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“Smart move for a teenager.” Jude stopped a few yards away from the conference room. “What’s your take on Woody now? Is he worth talking to about Paisley?”

Emmy shook her head. She felt like she was still playing catch-up. “He’s too smart. He’ll lawyer up immediately. We’ll burn through an entire day waiting for his attorneys to come down from Atlanta, then they’ll file a harassment suit against us by the end of the week.”

“You’ve never run a sting on him?” Jude asked. “It seems to be common knowledge that he’s dealing drugs out of the back of your ex’s bar.”

“Clayville PD leaves him alone. I honestly don’t know if they’re scared or being paid to look the other way. The biker gangs running heroin up from Florida are rich and ruthless. The chief claims he doesn’t have the resources to launch that kind of far-reaching investigation.”

“What was Dad’s excuse? I get why he wouldn’t use the sheriff’s office, but he could’ve called in the GBI or the DEA.”

“I never asked. I assumed he didn’t want to upset Cole.”

“Maybe he didn’t want to upset Jonah,” Jude said. “Did Dad know that he abused you?”

Emmy parted her lips to draw in air. She wasn’t so easily bewitched. She glanced at the open doorway. Her son was probably in the conference room. Virgil, too.

She told Jude, “I asked Virgil to help us run through the case. He was chief deputy when Madison and Cheyenne went missing. He tracked down all the phone calls and cell tower data. I figure we can split this up into teams. Me and Virgil on the Adam is guilty side. You and Cole on the Adam didn’t do it side. ”

Jude’s long pause was clearly meant to convey that she was choosing to move on. “I’m not sure that I have a side. I want to keep an open mind. It’s still possible that Adam murdered Cheyenne and Madison.”

Emmy crossed her arms to give her hands something to do. The remark about Jonah had stirred the ghosts in her body. “Because Adam got oral from Cheyenne?”

“Because Adam continues to make the most sense. The only reason he’s off death row and on parole right now is because he raped a woman in Metter twelve years ago.”

“But Barbara Jericho was twenty-two when he raped her. Madison and Cheyenne were fifteen.”

Emmy would’ve missed Jude’s change in expression if she hadn’t been watching her so closely. There was something hard about it. Something familiar.

She asked, “What are you not telling me?”

Jude’s expression changed again. “Statistically, men who rape don’t only rape one time, and generally, they don’t only have one victim.”

“Clifton is a typical American county. We’ve got thousands of open rape cases and hundreds of untested rape kits. We don’t have the money or resources to go through all of them, and even if we did, it would be too late to help Paisley Walker.”

“Adam was never arrested for a sex crime? Or held on suspicion?”

“Never,” Emmy said. “The only recurrent theme in his arrests was driving without a license.”

Jude’s expression changed yet again. This time, she was clearly thinking through all the alternatives. “Take Dad and your pride out of it. Is Adam guilty or innocent? What’s your gut telling you?”

Emmy’s gut was all over the place. “I’ve never been able to get a read on it. I just let my brain take over and look at the facts. Logically, Adam’s the one who makes the most sense. The district attorney thought the same thing. So did twelve jurors.”

“Okay,” Jude said. “What do we know?”

The question didn’t hurt as much this time.

“Adam’s fingerprints were on Cheyenne’s necklace that I found outside his basement apartment.

Millie saw Adam with Madison that morning at the pond.

Both their DNA was found on cigarettes they smoked.

Walton’s Jetta had the same brand tires as the tire tracks at the soccer pitch and on the backroads.

There was a mark on the front bumper that was consistent with hitting the back wheel on a bicycle.

Adam had access to the same kind of pistol that was used to murder Cheyenne.

His fingerprints were on the bag of weed inside Madison’s pocket. ”

“Tap the weak spots.”

“The evidence was all consistent with and not matched exactly .” Emmy knew she was basically quoting Cole from yesterday morning.

“None of the pistols matched ballistics. We didn’t find any fingerprints or DNA in the Jetta that matched the girls.

We never found any size eleven boots that matched the shoe prints.

We couldn’t match the treads on the Jetta to the impressions left at the scenes.

Adam admitted that he’d sold pot to Madison.

He said that Madison asked him to fix Cheyenne’s broken necklace, and that it must’ve fallen out of his pocket.

We never found Cheyenne’s flip phone with her initials scratched onto the case.

We never found the hammer that was used to break Madison’s hands and feet.

We never found another abduction or murder case that had a matching MO. ”

Jude cut through the noise. “The flip phone belonged to Cheyenne. The hammer was used on Madison.”

“You think he kept them as trophies?”

Emmy’s heart started tapping like a drum. They’d always assumed that Adam was a pedophile who’d gotten caught, not a serial offender with more victims. She couldn’t let her mind race to what this could mean for Paisley Walker.

She said, “I’m assuming Adam’s the killer. You said that he’s probably raped before. Do you think he could’ve killed other children before Madison and Cheyenne?”

“There have been fewer than two dozen cases of double child abductions in the United States since the nineteen-seventies. It’s incredibly rare.

Statistically, we know from the profiles of those offenders that they were more likely to have previous rapes, abductions and murders in their criminal backgrounds. ”

Emmy heard the academic-like shift in Jude’s tone. “Madison and Cheyenne weren’t his first victims.”

“Their abductor knew what he was doing,” Jude said. “Taking them wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision. He groomed them. He knew their schedules. He knew how to get to Cheyenne. He knew how to get to Madison.”

“He knew how to get to Paisley.”

“Did you search for similar cases where a hammer was used to break the hands and feet?”

“I found two cases, but the victims weren’t children. One was a nineteen-year-old in Tillar, Arkansas. The other was a twenty-one-year-old in Hidalgo, Texas. The bones were broken, but not systematically, and we couldn’t find any proof that Adam had ever been out of state.”

“If it was Adam—if—and if he was traveling for the purposes of committing a crime, he would know to cover his tracks. Turn off his phone. Get rid of receipts. Only use cash.” Jude took her phone out of her purse.

“I’ll reach out to my point person at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Their database is more thorough than the FBI’s. ”

“How is that possible?”

“The FBI relies on law enforcement to send them the data. Reporting is not mandatory, and compliance is spotty. The Center actively goes searching for the data themselves.”

Emmy could feel a bead of sweat roll down the back of her neck. “We should tell Seth Alexander. Paisley could be missing a personal item that was taken as a trophy.”

“No.” Jude looked up from her phone. “Let’s keep this between ourselves for now. Don’t even tell Cole.”

“My son can keep a secret.”

“I know, sweetheart, but sometimes just knowing a secret is harder than keeping it.” Jude glanced over her shoulder to make sure they were alone. “If we find the trophies, we find the killer.”