Chapter 9

Jess

The house is officially a crime scene.

Shane and I call it in, rope it off, then go outside to wait.

The sky is heavy, bloated with snow clouds. In a few weeks, it will be Christmas, thick banks of fluffy snow on the ground. But right now, everything just feels dark and gray.

A patrol car pulls up, two uniformed officers I vaguely know getting out.

"Want to get them canvassing?" I suggest to Shane. "There were no signs of forced entry, no weapon found, and no neighbors to get video surveillance from, but maybe someone saw something."

Shane snaps his fingers. "On it."

While he's talking to the cops, I scan the front yard. My eyes land on someone out in the field across the street. The one leading to Killer's Grove.

It's a man. He's of average height with thick, dark hair flopping over his forehead, a neatly trimmed beard, black-framed glasses. He's wearing a suit and a black peacoat, the hem flapping in the breeze.

Something cool and sticky slides down my spine. There's something about him. Something ... unsettling.

Later, when I find out who the man is, this feeling will make sense. But right now, I only vaguely recognize it, the whisper of something on my neck, a faint buzzing at the edges of my brain.

I turn away from him, watch as Shane talks to the other cops. Pressure builds in my ears, blood rushing in my head. I limp over to my motorcycle, open the saddlebag, and grab a bottle of water. It's ice-cold sliding down my throat, a sharp snap that focuses me.

Something cold touches my hand. I jump and whirl around.

"Oh, it's you." I smile softly when I recognize the person. "You scared me."

"Sorry." Shane comes up behind me, shooting me a funny look. He doesn't see her. Nobody does. "You're very jumpy today."

I shake my head, trying to clear it. "Um, catch me up on that backpack."

Shane pulls a notepad from his pocket. "According to Maya, the girl who brought it in, she was here with her brother and a friend. They were cleaning up after a party they had last night when she noticed the trunk was open and peeked inside, saw the backpack. She recognized it and brought it in."

"How'd she get inside?"

"She stole the key from her mom, who owns The Merry Maid."

"The cleaning company?"

"Yep. Her mother is Nancy Shepherd. She and her husband, Dom, run the company, so they have the keys to a lot of places in Black Lake now."

"Especially since that new gated community went in just up the road."

"Exactly."

"Is this house a rental?" I ask.

"Unclear. I chatted with a lady out walking her dog before you got here, and she says it's been sitting empty for a while. Last she knew, it was up for sale after the owners moved to England a few years back. I'll check the property tax records and find out who owns it now."

"I take it Nancy Shepherd didn't know her daughter was throwing a party here."

Shane laughs. His laugh reminds me again how young he is. Not so much older than someone who might have been at this party. "Like parents ever know."

"Tell me about the case."

Shane scans my face. I wonder how much he knows, if he's aware of my own gruesome history?

Last year, when the Harpers disappeared, I was still a mess. My husband gone. My daughter gone. My family fractured, splintered like a piece of wood that's been cleaved in half by lightning. I could barely get myself out of bed most days, let alone pay attention to somebody else's tragedy.

I tried to talk to Mac recently, drove up to his new place. But in the end, I couldn't do it. And Isla, Isla is gone, too, although I still see her on occasion.

"We received a call from an off-duty paramedic who'd driven past the wreckage of their car by the side of the road." Shane is still talking. I force myself to bring my attention back, to focus on him.

"He found a teenage girl wandering along the road a few hundred feet away, clearly in shock."

"That's right," I say, remembering now. "She was the only one who was ever found."

"Yep. Alice Harper. She said they were heading home after a family Christmas gathering at the house of their uncle, Jack O'Brien."

"The property developer?"

"Yep. Liu and I worked the case hard. In the weeks and months after they disappeared, we had more than a thousand tips, conducted over a hundred interviews, took over four thousand photographs, and followed up on multiple ‘sightings,' but nothing panned out. No witnesses; no fingerprints; no real, useful evidence; no suspects; no motives. No bodies. The FBI was brought in, but they didn't find anything, either. It was like they'd just poof , magically disappeared."

As he speaks, I glance over Shane's shoulder at the field. But the man, whoever he was, is no longer there.

"Any theories?"

"Liu liked the husband for the disappearances," Shane replies. "He thought that Peter Harper killed his family, hid their bodies, then killed himself. He'd been suspended from his job as a history teacher at the high school the week before. He came in drunk, falling all over the place. Cussing at one of the teachers. A week later, the whole family except Alice disappeared."

It isn't a bad theory. Family annihilators are, for all intents and purposes, loving husbands and good fathers, often seen as successful, stand-up citizens. They often see their family as a symbol of their own success, so when they fail—getting fired from a job, for example—the family members are the ones who pay.

"Got a history of domestic disturbance calls from the family?"

Shane shakes his head. "No, but a lot of abused women never call in their husband."

"True. Could've been battered wife syndrome. He hit her one too many times and she snapped, killed him."

"Or he took it one step too far and killed her and the rest of the family."

"Did you think he did it?" I ask Shane.

"If the body in that suitcase is Pete Harper, then it blows that theory out of the water. But at the time, it seemed plausible."

"What did Alice say?"

"She claimed to have no clear memory before or after the accident."

"Do you believe her?"

Shane bites his cheek. "I don't not believe her."

It isn't the same thing, and he knows it.

"But why leave one daughter behind?" I say.

Wheels hit gravel, and we turn. A CSI truck pulls into the driveway, "Jingle Bells" blasting from the speakers before the engine cuts and Khandi Dawson gets out dressed in a white forensic suit, a paper mask hanging off one ear. She grins when she sees me, hazel eyes sparkling.

"Jess! Hey, girl, it's been ages!" she exclaims, dimples flashing. She hugs me tightly. "You look amazing! Hold on. Let me get my kit."

She returns a moment later with a box of tools, still smiling. Khandi is friendly, cheerful, with a strangely optimistic outlook considering her line of work. She has smooth russet-brown skin, a twinkling nose ring, and long, cinnamon-colored twists pulled into a jaunty ponytail. She wears a dark choker with a tiny black heart.

Khandi moved to Black Lake with her husband, like I did a decade ago, looking for a quieter life, a more peaceful life. The type of life we thought a small town could give us to raise a family. We used to meet for drinks after work occasionally. Before.

"How are you?"

"Good. Can't complain." I introduce her to Shane, and they shake hands.

"How's the leg?" she asks.

"Better." I tap my cane against my shoe. "I'll be running marathons before I know it."

She laughs because it's obviously not true. My leg will never be good enough for running again. But I've started swimming, and in the summer I'll try rowing. It's therapeutic, and it helps offset my other hobby, which is baking.

"So, tell me what we've got," Khandi says.

We fill her in, pulling on crime-scene booties before heading inside. They make a quiet shuffling noise as I limp across the hardwood, my cane thudding as I follow them into the basement.

Downstairs, Shane points to the large, graphite-colored suitcase that has tipped onto its back. The soft-bodied outer shell has torn, or maybe the zipper has broken, exposing the mostly decomposed arm of the body inside.

I snap on a pair of gloves. The arm has a coat on, black, matted in dried body fluids, but the hand is pale and still, a shocking white against the dark hardwood.

Khandi extracts her tools as I awkwardly get onto my knees. I flick my flashlight over the suitcase. As you'd expect, there's staining at the bottom, dried body fluid and flecks of mud, as well as bits of twigs and clumps of dried dirt on the suitcase wheels. But I don't see any signs of blood.

"Whoever it is, they were dead before they were put in the suitcase," I say, "and probably moved, possibly pulled through Killer's Grove to this house in the suitcase. The Harpers went missing near Christmas, right? It would've been impossible to bury a body. The ground would be too frozen for digging. The victim in that suitcase is clearly male. But if it's Pete Harper, where's the mother and other daughter?"

It's a hypothetical question, and I don't expect a reply. Neither Shane nor Khandi gives one.

Khandi kneels next to me and flips the suitcase lid open, releasing a musky, stale scent. We stare down at the mostly skeletonized remains inside. The victim is wearing blue jeans and a black puffer coat. His hair has partially fallen out, strands of brown clinging to the scalp.

She plucks out a battered leather wallet from under the body and hands it to Shane, who's gone a little pale. He flips it open, reads the driver's license.

"Looks like we found Peter Harper."

I stare at the body for a long moment. "Something isn't right."

I bend closer, pointing my flashlight right through the open eye sockets. One side of the skull has collapsed. Before or after death? And there, at the back, is one small hole.

"A bullet wound." I look up at Shane. "Nobody shoots themselves in the head and puts themselves in a suitcase. This was murder. Pete Harper didn't do this."

I get to my feet, tapping my fingertips against the handle of my cane, try to grab the slippery thought that's darting around my head.

"Do you have that picture of Pete Harper?" I ask Shane.

"We got it off Alice's Instagram. Let me see if I can find it."

He taps at his phone, opens Alice's Instagram page, then hands it to me. I stare at the picture of the Harpers smiling in front of a Christmas tree last year. My mouth drains of all moisture when my eyes land on Pete Harper.

I recognize him.

Faintly collegiate, black-framed glasses, floppy brown hair. It's the guy who was watching me from across the road earlier. Except now that feeling I had—the tap of cool, sticky fingers down my spine, the unsettling whisper on the back of my neck, the faint buzzing at the edges of my mind—it makes sense.

Because he wasn't really there.

"This isn't the man in the suitcase." I hold up the phone, tapping the picture. "Pete's wearing a suit with tinsel around his neck."

We look down at the man in the suitcase. "This guy is wearing jeans and a puffer coat. Unless somebody undressed and then redressed him, this isn't Pete Harper."

"If this isn't Pete, then he could've been the killer after all," Shane says, his face grim.

And that's when I know.

Somewhere, out in Killer's Grove, Pete Harper is dead. But did he kill his family and hide them first?

And who the hell is inside this suitcase?