Page 54

Carol’s hand fluttered to her chest. “Seventeen, Father. She just turned seventeen.”

“Carol.” Nate’s voice was surprisingly firm. He was actually trying to help. “How old was Shelley when Reggie impregnated her?”

Carol’s eyes met Jude’s, but only because she couldn’t look at Nate.

“Carol,” Nate pressed. “Now is the time for complete honesty.”

The rosary beads clicked furiously. Carol looked down, watching them run through her fingers like water. “Fifteen the first time. But she lost the baby, and … and now she’s five months. It’s a blessing, isn’t it? Having children?”

Jude saw Emmy’s jaw clench. She knew what silent recriminations looked like.

Emmy was chastising herself for not following up on the brother sooner.

Understandable, but not productive. Jude started counting the seconds of prolonged silence.

She was planning to take over when the number hit ten, but she was denied the intervention by a loud knock at the door.

“Carol?” a man’s voice called. “Open the door. It’s Reggie.”

Emmy nodded for Cole to back her up. She opened the door. Reggie stood with his hand raised to knock again. Emmy didn’t bother with introductions. She grabbed Reggie’s wrist and spun him around, then frogmarched him toward the street.

“Stay here.” Jude didn’t wait for an answer. She ran out the door.

Emmy was pushing Reggie up the walkway. The street lights were still on.

The cruiser was lit up as if it was on a stage.

Jude had a perfect view of Emmy slamming Reggie face-down onto the hood of the car.

She started searching him, emptying his pockets onto the sidewalk.

Jude watched a flurry of crumpled receipts escape from his brown leather wallet as it hit the concrete.

Cole picked everything up. He had a panicked look on his face.

This wasn’t his mother’s normal behavior.

“Talk to me, asshole.” Emmy pressed Reggie’s face into the hood of the car. “Where’s Paisley?”

“I don’t—” Reggie gasped as she wrenched up his arm. “I don’t know!”

“Tell me where she is!” Emmy ordered.

“I told you I don’t—”

“That’s how you wanna play it?” Emmy’s handcuffs came out. She shackled his wrists behind his back. “You have the right to remain silent.”

“Please,” Reggie begged. “I don’t want trouble, okay? I don’t know where she is. I live in Mobile, for fucksakes. I just got here.”

“Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

“Jesus, lady! I’ll talk to you, okay? Just—”

“Shut your fucking mouth,” Emmy warned. “You have a right to an attorney.”

Jude put her hand on Emmy’s shoulder. She meant it as a kind of check, to bring her back to the moment, but the gesture had the opposite effect.

“Get your fucking hand off me,” Emmy ordered. “Cole, move her away.”

Jude held up her hands in surrender as Cole approached.

“Please!” Reggie begged. “Just listen to me! I promise I can—”

“I told you to shut up.” Emmy spun Reggie around. She balled the front of his shirt into her fist. She had tunnel vision. She wasn’t listening to a damn word he said. “If you cannot afford an attorney—”

“Reggie!” Jude raised her voice, trying to startle some sense into Emmy. “Are you waiving your rights? Is that what you’re telling us? You want to talk?”

“Hell yes, that’s what I’m saying!” Reggie yelled back.

Emmy cut her eyes at Jude, but her sudden spark of rage had clearly been dampened.

It took a few long seconds before Emmy’s steely resolve returned.

She looked at Reggie as if she was seeing him for the first time.

The panic in his eyes. His chest heaving in fear.

Emmy’s fist released the front of his shirt.

She took a small step back. Asked him, “Reggie Lee McAllister, are you waiving your rights?”

“Yes!” The word came out like a plea. “I’m on probation. If I get another arrest, I’m inside for five years. It don’t matter if you’re wrong. My life is over.”

Emmy was still visibly shaken. Jude knew that sickening feeling, the desperation that made you do stupid things to stupid people. It was easy to miss the forest for the trees.

“Reggie,” Jude took over, “where were you yesterday morning between the hours of seven and eight?”

“I was—” Reggie had to stop to catch his breath. “I was working. I clocked in at six thirty, then I got in my truck to make deliveries. It’s got a GPS in it. They can tell where I am. You can check it.”

“Mom.” Cole had one of the receipts. He showed it to Emmy. She studied the information for so long that Jude assumed she was buying time to get her emotions back under control. Then she finally handed the receipt to Jude.

“Need my glasses.” Jude could probably make out the small print under the light, but she wanted to buy more time for Emmy to collect herself.

She reached into her purse. Dug around the envelope with the photos from Elijah Walker’s phone.

Found her reading glasses. Slipped them on. Studied the receipt.

The logo was for the WaWa Gas Station in Fairhope, Alabama, a town across the Bay from Mobile. One large mochaccino with a bagel purchased yesterday morning at six thirty-eight. Fairhope was on central time, an hour behind Clifton.

“That’s proof.” Reggie’s voice was filled with relief. “I had to fuel up before making my run. That’s the receipt for my breakfast. The diesel went on the company card. You can check on the cameras at the WaWa, right?”

Jude knew they would check the cameras, just like she knew that Mobile was at least a six-hour drive from where they stood.

There was no way Reggie could be in North Falls abducting Paisley when he’d been buying a coffee and a bagel at the same time in Fairhope.

Jude waited for Emmy to make the same calculations.

“Turn around,” Emmy told him.

Reggie turned. Jude watched the handcuff key slide into the lock. Emmy’s hands were shaking. She was still wound up.

Jude asked, “Reggie, when’s the last time you saw your niece?”

“Christmas.” He rubbed his wrists. “I had to get permission from my parole officer. I was still on the ankle monitor. They only took it off two weeks ago. You can check with him, right? I called him before I left to get here. All this is on the record.”

“Does your PO know how old your wife was when she got pregnant?”

“Shit.” He kept rubbing his wrists. “She came on to me, okay? She was working at the McDonald’s down the road. We just hit it off, is all. Her parents gave us permission to get married. You can ask them.”

“Cole.” Emmy’s voice was shaky. “Walk Reggie to the house. Get the parole officer’s number. I’ll run down the rest.”

Cole dutifully followed orders as the two men headed up the sidewalk. Jude hung back. Emmy looked as if she wanted to say something, but changed her mind. She took her phone out of her pocket. She looked at the screen for a moment, then she dialed a number.

Jude didn’t listen to the call. She studied Emmy’s face.

The tension in her brow. The exhaustion in her eyes.

Being at the center of an investigation into a child abduction could take years off your life.

Add to that watching Myrna slowly fade away, seeing Gerald shot to death, then having to deal with a virtual stranger who knew everything about your family but nothing about you.

Any one of those things could break even the strongest person.

Jude didn’t know how she was still standing.

“Okay.” Emmy ended the call. “That was Virgil. He’ll track down the WaWa footage.

Damien got the information from Elijah’s CashApp.

The landscaper is named Antonio Ramirez.

He lives in Phoenix with his family. The black truck is registered in Arizona in his name.

Seth sent some agents to knock on his door, but there’s no way Elijah saw Antonio in the street yesterday morning. ”

“Why is Virgil reporting that information to you and not Seth Alexander?”

Emmy held out her hands in an open shrug. “Does it matter?”

“Yes, it matters. There’s a chain of command. You’re not an afterthought in this investigation. You’re the acting sheriff. Seth should report directly to you, not through a retired deputy.”

“Virgil was a cop for longer than I’ve been alive. He knows what he’s doing.”

“Emmy.” Jude tempered her tone. “I can’t imagine what the last twenty-four hours has been like, but you need to listen to me if you want your job when this is over. You’re all over the place. You need to rein yourself in. You’re going to miss the important details.”

“You wanna give me a detail I’m missing?” Emmy asked. “You told Dad you wouldn’t step foot back in town until he was dead. Is this your victory lap?”

“That’s a conversation for another day. Right now, you need to put your head down and do your job. You can find new ways to hurt me later.”

“You think I’m the one hurting you?” Emmy scoffed. “Take a close look in the mirror, lady. That’s my blood in your teeth.”

Jude looked up at the sky. She took a deep breath before diving back in. “You’re exhausted. You’ve been through a terrible trauma. It’s understandable that you need to take it out on somebody.”

“Stop psychoanalyzing me. I can’t fight with you anymore.”

“I’m not asking you to fight me . I’m asking you to fight them .”

“Mom.” Cole was clearly used to inserting himself in between two warring adults. He was trotting up the walkway to distract them both. “I talked with Reggie’s parole officer. His story lines up. All of it, even Shelley’s parents giving permission for them to get married.”

“Jesus.” Emmy was looking down at a text on her phone. “It’s Peggy. She wants to see the picture.”

“What picture?” Cole asked.

Emmy shook her head again, but whether it was to tell him not to ask, or to acknowledge how much worse the situation had just gotten was beyond Jude’s powers of deduction.

Jude reached into her purse for the envelope. “We should send her both. There’s an off chance she might recognize the other one.”

“Fine.” Emmy’s voice was monotone. She told Cole, “Elijah had pornographic photos on his phone. Close-ups of a man and a woman’s genitals. He was probably passing off the man’s photo as his own. I thought Peggy might recognize the woman if she’s one of her waxing clients.”

“Oh,” Cole said. “Okay.”

Jude assumed someone of Cole’s generation had seen worse than anything Elijah Walker had on his phone. She held up the woman’s photo so that Emmy could take a picture. Then she held up the man’s, saying, “There’s more than one mole that might identify him.”

Cole’s eyes went wide, but to his credit, he kept a straight face.

“Shit.” Emmy hissed out a long stream of air between her teeth as she sent the texts. She asked Jude, “Why didn’t you press Carol about Elijah’s affair?”

“Do you think she would’ve told me the truth?”

“If Father Nate told her to, yes.”

“You have a lot more confidence in Nate than I do.”

“Seriously?” Emmy asked. “He’s the one who made Carol tell the truth about Reggie’s child bride.”

Jude realized her emotions were probably making her miss details, too. She opened her mouth to own the mistake, but Emmy cut her off before she could speak.

“People aren’t the same as when you were here. It’s been forty-plus years. Whatever tight-ass version of Father Nate you got, that version changed, because that’s what people do—they change.”

Jude couldn’t tell whether Emmy was angry or exasperated. “This isn’t about Father Nate, is it?”

“I don’t know what it’s about.” Emmy looked down at her phone. “Jesus Christ. Peggy identified the woman in the photo.”