Hope's Peak (Harper and Lane #1)(26)

A text comes through on her cell.



Just heading to the station now—SR



Harper smiles, despite the situation. Another dead girl. There’s no stopping the killer now. Whatever it was that held him at bay in recent years is gone. He has the taste, the thirst, and needs to quench it.

Serial killers are like any other addict—they have to kill again. It’s a need.

Harper gets out and walks toward the farmhouse. Gerry Fischer opens the door and shakes her hand.

“Mister Fischer? I’m Detective Jane Harper with Hope’s Peak PD.”

“Mornin’, Detective. You can call me Gerry,” he tells her.

“Okay.”

“You want coffee or somethin’?”

As it is, Harper still feels the hum of a hangover. She didn’t get enough sleep, she drank too much the night before, the dead girl is very much on her mind, and the heat is weighing down on her. It sticks to you, makes you feel dirty and sweaty in no time at all.

“I’d like that,” she tells him. Gerry shows her inside. To Harper’s relief, he has his air-conditioning on and the house is cool. He leads her into the dining room and instructs her to take a seat at the big table in there.

“Cream and sugar?”

Harper nods her head. “Yes, please.”

“Won’t be a minute. Then I guess you’ll have some questions for me, won’t ya?”

“I’m afraid so, yes.”

Gerry leaves her alone while he goes to the kitchen. Harper scans the room. There are pictures of Gerry and his wife—some include their kids, some solo shots of the children as they got older. She guesses that they’ve all left home and moved away by now. Gerry Fischer has to be in his late fifties.

He returns carrying two mugs of freshly brewed coffee and sets them down. “There ya are. Hope that’s to yer likin’.”

“Thanks.”

He sits. “So . . .”

Harper places her recorder on the table between them, opens her notepad, and removes the cap from her pen. “I’ll try to keep this as brief as possible, Mister Fischer. There might be further questions later on, as you can imagine.”

“Sure.”

“Let’s start at the beginning. Tell me what happened last night.”

Gerry slurps his coffee, then explains the course of events; to Harper, it is pretty straightforward. He discovered the young woman out there in the field and called it right in.

“And how long have you worked this land?” she asks him, taking notes.

“Twenty years. I have a dozen or so men helpin’ me out. My wife handles the financials, ya know. I’ve always been more the, uh, outdoors type I guess you’d say,” Gerry explains. His voice warbles in his throat and as he looks away, Harper is sure she can see tears in his eyes. “Ain’t never had nothin’ like this happen before, I can tell ya. Fucking awful thing to happen to such a young girl.”

“Can you provide me with a list of your crew?” Harper asks him.

Gerry shrugs. “Can do. I’ve got nothin’ to hide, and I know they ain’t either. They’re all good, reliable men. And anyway, if they were gonna rape and kill some young woman . . . they wouldn’t leave her where they work, would they?”

“I seriously doubt it,” Harper says. “But regardless of that, I do need to know all the facts. It’s just part of the job.”

“Yeah, I get that.”

“Good,” Harper says. She pushes the notepad to one side for the moment and lifts her coffee cup. “This won’t harm your business in any way, will it?”

“I don’t know. It’s without precedent, ain’t it?” Gerry says. “In either case, I’m more concerned with that girl. Who was she? How did she get there?”

Harper sighs. “That’s what we’re going to determine, believe me.”

After an hour, Harper has asked all the questions she can think of. Gerry Fischer shows her out, and by now the sun is riding high. Away to the left, one of the fields is bare, save for the most crows Harper has ever seen in her life. There must be fifty of them, all picking over the dirt, some flapping their wings intermittently, a few cawing.

“I’ve never seen so many in one place,” Harper tells Gerry, slipping her shades on. The sight of so many crows has sent a shiver up her spine. It’s as if they have flocked to the Fischer land because there’s been a death.

“Yeah, they get like that. That field will be planted next season. Crows peck at all the old seed.”

Harper gestures toward the other fields, all lush green with life. “Obviously, we had heavy rainfall last night, but how do you get water to all these? Especially when it’s hot like it is now. You’ve gotta have a steady supply, am I right?”

“Yeah and no,” Gerry says, walking her to her car. “Ya see, what most people don’t know is how to look at it. It ain’t about how much water you can get to the field . . . it’s about how much excess you can get rid of. Drainage is the biggest challenge we face out here sometimes.”

“Right,” Harper says, knowing what he means. Where does the water have to go when the land is so flat and featureless? “Well, thank you for your time, Gerry. As I said, any more questions, someone will be in touch.”