”
“Sure. I can give it a try,” Filch says, watching as Albie gives Norma his seat. She sets out her things on the table—paper, pencils, charcoal, a tray of pastels.
“Try to recall as much detail as possible,” Norma tells him.
“Excuse us,” Harper says. “We’re gonna step out for a moment while you do that. We’ll be right back.”
“Sure thing.”
Albie follows Harper out and shuts the door behind them.
“What do you think?” he asks her.
“Could be a race thing. Given the description, the fact that the victims are black,” she suggests.
“You believe that about the KKK?”
“Stranger things have happened,” Harper says with a shrug. “It’s a stretch, I know, but we should look into it. Specifically, you should look into it.”