A Beautiful Corpse

The city was shaken in the early hours of this morning by news of a murder at the very heart of the city’s tourism district.

The victim was Naomi Scott, 24, a law student who also worked as a bartender at the Library Bar on College Row. Police say she was shot twice, at around two o’clock Wednesday morning.

No motive has been determined at this time, although robbery is unlikely.

As this story was being written, detectives were still looking into the details of the crime.

The body was discovered minutes after the murder by two members of the public. Police say no witnesses to the crime have come forward.

Calls for comment to Mayor Melinda Cantrelle’s office were not immediately returned.

She’d just sent the story across to Baxter when her phone rang.

‘McClain,’ she said, throwing her empty coffee cup in the bin.

‘Now look, Harper, my office will be issuing a statement at ten thirty. Don’t you dare write that I’m not replying, or that I’m trying to dodge this murder case.’

Mayor Melinda Cantrelle had a distinctive voice – rich and resonant, made for television. In fact, twenty years ago, she’d started her career anchoring the morning news on a local station. That experience gave her an air of cultivated calm most of the time, and she had a made-for-TV smile. But today she was talking fast, her words short and clipped.

Harper fired a quick message to Baxter: ‘Hold the story. Mayor on phone.’ And then leaned back in her chair, propping a notebook on her knee.

‘Of course not, Mayor Cantrelle,’ she said sweetly. ‘But the first story will go up on the website any minute now and I can’t have our readers think I didn’t try to reach you.’

‘Oh come on, Harper …’ The mayor did not sound happy.

‘Can’t you give me something small?’ Harper cajoled. ‘What does this murder mean for tourism? And will you be sending more police downtown? Anything like that would be enough to get that “no comment” out of my story.’

There was a long pause, during which Harper suspected the mayor was fighting to control her temper. She’d taken over the city leadership a year earlier, and Harper almost liked her – she had a blunt approach that, if nothing else, gave the appearance of honesty. At forty-five, she was younger than the gray-haired men who normally served as mayor, and she was still new enough at her job to pick up the phone at times like these.

‘The police have informed me they are searching for a suspect,’ the mayor said smoothly. ‘We believe this to be a family incident. It would be inappropriate for me to comment further while the investigation is underway. But we intend to get to the bottom of this, I can promise you that. I consider it my number one job to keep visitors and residents here safe.’

Harper wrote as she talked, pen skidding across her notepad.

‘A family incident? Can you be more specific?’ she asked, not looking up from the page. ‘You’re not saying her father had something to do with it, are you?’

‘This is off the record.’ The mayor lowered her voice. ‘But I’m told the detectives are looking for her boyfriend. They think this was a personal thing.’

Someone spoke in the background, and the sound suddenly became muffled. When Cantrelle returned she sounded rushed.

‘Look, I’m afraid I have to go. We’ll be issuing a full statement in an hour. Cathy will email it over. Call her if you need anything else.’

When she’d hung up, Harper read over her notes.

As she’d suspected when Daltrey questioned them last night, they thought it was the boyfriend.

She flipped through 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.’

Chapter Four (#ucac769f1-70d8-584b-aa80-2eb53a110df6)

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.