The Echo Killing: A gripping debut crime thriller you won’t be able to put down!

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright © Christi Daugherty 2018

Cover design by Holly Macdonald © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Cover photographs © Richard Ellis/Alamy Stock Photo (main image); Shutterstock.com (figure)

Christi Daugherty asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008238780

Ebook Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 9780008238803

Version: 2017-12-12

Dedication

For Loyall Solomon. Who gave me my first newspaper job.

And changed everything.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-one

Chapter Thirty-two

Chapter Thirty-three

Chapter Thirty-four

Chapter Thirty-five

Chapter Thirty-six

Chapter Thirty-seven

Chapter Thirty-eight

Chapter Thirty-nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-one

Chapter Forty-two

Chapter Forty-three

Chapter Forty-four

Chapter Forty-five

Acknowledgments

Read on for a sneak peek of the next instalment, coming April 2019 …

About the Author

About the Publisher

Chapter One

It was one of those nights.

Early on there was a flicker of hope – a couple of stabbings, a car wreck with potential. But the wounds weren’t serious and the accident was routine. After that it fell quiet.

A quiet night is the worst thing that can happen to a crime reporter.

With an hour to go until her midnight deadline, Harper McClain sat alone in the empty newsroom with no story to write, doing the one thing she despised most in the world – a crossword puzzle.

On the far wall, tall windows reflected back a dark image of the huge open room with its white columns and rows of empty desks, but Harper didn’t notice it – she was glaring at the paper on her desk. Smudged and scratched-out letters glared back, like an accusation of failure.

‘Why would anyone know an eight-letter word for “reckless bravery”?’ she grumbled. ‘I’ve got a seven-letter word for “bravery” – it’s called “bravery”. I don’t need a longer word …’

‘Audacity.’ The voice soared across the newsroom from the editor’s desk at the front.

Harper looked up.

City Editor Emma Baxter appeared to be focused on her computer screen, a silver Cross pen glittering in one hand like a small sword.

‘Excuse me?’

‘An eight-letter word for reckless bravery.’ Baxter spoke without shifting her eyes from the monitor. ‘Audacity.’

Baxter was pushing fifty at varying rates of speed. She was small and wiry, and that only made her look better in a navy blazer. Her angular face had a permanent look of vague dissatisfaction, but somehow that suited her, too. Everything about her was precise – her perfectly even short nails, her stiff posture, and you could cut your hand on the razor-sharp edge of her straight, dark bob.

‘How the hell do you know that?’ There was no gratitude in Harper’s voice. ‘In fact, why the hell do you know that? There is something fundamentally wrong with anyone who could answer a question like “What’s an eight-letter word for bravery?” without first wanting to off themselves with a …’

At her elbow, her police scanner crackled to life. ‘This is unit three-nine-seven. We’ve got a signal nine with possible signal sixes.’

Harper’s voice trailed off. She cocked her head to listen.

‘I’m willing to forgive your insubordination on this one occasion,’ Baxter said magnanimously. But Harper had already forgotten all about audacity.

On her desk, her phone buzzed. She picked it up.

‘Miles,’ she said. ‘You heard the shooting?’

‘Yep. Slow night just got busier. Meet you out front in five.’ His Tennessee accent glided over each word, smooth as warm honey.

Harper gathered her things with quick efficiency and hooked her police scanner to the waistband of her black pants. Sweeping a light black jacket off the back of her chair, she shrugged it on. A narrow reporters’ notebook and pen were shoved into one jacket pocket. Press pass and phone in the other.

Moving fast, she headed across the room.

Baxter cocked an enquiring eyebrow at her.

‘Shooting on Broad Street.’ Harper talked as she walked. ‘Possible injuries. Miles and I are heading down now to find out more.’

Baxter reached for her phone to alert the copy desk.

‘If I need to hold page one,’ she said, ‘I have to do it no later than eleven thirty.’

‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

She turned out of the newsroom into a wide, brightly lit corridor that opened directly onto a staircase leading down to the front door. Her editor’s final words floated after her.

‘When you return, we can have a talk about your attitude.’

It was Baxter’s favorite threat. Harper knew better than to worry.

The sleepy-looking security guard at the reception desk didn’t even glance up from the small TV on his desk as she hit the green exit button with hard impatience and hurled herself out of the building into the steamy darkness.

June had arrived a couple of weeks ago, bringing blistering days with it. Nights were better, but only a little. Tonight, the air was velvet soft, but so thick you could stick a fork in it and expect it to stay standing up. This wasn’t the usual Savannah humidity – this was like breathing under water.

Summer rain in Georgia is no minor threat – it can wash away your car, your house, your hopes, your dreams, and Harper glanced up at the gray clouds scuttling across the sliver of moon as if they might tell her when the water would fall, but the sky had no news to give.

The newspaper’s offices were in a century-old, rambling four-story building that took up half a city block on Bay Street, close enough to the slow-moving Savannah River to smell its green river scent and to hear the giant engines of the massive container ships rumble as they rolled slowly out to sea. The neon words ‘DAILY NEWS’ glowed red from a rooftop sign that must have been one of the last things the sailors saw before the great Atlantic Ocean opened before them.

Down the street, the ornate city hall’s gilded dome gleamed, even at this hour, and through a break in the buildings, Harper could see the cobblestone lanes leading down to the water’s edge.

She’d never lived anywhere except Savannah, so it had been a very long time since she’d paid much attention to its landmarks and antebellum architecture. To her, like the verdant town squares and endless monuments to ill-fated Civil War generals, it was all just there.

She didn’t spare any of it a glance now as she waited, one leg jiggling impatiently. Her scanner crackled on her hip. Ambulances were being called out. Backup was being sent.

‘Come on, Miles,’ she whispered, turning her wrist to see her watch.

It was quiet enough for her to hear the faint wail of sirens in the distance, as a gleaming black Mustang rounded the corner and roared straight towards her, headlights blinding. It stopped in front of her, the motor revving.

Harper yanked the door open and leapt in.

‘Let’s go,’ she said, strapping on her seatbelt.

The tires spun as they sped off.

Inside, the Mustang was alive with voices. Miles had one scanner on his belt, one mounted within the dash where there might otherwise have been a radio, and a third hooked up behind the gear shift. Each was set to a different channel – one monitored the main police frequency, another was set to a side channel the cops used for chitchat. The third monitored ambulance and fire.

It was like walking into a small, crowded room where twenty people were all talking at once. Harper was used to it, but it always took her a second to make sense of the cacophony.

‘What’ve we got?’ she asked, frowning.

‘Nothing new.’ He kept his eyes on the road. ‘Ambulance en route. Waiting for an update.’

Photographer Miles Jackson was tall and lean, with dark skin and neat, short-cropped hair. He’d been a staff photographer until a few years ago, when all the photographers were let go. Since then, he’d been freelance, doing whatever paid the most. He could be found shooting a wedding on a Saturday afternoon and a murder later that same night.

If it pays it plays, he was fond of saying.

He had a cool sardonic smile and liked driving fast. He was doing about twice the speed limit as they roared around the corner onto Oglethorpe Avenue, sending the car fishtailing.

Swearing under his breath, Miles wrestled the wheel.

‘Doesn’t this thing go any faster?’ Harper deadpanned, hanging on to the handle above the door.

‘Very funny,’ Miles said through gritted teeth. But he quickly regained control.

As they raced past Forsyth Park, where a huge marble fountain poured a hoopskirt-shaped arc of water into a stone pool, she cocked her head, listening to the scanner.

‘They know where the shooters went?’ she asked.

Miles shook his head. ‘Lost them in the projects.’

As he spoke, the scanner for the police chitchat channel lit up. A grave-deep voice growled, ‘This is one-four. Unit three-niner-seven, what are we dealing with here?’

Miles and Harper exchanged a look. Fourteen was the code number used by Lieutenant Robert Smith, head of the homicide division.

Miles turned down the other scanners.

‘Lieutenant, we’ve got one fatality, two going to hospital,’ the officer on the scene responded. Excitement sent his voice up an octave. He talked so fast Harper got a contact high from his adrenaline. ‘Gang-banger party. Three shooters, all MIA.’

Not waiting to hear the rest, Harper pulled out her phone. Baxter answered on the first ring.

‘It’s murder,’ Harper said without preamble. ‘But it could be gang-on-gang.’

‘Damn.’ She could hear the editor tapping her silver pen on the desk. Taptaptaptap. ‘Call me as soon as you know more.’

The line went dead.

Shoving her phone in her pocket, Harper leaned back in her seat.

‘If the dead guy’s a banger, the story goes inside.’

‘Well then, we’d best hope our victim is an innocent housewife,’ Miles observed as they turned onto Broad Street.

Eyes on the road ahead, Harper nodded. ‘We can dream.’

On early maps of Savannah, the city is a perfectly symmetrical grid of straight lines, OCD neat, with Broad Street forming the eastern border. In all directions, everything outside that grid is dark green emptiness, its contents identified with the words ‘Old Rice Fields’ in the nineteenth-century cartographer’s precise handwriting.

Today, that orderly grid remains largely unchanged, save for the rice fields, which are long gone, replaced by unlovely sprawl. Broad Street forms a speedy direct line between gorgeous, picture-postcard old Savannah and the parts where Harper and Miles spent most of their working nights.

As they headed west, the grand old houses fronted by trees draped in the gray lace of Spanish moss gradually disappeared, replaced by peeling paint, overgrown yards and cheap metal fences.

No leafy squares broke up the dense housing in this neighborhood. No fountains poured beneath oak trees. Instead, battered apartment buildings stacked people on top of each other in cramped and ugly conditions fronted by broken sidewalks and illuminated by the garish signs marking out fast-food chains and discount shops.

Out here, the streets were busy – drug dealers did good business at this hour.

Miles’ hands were steady on the wheel, but his eyes – scanning the buildings around them – were alert.

He was older than Harper – in his forties. Photography was his second career. Years ago, back in Memphis, he’d had another, very different life.

‘I was an office guy,’ he’d told her once as he took his camera carefully to pieces. ‘Pushing paper. Made good money. Had the big house, the pretty wife, the whole nine yards. But it wasn’t for me.’

He’d always loved taking pictures and he knew he had an eye. One day, he signed up for a photography course. Just, he said, for something to do.

‘After that, I had the itch.’

As far as she could tell, within a year of taking that course, he’d quit his job, left his wife, and started over.

He’d visited Savannah for a business convention and it always stayed with him, he said. The slow way of life. The silky, sweet beauty of the place. The long curve of the river.

He said it felt like a fairytale. So he came here, to live the dream.

They’d both started at the newspaper the same year. Harper as an intern. Miles as night-shift photographer.

Even after seven years, he still saw the city with a stranger’s eyes. He loved the homey cafés and the waitresses who called him ‘sweetie’. He liked driving out to Tybee Island at sunset, or sitting on River Street, watching the ships pass by.

Harper couldn’t remember the last time she’d done any of that. She’d spent all her life in Savannah. To her, this was simply home.

Ahead, swirling blue lights lit up the street like a deadly disco.

‘Here we go,’ Miles muttered, hitting the brakes.

Peering into the glare, Harper counted four patrol cars and at least three unmarked units.

An ambulance rumbled up behind them, its siren blaring, and Miles pulled to the side to let it pass.

‘Better leave the car here,’ he decided, killing the engine.

Harper glanced at her watch: 11:12. She had eighteen minutes to let Baxter know if she had to hold the front page.

Her heart began to race in that familiar way.

She had a thing for murder. Some people called it an obsession. But she had her reasons. Reasons she didn’t like to talk about much.

Miles gathered his equipment from the trunk, but Harper couldn’t wait.

‘Meet you down there.’

Leaping from the car, she took off, notebook in one hand, pen in the other, running toward the flashing lights.

Chapter Two

On the street, the warm, humid air smelled of exhaust and something else – something metallic and hard to define. Like fear.

In the dark, the flashing lights were blinding. It wasn’t until Harper got beyond the police cars that she saw the body in the road.

If people get shot while they’re running, they fall hard. Legs at unnatural angles, hands above their heads, clothes fluttering around them – for all the world as if they’ve tumbled from the sky.

This guy had been running when he was shot.

Pulling out her notebook, Harper jotted down what she saw. Blue jeans and Nikes, baggy T-shirt riding up over a lean, dark-skinned torso. Large bloodstain forming an uneven circle on the pavement beneath him. The face was hidden from view.

Nearby, the ambulance was parked with its back door open, sending light flooding out onto the street. A team of paramedics was working on the two living shooting victims – plugging them into fluids, stopping other fluids from leaching away.

They were a bit late with that, though. There was blood everywhere.

Both wounded men looked like teenagers. The one closest to her still had baby fat in his cheeks.

They were dressed like the dead guy – T-shirts, jeans, matching Nikes.

Harper made notes, but kept her distance. Trying to be invisible.

Miles appeared across the road, crouching down on one knee to get a shot of the body. He had to be careful – the paper wouldn’t use it if the dead guy looked too dead. So he angled himself to get a shot of the guy’s hand, one finger pointing out, reaching for something now lost forever.

Movement in the distance caught Harper’s attention and she looked up to see two men in cheap suits, their eyes focused on the ground, walking with slow deliberation. They were both listening intently to a uniformed patrol officer who was pointing and talking animatedly.

Detectives are easy to spot, once you get to know them.

Taking care not to step in the blood, she made her way toward them, sticking to the edges of the road.

She knew both men from previous crime scenes. Detective Ledbetter was short and portly, with thinning hair and a kind smile. The other detective was Larry Blazer. Tall and thin, with dark blond hair going artfully gray, he had cheekbones to die for and eyes as hard as copper pennies.

All the TV reporters had a thing for him, but Harper found him cold and self-aware, in the way of men who are handsome and know how to use that as a weapon.

Absorbed in their work, neither man noticed as she navigated the shadows until she was close enough to eavesdrop.

‘The shooters came up from the Anderson Projects. The victims won’t say how they knew each other, but this wasn’t random,’ the uniformed officer was saying as she walked up. ‘Someone wanted these guys dead.’

He was green. This could even have been his first shooting. His words poured out in an excited rush.

By contrast, Blazer’s questions were delivered at a slow and deliberate pace; trying to communicate calm and hope it was contagious.

‘You say the vics told you the three shooters ran off together. They give any idea where they went?’

The officer shook his head. ‘All he said was, “that way”.’ He pointed roughly towards the building in front of them.

Ledbetter said something Harper couldn’t hear. She took a step closer.

In the dark, she never saw the empty forty-ounce beer bottle in the gutter, but the rattle it made when she kicked it was hard to miss.

She winced.

All the cops looked up. Blazer spotted her first. His gaze narrowed.

‘Careful,’ he said. ‘Press on scene.’

Stepping back, Harper waited warily, hoping Ledbetter would be lead detective on the case.

But it was Blazer who walked towards her.

Crap, she thought.

‘Miss McClain.’ His voice was cool, with an oddly flat intonation. ‘What a surprise to see you standing in the middle of my crime scene. I don’t suppose you’re a witness?’

He was tall, over six-one, and he used that height to intimidate – looming over her. But Harper was five-eight, and she wasn’t easy to impress.

‘Sorry, Detective,’ she said, her tone a cultivated mixture of contrition and respect. ‘There’s no crime tape. I didn’t mean to get in your way.’

‘I see.’ He studied her with distaste. ‘And yet you are standing where no journalist belongs. Shedding DNA all over the place.’

Who was he trying to kid? They weren’t going to collect that kind of evidence at this scene. The cops cared no more for a dead gangbanger than Baxter did.

Harper blinked innocently.

‘I know you’re busy,’ she said, all sweetness, ‘but could you give me a little information for the morning paper so I can get out of your hair? Names of the victims? Number of suspects?’

‘Our investigation has just begun.’ Blazer recited the familiar words in a tone that said he saw right through her. ‘It would be premature to say anything at this time. We’re still identifying the deceased and have not yet notified next of kin. Now, I’m going to have to ask you to step out of the scene immediately.’

Clearly, he wasn’t in a giving mood.

Still, Harper gave it one more try. ‘Detective, is this part of a drug war? Should local residents be concerned?’

Rocking back on his heels, Blazer studied her with an interest she didn’t like.

‘McClain, a few small-time scumbags stepped on the turf of some bigger scumbags and they got a lesson in why that’s a bad idea. Why don’t you put that in your rag?’

She opened her mouth to answer, but he cut her off.

‘It was a rhetorical question. I have no official statement at this time. Now, kindly get the hell out of my scene before I have you arrested.’

Harper knew better than to argue. Holding up her hands in surrender, she backed away.

When she made it back to the ambulance, Miles was leaning against it casually, checking his shots on the camera screen.

‘Blazer’s lead detective, so I’ve got nothing,’ Harper announced glumly. ‘That man hates me like a canker sore.’

Straightening, Miles motioned for her to follow him back towards the Mustang.

‘I shot the lead paramedic’s wedding two months ago,’ he said quietly, when they were a safe distance away. ‘Gave her a cheap deal. She owed me a favor.’

Harper grabbed his arm. ‘You got an ID on our dead guy?’

‘More than that.’ He held up a crumpled piece of paper. ‘I’ve got it all. Melissa had a wonderful honeymoon. She was very chatty today.’

‘You hero.’ Harper mock-punched his arm. ‘What’ve we got?’

Miles squinted to read his own writing.

‘Our dead guy is Levon Williams, nineteen, recent graduate of Savannah South High School – played for the baseball team. Hell of a hitter, I’m told. Also, apparently, an up-and-coming heroin dealer. The two wounded victims are his known associates. Suspects are three black men, slim, two are average height, T-shirt and jeans, one is short and stocky, wearing a bandanna around his neck. All are late teens to early twenties. Suspected members of the East Ward gang.’ He handed Harper the page. ‘It’s all here.’