want to go back there, Miss Winter,” he said, “I’ll go with you.”
She didn’t want to go back there. She had to.
Rain and Gillian had taken Lily to the pumpkin patch, then left her with Greg. It was Gillian who pushed for the interview with Harper today, after reviewing Greg’s findings that morning over coffee. Rain felt a deep reluctance to see him again. Though he’d been the one to save her, his face was etched into the memories of the worst days of her life. And for a number of reasons, she’d have preferred to talk to him alone.
But Gillian had a way of making things happen. She’d hassled Rain until she made the call; Harper surprised her by agreeing to see them that afternoon. She was caught in the current of the story. That’s what happened. Hadn’t she known that?
He led them down a dim hallway, into his living room.
They sat on a sectional with built-in recliners and cup holders, across from a huge television, a flat screen that took up most of the wall over an ancient credenza. The walls and the surfaces around were populated by pictures—grandkids, she guessed, Harper with the town mayor, a wedding portrait where he looked impossibly young and virile, his bride an angel in white. Harper with his platoon. Vietnam, was it? She seemed to remember that. Sports memorabilia, pennants on the wall, medals of accommodation, his detective’s shield in a shadow box, all the detritus of a life someone enjoyed living. The window looked out onto a big backyard shaded by old-growth trees, a swing set and sandbox sat waiting for play.
“Mind if I record?” asked Rain, placing the device on the coffee table.
There was a definite beat as he held her with that gaze again. The wary cop. “Where is this going to air?”
“We’re not sure yet,” said Gillian. “This will be part of a larger feature, a history of the Tess Barker murder, and an exploration of how it might tie in with the vigilante killings of Eugene Kreskey, Wayne Garret Smith and Steve Markham.”
“Vigilante?” he said, leaning back. “Have there been developments on those cases?”
“No,” she said. “No yet. As I say, we’re just exploring connections, possibilities.”
“In my experience, when the media starts looking for connections, people get hurt,” he said. “And when it comes to cold cases, it’s usually a postmortem of the investigation where the local cops wind up looking like idiots.”
“It’s not that kind of story,” she said. Gillian leaned in, smiled this particular brand of smile she had—polite, so sweet. Those big eyes, the intimate way she touched his arm. Rain watched the old guy melt.
“And you’ll get a chance to hear the final product before it goes live. If it ever does.”
Which is not to say that you’ll be able to change a word of it, of course. But she wasn’t obligated to say that. You talk, we report. Those were the rules, and everyone knows it, even if they don’t like it in the end.
Text from Greg, the third one in an hour: Where’s Moon Bear?
Look under her crib?
Got it!
Detective Harper gave Rain a nod, and she pressed Record.
“Let’s begin at the beginning. Tell me about the first time you saw me.”
He closed his eyes a moment, as if accessing the memories. Rain remembered, too, seeing his face, clean-shaven, kind eyes.
Hey, Lara Winter, is that you? Everything’s okay now, kid. You’re okay.
“We got the call around noon,” he said. “Your mother, she’d called over to your friend Hank Reams’s house. When there was no answer, she went looking. When you weren’t there, she started driving around the neighborhood. It was Hank’s bike. She saw it fallen by the path to the bridge. She went to the nearest house and called the police.”
Rain nodded. It jibed with everything she knew, had heard or read a hundred times.
“We mobilized very quickly,” he said. “Missing kids, a small town. We had most of our people, some guys from other area departments, about a hundred volunteers, as well as some of the fire department out in those woods within an hour or so.”
He shook his head. “The clock starts ticking right away, as I’m sure you know. You have five hours to bring them home alive, they say. We created a circle, started talking to everyone we could find.”
Outside, the sun moved behind a cloud and the room dimmed.
“But it was nearly dark by the time we found you. You were right there. How did