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PRAISE FOR TRACY CLARK
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“Tracy Clark’s not-so-hidden talent is for conjuring characters who are engaging and achingly real. Detective Harri Foster is a stellar recruit to her new team and to our crime fiction shelves. Hide is a page-turner with heart.”
—Lori Rader-Day, Agatha Award–winning author of Death at Greenway
Runner
“You know those books that are wonderful, but that envy, the worm in the bud, makes you shy away from praising because you wish you’d created that prose or those insights? Runner by Tracy Clark. She understands the streets, kids, the way a PI and a cop really work. Kudos.”
—Sara Paretsky, New York Times bestselling author of the V.I. Warshawski series and cofounder of Sisters in Crime
“Clark writes with purpose, her sense of social justice never venturing into dogma but remaining fully rooted in Raines’s actions and personality. She saves, but is no savior, because she operates in a world where survival is the benchmark, and pain remains in the aftermath.”
—The New York Times
“Clark has a unique voice in the PI genre, one that is articulate, daring, and ultimately hopeful.”
—S.A. Cosby, Anthony and ITW award-winner, The Washington Post
Broken Places
Engrossing and superbly written—I can’t say enough good things about Broken Places!”
—Lisa Black, New York Times bestselling author of That Darkness and Unpunished
“Unforgettable . . . Distinctive, vividly written characters lift this promising debut. Readers will be eager for the sequel.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Clark’s compelling, suspenseful, and action-packed debut introduces a dogged, tough African American woman investigator who is complex and courageous and surrounded by a family of fascinating misfits. Fans of Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone or Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski will welcome Cass Raines to their ranks.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“This street-smart first mystery boasts great characterization and a terrific new protagonist. Get this writer on your radar now.”
—Booklist
Chicago Mystery Series
“A potent mix of empathy and rage fuels Sue Grafton Award winner Clark’s exceptional fourth Chicago mystery. The action builds to an exciting showdown. Those who like their crime novels with a social conscience will be amply rewarded.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Clark has a unique voice in the PI genre, one that is articulate, daring, and ultimately hopeful.”
—The Washington Post
OTHER TITLES BY TRACY CLARK
Broken Places
Borrowed Time
What You Don’t See
Runner
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Otherwise, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2023 by Tracy Clark
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542037570
ISBN-10: 1542037573
Cover design by Damon Freeman
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
CHAPTER 62
CHAPTER 63
CHAPTER 64
CHAPTER 65
CHAPTER 66
CHAPTER 67
CHAPTER 68
CHAPTER 69
CHAPTER 70
CHAPTER 71
CHAPTER 72
CHAPTER 73
CHAPTER 74
CHAPTER 75
CHAPTER 76
CHAPTER 77
CHAPTER 78
CHAPTER 79
CHAPTER 80
CHAPTER 81
CHAPTER 82
CHAPTER 83
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER 1
Elyse Pratt hated Mondays on principle. She hated running on a Monday even more, but at thirty-eight she knew time was not on her side, and she was determined to stay in a size six if it killed her.
She jogged her way along the Riverwalk, heading east, sweaty, huffing, resigned. She’d win no marathon or speed record, but she was out here, she was doing it, and her reward would be gotten on the scale. One hundred and twelve solid pounds was her sweet spot, give or take a tofu salad.
She passed the City Winery and another unhappy jogger going the opposite direction. They exchanged a head nod and a slight smile. Ariana Grande wafted out of Elyse’s earbuds, the beat of the up-tempo pop fluff just lively enough to keep her toned legs moving and her mind off the early hour and the fact that she would allow herself nothing for breakfast but a kale smoothie and half a mandarin orange.
She flicked a look at the clouds overhead and filled her lungs with fall air, breathing in earthy algae from the green-gray river running along her left, mixed, strangely, with the aroma of coffee and chocolate chip cookies—Satan’s temptations.
Elyse picked up the pace, Michigan Avenue and the DuSable Bridge just ahead. She’d stop at the underpass leading to the marina and then turn around and complete her route. Three miles. Then the smoothie. She ticked off the landmarks as they loomed over her from street level—the Merchandise Mart, the Jewelers and Wrigley Buildings, the Tribune Tower, and, on the site of the old Sun-Times, the building Elyse let her eyes sweep right past, its name emblazoned on the side so large that she would swear astronauts could see it from space. She picked up her pace.
As she jogged past the bridge, the underpass in sight, something off the path caught her eye. She squinted, slowed. It looked like a pile of leaves. Odd. There weren’t that many trees down here, not enough certainly to account for so big a mound. It was curious but not alarming. There were leaves. It was autumn. Some city worker had likely raked them up and left them there to scatter again. But as she got closer, she saw something sticking out of the pile. A foot, though it didn’t look real. Some idiot’s sick joke. It was probably a mannequin underneath, someone’s idea of starting Halloween weeks too early.
Elyse slowed as she got nearer, then stopped right where the path abutted the pile. She padded forward, pulling the earbuds free, letting Grande sing on. The foot was ghostly white, almost blue. There was toenail polish on the toes. Not a joke. Not a mannequin.
Her scream tore through the morning like the screech of a thousand crows. Elyse backed away, her heart pounding, and then she ran back along the path the way she’d come, every alarm in her body clanging as panic overtook her. Her phone. She stopped and fumbled for it in her pocket but dropped it on the path when her trembling fingers couldn’t work the keypad.
“Damn it.”
She finally managed to scoop the cell up and ran for the stairs that led up to the street, but there was someone there right at the base of the steps. A man. A Black man sitting on the ground, his head on his chest, a spot of blood on his jacket. She screamed again, this time losing every ounce of composure. Fast, as though the man might leap up and grab her, Elyse backed away, no thought in her head following any logical pattern. Blood. Foot. Leaves. Man. Blood. Dead. Dead.
Her third scream was otherworldly in its desperation. Birds scattered at the sound, and foot traffic along the bridge stopped. She fell to her knees, unable to stop herself from trembling. She needed to get away, flee, but couldn’t get to her feet.
“Call 911,” she screeched, tears streaking down her face. “Please, somebody, call the police. They’re dead.”
CHAPTER 2
Monday. 0800 hours. Eight a.m. Detective Harriet Foster couldn’t get her legs to move as she stood on the sidewalk in front of CPD’s District One building at Seventeenth and State. She was expected inside. Now. But she couldn’t get past the sidewalk. Instead, she stood facing the door, cars whizzing past along the wide street at her back, firmly rooted in the in-between.
This was her first day back from leave, the first day on a new team. There would be a new boss, a new desk, a new . . . partner. Nothing she felt gave her any indication that she was ready, not one single thing. Only eight weeks had passed since it happened, eight weeks that felt more like eight seconds.
She inhaled deeply and held the breath for a time before letting it out slowly, but the building was still there, cops and noncops going in and out. Through the windows on the ground floor, she could see the uniformed cop standing at the metal detector just inside. He was watching her, definitely assessing her threat level. Weird Black woman standing on the sidewalk watching the building—friend or foe? Nothing in his level stare indicated that he was taking his assessment lightly.
Cop entry was around the side on Eighteenth Street, accessed through the lot for staff and official vehicles, but she had circled the building at least six times, unable to pull her car in. She knew it was ridiculous, something that she’d have to get over today, but right now the bigger issue was deciding to get inside the building. Her star was in her hand, hard metal pressed to her sweating palm. She held it up so the cop could see it. He took one last sweep, and they exchanged a look. Then he nodded and went back to his morning. Friend, not foe. She was one of them.
Two months. Not long enough and yet interminable since the day her partner, Detective Glynnis Thompson, had woken up on a Tuesday, fed her kids, kissed her husband, Mike, goodbye, then driven to work and blown her brains out in the CPD parking lot. A PO walking through the lot heard the shot and found her. Glynnis would have been forty-three on Christmas Day.
Signs. There had to have been signs. There almost always were. But Foster had missed every single one, even though she had been trained to lock in, to be observant, intuitive even, to always see three moves ahead. Where had she failed? She had replayed that day over in her head for weeks, eight weeks, but the picking didn’t change anything. Dead was forever. A chance missed to say just the right thing or do the right thing would never come around again.
Glynnis had been a good cop, a decorated cop, and they had worked eleven years together like well-oiled gears in a high-performance machine. After Foster had lost her only son, Reg, to a thug with a gun who’d demanded his bike, a painful divorce had followed. Amid all the pain, Glynnis had helped her stay sane.
Foster was godmother to Glynnis’s youngest son, Todd. There had been nothing unusual about the marriage as far as she could see. Mike and Glynnis had been married more than fifteen years. There had been ups and downs, of course, but nothing that might explain what had happened. The kids, though . . . Foster always came back to them. The Glynnis she knew, the one she trusted with her life, wouldn’t have done that to her kids. To Mike. To her. But she had.
With a nod and an unconvincing half smile, she moved past the cop at the detector and flashed her star to the cop sitting at the desk in the lobby before heading up to homicide, every step reining in fear and self-doubt and resentment. By rote, the mask went up, her shoulders went back a little farther, and the cop returned. Eight weeks. Eight seconds. She held her breath, kept her dark eyes steady, and put the hardness in them.
“Here we go,” she muttered to herself. “Here. We. Go.”
Foster stood at the office door, peering in. Just another cop squat—scarred desks, CPD insignia everywhere, the stench of burnt coffee, and sweaty cops who’d seen more than any human should have the misfortune of seeing.
She squeezed her eyes shut, breathing, remembering who she used to be, needing that woman back like yesterday. She’d lost fifteen pounds off her five-foot-seven frame since Glynnis’s funeral. The shirt, pants, and jacket she had on today were new. Fresh start and all that. Even her hair was different. She’d gone short and natural, short twists ringing her thin, serious face. Less bother. Less interest. Primping her hair and planning her wardrobe were the least of her worries. Jacket, shirt, slacks, gun, badge, and shoes with a low heel were all she needed. Cop. The job. The rest of her lay buried.
A white cop, tall, thin, brushed by her, flicked her a look. “You’re the transfer? Foster, right?”
She nodded. “Harriet Foster. Don’t tell me they made an announcement.” She glanced at the cop room again, panic rising, her heart fluttering like butterfly wings. If there was a welcoming committee hiding somewhere or cops with prying eyes, she was out of here. “Please, don’t.”
He chuckled. “Relax. There’s no brass band. I just saw your paperwork on the boss’s desk.” He held out his hand for a shake. Foster took it. “Kelley. Matt.” His dark-blue eyes were filled with understanding and a tinge of pity. He looked to be in his late forties, wiry, about six feet, built like a runner instead of a stevedore. “Sorry about . . . you know. That’s tough.”
Foster stiffened. It was the pity she couldn’t take. It felt like it burned her skin and set her insides on fire. Mask on. Eyes ahead. “Thanks. Everybody knows, I guess.”
He nodded. “You know the cop grapevine, but it’s cool. We get it. Here, let me show you where to go.”
She followed Kelley through the office, feeling the looks at her back. She was the oddity, the cop whose partner had killed herself. Foster could just imagine what they were thinking. Where had she been when it all happened? Why hadn’t she stopped it, intervened? What kind of partner was she? Could they trust her? She kept her eyes on the back of Kelley’s shirt. They were right. She had asked those same questions of herself every single hour of every single day since that day. What kind of partner was she? What kind of cop? What kind of friend? What kind of mother? The last thought, random but not, caught in her throat, and she pushed forward, a tiny fear and a tiny sorrow stabbing at her core. Today, she thought. She just had to get through today. Once today was past her, everyone would turn away, the cop bullshitting would take over, and there would be no great attentiveness shown to her. After today, she could ease back into the routine of the job and fill her days with the misery of others.
Kelley pointed at a corner office. The door was closed. “The boss is there. What do you go by? Harriet? Harri?”
“Either’s fine.”
He smiled. “Got it. See ya around, Harri.”
She nodded, eyed the door, and then remembered her manners, catching him halfway down the hall.
“Hey, Matt? Thanks.”
He tipped an imaginary hat as Foster walked to the door, knocked, and waited to be invited in.
“Yeah, get in here.”
Sergeant Sharon Griffin sat at her cluttered desk, jacket off, white blouse spotless. She checked her watch, then looked up, stern of face, giving Foster a quick once-over. She pointed to a chair. “Detective Foster. Sit.” Griffin’s posture was as straight as a ruler, her face implacable, blue eyes sharp as Arctic ice. She folded her hands on the desk. Foster couldn’t miss the wedding ring.
Midfifties, maybe. Griffin’s ash-blonde hair was sprinkled with strands of gray and cut short, easy to tuck under a uniform cap. Simple makeup, a little lip coloring, mascara, nothing more. Just female enough to identify, the rest all career cop. Proudly Irish, too, Foster divined from the shamrocks on Griffin’s coffee mug, the dusty Saint Patrick’s Day fedora sitting on a side table, and the photo on her desk with three pale, freckled teens.
“I’ve just been going over your personnel file again. Solid career, which is why you’re here and not out in the boondocks answering nuisance calls about rabid squirrels. Commendations. Solid leadership skills. Impressive clearance rate.” She looked Foster over again. “I intend to tap those leadership skills. I want you out in front.” She paused. “How’re you doing?”
Foster had no idea how to answer the question. How was she doing? She was here. She’d gotten through the front door. Her mask was on. She was almost sure she could be a cop today.
“Fine,” Foster said.
Griffin sat back to study her. “Maybe. Tough thing losing a partner that way. Losing a partner period. I’m sorry for your loss.” She flicked another look at the personnel file. “Detective Glynnis Thompson. Family and everything. Jeez. This job . . . sometimes . . . it just breaks you.” She looked up and saw the stricken look on Foster’s face along with the beginnings of a cold sweat. “The elephant in the room.” Griffin laced her hands together in her lap. “Your first day back. Are you all here?”
