More than anything, she knew what was coming. Ida had spent years revisiting her mother’s murder, over and over. Now she would experience another murder. Another little sparrow that had had its neck wrung. Laid to rest in a field, coveted as a thing of beauty and venerated as such. But they were what they were. Nothing more than strangled birds, silenced before they knew their own song.
It was the thought of them as helpless birds that got her back on her feet, that made her draw a heavy breath and charge at the door, keys clenched in her hand so hard she nearly drew blood. Those young women deserved to have their stories heard. Their songs would remain unwritten otherwise. Ida was on the road without even realizing it, gunning the engine, knuckles white on the steering wheel. She’d sped her way through a mile or two before she relaxed her grip and fell to her own anxieties of the dark night around her.
But the fire inside her had already been lit. Whatever awaited her, whatever the latest victim had to tell her, she would listen.
Harper waits while Stu dozes on and off next to her in the car.
“Keeping you up?” she asks, giving him a sharp elbow in the ribs when his head lowers, chin resting on his chest, a stifled snore coming from his crumpled mouth.
“Huh?” Stu looks around, eyes red, and wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. “Did I nod off again?”
“Either that or you were slipping into a coma, Stu.”
“Sorry.”
Harper checks the time: 11:46. She wonders if Ida will show. She sounded game on the phone when she spoke to her earlier, but something could have changed since then.
“Feeling it at the moment. I don’t know, I can’t sleep at home,” Stu says, stretching out. “Do you get that? When you’re caught up in the case?”
She knows he means “the victims” when he talks about the case. A death is like a boat cutting through water, the ensuing pain and heartache left in its wake fanning out for a long time to come. But she knows there’s something else, too.
Us.
“Stu, I said we’d have that chat. I think maybe—”
He cuts in. “D’you know me and Karen were high school sweethearts? Prom dates even? Man, I thought it was the happiest day of my life, getting married to her. Went off without a hitch. Everything was rosy. I worked my way up to detective over time. We got our first house. A place of our own. You know that feeling? When you go from renting someplace to actually owning a piece of one yourself?”
“I do.”
His eyes are glassy, looking through the windshield, lost in the fog of what he’s saying. “I thought we’d last, I really did. But you know what? Sometimes it just don’t work out. I tried giving her a kid, Jane. I tried to make the picture complete, but I couldn’t.”
“How do you know the problem was with you?” Harper asks. “Maybe she couldn’t—”
Stu shakes his head. “No. It was me.”
“Is that what’s eating you up? Some kind of fucking guilt?” Harper slaps him on the arm with the back of her hand. It brings him back. “Look at me. Stu, really look at me.”
Stu’s voice is only a whisper. His eyes hang heavy. “Yes?”
“You are not to blame for your marriage ending. No more than I’m to blame for mine. We make decisions—sometimes those decisions turn out to be mistakes. That’s just how it is,” Harper says.
“I know.”
“Why have you brought all this up? Because of us?”
“God, Jane, do I have to spell it out? I’ve got feelings for you. I want us to be more than what we are. I thought that was going to happen, but all I get now is a cold shoulder. You don’t want to know,” Stu tells her. “I wonder what’s wrong with me that I have this effect . . .”
“Fuck’s sake.” Harper grabs his hand, gives it a hard squeeze. At that moment a car’s headlights sweep across the parking lot. It’s Ida’s truck. “This is her. Listen to me, Stu. It’s not you. I think my own insecurities are the problem. I’ve got a history of running away when things don’t turn out the way I wanted them to. I won’t do that this time.”
“Really?”
She smiles, though there’s a sickening feeling in her gut from making such a promise—the problem is that you feel compelled to keep promises like that. “Really.”
“What about Karen?”
She shrugs. “It’ll sort itself out, I guess. I don’t know. If need be, I’ll talk to her myself. We didn’t do anything wrong, Stu. We were free agents.”
The truck pulls up alongside, and the driver reaches across to wind the passenger window down.
“Evening,” Ida calls out to her.
Harper pushes a button and her driver’s-side window slides down. “Hey, Ida. I was beginning to wonder if you’d show at all.”
“Yeah, I got caught up.”
“Uh-huh,” Harper says. “Do you want to jump in back?”
Ida cuts the engine. “Okay,” she says. Harper watches in the rearview mirror as Ida climbs in.
“Ida, this is Detective Stu Raley. He’s my partner. You can trust him, okay?”
“I know,” Ida says. “Pleasure to meet you.”
Stu nods. “And you.”
Harper starts the car, drives through the empty parking lot. She glances up at the mirror, sees Ida looking out the window at her truck. “It’ll be fine there, Ida. I promise.”
“Alright.”
“Listen, I’ve told Stu about your . . . gift,” Harper tells her. She feels Stu tense in the passenger seat.
Neither Ida nor Stu says anything.
“He’s skeptical.”
Stu glares at her. “Jane . . .”
“It’s alright, Detective Raley,” Ida says from behind. “I’m used to people thinking I’m a little soft in the head. Goes with the territory. I spent four years in a mental hospital because no one believed a word I was saying. You’ll either be convinced, or you won’t. I’m not out to impress anyone.”
Stu clears his throat. “Uh, that’s fine. Yeah.”
Harper thinks: So far so bad.
Barnie watches the morgue overnight. The job involves him sitting at a desk watching television, trying to stay awake until the morning supervisor arrives. His proclivity for eating several bags of cheese balls every night, washed down with cans of Coke, has seen him balloon to a solid three hundred pounds.
Occasionally, people arrive at the morgue to deliver a body, or to take one away. It’s Barnie’s job to ensure everything is kosher. So when he sees Detectives Raley and Harper—and a third person he’s never met before—approach the entrance, he’s not too surprised. He knows they have that girl in storage, the one from the high-profile murder case that’s all over the local paper. It’s not unusual to have homicide people, and coroners, revisit a body to confirm some theory or other.
They ring the bell and he buzzes them in.
“Evening, Barnie,” Raley says.
“Detective.” He nods his head. “Harper, you along for the ride tonight?”
“I am.”
Barnie peers around Harper’s side at Ida. He lifts the sign-in sheet attached to a clipboard and sets it down on the counter in front of them. “Does your friend there have ID?”
“I’m afraid not,” Raley says. “But you’re due for a quick bathroom break, aren’t you?”