They exited through the Towers’ front door, brushing past youths sitting on the steps, several barely bothering to hide their drug paraphernalia. The sun now blazed over the mountaintops to the east, the air thick and heavy, promising another scorching day.
As they walked around the corner to return to the alley crime scene, Harper noted the paucity of security cameras without surprise: the gangs who ruled the Towers destroyed them as soon as they were placed, paying bounties to young kids who spotted them. Despite its location, nestled in the idyllic Allegheny Mountains, Cambria City, like many down-and-out rust-belt towns, still faced its share of crime wrought by enterprising groups of young men. While the gangs that ran the Kingston Towers and surrounding neighborhood weren’t as vicious or well-organized as the more violent MS-13 or the drug cartels that plagued larger neighboring cities like Baltimore, DC, and Philly, the Towers’ factions definitely contributed more than their fair share of grief to the community.
Luka stopped, hands deep in his pockets as they watched the CSU team pack up, taking one last look at the scene in the daylight. Without the harsh glare of the work lights the alley returned once more to what it always had been: a squalid, shadowy, lonely place to die.
And an easy place to potentially get away with murder, Harper realized grimly.
“What did I miss?” she swallowed her pride to ask.
He glanced at her, obviously surprised. “Do you think you missed something?”
“Luka, she was thrown away with the garbage. I really want to know. What more can I do?”
“Nothing until we retrace her steps, see if anyone had reason to kill her—”
“Yeah, yeah. The three Ps.” It was the first lesson she’d learned working with him. Murder motives boiled down to passion, profit, or power. “She didn’t have any cash or valuables on her, so could have been a robbery gone wrong. As for power or passion—”
“Pimp angry with her?” he suggested. “Maybe she wanted out of the life. Or she just pissed him off.” Sex workers were all too disposable; there was always more supply to fill a trafficker’s demand.
“Same could go for a john. Wanted more than he paid for or she was prepared to give and…” They stood side by side, the morning heat turning the odors emanating from the alley into a rancid stew too foul to breathe. She rolled her shoulders, a list of her next steps forming in her mind. “I’ll start with the local girls. I know where they hang out from my time with Vice. Hopefully by then we’ll have traced her next of kin.”
Luka’s phone buzzed—not for the first time this morning, since he was the supervisor on call for the weekend, covering not only the VCU but also the other investigatory units. “Patrol needs me to sign off on another scene. Call me when you know anything and we’ll do the death knock together.” He walked away, heading to his car.
Harper couldn’t stop staring at the spot on the pavement where Lily’s body had been found. Luka would help—as would Ray Acevedo and Scott Krichek, the other two detectives with the VCU—but this was her case, her responsibility.
She had to swallow twice as the true nature of her new job bore down on her. A person’s life had been stolen. Everything Lily could have seen and done, years or decades in the future, children, partners, a family… all taken from her.
If Lily was ever going to get justice, it would be up to Harper. But was she up to the task?
Now it was 12:03 and Harper sat parked in her departmental-issue unmarked sedan debating her options. She was three minutes late for Sunday dinner; she should be rushing inside to offer apologies. Or she could throw the car into reverse and get back to work on a case that statistics said she had no hope of solving.
The August glare beat down on the Impala’s windshield. Harper stared at the house she’d grown up in, a modest white-framed colonial with a roofline that paralleled that of the larger church beside it. The only home she’d ever known and yet every time she returned it was harder and harder to find the strength to go inside and face her family. Especially her father, the leader of Holy Redeemer, the Reverend Matthew Harper.
After Luka left her at Lily’s crime scene, Harper had gone back to the police department where she’d pulled Lily’s records and searched for known associates, made a list of people arrested at the same time as Lily, as well as the various addresses—most of them fake—that Lily had given along with an assortment of Lily’s aliases. She’d also compiled the names of the people who’d bailed Lily out and paid her fines. By the time she’d finished, she couldn’t even verify that Lily Nolan was the girl’s real name. Typical of so many street kids, Lily had never given the same name twice and she was young enough that they had no driver’s license or other official documentation to confirm her true identity.
Undaunted, Harper had spent the rest of the morning walking the streets around the Towers in a fruitless search for anyone who could possibly tell her about Lily’s final hours or point her in the direction of Lily’s next of kin. But Sunday mornings were about the only slow time on the streets, a chance for working girls to catch a few hours of sleep.
The entire time, all Harper could think about was Lily’s birthday, four days ago. For some reason, she couldn’t get past that.
Harper’s own birthday was January sixth, the same date as the Epiphany, the celebration of the Magi arriving with their gifts for the Christ Child. It was a poor choice of a birthday for the adopted child of a preacher. A day to give, not to receive. A day that meant more as
