“Classy guy,” Tom said.
“Yeah, all the way. So that’s where I get tripped up. I still want Pete for this, but Harris knew about the lacy underwear.” He glanced at Tom. He kept details of the case very close, but he told his brother everything. He needed his help.
“And the only way he could have known ...”
“Not the only way—but the most likely way is that he was there,” Reid said. “Or whoever killed Beth told him about it. Or someone leaked info—from my squad, or the ME—it happens.”
“You think there was a leak?”
Reid had been racking his brain on that one. He shrugged.
“Let’s try this: Where do Harris’s and Pete’s lives intersect?” Tom asked.
“Dead end,” Reid said. “Nothing’s coming up. Harris can’t hold a job—he’s a drunk. Robin—his PO—is constantly on him to find work. When he’s sober enough, he sometimes picks up cash by washing dishes at Black Whale or the Rusty Anchor.”
“The Whale, maybe, but the Rusty Anchor’s not exactly a Pete Lathrop kind of establishment,” Tom said.
“Nope,” Reid said, chuckling to think of preppie Pete stepping foot in the second-nastiest bar in New London, after the Y-Knot.
“So, where else?”
Reid shook his head. “The guy’s not into art. He can’t afford to eat—other than what he gets from church basements or the food pantry—so he’s not about to show up in Black Hall. He has an education—that’s true, like Pete. He taught college twenty years ago.”
“Could he have met Pete back then?” Tom asked. “Same school, old friends?”
“Different schools. Harris grew up in Bridgeport and went to public school there. Pete’s prep all the way. Rhode Island. And Pete was your basic gold digger. His job was landing Beth Lathrop. At least Martin Harris had a real career. He was a college professor.”
“So basically Pete and Martin are different as night and day,” Tom said. “What’s your gut say?”
“Harris has a perv mind and did a great job of imagining what he would do with the underwear if he’d been there,” Reid said. “But I don’t think he was.”
Tom finished his whiskey and signaled the bartender for two more. The jukebox was playing Steve Earle, and two TVs over the bar were broadcasting baseball games—the Red Sox on one, the Mets on the other. A bunch of Coast Guard cadets were playing darts. When the drinks arrived, the two brothers clinked glasses.
Tom took a deep breath and a long drink. “Have you really looked at the evidence that it wasn’t Pete?”
“I have, of course. He’s got gouges down his back and a chunk of his shoulder practically bitten off, but not by Beth. Nothing under her fingernails, and her bite didn’t match. He swears he’s innocent and is insisting on a polygraph.”
“One family, two murders,” Tom said. “You’re telling me your old case and your, um, fondness for the Woodward sisters haven’t given you tunnel vision?”
No one could get him going like Tom. They were close but competitive and always had been—in sports, for their father’s approval, even in their choices of careers. Tom in the military, Conor in law enforcement.
“There’s a connection between the cases, regardless of who killed Beth,” Reid said. “Same town, same family. Violence. The wife dies. The same painting taken each time.”
“Moonlight,” Tom said. “Maybe Harris took it.”
Reid drank, staring into the mirror behind the bar. “Funny,” he said. “He’s not into art, but he could be into the moon.”
“Let me guess. Big dreams of being an astronaut?” Tom asked.
“Nope. But he probably taught those college students about the moon.”
“Yeah?” Tom asked. “What’d he teach?”
“Astronomy,” Reid said. “He loves the stars. Claims that’s why he had those other postcards. Small Connecticut towns with night skies dark enough to see the stars.”
His brother stared at him. “Well, that’s it.”
“What?”
