Hope's Peak (Harper and Lane #1)(55)

“You’re beginning to sound experienced in this area, Stu.”

“I am, pretty much. Not that I’d like to be,” he says, climbing into his car and firing up the engine. “I’m gonna go visit Lester Simmons, see what I turn up. This one will probably be missing his arms and legs, dragging his ass around all day on a goddamned skateboard.”

“Be careful, partner.”

“I will.”

“As it turns out, I’ve got my last one, too. I’m convinced—one of these names must be the killer.”

“Well, looks like we’ll find out real soon.”

“I’ll let you know, soon as I’m done here,” Harper tells him.

“Roger, roger.”



Harper parks the car. “Ida, why don’t you wait here, okay?”

“You don’t need me?” Ida asks her.

“I don’t think so. I have a good nose for this stuff. Besides, I’ll be able to tell from what he has to say,” Harper explains. “I’ll be fine.”

“Mind if I listen to the stereo?”

Harper laughs. “Of course not.”

It’s hot out. Harper wears a light-blue shirt, rolled up at the sleeves, as open at the chest as she dares—though she wears a thin vest beneath. She has a notebook in one arm, a file. Her gun bulges in its holster at her right hip.

The house is pleasant enough, nestled among a row of similar houses, a well-kept lawn in the front. The whole street is nice, she concludes, though sometimes it’s the brightest houses that hide the darkest interiors.

Harper rings the doorbell and waits. She is about to ring it again when a woman in her fifties, hair going to gray, answers the door. “Yes?”

“Hello, I’m Detective Jane Harper. I’d like to speak to George Armistad? Is he home?”

The woman swallows. “I’m afraid not.”

“Is he out? Any idea how long he’ll be, or when he’ll be back?”

“No,” the woman says, shaking her head. It’s now that Harper notices the bags under her eyes, the pale complexion of her skin. Her short nails that look bitten rather than clipped. “I’m afraid George is no longer with us.”

Harper feels the wind rush out of her. “What?” she says softly, voice barely a whisper.

Tears come to the woman. “He passed away in his sleep not two nights ago. I’m really very sorry, Detective.”

“Right,” Harper says, looking down at her notebook, just to be able to look away from the woman in her grief.

“I’m really not in the right frame for questions right now, Detective. So . . .”

She starts to close the door. Harper nods, steps back, and the door shuts. She turns and heads back to the car. There’s a distinct difference between dealing with a dead body and the family of the dead. The survivors who have to bear the pain and anguish.

Back in the car, Ida has found a station playing “Wicked Game” and is sitting in the passenger seat, singing along to it. Harper gets behind the wheel, but before she starts the engine, the realization hits her—the man Stu is going to meet may very well be the killer.

“What’re we doing now?” Ida asks.

Harper calls Stu on the hands-free. It goes straight to voice mail. She turns the key, handing Ida her cell. “Keep trying him, Ida.”



Stu parks away from Lester Simmons’s house. Much like Ida, he lives apart from the rest of town. His home lies down a dirt road, a couple of minutes’ drive from suburbia. The houses out here are big and old and come with plenty of land. Stu leaves his car door open, and gets closer on foot, careful to stay out of sight. He can hear his phone ringing, and he knows who it will be and why. Harper will tell him this last name on the list is very likely their killer. She’ll tell him to wait for her, to get backup. But suppose they’re wrong—suppose he calls all that in, and the man is innocent. Or doesn’t even live here. The hospital records can be only so accurate . . .

He returns to the car, grabs his phone, and switches it to silent but keeps the vibration on so that he can feel it ringing in his pocket. Stu locks the car, then pulls his sidearm out, checking the clip before sliding the gun back into the holster. He looks up at the house, and the sight of it sends a cold shiver down the back of his neck.

Well, here we go.



“Where does this guy live?” Ida asks.

“I don’t know,” Harper says. “Do me a favor, Ida. Open that file there. The printouts are in the back.”

Ida pulls several loose pages out. “These?”

“That’s it. You’re looking for Lester Simmons,” Harper tells her, checking her mirrors and changing lanes. “I know I’m headed in the right direction, but I need the actual address.”

“Okay, sugar,” Ida says. “Ah, it’s here. Got it.”

“D’you know how to use Google Maps?”

Ida just looks at her. “Google what?”

“Never mind. I’ll have to pull over for a second.”

More time wasted, she thinks. I know what he’ll be doing. He’ll be knocking on the door, confronting the guy. He won’t wait.

She finds a place to stop and asks Ida for the phone. The map takes a moment to load, and now she knows where she’s going. Still, she clips the phone back into its holder so that she can follow the map if she gets lost.