Chapter 43

Jess

"I ran the DNA from the fingernail we found on Theo Moriarty's body against a cheek swab Maya Shepherd gave last year, and it isn't a match," Khandi tells Lieutenant Galloway and me.

She wedges one boot against the door and leans out into the courtyard as she talks, rubbing her bare arms. Snow sticks in her twists, and she shivers.

"Who's the DNA from?" Galloway asks.

"We don't actually have a match yet." The diamond in Khandi's nose winks in the pale yellow lights. "It'll take a little longer ..."

I curse under my breath.

" But I also got a hit from that partial fingerprint on the suitcase zipper."

"In AFIS?"

"No, that was a bust. But Laura used to volunteer teaching children painting a number of years ago at the local elementary school. She had a full background check, including fingerprints, done then."

"So the partial is from Laura Harper?" I ask.

"Yeah, but here's the interesting thing. The fingerprint and the DNA from the fingernail are not from the same person. Laura Harper put Theo Moriarty in that suitcase, but she wasn't alone."

I turn to Galloway, heart accelerating. "There was a second killer."

Galloway's eyes burn with something I recognize: that buzz you get when a case starts to click. The aura.

"Maybe that's who killed the Harpers," she says. "They wanted to silence Laura."

"The family was just collateral damage."

"Killers tend to kill again when they need to cover their tracks."

Somewhere deep inside my spine, creeping along the palms of my hand, something is humming. A warning. A notice. Like a tuning fork stuck into an electrical socket. There's that pressure in my ears, that cold trickling down my spine.

I look up, and there's Isla, standing on the other side of the courtyard, blurred by the falling snow. And then that sound, the beeping of a fire alarm battery that's dying.

This time, I don't brush it away. I focus on it. Isla is trying to show me something.

"The beeping," I murmur.

"What?" Galloway and Khandi look at me.

"Alice said when she woke up in the car after the accident, there was a beeping sound. I thought maybe she'd imagined it or that it was the car itself making that sound. But what if it wasn't?"

I look up at the darkening sky, my body practically vibrating. My skin is hot despite the chilly winter wind. I'm filled with that restless sensation, like my skin is fizzing, like adding lemon to baking soda. I tighten my grip on my cane and start pacing, a thought tugging at me, something else Alice said, shifting and jumping around. I pause, close my eyes, trying to focus.

And then, suddenly, it's there.

"I know who was there that night." I thump Galloway's shoulder and head inside. "I gotta go. Alice Harper's in danger."