curve of the river.
He said it felt like a fairytale. So he came here, to live the dream.
They’d both started at the newspaper the same year. Harper as an intern. Miles as night-shift photographer.
Even after seven years, he still saw the city with a stranger’s eyes. He loved the homey cafés and the waitresses who called him ‘sweetie’. He liked driving out to Tybee Island at sunset, or sitting on River Street, watching the ships pass by.
Harper couldn’t remember the last time she’d done any of that. She’d spent all her life in Savannah. To her, this was simply home.
Ahead, swirling blue lights lit up the street like a deadly disco.
‘Here we go,’ Miles muttered, hitting the brakes.
Peering into the glare, Harper counted four patrol cars and at least three unmarked units.
An ambulance rumbled up behind them, its siren blaring, and Miles pulled to the side to let it pass.
‘Better leave the car here,’ he decided, killing the engine.
Harper glanced at her watch: 11:12. She had eighteen minutes to let Baxter know if she had to hold the front page.
Her heart began to race in that familiar way.
She had a thing for murder. Some people called it an obsession. But she had her reasons. Reasons she didn’t like to talk about much.
Miles gathered his equipment from the trunk, but Harper couldn’t wait.
‘Meet you down there.’
Leaping from the car, she took off, notebook in one hand, pen in the other, running toward the flashing lights.
On the street, the warm, humid air smelled of exhaust and something else – something metallic and hard to define. Like fear.
In the dark, the flashing lights were blinding. It wasn’t until Harper got beyond the police cars that she saw the body in the road.
If people get shot while they’re running, they fall hard. Legs at unnatural angles, hands above their heads, clothes fluttering around them – for all the world as if they’ve tumbled from the sky.
This guy had been running when he was shot.
Pulling out her notebook, Harper jotted down what she saw. Blue jeans and Nikes, baggy T-shirt riding up over a lean, dark-skinned torso. Large bloodstain forming an uneven circle on the pavement beneath him. The face was hidden from view.
Nearby, the ambulance was parked with its back door open, sending light flooding out onto the street. A team of paramedics was working on the two living shooting victims – plugging them into fluids, stopping other fluids from leaching away.
They were a bit late with that, though. There was blood everywhere.
Both wounded men looked like teenagers. The one closest to her still had baby fat in his cheeks.
They were dressed like the dead guy – T-shirts, jeans, matching Nikes.
Harper made notes, but kept her distance. Trying to be invisible.
Miles appeared across the road, crouching down on one knee to get a shot of the body. He had to be careful – the paper wouldn’t use it if the dead guy looked too dead. So he angled himself to get a shot of the guy’s hand, one finger pointing out, reaching for something now lost forever.
Movement in the distance caught Harper’s attention and she looked up to see two men in cheap suits, their eyes focused on the ground, walking with slow deliberation. They were both listening intently to a uniformed patrol officer who was pointing and talking animatedly.
Detectives are easy to spot, once you get to know them.
Taking care not to step in the blood, she made her way toward them, sticking to the edges of the road.
She knew both men from previous crime scenes. Detective Ledbetter was short and portly, with thinning hair and a kind smile. The other detective was Larry Blazer. Tall and thin, with dark blond hair going artfully gray, he had cheekbones to die for and eyes as hard as copper pennies.
All the TV reporters had a thing for him, but Harper found him cold and self-aware, in the way of men who are handsome and know how to use that as a weapon.
Absorbed in their work, neither man noticed as she navigated the shadows until she was close enough to eavesdrop.
‘The shooters came up from the Anderson Projects. The victims won’t say how they knew each other, but this wasn’t random,’ the uniformed officer was saying as she walked up. ‘Someone wanted these guys dead.’
He was green. This could even have been his first shooting. His words poured out in an excited rush.
By contrast, Blazer’s questions were delivered at a slow and deliberate pace; trying to communicate calm and hope it was contagious.
‘You say the vics told you the three shooters ran off together. They give any idea where they went?’
The officer shook his head. ‘All he said was, “that way”.’ He pointed roughly towards the building in front of them.
Ledbetter said something Harper couldn’t hear. She took a step closer.
In the dark, she never saw the empty forty-ounce beer bottle in the gutter, but the rattle it made when she kicked it was hard to miss.
She winced.
All the cops looked up. Blazer spotted her first. His gaze narrowed.
‘Careful,’ he said. ‘Press on scene.’
Stepping back, Harper waited warily, hoping Ledbetter would be lead detective on the case.
But it was Blazer who walked towards her.
Crap, she thought.
‘Miss McClain.’ His voice was cool, with an oddly flat intonation. ‘What a surprise to see you standing in the middle of my crime scene. I don’t suppose you’re a witness?’
He was tall, over six-one, and he used that height to intimidate – looming over her. But Harper was five-eight, and she wasn’t easy to impress.
‘Sorry, Detective,’ she said, her tone a cultivated mixture of contrition and respect. ‘There’s no crime tape. I didn’t mean to get in your way.’
‘I see.’ He studied her with distaste. ‘And yet you are standing where no journalist belongs. Shedding DNA all over the place.’
Who was he trying to kid? They weren’t going to collect that kind of evidence at this scene. The cops cared no more for a dead gangbanger than Baxter did.
Harper
