Hope's Peak (Harper and Lane #1)(20)

I been haunted by mine for too long.

“You sound like you miss her,” Harper says.

“Yes,” Ida says without hesitation. “Yes, I do.”

“I know it’s hard to talk about, but I’d like you to tell me about your mother’s death. What do you remember about it? I know you were young at the time.”

Ida draws on the cigarette. “Only that she went missing, and was found. And then there was after.”

“What do you mean?”

“Her funeral.”

It’s suddenly hotter in the house, and Harper suppresses the urge to pull at her collar or take her suit jacket off. She sits as if nothing has changed, but there’s definitely a shift in the air—as if the whole house has tensed in expectation.

“I went to see her. Laid out in the casket. You know something? It happens so fast. You must see it on your end of things. But when you lose someone like that, everything takes on a kind of quickness. There isn’t time to catch your breath. One morning your mother’s seeing you into school. A day later, she turns up dead. A short while after that, you’re visiting her in her coffin, saying good-bye.”

Harper expects tears from Ida, but none come. She just sucks on that cigarette, as if drawing strength from it. Clutching the smoke in her lungs for as long as she can, till it burns, then slowly releasing it.

Watching her smoke, Harper begins to see why Ida lives on her own, so far from town. Why she needs space. Harper thinks back to what Lloyd Claymore said: It was like someone took that sweet little girl and wrung her out.

Ida takes her time, and Harper lets her. Sometimes the key to a revealing interview is letting the interviewee just talk. Giving them room to breathe and release what’s locked up inside.

“I couldn’t believe it was her. She looked like she was just asleep. They did a real good job, let me tell you. I thought I could just reach out, touch her, and it’d all be alright. Silly, huh? I put my hand on hers and the first thing that hit me was just how cold she was. Like touching marble. And then it happened.”

“It?”

Ida stubs the cigarette out. “Detective, do you think a person can tell what another person is thinking? Like, hear their thoughts?”

“I’ve heard stories,” Harper says. “But I’ll admit, I’ve never really believed that kind of stuff.”

Now Ida smiles. “What if I told you that I touched my mother’s hand and saw the entire murder? Everything but the killer’s face. I dream about it even now. Every night, over and over. There’s barely a night goes by I don’t wake, soaking wet I’m so scared.”

Harper sits forward. “You say you saw the entire murder . . .”

“As if I were there. I think afterward, I passed out. It was too much,” Ida says. “I guess I got a bit overloaded.”

“Are we talking some kind of . . . psychic thing here?” Harper asks. She is wondering how long it will take her to get out of the house without causing offense. Make her excuses to wrap it all up quick and get on the road. Either Claymore was pulling her leg, or he believed such nonsense.

Ida smiles knowingly. “Detective, you don’t have to hide your distrust. I don’t blame you. Just another crazy black woman living out in the sticks, huh?”

“No, no, no! Not at all!”

Ida sits back, arms folded. “I touched my mother’s hand. It felt like an electrical charge, jumping from her to me. And nothing around me mattered anymore because the vision was on me. It felt like a heavy curtain around my shoulder, pressing down on my head. It was this weight. Everything turned black. My grandmammy’s voice called for help, but I wasn’t there anymore. I was wherever her spirit led me. Another place, away from the light.”

“Go on . . . ,” Harper tells her in a soft voice. Part of being a good detective is allowing a person time to reveal the truth. Playing along for the sake of furthering the case.

Cop 101 is to never tell the crazy person you can or can’t see the dragon. Just tell them you believe they can see it.

Harper looks at Ida and wonders if she knows more than she’s letting on. The crazy person routine could be a defense mechanism, Ida’s way of coping with her experiences. Not unlike people who report being abducted by UFOs when, in fact, they were molested as a child.

Our bodies have remarkable ways of protecting us from harm, even when that harm is psychological.

“Let me tell you the dream, which was the vision I had. Okay? See what you think.”

Ida describes everything to her—how it is in her head, how it plays in her dreams. “There’s wind, and it pushes over the pond. You know, the way it does. Making the water ripple, kind of fan out . . .”

Ruby calls his name, treading through grass tall as her hip. A bird caws somewhere in the trees, which crash 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 . . .

Harper waits a second for Ida to finish. “Listen, Ida, how do we know this wasn’t something you imagined afterward? Dreams can be very convincing.”

“I thought of that,” Ida says. “Maybe, I suppose. But what if I were to tell you my mother’s killer was wearing a white mask of some kind? Sorta reminded me of a pillowcase, cut to size. Does that have any bearing on your case?”