Save Her Child by CJ Lyons (book recommendations TXT) 📕

Leah suppressed her urge to search for Beth’s phone—and identity—forcing herself to relax and concentrate on Emily. After all, how many more nights like this would they have before Emily grew too old to cuddle with her mother and share all her secrets?

First thing tomorrow, she promised herself. She’d deal with Beth and the kids and the dreaded Ms. Driscoll and the budget due at work and the bills to be paid… they could all wait until tomorrow. Tonight Emily needed her.

Nineteen

Harper had spent the rest of the night trying in vain to find anyone who saw Lily before her death or knew how to contact her next of kin. She’d bought numerous coffees and burgers for street kids and even tried to wheedle intel from the few pimps and drug dealers who protested at her scaring off their customers.

She’d learned that Lily hadn’t been on the streets for a while. She had first shown up in Cambria City when she was sixteen, lasted a little more than a year working for Freddy, most of it spent in a haze of oxy and then heroin addiction, before vanishing sometime last year. Harper hadn’t been much older herself when she’d been thrown out of college and her family’s affections. She remembered the constant fear of navigating life on her own: juggling bills because her scant waitress’s wages wouldn’t allow her to pay them all at once; depending on the kindness of strangers to tip her well—sometimes forced into playing a role, rewarding their not-so-subtle harassment with a bitter smile.

As much as she’d like to think her survival was the result of some special hidden strength inside herself, Harper knew that it was as much about luck as anything else. Hearing the vague accounts of Lily’s short-lived time in Cambria City left Harper wondering what more she could have done to help Lily during their several brief encounters. She’d steered Lily to Jonah’s mission and, from what he said, she’d taken advantage of the services he’d offered, and yet, somehow, she’d still been lost: another anonymous victim of the streets.

No one admitted to seeing Lily recently; most assumed she’d died of an OD last year. No one knew where she came from, who her family was—or where they were—or, worse, seemed to care. Other than Macy, that was. But Macy was nowhere to be found Sunday night, so Harper eventually headed home for a few hours’ sleep.

Monday morning, after showering, changing clothes and grabbing a bottled protein shake in lieu of breakfast, Harper headed back out. She had an extensive to-do list, including requesting a court order for Lily’s rehab records and continuing her search for Macy. First, though, she had a far worse duty to attend to: observing Lily’s autopsy. On her way to Good Sam she called Maggie Chen to let her know she was running a few minutes late.

“Didn’t Luka tell you?” Maggie said. “He still wants you here, but not for the Lily Nolan case.”

“Why?” Harper felt a fool, out of the loop on her own case. “Did you already finish? What did you find?” Lily’s autopsy was her last chance to find any evidence Lily’s killer might have left behind.

“Haven’t had a chance to start. Lily’s autopsy has been rescheduled.”

“Rescheduled? To when?”

“To follow. Which means whenever the medical examiner has time to get to it. After we finish the Spencer Standish postmortem.”

Harper bit her lip, trying to curb her anger. “Some rich idiot dies and my victim is dropped to the bottom of the list? Who’s the ME assigned? I want to talk to them.”

“It’s Ford.”

Great. Ford Tierney would never upset his schedule simply because Harper asked. He was the most rigid, punctilious, and brilliant of the three forensic pathologists who worked with Craven County’s coroner as well as the other four surrounding counties, none of whom could afford their own qualified medical examiners. Consolidating their unique, specialized services saved money, provided faster results, and was a huge help to law enforcement—especially as they happened to be quartered at Good Sam, making them especially convenient for Cambria City’s police department. But covering such a large swath of the state meant they were always juggling which case took priority. And clearly a prostitute killed in an alley took a back seat to the suspicious death of a millionaire who’d confessed to a Ponzi scheme.

“Can you at least give me any preliminary results from Lily’s case?” Harper hated to beg, but something was better than nothing. She couldn’t afford to lose momentum now, not when she had so little of it to start with. No witnesses, no exact time of death, not even a next of kin to interview to learn where Lily had been for the past year and why she had suddenly resurfaced back in her old neighborhood.

“Writing it up now, but it’s not much,” Maggie told her. “Tox screen negative—”

“Wait.” Harper had assumed there would be traces of drugs in Lily’s system. “Nothing? No oxy or heroin?” Lily’s previous drugs of choice.

“Not even alcohol. She was clean.”

So Lily hadn’t returned to the streets because of a relapse. If she hadn’t needed cash to fuel her addiction, why had she returned? “Okay. What else?”

“There’s no evidence of recent sexual activity,” Maggie said. Which also meant Lily hadn’t been working the streets—so what was she doing in an alley at three in the morning? “Oh, and Ford will need to confirm, but from the X-rays it looks like the lethal blow was a blow to the back of the head. From the bruising, I’d guess it was one of the first blows, if that helps.”

“Are you saying the majority of her injuries were inflicted after she died?”

“Yes. Again, preliminary, we need to examine the tissue, but yes. She was dead or at the very least unconscious after sustaining the lethal blow.”

They were both silent for a moment. “That’s an awful lot of rage.” Harper couldn’t help but visualize the beating Lily had taken.