Save Her Child by CJ Lyons (best historical biographies txt) 📗

Harper blew her breath out in frustration. But then she had a thought. “Maggie said she died of a blow to the head. Her body was beaten—I thought to make it look like a robbery gone wrong. And Spencer Standish also died from a blow to the head, but his death was staged to look like suicide—”

Tierney glanced over his glasses at her, his expression stern. “Detective, I know you’re new at this, but you can’t go leaping to conclusions, not without evidence. And right now, I have no evidence that the two deaths are related.”

“But—”

“Do you know how many people die of head injuries any given year?”

Yeah, but how many of them were victims of homicide? Harper had the urge to shoot back. But she kept her silence, knowing that Tierney was right; she didn’t have any evidence to connect the two cases. In fact, the only real connection between Lily and Spencer was Harper herself—it was only because she knew the details from both cases that they appeared similar. Luka had warned her about that, had called it the “fallacy of confirmation bias.”

She forwarded him the information about the time and cause of death. But she hesitated about adding that the Reverend was the last person to speak with Standish while he was alive. That particular tidbit seemed to require a conversation—as uncomfortable as it would be to tell Luka that her father might be more involved with the case than they’d suspected.

But she couldn’t believe he’d bury evidence of a killer. What had he heard during Standish’s final call? Maybe nothing. Maybe the call had been a simple follow-up after the Reverend had counseled Standish about his confession.

Except… it’d been Sunday morning. And the Reverend did not allow anything—legal work, family, breaking news, the house could be on fire—nothing interrupted his Sunday morning prayers as he prepared to preach his first service of the day. And yet, he’d taken a call from Spencer Standish.

She left the morgue, pausing at a vending machine to grab an energy bar before calling Luka. “The techs found something,” she said. “Standish made a call that was cut off seconds after he started the car engine. Probably about the same time he was attacked and his phone taken. Well, maybe.”

“Call to who?” Luka sounded distracted.

She swallowed. The good thing about the call between the Reverend and Standish was that it gave the Reverend a rock-solid alibi for Standish’s murder. “My father.”

There was a pause; she heard voices in the background. “Yeah, okay. I’ll deal with him later. Right now, we’ve something more urgent. Are you still in the hospital?”

More urgent than finding a killer? “Yeah, I’m downstairs in the morgue. What happened?”

“A mother and her newborn child have disappeared from the hospital. I’ve locked down the area and am heading to security to review the tapes.”

A critical missing person case took priority over everything. Harper spun on her heel and jogged to the nearest stairwell, not wanting to wait on the elevator. “What can I do?”

“I need you to help Leah. She suspects the mother might have been a victim of domestic violence, on the run from her partner, and she’s going to start canvassing the shelters and outreach programs.”

At first Harper was tempted to protest the assignment; it felt so minor, as if she was being sidelined again. If she wasn’t going to play a role in finding the mother and child, then why not focus on her own case? She itched to follow up with Macy—who’d conveniently never mentioned that she’d gone with Lily to rehab. What else had she hidden? But then she realized that not only did Luka’s assignment give her a way to search the streets for Macy, she also had the perfect person who knew every domestic shelter worker in the county and could coordinate them to help with the search for the missing patient.

“Tell her I’ll meet her in the ER in five,” she told Luka.

Harper ran up the steps and through the ER and found Leah Wright waiting for her at the CIC’s entrance. “There’s a long list of places she might have gone to for help,” she told Harper, holding her phone up. “This might take all day. I think we should start at the Salvation Army’s shelter and then try the one on Maple.”

Harper smiled. It wasn’t often that she held the upper hand when it came to Leah. But she knew exactly who might be able to shed light on where a desperate woman fleeing someone might go. Jonah’s outreach mission. Finally, one of her family members who might actually do more than criticize her career choices or call her a traitor for not betraying her badge.

She told Leah, “We need to make a quick stop first.” They reached Harper’s Impala parked in front of the ER. “Trust me,” she told Leah as they got in.

As Harper drove, Leah was on her phone to her mother, Ruby. “Did you get my text? Yes, I know it was only ten minutes ago, but this is important. Okay, ask Nate to send anything to my phone as soon as possible. Thanks.”

“What was that all about?” Harper asked.

“I’m trying to get a photo of Beth. We don’t have any to circulate and without even knowing her last name—”

“Gonna be hard to ask any outside agencies to help find her, much less make a public appeal.”

“Exactly.” Leah sighed. “But try explaining that to Ruby.”

Harper’s phone buzzed. Another text from Rachel. Now that Harper knew her father had been the last to speak to Spencer Standish, she understood her mother’s sudden interest in Harper’s career. She hesitated. She and Leah weren’t that close. But maybe that was good; maybe that meant a more objective viewpoint. Especially as they seemed to share similar situations with their families. Yet, somehow Leah had made her fraught relationship with her mother work. “You two don’t get along. I mean, you didn’t talk to your mother for years,