“Her judicial appointment has a tragic backstory. The week before her confirmation hearing, her daughter disappeared. Concurrently, a body was found inside a Dumpster on the edge of town. The woman’s face was bashed in. Two vertebrae in her neck were fractured. They had to identify her using dental records. She was the judge’s daughter.”
Andrea felt the soles of her feet start to tingle, as if she was standing on the edge of a very tall building.
“Unbelievably, the girl survived the attack.” Jasper paused, as if the fact deserved reverence. “Though, survived is a relative term. Medically, she was in a vegetative state, but she was also pregnant. To the best of my knowledge, they never found out who the father was. They kept her body alive using life support for nearly two more months—until the baby could be safely delivered.”
Andrea bit down hard on her lip to keep her body from visibly shuddering.
“At the time, the girl’s plight was a cause célèbre. Her tragic circumstances arguably helped grease her mother’s confirmation. Reagan was the one who really pushed the anti-abortion stance onto the platform. Before that, no one on their side really cared. Bush had to turn his back on Planned Parenthood to get the VP slot.” Jasper seemed to pick up on her desire that he get to the point. “The judge and her husband raised the child. I say child, but she’s forty years old now. She has a daughter of her own. A teenager, in fact. I hear she’s quite a handful.”
Andrea asked the same question from before. “What are you doing here?”
“I think what you really want to know is, what does this have to do with my father?” His hand returned to the mysterious file. “The federal courts are in summer recess. As is their usual, the judge and her husband have returned to their family estate, where they will stay for the next two months. The USMS has two teams working security, one night shift, one day, while the death threats are investigated by the special judicial inspector out of Baltimore HQ. The security assignment is no hardship, really. Think of it as babysitting. And Longbill Beach is a beautiful town. I gather you know where that is?”
Andrea had to clear her throat before she could answer. “Delaware.”
“Exactly right,” Jasper said. “In fact, Longbill Beach is the same town where your father grew up.”
Andrea put together the remaining pieces. “You think that forty years ago, Nick Harp killed the judge’s daughter.”
Jasper nodded. “Murder has no statute of limitations. A conviction would keep him in prison for the rest of his life.”
Andrea heard the words echo inside her brain—in prison for the rest of his life.
Jasper said, “He was rumored to be the father of her child. She confronted him in public the night that she disappeared. They argued in front of several witnesses. He physically and verbally threatened her. Then he left town shortly after her body was identified.”
Andrea felt her throat work. She wanted to hold onto the details but, in her mind, all she could think about was that Nick Harp had fathered another child.
And then he had abandoned her.
“See for yourself.” Jasper finally released the folder, sliding it in her direction.
Andrea let the closed file sit between them. She could read the label now:
EMILY ROSE VAUGHN DOB 5/1/64 DOD 6/9/82
Her eyes blurred on the young girl’s name. Andrea’s mind was still reeling. She tried to focus her attention—murder, no statute of limitations, Nick behind bars for the rest of his life—but what she kept coming back to was a single question: Was this somehow a trap? She couldn’t trust Jasper. She had learned the hard way that she couldn’t really trust anyone.
“Well,” Jasper said. “Aren’t you curious?”
Curious wasn’t the emotion she was feeling right now.
Scared. Apprehensive. Angry.
A forty-year-old half-sister who’d grown up in a beach town just like Andrea had. Another child who would never solve the puzzle of her mother. A sadistic father who’d destroyed their lives, then moved on to his next victim.
Andrea’s trembling hand reached for the file. The cover felt thick between her fingers. The first page showed a photograph of a pretty young blonde who smiled openly at the camera. Her tight perm and blue eyeshadow placed her firmly in the early eighties. Andrea turned to the next page. Then the next. She recognized the police report by its layout. Date, time, location, street map, crime scene drawing, possible murder weapon, witnesses, injuries on the body of an innocent seventeen-year-old girl.
Sweat made Andrea’s fingers moist as she continued to flip through the pages. She located the investigating officer’s notes. Computers were rare in 1982. Apparently, so were typewriters. The scribble was almost illegible, photocopied so many times that the letters looked furred.
Andrea knew she would not find the name Nicholas Harp anywhere in the file. That was the pseudonym that her father had been using when he’d first met her mother. He’d abandoned his true identity back in the spring of 1982, when he’d left Longbill Beach for good. The people there would know him by his real name. She found it on the last page, circled, underlined twice.
Clayton Morrow.