sofa and made her tone as cold as his. “Sorry to bother you. I won’t keep you long. There’s just something I need to ask you.”
“This rarely goes well,” he said dryly.
“I want to ask you about a man named Martin Dowell.”
Her father was two thousand miles away but Harper could swear she felt him stop breathing.
All he said, though, was, “I’m not sure I know that name.”
How could she have reached this age without knowing what a good liar her father was?
“That’s funny, because you were his lawyer for years.” Her voice dripped sarcasm. “I would have thought you’d remember. You look so cozy in the pictures.”
After an infinitesimal pause, he said, “Harper, what is this about? Get to the point. My family needs me.”
Harper flinched. When she spoke again, her voice was ablaze with fury. “This is about whether or not you lied to the police when they interviewed you after Mom died. This is about whether or not you are complicit in her murder. There is no statute of limitations on conspiracy to commit murder in the state of Georgia, as I imagine you know. Or on obstruction of justice in a homicide case. That’s what this is about. Now tell me about Martin Dowell. Did he kill my mother?”
“Don’t go down this rabbit hole, Harper,” her father began, but she cut him off.
“Don’t you dare give me advice. You give me answers, or there’ll be police knocking on your door with a warrant within forty-eight hours—and you know I can make that happen. Worse, I can make sure everyone knows it happened. So, I suggest you answer my questions right now. After all, your family needs you.”
In the silence that followed, she could hear his uneven breathing.
“What do you want to know?” His tone had changed. He sounded tired now. Tired and scared.
Harper opened her notebook. “Several months before Mom was murdered, you lost a murder case. It was the first case of his you ever lost. Until then, you were his golden boy. You fought like hell to keep him out of jail, and then you let him get a twenty-year sentence. Did you lose that case on purpose?”
“Your faith in me is heartwarming,” he said. “But sometimes even the best lawyers lose.”
“Stop lying,” she snapped, before he’d even finished speaking. “I read up on the case. There was a witness who was going to provide Dowell with an alibi. The witness didn’t show up in court and Dowell was finished. The victim was a known member of his operation. They’d had a falling-out and Dowell had left him a threatening message, saying he’d blow his head off. Then he blew his head off. He didn’t know the man had been cooperating with the FBI and his calls were being recorded. Dowell’s only hope was an alibi, and for some reason that didn’t happen.”
“I’m not the one who decides whether or not witnesses show up,” her father growled.
“Like hell you’re not.” Harper said. “Don’t underestimate me, Dad. This is what I do. That man, the one who didn’t show up, he was never seen again. His family never reported him missing. In fact, his wife and kids are also MIA, which undoubtedly means he’s in the federal Witness Protection Program. Now why would that be?”
There was a long silence.
“You just don’t give up, do you?” The way her father said it, it didn’t sound like a compliment.
“No, I don’t,” she replied. “So you might as well cooperate.”
There was a long silence before he exhaled, audibly.
“You’re mostly there, anyway. Dowell was a killer. He’d killed far more people than I ever knew. During the trial, an FBI agent laid it all out for me—everything they had on him. I knew Dowell would come after me if I didn’t get him off but I did the right thing. I told the FBI who the witness was, where they could find him. I told them what they’d need to offer him so he wouldn’t perjure himself.”
Harper wasn’t buying his hero act. “It would be nice to think you did it for the right reasons but I’d imagine it had more to do with the FBI laying out all the laws you’d broken. And telling you what their next steps would be if you didn’t cooperate.”
“Is that everything now, Harper?” Her father’s voice had a razor’s edge. A warning that he’d hang up and walk away.
“Oh, no. We’re nowhere near done yet.” She propped her elbows on her knees.