Chapter One
11:47 P.M.
Detective Jack Mercer had one arm inside his coat when the phone rang.
He stopped.
Not his phone.
The desk phone.
Jack looked across the nearly empty homicide bullpen. Most of the overhead lights had been shut off, leaving islands of yellow light scattered between rows of desks. Outside the windows, Chicago was disappearing beneath freezing rain.
The clock above the door read 11:47 p.m.
“Let it ring,” Elena Ruiz said.
She was standing beside her desk, stuffing a case file into an already overflowing drawer.
Jack glanced at her.
“You’re closer.”
“I’m also leaving.”
The phone rang again.
Jack sighed, pulled his arm from his coat and picked it up.
“Mercer.”
For a moment, there was nothing.
Then breathing.
Fast.
Shallow.
A woman whispered, “Are you a police officer?”
Jack looked at the receiver.
“You called the homicide unit.”
“I need a police officer.”
“You’ve got one. What’s your name?”
Silence.
Jack heard something in the background.
Traffic, maybe.
Then a metallic sound.
A door closing.
“Ma’am?”
“Don’t say anything. Just listen.”
Something in her voice changed him.
Jack sat down.
Ruiz noticed.
“What is it?” she mouthed.
Jack raised one finger.
“I’m listening.”
The woman took a trembling breath.
“Tomorrow night a man is going to be murdered.”
Jack grabbed a pen.
“Who?”
“Daniel Harlow.”
The pen stopped.
Jack didn’t move.
Across the room, Ruiz stared at him.
“Say that again,” Jack said.
“Daniel Harlow.”
Jack hadn’t heard that name in fourteen years.
Not since a courtroom on the third floor of the Cook County Criminal Courthouse.
Not since a jury had returned a guilty verdict.
Not since a twenty-two-year-old man named Michael Vance had screamed that they were sending an innocent man to prison.
Jack pushed the memory away.
“Where are you calling from?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It matters if you want me to help you.”
“You can’t help me.”
“Then help Daniel Harlow. Tell me where you are.”
“He’ll be home tomorrow night. Eight sixteen.”
“Who will?”
“Harlow.”
Jack began writing.
DANIEL HARLOW. 8:16 P.M.
“How do you know that?”
No answer.
“Are you with him?”
“No.”
“Do you know who’s going to hurt him?”
Another pause.
“Yes.”
Jack straightened.
“Give me a name.”
“I can’t.”
“You called the police.”
“I called you.”
Jack’s eyes moved toward Ruiz.
“What do you mean, you called me?”
“I needed you to answer.”
A chill ran across the back of his neck.
“Who are you?”
The woman ignored him.
“Daniel Harlow lives at 1847 West Henderson.”
Jack wrote the address.
“He’ll be in the upstairs study. The door will be locked from the inside.”
“What’s going to happen?”
The woman began breathing faster.
“Listen carefully.”
“I’m listening.”
“At eight sixteen tomorrow night, Daniel Harlow will die.”
“How?”
“He won’t be shot.”
Jack waited.
“He won’t be stabbed.”
“Then how?”
There was a sound on her end of the line.
Three hard knocks.
The woman stopped breathing.
Jack heard them too.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
“Who’s there?” Jack asked.
She didn’t answer.
“Ma’am?”
A man’s voice came faintly through the phone.
Jack couldn’t make out the words.
The woman whispered something.
“What?”
“He found me.”
Jack stood.
“Where are you?”
The line went dead.
“Damn it.”
Jack slammed the receiver down.
Ruiz was already beside him.
“What happened?”
“Trace that call.”
“Who was it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why do you look like that?”
Jack tore the sheet from his notepad.
Ruiz read the name.
Her expression changed.
“Daniel Harlow?”
“You remember him?”
“Everybody remembers Harlow.”
Most Chicago cops did.
Daniel Harlow had spent nearly thirty years putting killers, gang members and corrupt cops behind bars. Television stations loved him. Newspapers called him relentless.
Jack remembered something else.
A courtroom.
Michael Vance turning toward him as deputies dragged him away.
You know I didn’t do this.
Jack had been twenty-five then.
His first major homicide arrest.
The case that made people inside the department learn his name.
Ruiz pointed toward the phone.
“She said Harlow’s going to be murdered?”
“Tomorrow night. Eight sixteen.”
“And you believe her?”
“No.”
Jack grabbed his coat.
Ruiz smiled slightly.
“That’s why we’re leaving at midnight to visit him?”
Jack slipped the coat on.
“Exactly.”
Daniel Harlow lived in a three-story brick house on a quiet street lined with bare trees and expensive cars.
At 12:23 a.m., Jack knocked on his front door.
Nobody answered.
Ruiz stood behind him beneath a black umbrella.
“This is going to go great.”
Jack knocked again.
A light came on upstairs.
Thirty seconds later, the porch light snapped on.
The door opened.
Daniel Harlow looked older than Jack remembered.
His hair had gone completely white. His face was thinner. But the eyes hadn’t changed.
Hard.
Impatient.
Prosecutor’s eyes.
Harlow stared at Jack.
Then recognition came.
“Mercer?”
“Sorry to bother you.”
“At twelve-thirty in the morning?”
“Someone called the department.”
“That sounds like your problem.”
“She said you’re going to be murdered tomorrow.”
Harlow’s irritation disappeared.
Only for a second.
But Jack saw it.
Ruiz saw it too.
Harlow recovered quickly.
“Some lunatic calls the police and you come knocking on my door?”
“She knew your address.”
“Half the city knows my address.”
“She knew you’d be here tomorrow night.”
“I generally sleep in my own house.”
“She knew about your upstairs study.”
This time Harlow said nothing.
Jack watched him.
“Mr. Harlow, is there somebody who might want to hurt you?”
Harlow laughed.
“I spent twenty-seven years prosecuting murderers. How much time do you have?”
“Anybody recently?”
“No.”
“Threatening calls?”
“No.”
“Letters?”
“No.”
“Someone following you?”
“No.”
Ruiz stepped forward.
“Do you still work from the upstairs study?”
Harlow looked at her.
“Yes.”
“Does the door lock?”
“Of course it locks.”
“From the inside?”
Harlow’s jaw tightened.
“Yes.”
Jack and Ruiz exchanged a glance.
Harlow noticed.
“What exactly did this woman tell you?”
Jack studied him.
“I never said it was a woman.”
Silence.
The rain tapped softly against the umbrella.
Harlow’s face changed again.
Barely.
But enough.
Jack stepped closer.
“You know who called us.”
“No.”
“You just assumed the caller was a woman?”
“I assumed nothing.”
“Then how’d you know?”
Harlow reached for the door.
“Goodnight, Detective.”
Jack put his hand against it.
“Fourteen years ago.”
Harlow froze.
Jack continued.
“Michael Vance.”
Harlow stared at him.
“What about him?”
“The caller used your name. I haven’t heard your name in years. Now I’m standing here wondering why the first thing I thought about was Vance.”
“That sounds like something you should discuss with a therapist.”
“Did something happen with that case?”
“No.”
“Something I didn’t know about?”
Harlow’s eyes hardened.
“We convicted a murderer.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“And I’m done answering questions.”
He pushed the door.
This time Jack let it close.
The deadbolt clicked.
Ruiz stared at the house.
“Well.”
“Yeah.”
“He’s scared.”
“Yeah.”
“And he knew the caller was a woman.”
Jack looked toward the second-floor window.
A light came on.
A man’s silhouette crossed behind the curtains.
Daniel Harlow was heading toward his study.
Jack reached for his phone.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling the lieutenant.”
“At twelve-thirty?”
“He loves hearing from me.”
Ruiz smiled.
Jack didn’t.
Because something Harlow had said was bothering him.
We convicted a murderer.
Not Vance was guilty.
Not Vance killed her.
We convicted a murderer.
Jack remembered Michael Vance screaming as deputies pulled him from the courtroom.
He remembered Harlow gathering his papers.
He remembered Sgt. Marcus Reed putting a hand on Jack’s shoulder.
Good police work, kid.
And suddenly Jack remembered something else.
Something he’d forgotten for fourteen years.
An evidence envelope.
Harlow taking it from Reed.
Jack never saw it again.
His phone vibrated.
UNKNOWN NUMBER
Jack stared at the screen.
Ruiz saw it.
“Answer it.”
Jack did.
“Mercer.”
The woman whispered immediately.
“You shouldn’t have gone there.”
Jack turned toward Harlow’s house.
“Where are you?”
“I warned you.”
“Are you watching us?”
Silence.
Jack scanned the street.
Parked cars.
Dark windows.
Rain.
“Who are you?”
“You still don’t understand.”
“Then explain it.”
“I can’t.”
“Why Daniel Harlow?”
The woman began crying quietly.
“Because it has to start with him.”
“Start what?”
A long pause.
Then she said:
“The truth.”
Jack gripped the phone.
“What truth?”
“You arrested the wrong man, Detective.”
Jack felt the air leave his lungs.
Across the street, the light in Harlow’s upstairs study went out.
The woman whispered one final sentence.
“Tomorrow night at 8:16, you’re going to find out.”
The call ended.
Jack lowered the phone.
Ruiz was staring at him.
“What did she say?”
Jack looked back at Daniel Harlow’s darkened window.
“She said we put an innocent man in prison.”
