Chapter 17

Jess

Shane calls as I'm leaving Alice's house. I check the time and realize it's after 5:00 p.m.

I swear under my breath. I need to head back before the press conference starts. I press "End." It's probably best not to tell anybody about my little chat with Alice, a witness, without the lead detective's knowledge. Or that Melanie O'Brien threatened to call not only her lawyers but my boss on me.

My mind is on Alice as I climb on my motorcycle. She's a clever girl, perceptive, sensitive, astute. But I don't think she's telling the whole truth. She said her dad wasn't drinking that night, and yet they were at a Christmas party. I find that unlikely, especially given he had a drinking problem. As an alcoholic, I can recognize the signs. Either Alice didn't realize it or was covering for him.

And then saying the paramedic had found her in the forest, when she was found by the road. Is the girl hiding something or playing some sort of game?

I pull a worn notebook from my backpack, the one Liu kept for the investigation. Every detective has their own notebook, one where they record anything that seems strange or odd, gut feelings and theories that don't have enough basis to make it into the formal report. I yank one glove off and flip through the pages, brushing away falling snow as I scan the messy scrawl.

The facts of the case are simple enough. On Christmas Eve, the Harper family was heading home from the O'Briens'. Two hours after leaving, Alice Harper was found injured and in shock by the side of the road, the minivan wrecked nearby, her family missing.

A search for the Harper family began shortly after. The winter conditions were terrible, and any footprints had long since been covered by snow, but police set out a search area in Killer's Grove. Rescue crews and search parties reported having difficulty moving through the dense foliage in the snowstorm. They found nothing except Ella's and Pete Harper's blood in a frozen pool by the side of the road and Laura's inside the car. Enough to lead detectives to believe they were dead.

The Harpers' house was searched the next morning. Police found nothing out of the ordinary. A load of laundry still sat in the washing machine. Dishes sat on a drying rack in the kitchen. Luminol revealed no semen, no blood in the girls' beds, so sexual grooming or assault appeared unlikely.

The minivan, once processed, revealed no strange DNA or foreign hairs. There was no evidence another car had been involved in the accident, although trace evidence of milfoil—which Google tells me is a feathery, fast-spreading plant found in water—was found in the trunk.

A week after they went missing, police, partnering with the FBI, conducted a second ground and air search using tracking dogs and cadaver dogs. Divers were sent into the lake using sonar, pole cameras, underwater drones.

Nothing was ever found. The Harpers had simply vanished. Over the last year, the case had gone cold and, once Detective Bill Liu left for chemo, neglected and abandoned.

These are the facts, but not the feel of the case. When I'm on a case, I get what I call the "aura." It's something intangible, almost indescribable. It's a sensation, a chemical rush that hovers over my brain, creating some sort of magnetic field. Once I feel that, I know I'm on the right track. But I'm not there yet.

I flip to the last page in Liu's notebook. In the margins he's written: Possible DV? Domestic violence. And then: Laura/Pete arguing—Ciao Bella mgr . And at the bottom, circled twice: car beeping? Dream?

A copy of the evidence log of items found around the car is folded in the back of the notebook. I flatten it against my motorcycle seat. A cigarette butt, a tennis ball, pieces of ripped paper, a thread of string, a dirty strip of linen, presumed to be the sling from Laura's arm. Nothing that could issue a beep or an alarm.

I check the time on my phone. I'll miss the press conference, but I have one more thing I need to do before I meet my dad tonight.

Detective Bill Liu lives in a pale-yellow-and-brown split-level house that crouches over a two-car garage. His wife, Gina, leads me through a dated but tidy living room to a den with a giant TV and a crackling fireplace. Bill is now twenty pounds lighter and completely bald, his cheeks and chin sagging. He sits, legs up, in an overstuffed armchair, watching Stranger Things with his teenage daughter, Taytum.

"How've you been?" I ask as I sit opposite.

He rubs his bald head and chuckles. "I've been better, but I think I'm on the mend. How have you been?"

He gives me a long look, like he's peering into my soul. I hate when people do this, bring up all I lost without really bringing it up.

"I'm okay," I say brusquely. "Good to be back to work."

"Yeah. I'm counting down. Hope to be back in a few weeks."

I try not to look surprised. He doesn't seem well enough to go back to work, but I know how it can be the thing tethering you to life.

Bill asks Taytum if we can have a few minutes alone, then says, "I wondered when you'd come by."

"You heard about the body found with Ella Harper's backpack?"

"Yep. Can't help but hope the two are connected and you solve this one. I hate that it's still hanging over me. The one that got away, you know?"

"Sure. Do you think they're still out there?"

"The Harpers? Oh, they're out there, they just aren't alive. That's my professional opinion, by the way. The crime scene was cleared up, the bodies, if that's what they were, moved. Any sign of them in the house?"

"The CSIs are still going through it, but the dogs haven't found anything, so I'm thinking if they're dead, they aren't there."

"A lot of places to hide a body in those woods. All those chasms and caves. We looked, the FBI looked, but maybe we missed something."

"Maybe they were picked up, taken somewhere else, killed somewhere else."

"There were no sightings, no evidence that's how it played out."

"Shane said you liked Pete Harper for it."

Bill draws a knitted blanket from the back of his chair over his lap as Gina enters again. She sets some kind of green smoothie along with about six different pills on the coffee table.

"Time for your meds, my love," she says cheerfully.

Bill looks embarrassed as he drops the pills in his mouth and takes a slug of smoothie. I look away. I don't know if it's a cop thing or just a human thing, but it's hard letting others see you when you're at your most vulnerable. I think maybe that fear of vulnerability sometimes leads you to hurt others, the way I've hurt Mac. And yet, how to fix it? Loving yourself despite your flaws and past mistakes is a tough lesson to learn.

"What were we talking about?" Bill asks when Gina's left.

"Pete Harper."

"Ah. That's right. We looked at a lot of theories. Abduction, voluntary disappearance, murder. The possibility they'd left on foot and frozen to death. We had a lot of armchair detectives and crazy conspiracy theories to contend with, if you remember, like that a ghost had pushed them into a wormhole, shit like that."

He shifts in his seat, rolling his eyes. "Some people are bonkers. But like I said, there was no sign they'd up and left. Not voluntarily. We checked airlines, rental car counters, watched their bank accounts and credit cards, but there were no charges and no cash withdrawals. None at all. So we knew they hadn't left to start a new life somewhere. Their wallets and cell phones were missing, but we searched their phone records and never found any unexplainable calls. Pete Harper killing his family and hiding the bodies before killing himself was the best theory we had."

"Sure, but that comes with holes in it, too."

"You mean Alice Harper."

"Yeah. Why kill your family, but leave one daughter behind?" I ask.

And that's exactly it. Alice Harper was left. If it weren't for her, it might've been an open-and-shut case. But it isn't. I can't help thinking there's something more going on here.

"Maybe it was an accident. Alice got away before he could do it."

I shake my head. "I don't buy it. If she got away by accident, why wouldn't she tell anybody?"

He shrugs. "‘When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.'"

I frown. "What?"

"You ever hear of Occam's razor?"

"Yeah. The simplest solution is almost always the best."

"Well there you go. Maybe Alice didn't see anything. Maybe she regained consciousness when he was running after the little one or his wife. Maybe she just got lucky."

It's a lot of maybes. I don't like maybes. "Did you get the sense she was hiding something like that?"

"No," he admits. "I was never sure if she was telling the full truth, but I'm not sure it could've been something like her own father's guilt. Why hide that if he'd tried to kill her?"

"Exactly. I can't get my head around it," I say. "What about the beeping sound you wrote about in your notes? Any idea what that was?"

Bill tells me the same thing Alice did, that it sounded like what a fire alarm battery makes when it's dying.

"We didn't find anything around that could make the noise she says she heard in the car," he says. "We checked with the manufacturer to see if any car parts could make that sound, but that came back negative. It had to have been outside the car."

Bill stands, crosses slowly to the fireplace, and puts his hands out, soaking up the heat. "Alice Harper wasn't exactly a reliable witness. She was injured. Traumatized. We eventually concluded she hadn't really heard it, just like she didn't really see a child sitting in the car with her. Maybe she dreamed it."

"Or maybe somebody else was there," I say. "Just like she said."

Bill levels watery brown eyes at me. "Why would a kid be at a car crash scene in the middle of a snowstorm at that time of night?"

"I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about a killer. Someone who caused the accident, then killed them."

The fireplace crackles, a piece of wood spitting. Bill rubs his hands together over the flames. "We don't know exactly what happened that night, but there was no evidence of that. After a few weeks, Shane and I, and the FBI, we all concluded that the most likely scenario was that Pete killed them."

He ticks the reasons off on one hand. "Laura Harper's medical records showed she dislocated her shoulder shortly before going missing. A nurse who treated her said she had bruises all over, not consistent with a fall on wet pavement, as she'd claimed. A restaurant manager where they regularly went said he'd seen them arguing. Pete had been drinking more the last few months; he'd shown up drunk to school, verbally abusing his coworkers. Plus, there was Laura's art studio, which had folded just a few months before. That would have created some stress."

I nod, staring at the dancing flames.

Bill watches me carefully, his gaze too heavy, too intense. "The first anniversary is approaching. The media will be all over this. Will you be able to handle it?"

I stiffen. Bill, like the rest of my colleagues, has heard about me. The rumors are still swirling. I'm crazy. Broken. Haunted.

Maybe I am. But I'm still here.

I flash a big, fake grin. "Haven't you heard? Shane's leading on this one."

Bill can't hide his surprise. "Shane? Damn. Poor kid."

"Why?"

"Don't you know?"

"I guess not."

"Shane's little sister went missing when he was a kid. They were outside, playing, and somebody took her. She was never found. It's why he became a cop. His dad, too. Working the Harper case last year was hard on him, but he was the first one in every morning and the last one out every night. He has the makings of a fine detective."

"I agree." Maybe I haven't given Shane enough credit. He's been working his own personal cold case longer than I've been a detective.

I stand, thrust a hand out to shake Bill's. "I've taken enough of your family time. Thanks for talking to me. I can see myself out."

I call goodbye to Gina and Taytum and step outside. Snow is falling gently, kissing my cheeks with feathered fingers. The air has a snap to it, my breath turning to mist in front of my face. Isla is standing by my bike. She looks like she's hidden in a snow globe, one more shake and she'll disappear forever.

"What do you think?" she asks.

I fold my cane, slide it into my backpack, and clip my helmet on. "I think maybe Bill Liu focused too much attention on Pete Harper and not enough on looking for possible other suspects."

The truth is, the simple answer often turns out to be the correct one. But my gut tells me nothing about this case is simple.