On Harrow Hill

Four other individuals were present in the swale. A young patrol officer was standing with his arms folded and his mouth drawn down in disgust. An obese fellow was taking a series of photos, sidling in a slow semicircle around the upwind side of the body. A gaunt man was pushing a mortuary trolley, like the one in Peale’s embalming room, toward the body. The fourth individual, whom Gurney assumed was Dr. Fallow, was speaking loudly into his phone, his back to the body. He had an athlete’s physique gone soft and a large head with receding hair. The hair, neatly combed straight back, was incongruously brown above a white mustache. His blue blazer appeared to have been purchased when he was twenty pounds slimmer.

The man pushing the trolley brought it to a stop near the body. He unfolded a black plastic transport bag and laid it on the ground, then called to the young cop to help him slide the body into the open bag. The cop approached with reluctance, checked the integrity of his gloves, and did as he was asked. After the gaunt fellow zipped up the bag, they lifted it onto the trolley, which they pushed along the swale in the direction of the parked vehicles.

The big man in the blue blazer ended his phone call and, after a curious glance at Gurney, set out after the trolley. The photographer took a few more shots of the site, then climbed up out of the swale, nodded to Barstow, and headed for the break in the bushes.

Gurney went over to the spot where the body had been resting. Bright green elsewhere, the grass there was dull, matted down, bloodstained.

He gazed at the surprisingly small indentation her body had made—as though she were a child. “Mary Kane,” he said softly.

Barstow gave him a quizzical look.

“It’s a habit I have. Saying the name aloud. It moves my focus from the corpse to the person who was once alive—where it belongs—the person whose life was stolen from them.

“Sounds painful.”

“It should be painful. Otherwise, this is nothing but a game.”

Hearing himself, he was taken aback by his sententious tone. Hadn’t his own investigations been powered more by intellectual challenge than by empathy for the victim? Hadn’t he often found the “game” intriguing, motivating, all-consuming?

Barstow’s voice brought him back to the moment. “Do you have any scenario yet for what happened here?”

“You’ve been here longer than I have. You tell me.”

“Well, we know from the mortuary video that Tate walked out of there about twenty after ten that night. So, sometime between then and the Russell murder, he drove out here. You can see the turnoff to Harrow Hill is pretty sharp, so he must have come to a near-stop in front of her house, with her sitting on the porch. She may have recognized him—under that streetlight.”

She pointed at the arching arm of the light pole across the road from the cottage. It was one of the first things Gurney had noted when he arrived at the scene. He was pleased that its significance hadn’t escaped her.

“So,” she continued, “if Tate realized he’d been recognized, he may have decided to deal with it.”

Gurney nodded. “The proximity to Harrow Hill, the timing, and the neck wound point to Tate being the killer. But there’s a problem with motive. I just spoke to a woman a mile down the road who saw Tate driving this way shortly before the Russell murder and spoke to him. With no consequences. Why would Tate let one person who recognized him stay alive, but not another? Maybe we’re making the wrong assumption about the motive here. Maybe it had nothing to do with being recognized.”

Barstow was watching him with increasing interest.

He went on, “I’d like to know what this woman was doing on her porch—with an index card and a pen and a phone—in the middle of the night.”

“You love this, don’t you?”

“Sorry?”

“It’s written on your face. Baffling questions excite you.”

Gurney didn’t respond.

“So, when will you be taking over the investigation?” There was a sparkle of amusement in her gray eyes.

“Taking over is not what I do.”

“It would be an improvement.”

“You have a problem with Brad?”

She shrugged. “Brad and I have a history.”

“Oh?”

She let out a burst of laughter. “Lord, no, it’s not what you’re thinking. Back when Brad was taking criminal justice courses at Russell College, I was one of his instructors. We had no problem then, but ever since he got promoted to detective, he’s been trying very hard to prove that we’re equals.”

That explained a lot. After a pause, he asked, “How long have you been up here? Your accent sounds West Indian.”

“It’s Jamaican.”

“Were you born there?”

“In Albany, actually. My mother was Jamaican. She took me there after she divorced my father, when I was three. I came back when I was seventeen.”

He nodded with interest, then looked at his watch. “Time to get back to business. I need to check on a conversation your chief is having with the medical examiner.”