Murder Deja Vu

responsibility. I settled in, thinking I was lord and master of my own little universe, but I still had those lofty ambitions only the young think are attainable.”
    “Get to it, Harris. Time’s wasting.”
    “I’m getting there. This isn’t easy for me.” He stared into his coffee cup, pushed it aside. “Then Robert arrived on the scene, bought the paper from Mr. Grimes. He was older and self-assured. He acted like my best friend, taking me into his confidence. I looked up to him. Of course he had an ulterior motive. I wrote newspaper stories that could make him look good whenever he won a case. He had switched from defense to prosecution, and he needed to make his bones—get name recognition. At the time I didn’t know that he’d left his firm in Charlotte under suspicious circumstances. Found out the details later. Anyway, Robert was colorful and did everything with panache. It was easy to write about him. Then he saw Dana, the prettiest girl in the county—still is—and he wooed her like she was royalty, buying her expensive presents and taking her to the best places. She fell for his line. Besides seeing my folks, Dana was the real reason I’d come back to Regal Falls. But we grew up together and were more like brother and sister, no matter that I wanted it to be more. Anyway, neither of us saw the real Robert until it was too late.”
    “What happened?” Payton asked, coaxing Harris along.
    “What do I get for this besides baring my soul?”
    “I told you, it depends. I can’t promise anything till I know what you tell me. Even then.”
    Harris set his gaze across the room as if he couldn’t look at Payton when he told him. Maybe he figured time had come to tell someone.
    “I was driving back from Asheville one night, wasted. I shouldn’t have been behind the wheel of a car, but—” He glanced at Payton and shrugged. “I took the back roads, figuring I’d be safer off the highway and so would everyone else. It was dark, and—” He chewed on his thumbnail, pulled a piece of skin until it bled.
    “And?”
    “I’m getting to it, Jim.”
    “I know, but we’ve got a situation here.”
    Harris nodded. “I felt a bang. I swear I didn’t see anything, but I stopped the car and got out. A black man lay crumpled on the road beside a toppled bike. He didn’t have any reflectors; I flat out didn’t see him.”
    Payton didn’t say anything. He drank his coffee.
    “I checked for a pulse, couldn’t find one. I listened at his chest, thumped it. I didn’t know what else to do. The guy was dead.”
    Payton watched as Harris absent-mindedly sucked his bloody finger.
    “I felt sick. You know how those mountain back roads are. It’s like a wasteland. No houses, no cars, nothing. I didn’t have a cell phone. No one did then. I panicked and left the scene. Other than stopping a mile or two down the road to throw up, I drove straight to Robert’s apartment.”
    “Why him?”
    “I don’t know, Jim. He was an attorney. I was scared shitless, still tipsy, although the accident sobered me. I thought Robert was my friend, and he’d tell me the right thing to do.”
    “And you told him what happened?”
    “I said I was in trouble. I’d obviously been drinking, so he must have figured out what happened or had an idea. He told me not to say another word until I gave him a dollar. I didn’t know why he asked, but I gave him the dollar. Then he said he was my attorney and whatever I told him was privileged. He asked me questions and manipulated what I said, adding words like allegedly and hypothetically, but he knew what I was saying, and I knew what he was doing. I was young, not stupid. I wanted to call the police, but Robert said if I did hit someone, the guy was dead, and there was nothing I could do for him. I’d go to jail for vehicular manslaughter because I left the scene. I shouldn’t have let him talk me into it, but I was scared.” Harris took a gulp of coffee, winced at the cold dregs, and pushed the cup away.
    “Did you ever find out about the guy you hit?”
    “No. I listened to the police reports in the area, read all the papers. Nothing. No one ever reported the hit and run or a dead man. I can’t tell you how many times I almost called the police. Must have been a hundred.”
    “You’re sure the guy was dead?”
    “I thought so. Damn, just thinking about it—” Harris leaned over, put his head down.
    Payton eyed him, thought the editor was going to lose his