Page 28

Dust swirled around her pants and covered her shoes as she walked toward the van.

The brutal sun had bleached the Georgia red clay to a high white that was so hard to look at her eyes started to water.

She could see the crime scene techs were starting to pack up their equipment, literally pulling up stakes.

The yellow tape dropped to the ground. Close up, she recognized the lanky, Tyveked crime scene tech as Special Agent Michael Berry-Lawhorn.

He nodded a hello to Emmy. “I was telling your dad our second team just found a bullet casing on the soccer field. Half-buried in the soil. Got crushed by one of the tires on the car. They’ve sent it to ballistics, but the thinking is it’s from a twenty-two Mag rimfire cartridge.”

“That’s for a rifle or a revolver,” Emmy said. “We’ve got a suspect with a registered Glock 20 that takes a ten-millimeter round.”

“I can tell you with near certainty that’s not the gun that was used,” Michael said.

“If your victim had taken a ten-mil shot to the head, there’d be bone and brain everywhere.

A twenty-two is smaller and lighter. Knocks around inside the skull like a pinball.

The only thing that usually comes out is blood. ”

Gerald asked, “You find anything here?”

“Nothing jumped out, but give me a second and I’ll take you through the scene.”

Gerald waited until Michael had walked toward his crew to tell Emmy, “Ruger has a rimfire pistol. Standard model. One-button takedown. Bolt-action. Drop-down mag. Nice gun.”

Emmy would never know firearms like her father did. “What’s the application?”

“Sport, mostly. Target shooting. Plinking.” He added, “Browning Buck Mark. Beretta Neos. Colt Ace. There’s more. Ruger’s the best.”

“I can’t see Dale shooting cans off a fence post in his free time.” Emmy googled the Ruger on her phone. The semi-automatic pistol had first been manufactured in 1949. “Looks like something you’d see a Nazi waving around in an old war movie.”

“Based off the Japanese Nambu.”

She put her phone back in her pocket. “Dale’s still the best suspect. The pros don’t cancel the cons.”

“Maybe haven’t found the right con.”

“Madison got the prescription for birth control pills from Dr. Carl so that Cheyenne could take them.” Emmy saw his curious look, but she knew he could easily figure out the source.

“The first time Madison filled the prescription at the pharmacy was on September fourteenth. My guess is that Cheyenne waited a few weeks, then started on the first of October.”

“Took some time to be talked into it,” Gerald said.

“Maybe,” Emmy hedged, because she knew how idiotic teenagers could be. She’d started having sex with Jonah a full three months before a pregnancy scare had sent her running to the Planned Parenthood over in Clayville. Celia had driven her so that her parents wouldn’t find out.

“Sheriff.” Michael was rolling the loose crime scene tape around his hand like a bright yellow mitten. “Ready when you are.”

Emmy looked down at the ground as they walked along the track.

There were drainage ditches on both sides, heavy rocks covering the French drains that diverted the water toward a retaining pond.

Terrell kept the grass cut close to the ground to discourage snakes from scaring the horses.

The fence to what was called the back hundred, a grazing area for his dairy cows, was fifty feet away.

Emmy could see the rolling hills beyond, then the rise where the farmhouse was situated like a crown in the Clifton jewels.

She told her father, “Taybee and her family were at the river basin last night. The field hands would go home at four. No one would’ve been looking back here between seven and eight.”

Gerald nodded, but he told Michael, “Ready.”

“Yes, sir.” Michael unzipped his suit as he talked.

“The FBI is handling the identification on the tire and shoe prints. They said we’ll have those back by the middle of next week.

But this is definitely the area where the struggle took place.

We’ve got the bike traveling from a westerly direction.

We lost the impression about forty yards down, but you can see how the bike meandered back and forth across the road. ”

Emmy saw the lazy curves and thought about Cheyenne pedaling her bike, arms out at her sides, tilting her body left, then right like an airplane, thinking about what she was going to do with the older man now, how much fun she was going to have with Madison at the park later.

“The car came from the west, too,” Michael continued.

“We picked it up at twenty feet. There are a lot of farm vehicles that use this track, so it’s impossible to pick it up before then.

What we know is that the driver came to an abrupt stop here.

He got out of the car. These footprints are a man’s size eleven.

I would guess some kind of hiking or work boot, but the FBI will confirm that. Now, if you’ll follow me down here.”

Gerald stayed on the road as Emmy followed Michael into the drainage ditch. The gravel shifted under the thick soles of her boots. Dust clouded up into her mouth. She coughed.

“There.” Michael pointed back at the road. “You can see that divot better from this angle.”

Emmy had to use both hands to shield her eyes from the sun. She squinted at the packed clay. She only noticed the indentation because Michael had told her to look for it. She shook her head, because this wasn’t at all how she had imagined it. “Are you saying the car hit the bike?”

“Yes.” He pointed a few feet back from the divot. “That’s where the impact took place. This is where the bike went down.”

Emmy climbed up to the road to get a better look. She had worked dozens of bike accidents on patrol. She went to one knee, trying to read the scene. The bike pedal had hit the ground first, acting like an anchor, then momentum had taken over and swung the rear tire around.

She remembered, “The rim of the back tire was bent. The chain was hanging off.”

“I believe the left front bumper of the car tapped the rear wheel. The impact bent the rim and sent the bike flying. And the cyclist.”

The image in Emmy’s mind changed from a carefree Cheyenne making lazy curves on the road to a terrified girl frantically pedaling her bike back and forth as she tried to outmaneuver a speeding car.

Michael said, “He wasn’t driving fast, maybe fifteen miles per hour, but it’s a 2,000-pound vehicle versus a 20-pound bike carrying a very small girl. She was knocked to the road here, then rolled into the ditch there.”

Again, Emmy played it out in her mind. The terrified look on Cheyenne’s face as she heard the car inching closer. The shock when the bike was tapped. The horror as she flew through the air and landed on the gravel, then rolled into the low point of the ditch.

She asked, “Did you find any other part of the gold necklace?”

“Nothing, but this is where the Highway Patrol found it last night. Absent a body, it’s hard to tell if it was yanked from her neck or if the impact broke it off.”

Emmy saw something else. Three round patches of gravel had been scooped from the ditch. “Was there blood on the gravel?”

“Yes, we found spatter from the impact, and several drops where she was either carried or crawled back up to the road. I would assume the blood came from her nose and mouth. Maybe some road rash. We’ll run it for DNA back at the lab just to make sure it’s hers. Excuse me, I have to take this.”

Michael was answering his phone as he climbed out of the ditch.

Emmy turned to her father. “This changes things, Dad. The kidnapper just drove up and hit her bike. He wanted to scare the shit out of her. Maybe kill her right then and there.”

“Yep.”

“What the hell were they involved in?”

Gerald looked up the road. “How’d she get here?”

Emmy looked up the road, too. She needed to get her bearings. She took out her spiral notebook and drew three horizontal lines, then overlaid them with three vertical lines spaced out at equal intervals to indicate the backroads.

“Michael said she came from the west.” Emmy held her notebook so her father could see.

“The backroads go like this, kind of like a tic-tac-toe box with three extra squares along the bottom. This is where Cheyenne’s house is in Verona.

This is where her bike was hit by the car.

The fastest route for her to take would be here, which would bring her in from the east, not the west. She wouldn’t cut through Taybee’s place because of the dogs.

Plus there’s the fence. She’d have to lift her bike over the—”

“Came through here.” Gerald pressed his finger to the bottom corner.

Emmy felt gut-punched. “That’s Aunt Millie’s land. Taybee told me she was complaining about strangers cutting through her yard.”

“Call her.”

Emmy could see the missed call notifications from Millie stacked up on her phone. There were eleven voicemails. She felt as if her stomach was folding in on itself as she selected the number. She tapped the icon to put it on speaker. Five long rings passed before her aunt finally picked up.

“Millie Clifton,” she announced.

“It’s Emmy. Taybee told me—”

“You took long enough to get back to me,” Millie interrupted. “You’re lucky I happened to come home from searching for those poor girls so I could take my blood pressure medication. Why didn’t you answer when I called?”

“Aunt Millie,” Emmy tried to keep her tone even, “please, just tell me why you were calling.”

“One of those missing girls. She was in my yard yesterday, and not for the first time. I recognized her face from the newspaper.”

Emmy felt stunned—not by the information, but by the fact that she could’ve had it as early as this morning. “You saw Cheyenne Baker in your yard?”

“No, the other one, the thick-waisted girl.”

“Madison.” Emmy felt her throat tighten around the name. “What was she doing?”

“She was talking to Adam.”

Emmy shot a questioning look at Gerald. He shook his head.

She asked, “Aunt Millie, who’s Adam?”

“The man I told you about last month. The one I hired to fix my retaining wall. I told you he was up to no good. Just sits out there smoking cigarettes with whatever riff-raff he can drag in. You girls never listen to me. You think I’m an old fool.”

Emmy couldn’t stop shaking her head. “What time did you see Madison?”

“I guess it was just before lunch time. Adam told me he didn’t mind working over the Fourth, but then I look out my kitchen window and I see both of ’em smoking and laughing with their bare feet in my pond.”

Emmy’s heart felt like it was going to explode in her chest. “Can you tell me Adam’s last name?”

“Oh, so now you want to know about him?” Millie asked.

“I’ve told you for a month about strangers cutting through my yard to see him.

Some lunatic even knocked on my front door at five in the evening.

She thought he lived here at the house with me.

And I’m talking a young girl, barely out of high school.

You could’ve knocked me over with a feather. ”

“Aunt Millie, please. I need to know Adam’s last name.”

“All right. Lemme look in my address book. It’s not under A for Adam …” Millie started singing the alphabet. “A, B, C, D, E—”

Emmy bit her lip so she wouldn’t scream. Her aunt’s address book was as thick as a regular phone book, except Millie had her own way of categorizing people.

“P,” Millie finally said. “Here it is. Adam Huntsinger.”

“Thank you.” Emmy’s finger hovered over the button to end the call, but she felt frozen.

The tickle. The bad feeling. The Don’t Feel Right .

“Aunt Millie,” she said, “why was Adam Huntsinger under P in your address book?”

“Oh, that’s from the young girl who knocked on my door,” Millie said. “Nasty little hooligan looks me right in the eye and tells me, ‘I’m here to see the Perv.’”