Page 69

Emmy added, “She went home to take her blood pressure medication. I had nearly a dozen voicemails from her that day, but I didn’t call her back until we realized that Cheyenne would’ve cut across her property to get to the backroads.

That’s when she told me that Adam was called the Perv. Should’ve called her earlier.”

Jude could hear the self-recriminations in her voice. Missing something right in front of you was a terrible guilt to carry. So was spinning your wheels in a conference room full of boxes. Jude had a decision to make.

She said, “We’re going to get case blind if we keep staring at documents.

Let’s turn this around. Stop looking at the crime through Cheyenne and Madison’s eyes.

Look at it from our killer’s perspective.

I want us to start fresh and pretend that Adam doesn’t exist. We’ll call the perpetrator the Bad Guy.

When did the Bad Guy meet the victims? How? Where?”

Virgil said, “Cheyenne’s first burner phone came online in August the year before, so that’s probably the time that she met him.”

Emmy said, “Madison got a birth control prescription from Dr. Carl in September. Cheyenne was the one taking the pills, though. I found the blister pack in the attic above her closet. She started them October first. My guess is the Bad Guy met her at the outlet mall. That’s where kids hang out.

He took his time grooming her because he knew she’d keep showing up. ”

“Your feeling is that he met Cheyenne first?” Jude asked.

“Yes,” Emmy confirmed. “If the Bad Guy really was local, it would be stupid to approach Madison. Everyone knew Hannah was my best friend.”

Jude could hear the same note of regret in her voice. “Does Cheyenne fit the Bad Guy’s victim profile? Controlling parents, rebellious teen?”

“Yes,” Emmy confirmed again. “I guess Madison did, too, but not as much. Paul, her father, had a tracker on her phone. Hannah tried not to helicopter, but it’s hard not to smother a kid who’s pulling away.

Then Cheyenne moved to Clifton and she and Madison were Velcroed to each other.

Virgil tracked hundreds of texts and calls a day between them. ”

Virgil said, “That’s not an overstatement. I’ve got the logs here.”

Jude waited as he shuffled through some paperwork. She could see the black AT&T logo at the top of the pages. Emmy’s handwritten summations were below the Bates stamp.

“Here we go.” Virgil pushed his glasses up his nose so he could read it.

“July Fourth, there were eighteen phone calls between Madison and Cheyenne’s second burner.

There were ninety-seven texts back and forth.

Then it comes up on six o’clock, and they stop all communication.

It doesn’t pick back up until eight, but all the calls and texts are from Madison.

There’s no response from Cheyenne. The last ping from her phone on the North Falls cell tower was at five fifty-eight.

It never pinged again. She must’ve powered it off. ”

Jude said, “Or the Bad Guy did.”

“Here’s the thing.” Emmy stood up from her chair.

She’d obviously found her second wind. “The neighbors say Cheyenne left the house on her bike around three thirty. We don’t know what she was doing for those two and a half hours before she turned off her phone.

Nobody saw her in town. There weren’t that many CCTV cameras on the streets or in stores back then.

Most people were at one of the fireworks shows. ”

Virgil said, “Only one cell tower served North Falls. The geo-data wasn’t as precise, so we couldn’t narrow down where Cheyenne was other than in the North Falls city limits.”

“How hot was it that day?” Jude asked.

“Hundred degrees in the shade,” Emmy answered. “That’s a good point, though. She had to be somewhere with air conditioning. The library was closed. Maybe the Chilly Treat?”

Virgil said, “They were all interviewed. Nobody saw her.”

“Maybe the neighbors were wrong about the time Cheyenne left the house?” Emmy guessed. “Or maybe she circled back without them seeing?”

“Okay.” Jude could feel them spinning their wheels again. “Cheyenne had three phones. The flip phone, the first burner, and the second burner. Tell me about them.”

Emmy answered, “The first burner was confiscated by Celia at school. Cheyenne did a factory reset on her way to Celia’s office.”

“The reset wiped it completely clean,” Virgil said. “Quantico couldn’t get anything off it.”

Emmy continued, “We found Cheyenne’s second burner in her back pocket when the bodies were recovered. The device was submerged in the water too long to be able to recover any data. We never found the flip phone, but we know that Cheyenne carved her initials on the case—C.B.”

Virgil took over, anticipating the next question.

“Madison’s iPhone was found crushed on the soccer pitch.

The GBI lab wasn’t able to recover anything.

None of the devices were backed up to the cloud.

We found a laptop that Cheyenne’s mother donated to the church, but it was wiped clean.

The family desktop computer was clean. Madison’s laptop was clean.

All of the digital footprints were either wiped, lost, or didn’t exist in the first place. ”

Jude thought of something. “What kind of flip phone was Cheyenne using?”

“Nokia,” Virgil said. “Used to belong to her father, Felix. He passed it down to her when he got an iPhone. They didn’t want her going online without them knowing.”

“What’s the model?” Jude asked.

“I’ve got it in here somewhere.” Virgil started shuffling through a thick stack of papers. “Gonna be a minute.”

Emmy nodded at Cole to give him a hand.

Jude told her, “Let’s put the focus back on the Bad Guy. What was his July Fourth like? You’re assuming he was supposed to meet Cheyenne on the backroads, right?”

“Theoretically,” Emmy said. “We don’t know if he surprised her, or they planned to meet. Her necklace and her blood were found on the stretch behind Taybee’s farm.”

Jude couldn’t stop herself from chuckling. “Of course Taybee got the farm.”

Emmy rolled her eyes but stayed on point.

“If the meeting was planned, I’m assuming that the Bad Guy told Cheyenne to turn off her phone at six.

He wouldn’t know that we couldn’t geo-locate her position from the cell tower.

My guess is she was supposed to meet him around six thirty.

They were going to do whatever they were going to do.

Then, Cheyenne was going to meet Madison at the park by eight at the latest.”

“Why were the Bad Guy and Cheyenne meeting?”

“For sex?”

Jude had to ask, “An hour and a half for a blow job?”

“Maybe she was finally going to agree to penetration?” Emmy shrugged.

“Fifty bucks for oral versus several hundred, maybe even a thousand, for full-on sex. Cheyenne wouldn’t know how long it would take if that was really her first time.

She tried to pretend like she was sophisticated, but she was still a child. ”

Jude could see the pain in Emmy’s expression. She had known Cheyenne Baker. The theoretical had become personal.

Jude said, “All right, Cheyenne and the Bad Guy were going to meet for sex around six thirty. He was meant to pick her up on the backroads. Then what?”

Emmy shrugged, but said, “If we’re still talking about what the plan was, maybe Cheyenne thought the Bad Guy was going to take her to his house or a motel room. She probably romanticized it. He wouldn’t have told her it was going to happen in the back seat of the Jetta.”

Jude asked, “And then?”

“I think Cheyenne was supposed to meet Madison at the park by eight o’clock,” Emmy sounded more certain of the timeline now.

“Madison was very anxious when I talked to her between eight fifteen and eight thirty. Then, she tried to talk to me again around eight fifty, but I blew her off. I think she waited until the fireworks started around nine, then she went looking for Cheyenne.”

Jude watched Emmy’s jaw stick out as she clenched her teeth. The self-recriminations were writ large in her expression. Jude knew there was no use in trying to smooth them away.

She said, “That leaves a roughly two and a half hour gap between our Bad Guy abducting Cheyenne on the backroads and abducting Madison at the park.”

“Right. That’s what’s always bothered me.

” Emmy leaned her elbows on the back of the chair.

“I’m the Bad Guy. I’m driving around in my Jetta.

I’ve got Cheyenne and her bike in my car.

I wait two and a half hours until the sun sets, then I go look for Madison at the park, but I bring Cheyenne and her bike with me. ”

Jude said, “In dual kidnappings, generally they threaten one girl in order to get the other girl to comply.”

“But we know the Bad Guy had a gun. That’s a hell of a persuader.

And he obviously had a secluded location he took Madison to, somewhere isolated enough to torture her for hours.

” Emmy lifted her shoulder in a stiff shrug.

“Why not take Cheyenne to that place, chain her up, then go looking for Madison? Even with virtually nobody in town, it’s risky keeping her in the car. ”

Jude said, “So risky that when the Bad Guy drives onto the soccer pitch, Cheyenne manages to escape. She runs toward the trees. The Bad Guy shoots her in the head. He goes after Madison. He puts them both in the car and off they go.”

“Not exactly,” Emmy said. “Before he drove off, he took time to move their bikes. Madison’s was in the middle of the soccer pitch. Cheyenne’s was over by the trees. And from what we could tell, he laid down Madison’s bike. He threw Cheyenne’s maybe ten feet away from the field until it hit a tree.”

“He was angry with Cheyenne, but he was composed enough to try to misdirect the search.” Jude had seen Emmy’s meticulously drawn map of the first crime scene. “You’d have to be strong to throw a bike that far.”