A Beautiful Corpse. Christi Daugherty
her notepad until she found his name: Wilson Shepherd.
It wasn’t a surprise. The vast majority of murdered women are killed by someone close to them – husband, boyfriend, friend. No more than one in ten murdered women are killed by someone they don’t know.
Harper had long thought women were afraid of the wrong thing. Women are scared of the hooded teen at a gas station, or the unknown man walking down the dark street late at night.
They should be afraid of their husbands.
When you get right down to it, if you’re a woman, being killed by someone you love is the most ordinary murder of all.
This was bad news. The paper hardly covered domestic violence.
‘There’s nothing there,’ Baxter had said, more than once. ‘No one wants to read about that stuff.’
She wasn’t wrong.
A random murder is a threat to everyone. It’s lawlessness in the streets.
But if a woman’s ex-boyfriend shoots her? Well. She should have made better choices.
If Naomi Scott was killed by Wilson Shepherd it would move the story to page six within a couple of days.
Harper kept trying to remember if she’d met Naomi’s boyfriend. Her mind summoned an image of a serious, chubby-cheeked guy, neatly dressed, sitting quietly at one end of the bar.
Otherwise, she knew nothing about him.
Before she’d gone to sleep last night, she’d asked Bonnie what she knew about him. All she’d said was that they met at school. She’d been so worn out Harper hadn’t wanted to push it.
She’d still be asleep now. But later today, she could see if she remembered more.
For now, she searched his name in the newspaper database and came up empty.
Staring at the empty screen, she tapped her fingers against the desk. She’d done all she could in the office. It was time to go hunting.
After typing up a quick update with the mayor’s statement and sending it through to the editor, she grabbed her scanner and stood up.
DJ glanced at her enquiringly.
‘I’m heading out,’ she said, stuffing a fresh notebook in her pocket. ‘If Baxter comes looking for me, tell her I’m off to find a killer.’
When she stepped out of the newspaper office, the sun was fierce. Humidity hung so thick it left a white haze in the air, giving the gold dome of the City Hall an oddly electric shimmer in the distance.
August was always brutal, but this year it seemed even worse than usual. It had been over a hundred degrees every day for two weeks. The heat was relentless.
Harper shoved her auburn hair back, twisting it into a knot at the base of her neck as she surveyed the traffic backed up on Bay Street. She’d planned to get in her car and drive straight to The Library to try to find out more about Naomi and Wilson Shepherd, but it would take half an hour to get anywhere right now.
Instead, she walked toward the scene of the crime.
Already sweating, she threaded her way through stalled traffic, breathing in the acrid scent of exhaust and hot pavement. Whatever the mayor’s worries, news of the murder clearly hadn’t reached the city’s visitors yet. Tourists circulated in brightly colored crowds of T-shirts, baggy shorts and baseball caps, guidebooks shoved under arms.
As she headed down an uneven cobblestone ramp towards River Street, Harper was struck by the audacity of the murderer. All around her were people. Walking, strolling, driving. A Savannah Police car was stuck in traffic twenty feet away.
Even at two in the morning, this area would not have been empty. The Hyatt hotel stood nearby, overlooking the river. Hotels, restaurants, and apartment buildings surrounded her on all sides.
People were close the whole time.
Most murders take place in the shadows. They’re shameful acts hidden from prying eyes.
This hadn’t been a normal murder. This location made it a kind of public execution.
Down by the river, a breeze cooled her skin. The exhaust faded away, to be replaced by the smell of muddy water, and the cloying scent of burned sugar from the praline shops.
It was already busy. Kids ran through the riverfront plaza, oblivious to what had happened here a few hours ago. In the distance, a paddle-wheel riverboat, painted candy-cane red and white, sat waiting for passengers. A busker played the banjo, a battered top hat shading him from the sun as he jangled out a version of ‘Summertime’.
This was why the mayor was panicking. Why Harper and Baxter had both come to work seven hours early today.
The death of Naomi Scott threatened all of this.
Savannah lived or died by its tourist trade. A murder on this street put poison in the well.
Hurrying her pace, Harper walked down the narrow street, searching for the spot. It was hard to square the dark street from the night before with this bright, busy scene. It took a few minutes to find what she was searching for.
In the end, it was the ragged white remnants of crime tape that guided her, fluttering from the base of the lampposts.
From there, the crime scene was easy to find. Discarded latex gloves lay at the curb, along with other medical detritus, overlooked in the hasty clean-up in the dark.
The cobbles were damp – someone had hosed them down, trying to wash the evidence away. But blood stains everything it touches.
The darker stones showed clearly where the body had fallen.
She turned a full circle, oblivious to the tourists jostling her as they passed.
It didn’t make sense. Why had Naomi left The Library in the middle of the night and come here? Was she meeting her boyfriend, as the police suspected, only to be shot dead? And if so, why here of all places?
This was a crazy place for a murder.
Half an hour later, Harper parked the Camaro in a shady spot on a narrow lane on the other side of downtown.
Tucked away not far from the Savannah College of Art and Design, College Row was quiet and dingy during the day, littered with empty beer cans and cigarette butts. The short alley served no purpose except to hold two bars and a small clothes shop, known for its quirky T-shirts.
The lights were off in the Library Bar when she walked up. Its sign – an open book with a martini glass perched on it – was unlit.
When she tried the door, Harper found it locked.
‘Hello?’ she called, knocking on the door. ‘Is anyone in there?’
No response. She knocked again, raising her voice.
‘Hello?’
This time, something inside stirred. She heard footsteps shuffling across the room.
After a minute, the door opened a crack.
A rumpled, lived-in face peered out at her.
Harper barely recognized Jim ‘Fitz’ Fitzgerald, the bar’s jovial owner. Normally, he was a natty dresser, with a penchant for tweed jackets, turned-up cuffs and crisp, white shirts. Today, he wore a flannel shirt and wrinkled slacks, his thick, graying hair waved wildly.
‘We’re closed right now,’ he told her, and began to shut the door.
Harper moved quickly, angling her body so it would have been rude – if not impossible – to close the door on her.
‘Hi, Fitz,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if you’ll remember me, but I’m a friend