him. “None of this is any of your business. Why don’t you just go back to LA and leave us in peace?”
Bonnie looked back and forth between them, a puzzled frown creasing her forehead as Graff stepped closer. His worn gray jacket looked rumpled, and he didn’t smell all that clean. “You think you’re so pure,” he said, a jagged edge of malice in his voice. “You think you’re a real journalist and I’m a hack. But you’re wrong. We’re the same. We’re both reporters. It’s just that you’re old journalism. I’m the new wave.”
Harper glared at him. “God help us, then.”
He didn’t back down. “I’ve been doing my research. Your newspaper’s in trouble. Been laying people off. Newspapers like yours don’t stand a chance. The world is changing.” He snapped his fingers in front of her face. “People want their news fast and they want it exciting. Paper’s what they read in school. They want news on their phone. And they want it updated all the time. You can’t do that. Not with your big office building downtown. Your bloated staff. Advertising department. Sports department. You look down on me but someday you’ll be coming to me for a job,” he told her, with satisfaction. “I guarantee it.”
“Not as long as any other job in the world exists.” Harper said it through gritted teeth.
He wasn’t convinced. “You’ll wipe tables for a living when you could write?”
“I won’t ever work with con artists like you.” Motioning for Bonnie to follow, she turned on her heel and strode away. She could hear him laughing but she didn’t look back.
“Who was that guy?” Bonnie sputtered. “He’s repellent.”
But Graff’s words stung more than she cared to admit. He wasn’t wrong about the piece she’d written. It was completely legal but it wasn’t fair. There wasn’t any real evidence that Cara had anything to do with a murder. She’d written it because she had the information, and because Baxter needed a compelling front page to keep the newspaper’s owner happy.
She didn’t like what this case was doing to her. Why didn’t the police just solve the damn thing?
Then she could focus on finding the man who killed her mother.
* * *
Bonnie went home a short while later to prepare for the classes she would teach the next day. Harper had the day off, and spent most of it looking for more information about Martin Dowell. Still, she could find nothing in any newspaper about him being released from prison. And little that she didn’t know already about his long list of crimes.
Late that afternoon, Luke texted:
SP tell me they’re monitoring Dowell. Ankle bracelet; limited freedom.
Harper knew “SP” would be the state police. This information should have made her feel better, but for some reason, the worried feeling in her chest didn’t lift.
After a second, she texted back:
Is he in Atlanta?
His response was instant:
Don’t know. No one’s talking.
She frowned, turning the phone over in her hand. There were very few circumstances in which police would protect an ex-con in that way. None of them made sense in this case, except one.
She typed:
Is he cooperating with them? Is he a witness?
There was a long pause before he replied:
Can’t be. He’s too dirty. He’s tainted.
Normally, she’d have agreed with him. But she’d been thinking about this all day and nothing else made sense.
I hope you’re right,
she wrote back.
I’ve got a bad feeling about this.
His reply came shortly:
Yeah. I don’t feel too good about it either.
She wanted to ask more. To find out what he thought, based on his old days working undercover. For a brief moment she considered calling him, but then put the phone down again. After all, he hadn’t called her. That might mean he was with his girlfriend right now.
The thought was a needle jab to her chest.
She didn’t have any right to be jealous. After all, she was the one who’d told him she didn’t want to try a relationship again.
So why did she feel left behind?
In an attempt to distract herself, she made food she couldn’t eat. Poured a glass of wine and didn’t drink it. Through it all, her mind kept going back to Martin Dowell, and wondering what he’d offered the police in return for his freedom.
Just after eleven o’clock, her phone finally rang, but it wasn’t Luke, calling to throw ideas around.
It was her father.
“I got your message.” His voice was clipped, distant. “That was a surprise.”