Reid didn’t want to leave Kate without answers. He had driven past her loft last night, seen the windows lit up and warm against the dark. The last few days, he’d gone to the Groton-New London Airport, where she kept her Piper Saratoga, and watched planes take off and land. He told himself it was meditative, a way to clear his mind and let ideas about the case come in sideways.
Now, sitting at his desk, Reid considered the lack of DNA and believed that indicated a staged, rather than authentic, sexual assault. Sideways, he told himself. He still wanted Pete for the murder, but he was determined to stop focusing on any one suspect and not rule anyone out.
The bedroom had been full of fingerprints: Beth’s, Pete’s, and Sam’s, of course, but also Kate’s, Lulu’s, Scotty’s, and Isabel’s. There were also several made by an unknown person. Most of Beth’s friends’ prints had been in the seating area, where a sofa and two chairs were arranged by a fireplace, where French doors opened onto a small balcony overlooking the distant beach and sea. It would make sense for Beth and her friends to sit there, enjoying the view. But he would check on that.
He had looked at sex offenders in Southeastern Connecticut and found one of real interest.
Twenty years ago, Martin B. Harris had been an astronomy professor at a community college in Baxbury. He had been married with two children. There had been a string of home invasions in the suburbs around the school. The crimes were violent, sexual in nature, but not always rape. The victims were white women ranging in age from eighteen to thirty-eight.
The attacks always occurred early in the day, mostly during the summer. They took place in the woman’s house, on her own bed, and the scene was always strewn with lingerie—some owned by the victim, but most of the racier pieces brought by the perpetrator. DNA was everywhere, but it didn’t match anything the police had on file.
Harris was arrested on a fluke. A witness had seen a blue Toyota driving away from the scene of one of the attacks, and she reported that it had a Baxbury Community College parking sticker on the bumper. Investigators scoured the college parking lots and found plenty of blue Toyotas. The owners were painstakingly cleared. But during one interview, a student reported that he sometimes parked his car next to his astronomy professor’s, and he noticed Dr. Harris almost always had a Frederick’s of Hollywood bag in his back seat.
The police arrested him in his classroom. They had warrants for his home, office, and vehicle and found trophies taken from every home he had entered. His DNA matched. He had a penchant for black lace underwear and always brought some to his crime scenes, in case his victims had other taste.
He’d accepted a plea deal for fifteen years. His wife had divorced him and taken the kids. The college had fired him.
Reid read through Harris’s parole records and saw he had been released from prison two years ago and was living in a residence hotel in Silver Bay—one town over from Black Hall. He checked in with his parole officer once a week and was subject to unannounced drop-ins.
Reid called Robin Warren, Harris’s parole officer, to give her a heads-up that he’d be stopping by Osprey House to question Harris.
“Thank you for letting me know,” she said. “May I ask, why is he of interest to you?”
“The Beth Lathrop case,” he said.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “That was a terrible thing.”
“So you know the details?”
“Those that have been made public, of course,” she said.
“Did you think of Harris?”
She paused for a long moment. Reid had worked with her before, found her to be thoughtful and thorough, an excellent officer studying for a master’s in psychology. She had lived in Zimbabwe as a child, and her accent was elegant and formal.
“I saw similarities with Mr. Harris’s past crimes,” she said. “But no, I did not think of him in relation to this case.”
“Why’s that?”
“He willingly undergoes anti-recidivism treatment. He takes two testosterone-suppressing drugs, and he goes to therapy once a week.”
“What kind of therapy?” Reid asked, feeling weary. Psychological, and even drug, treatment for sex offenders was controversial at best.
“I hear that tone in your voice,” she said with a hint of amusement. “Police officers are not inclined to believe it works. But it does. His doctor works with him on imaginal desensitization.”
“Right,” Reid said. “Get those dirty pictures out of his mind.”
“And thoughts. And desires to act.”
“What about actual pictures? Does he like pornography? And how hard is it for him to stay away from Victoria’s Secret?”
“Possession of any of those items would constitute a parole violation. And he would return to Ainsworth,” she said.
The prison where Harris had been incarcerated.
Warren asked if it was okay if she was present when he interviewed Harris, and he said sure. He grabbed his jacket from the hook behind his office door. The drive took twenty minutes, including a stop at a drive-through Dunkin’ Donuts for coffee and a plain cruller. He burned his mouth on the coffee and scarfed down the cruller just before pulling up to Osprey House.
The big, sprawling yellow Victorian building had a wide porch and a large cupola, and a hundred years ago, it had been a resort hotel. Now it was the land of broken toys: people whose luck had run out, who were trying to hide from a spouse or the law, who were trying to kick drugs or wanted an anonymous place to take them, who had lost their driver’s licenses and enjoyed the fact that cheap booze was just a two-minute walk away, whose income didn’t cover anything nicer than a tiny bedroom with a microwave and a shared bath down the hall.
“Hey, Paul.” Reid waved to the manager sitting in the front office behind bulletproof glass. They had met on many occasions. Quite a few of Reid’s frequent flyers—people who often seemed to wind up in trouble with the law—found their way to Osprey House.
“What’s up, Conor?” Paul O’Rourke asked, coming out to shake his hand. He was in his midfifties, with white hair and a bristly mustache, bright eyes, and a ready smile. Reid knew that his job was hard and that he was as much a bouncer and social worker as hotel manager.
“I’ve come to see Martin Harris,” Reid said.
“Ahh,” Paul said, glancing at the clock on the wall. “Considering it’s not yet 4:00 p.m., you should find him at least semicoherent.”
“Enjoys a drink?”
Paul nodded.
“Does he get belligerent?”
“Braggadocio after he’s had a few—you know, how he used to be a professor, and he’ll fight anyone who says he wasn’t. To look at him now, you’d never believe he was. But mostly he keeps to himself.”
“Has there ever been an incident? A woman complaining about him?”
Paul shook his head. “No. We’re aware he’s on the SOR, but we’ve never had a problem with him.” He pointed at the stairway. “Room 408.”
Reid walked up four flights. He wasn’t surprised that Paul would keep track of residents on the sex offender registry. The stairwell smelled antiseptic, trying to cover stale cigarette smoke and ancient vomit. Every few weeks the morgue was called here to remove a body—mostly overdoses, some accidental and some suicides. The walls were soaked with the sadness of lonely people drinking themselves to death in their small rooms.