Hope's Peak (Harper and Lane #1)(30)

“What’s up?” she asks him.

He’s flustered. Red in the face. “All that about the TV interviews? I hope it’s made you rethink what you’re planning on doing.”

“What d’you mean? Taking Ida to see the body?”

He rolls his eyes. “What else? Come on, Jane. See sense here. If the press gets wind that you’ve marched a goddamn psychic into the morgue, public confidence will plummet. They’ll eat us alive. And that’s not the worst. If they put two and two together and realize she’s the daughter of a victim—”

“Look, even if that happens, they won’t make the connection. As far as they’re aware, Ruby Lane isn’t connected to the case. At least, not until we expose the truth at some point. Going on the assumption we ever catch the guy . . .”

“Ida is a soothsayer. Nothing more. Having her anywhere near the investigation makes it look like we’re relying on voodoo or some other nonsense, rather than good old-fashioned police work,” Stu tells her. He crosses his arms, looks down at the floor. When Harper reaches out and holds his shoulders, Stu looks back up at her. “What?”

“I hear you. Honestly, I do. But I can’t do this without you. I want to break this case. So far, all we have are bits and pieces. I think we’re on the verge of something here. I need you with me.”

The silence stretches out, and for a moment, she wonders if he will turn her down, but he nods once, frowning.

“Okay,” he says. “But I do this out of respect for you as my partner, not for anything else.”

That hurts, but she takes it on the chin. “Okay. You’re not letting your personal feelings get in the way. I respect that.”

“Good.”

“I just hope all this isn’t about me blowing hot and cold with you, Stu. Because I have my reasons. I’m not your ex-wife, okay?” Harper says.

“I know, I know,” he says.

Harper opens the door. “Come on, before someone wonders why we’re standing in a closet.”





7


The road is a dark river through the night and she rides the current.

Ida sits forward against the steering wheel, concentrating on the asphalt. Driving at night has never been her forte, and for once, she will be glad to be off the back roads. There’s something comfortable about joining the flow of traffic at night, the beams of opposing headlights giving a false sense of security she nonetheless buys into. She has the radio on—the station is playing an old Leonard Cohen number she knows but can’t put a name to. In that way, old songs are like old friends you meet in the street. You talk for a while, having genuine back-and-forth, all the while trying to remember what they’re called.

The detective told her to get to the Buy N Save in Hope’s Peak at eleven. She knows her watch runs five or six minutes fast, and even that is telling her she’s late.

It’s my fault.

Ida was set to go. She’d thrown some stuff in the truck, made sure everything was switched off in the house, closed all the windows, was about to leave when she was positively crippled with fear. She opened the screen door, and an invisible hand took her gut and wrenched it around, twisted it up tight. Ida doubled over in pain, stumbled back, the door swinging shut. There in the darkness of her house, she found she could not move. Could not go near the door.

Come on. One step at a time.

She tried, she really did. Yet the thought of getting out there, of heading into the night on her own, with the prospect of being in the presence of a dead body, scared her more than anything had in a long while. Even the dreams did not have the toxic effect the fear was having on her then.

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?”