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Emmy listed it off, “None of the photos on his laptop were of Cheyenne and Madison. They were both fifteen years old. All of the girls in Dale’s collection were between the ages of nine and eleven.

We spent hours going through every piece of footage from the school’s CCTV to see if there was anything on camera that showed Dale acting inappropriately with either Madison or Cheyenne.

We found nothing to link them. We did extensive interviews with all the teachers and every student who had even a passing association with the girls.

We talked to people at the rec center and the outlet mall.

And whenever Dale drove them home from choral practice, the times made sense.

Practice ended at five, and the girls were home ten minutes later.

Both Hannah and Ruth testified to the times at Adam’s trial.

There wasn’t a shred of evidence that we could use to pin it on him. ”

Virgil said, “And Adam made more sense. You know the reasons, but my money is still on him. For what that’s worth.”

Jude still wasn’t sure. She looked back at the names on the board again. She’d been gone for decades and she had a passing familiarity with at least four of them. “Do we know if any of these men on our list knew each other?”

“I mean—” Emmy shrugged. “Most of them are North Falls people. They might know each other in passing. We only looked at them in relation to the girls.”

Jude asked Virgil, “Did they ever call each other on their phones?”

He paused for a moment, as if he needed to let the question sink in. “We didn’t have probable cause on a warrant for anybody but Adam and Dale, and there was no record of those two communicating with each other.”

Jude asked, “Was Adam on his parents’ cell phone plan?”

Virgil paused again. He wasn’t a man who was used to missing small details. “Yeah, I got copies of all the family call logs going back six months. The landline, plus Walton and Alma’s cell phones. They’re all in a box in my basement. Didn’t think we would need them.”

“Hold on.” Emmy had her hands up like she needed everything to stop. She asked Jude, “Do you think Adam was using his parents’ phones to communicate with an accomplice?”

“Accomplices in serial abductions aren’t common, but they’re not rare, either. Typically, it’s a man and a woman caught up in folie à deux , but when it’s two men, the crimes can be exceptionally brutal. Leopold and Loeb. The Toolbox Killers. The Hillside Stranglers.”

Emmy looked shaken. “If Adam had an accomplice, that person could be the one who took Paisley.”

Jude said, “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. These are theories right now. We don’t have anything concrete.”

Virgil volunteered, “I can call the prison and see if we can get Adam’s visitation logs.”

Emmy said, “Use Dad’s office. Don’t let anyone else hear you.”

Jude added, “Ask for a list of all the guards on his tier and any prisoners who did meal and mail delivery service or rolled the library cart. Get all the scans of his emails and any other correspondence.”

“Wait.” Emmy stopped Virgil at the door. “Call Dooley State Prison, too. I want to know who’s had any contact with Dale Loudermilk. Check all the same things, plus his commissary. See if anybody on the outside is making his time inside a little easier.”

Jude said, “Dale was caught red-handed on the porn. He knew he was going to be doing some serious time. If he really did have an accomplice, his silence wouldn’t come cheap.”

“Got it.” Virgil gave her a salute on his way out.

Jude looked back at the whiteboard. She felt in her bones that they were getting close.

Her eyes scanned the names again. She’d tried so hard not to let her horrific experience with Adam cloud the way she looked at the facts of his case, but his name was at the top of the list for a reason.

She remembered Emmy talking about how a lot of the evidence against him was consistent with and not matched exactly .

An accomplice could explain the disparities.

She asked Cole, “What kind of car did Dale drive?”

“He drove a truck. White Ford F-150. Six years old.”

Emmy went to the laptop. “The car he was vacuuming and cleaning with a bleach solution at five thirty in the morning was a three-year-old black Audi A4 that belonged to his wife, Esther.”

Jude watched the monitor again as Emmy arrowed through the images: different angles of the trunk, rear and front bumpers, several shots of the interior, the seats, floorboards, steering wheel, and console, another tight shot of the edge of the trunk’s lid that showed where some paint had been chipped off.

Emmy explained, “Dale told us the paint got chipped when he took his lawnmower to get it repaired.”

Jude asked, “He loaded a lawnmower into the Audi and not the truck?”

Emmy’s nod acknowledged the thin excuse.

“He did a good job cleaning the car. There wasn’t any paint transfer from whatever the trunk slammed down on.

There were no marks that we could see on the front left bumper.

Obviously because of the bleach, none of our tests showed positive for blood or body fluids.

At the time, we assumed Dale cleaned out the car because he was hoping we wouldn’t find out that he’d given Madison and Cheyenne rides home from school. ”

Jude asked, “A plastic tarp was brought up when they dragged the pond, right?”

“Yep,” Emmy said. “Big enough to line the trunk, but there was no forensic evidence on the plastic.”

Cole cleared his throat. “What about the numbers on the sticker?”

Jude had no idea what he was talking about. “Show me.”

Cole worked the laptop to select a photo of the Audi’s interior.

The steering wheel was at the center of the frame.

He zoomed into the upper left-hand corner of the windshield.

There was a small, square decal with a logo for the Speedy Go Garage.

Below it was written the date and mileage of when the next oil service was due.

Cole said, “Those high-end cars, you get the oil changed every 10,000 miles or twelve months, whichever you hit first. The sticker says the next oil change is due on July second of the following year, which means the oil service was performed two days before Madison and Cheyenne were abducted.”

“That makes sense,” Emmy said. “Esther’s sister was in Florida the week before. She picked her up on her way back to Carrolton. Dale took her car to get the oil changed while she was out of town.”

Jude found her reading glasses. She got closer to the monitor so she could look at the numbers. Her gut told her that Cole was onto something. She said, “Keep going.”

He went to the whiteboard and started writing. “The sticker says that the next oil change is due when the odometer hits 16,483, right? So if you subtract 10,000 from that number, that means that two days before Cheyenne and Madison were abducted, the odometer was at 6,483, right?”

“Shit.” Emmy pinched her fingers on the trackpad to show the console behind the steering wheel. “The mileage on the odometer is 7,173.”

Cole drew a line under the number so that he could work the problem. “That’s—”

“Six hundred and ninety,” Jude said. “In two days, Dale put 690 miles on the Audi.”

Cole said, “If he went on a round-trip, that would be 345 miles each way.”

Emmy said, “Dale never mentioned a trip out of town.”

“Walton went out of town,” Jude said.

Emmy was already shaking her head. “Bridgeport, West Virginia, is a 1,400-mile round-trip from North Falls. Virgil matched the odometer on the rental car receipt. Then, just to be sure, I had Homeland Security check all the flight manifests around the country on those dates to see if Walton Hubert Huntsinger’s name was on any of them. It wasn’t. Then, there’s this—”

Jude turned back to the monitor. Emmy used Google Earth to find the American Legion building in Bridgeport, West Virginia. She clicked to expand the street view.

Emmy said, “This is the same building as the one behind Walton in the selfie on his phone. And the metadata from the jpeg gives the same location. He was definitely in West Virginia.”

“Okay.” Jude took off her glasses, asking Emmy, “What’s your gut saying?”

“That Dale and Adam were working together.”

“What’s your reasoning?”

Emmy held up her hand and counted off the points.

“We know that Adam had contact with both girls. He was seen smoking weed with Madison. He admitted to you this morning that he got oral off Cheyenne. We know that someone was producing child pornography. We know that Cheyenne had child porn of herself in her locker. We know that Dale collected child pornography. We know that he looked at the illicit photo of Cheyenne and didn’t blink.

We know that he did a psychopathic deep clean of his wife’s Audi at five thirty in the morning. ”

“That’s persuasive, but not definitive,” Jude said. “We need to figure out where Dale went in the Audi.”

“Esther’s dead, so we can’t ask her, and the sister in Carrolton refuses to talk to us.

Wants to keep the past in the past, she says.

” Emmy was looking at the mileage calculations on the whiteboard.

“That’s about ten hours of driving round-trip.

Madison was kept somewhere for at least twelve hours.

But why would Dale drive her that far away, then bring her back and chain her body to Cheyenne’s, then leave them both in Millie’s pond? ”

Jude’s earlier bad feeling came roaring back. “He could’ve taken her to someone. A customer, maybe.”

“Like, sold her?” Cole asked.

“Maybe,” Jude said. “That could explain the photos in Cheyenne’s locker. The girls were both probably tricked into posing for them. They would have no idea they were being offered for trafficking.”

Emmy covered her mouth with her hands. She was clearly thinking about the last twelve hours of Madison’s life. She disappeared into the kitchenette before Cole could see the tears streaming down her face.

Jude knew better than to go after her. She asked Cole, “Do you know how to plot out travel distance from a center point?”

“You mean can I tell you all the towns that are within 345 miles of North Falls? Yes, ma’am.” Cole sat down at the laptop. “Maps and mistakes, right?”

“Maybe.” It was hard for Jude not to pick up on his enthusiasm. It was also hard for her not to remember the many times she’d been in this situation before. “One step at a time, sweetheart. We’re still in a marathon, not a sprint.”

Emmy’s phone vibrated on the table.

Jude watched the Caller ID scroll across the screen—

CLIFTON CO SHERIFF DISPATCH

Emmy came back into the conference room. She was dry-eyed as she tapped the phone to answer. “Marla, you’re on speaker.”

“Chief.” Anxiety infused the word. “Adam Huntsinger called into nine-one-one. He’s demanding to speak to you.”

Emmy’s brow furrowed. “Is Brett still tailing him?”

“Yes, ma’am. Brett’s last check-in was outside the Huntsinger house five minutes ago. I’ve got his cruiser on GPS set up fifty yards down from their driveway.”

“Check on Brett and put Adam through to my phone.”

“Transferring now, chief.”

A series of low tones played through the phone’s speaker, then there was the phlegmy sound of heavy breathing.

Emmy’s chest rose and fell as she took a quick breath. “Mr. Huntsinger, this is Chief Clifton. What can I do for you?”

“You can go fuck yourself,” Adam hissed. His words were slurred. He’d clearly helped himself to more in the hours since Jude had left the bar. “What the fuck, lady? What’d I ever do to you?”

Emmy took another shallow breath. “Mr. Huntsinger—”

“I found what your sister hid in my fucking truck!” he yelled. “I’m not going down for it this time. I got nothing to do with that little bitch that’s gone missing.”

Emmy looked at Jude, who could only shake her head. Cole did the same. Neither of them knew what Adam was talking about.

“Mr. Huntsinger.” Emmy’s tone stayed tightly controlled. “I need you to calm down and tell me what you found in your truck.”

“You fucking calm down, lady. I’m done talking.

” Adam didn’t hang up, but Jude heard the familiar sound of a man taking a long pull from a bottle.

“I’ll tell you another thing, bitch. You better get that fucking cop off of my street right now or I swear to God, I’m gonna take this fucking shotgun and blow his fucking head off. ”