Hope's Peak (Harper and Lane #1)(3)

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.”

“Great,” Albie says, watching the man through the glass.

“Hey, it gives us another avenue to explore, at the very least. Look at all the convicted racists in the local area. See if the murders correlate to them being out and about. See what you can find out about recent KKK activity in the area. White supremacists, that sort of thing.”

Albie nods. “Okay. You’re the boss woman.”

“You’re learning fast, my little apprentice.” She pauses for a moment. “It’s kind of a long shot, but let’s put out a description of the car as well. There can’t be that many of those old trucks still on the road.”

Albie rolls his eyes. Filch waves at them and they return to the interview room. “What’ve we got?” Harper asks.

She looks at the drawing Norma has made based on the trucker’s description of the man. He looks like a ghoul. Long, stringy arms. Slender body. Odd-shaped, irregular eyeholes staring right back at her. Filch hasn’t put eyes behind the mask, only darkness. It gives her chills just to look at it—a cold breeze at the back of her neck, traveling all the way down her spine.

When you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

As ever, she feels a burning hatred for the one responsible. It’s one thing to be passionate about the job—Harper is passionate about seeing justice served. Catching the bad guys and seeing them safely behind bars. The way it’s meant to be done. But seeing these girls turn up dead, it makes her feel a different kind of cold inside. It goes beyond hatred to pure loathing.