Hope's Peak (Harper and Lane #1)(2)

In the early hours, a delivery driver saw a man walk out of the corn, completely naked except for a white mask. A truck was parked twenty yards farther down the road. The driver called it in right away, using his GPS to give them the location—it’s the first break they’ve had with the case so far, if you don’t figure the killer’s DNA into the equation, taken from the previous victim. But even that proved a dead end. The Combined DNA Index System contains only known offenders—if the perpetrator has never been caught and booked, he’s not in CODIS—and that’s about as useful as having fingerprints for someone who’s never had their prints catalogued.

“The driver’s at the station. I asked him to wait.”

“Thanks, I appreciate that,” Harper says. “I’ll bet Dudley was chomping at the bit to get in there.”

“He can go kiss my ass.” Stu smiles. “If Dudley thinks he’s making lieutenant on the back of our work, he’s wrong. I asked Albie to hold the fort till you get there.”

“Oh, you’re not coming along?”

“The captain’s got me interviewing the farmer who works these fields, see if he knows anything. Owen Willard owns all this. I don’t think I’ll be long.”

Harper turns to face Stu and straightens his tie. He looks at her the way he does when they lie in bed after a few beers, listening to her talk, one arm under his pillow, the other around her waist. It’s all she can do to look away, thinking of the broken girl in that sea of corn.

The Crime Scene Unit arrives in a white van. Harper pats the side of Stu’s face and goes to greet them. “I guess this is me. Thanks for the coffee, stud.”

“Anytime, kiddo.”

She glances back to see him walk across the road and into the corn. The shifting green stems part and swallow her partner whole.



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 . . .”