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CHAPTER NINETEEN

Emmy sat beside Cole in the viewing room inside the sheriff’s station.

The only light was from the two monitors, but Emmy didn’t focus on the images.

She looked down at her right hand. The memory of Paisley Walker’s pulse lingered in her fingertips.

The girl had been flown to the children’s trauma center in Atlanta.

She was severely dehydrated, on the brink of death, when Emmy had found her.

There was no telling whether she would regain the use of her feet and hands.

But she was alive. She was breathing. She was talking. She was with Elijah and Carol, and she was safe.

Everyone was acting like Emmy was a hero, but there was no hero in this story.

All that Emmy could think about was Hannah’s words the night that Madison and Cheyenne had gone missing.

They’d both still been holding onto the tiniest sliver of hope that Madison would be found alive.

Hannah had asked the most obvious question—

How the hell is she ever going to recover from it?

Twelve years hadn’t brought Emmy any closer to an answer, but if being a Clifton had taught her anything, it was that some things were easier to endure than to examine.

She clasped together her hands, trying to get the tapping sensation to go away.

Emmy was rewarded with a horrific pain in her left wrist. She couldn’t breathe through it.

The ribs in front of her heart were bruised.

Virgil had fired one shot from the Ruger before he’d started to fall.

K-5, center mass. The .22 had punched Emmy’s armored vest like a compressed bolt.

She hadn’t felt it at the time, but now, every breath was a misery.

Cole rested his hand on her arm. She knew he was worried, but there was no way Emmy was going to lie in a hospital bed while Walton Huntsinger was interrogated.

“I’m fine, baby.”

She looked past him to the monitor that showed Walton slumped at the table.

Jude and Seth Alexander were sitting across from him.

Seth looked exhausted. His tie was pulled down.

He was hunched over a notepad he’d rested on his crossed leg.

He wasn’t transcribing the interview. He was noting inconsistencies.

His pen had scribbled furiously at the beginning.

Now, he only made a stray mark here and there.

In contrast, Jude looked invigorated. Nothing Walton had said managed to rattle her.

As Walton had walked them through the disgusting details of his sickness, she had remained completely impassive, at times seemingly bored.

He might as well have been telling her about the price of cotton futures.

He’d had no idea she was setting a trap until it was too late.

Emmy wasn’t too proud to admit that her sister had given a master class in interrogation. Seven long, brutal hours had passed since Walton had been arrested, but Jude had carefully broken him down piece by piece until finally, eventually Walton had given in.

The sound of Seth flipping a page on the notepad shushed from the Bluetooth speaker.

“Okay.” Jude’s tone was crisp and professional. “Continue.”

Walton looked at Seth’s notepad. The last bit of his good guy facade had fallen away.

Only the child rapist and murderer remained.

“I guess it was around ten days before the Fourth. Cheyenne told me to meet her at my office at midnight. I thought we were going to have some fun, but Cheyenne showed me the video.”

“How did she show it to you?”

“On the Nokia N93i. It was the good kind with the video camera you could hide in your pocket. Virgil didn’t even know she had it.

I told you she was sneaky. He’d given her an iPhone burner, but he checked it all the time to make sure there was nothing that could lead back to us.

” Walton shrugged. “She was such a damn good liar.”

Jude stayed on point. “What did you do when Cheyenne showed you the video?”

“I snatched the phone away from her. She started laughing. I checked the slot for the memory card, but it was empty. She told me she’d put it in a safe place.

” Walton took off his glasses and dropped them on the table.

“She said if I didn’t give her 50,000 dollars, she would send Emmy Clifton the part of the video that showed all of us together. ”

“All of us?” Jude repeated.

“Me, Virgil, Cheyenne, and Madison,” Walton recited, putting his crimes officially on the record. “Cheyenne thought it was funny, some kind of sick joke. She didn’t give a shit that our lives would be ruined.”

Emmy bit her lip. Walton and Virgil were not the victims here.

Jude asked, “What about Madison? Was she in on the blackmail scheme?”

“Yes, but it wasn’t her idea.”

“How do you know that?”

“Madison would’ve never tried to hurt us. She was a good girl. Anything bad she got mixed up in was all because of Cheyenne.”

Emmy tasted blood in her mouth. Neither girl was bad. They’d been victimized by two sadistic predators.

“All right.” Jude kept her preternatural calm as she continued walking him through his crimes. “What did you do after Cheyenne showed you the video?”

“I panicked. I called Virgil. He told me we would take care of them both over the Fourth of July holiday.”

“Tell me your plan.”

“Virgil’s plan,” he corrected. “I’m not shifting blame.

I’m telling you he was always in charge because he was a cop.

He knew what he was doing. How to keep us safe.

He told Cheyenne to meet us on the backroads because he knew everyone would be at the fireworks shows.

She was going to give us the phone and we were going to give her the money. ”

“What was she going to do with fifty grand?”

“Move to Atlanta with Madison. They were going to leave in three months, on Halloween night so no one would look for them.”

Emmy closed her eyes. She could easily see Madison and Cheyenne stupidly thinking they’d had it all worked out. The idea that no one would look for them on Halloween was preposterous.

Jude said, “The plan you just told me—that’s what Cheyenne thought would happen. What were you and Virgil actually going to do?”

“I wanted to pay them off and let them leave town. I knew it would draw too much attention to us if we did anything to them.” Walton rubbed his eyes.

“Virgil said that fifty grand would only be the start. That they would keep coming back for more. We couldn’t give them that kind of power over us.

I wasn’t on board until Cheyenne upped the pressure. ”

“How?”

“Phone calls. Constant phone calls.” Walton scratched the side of his neck.

His fingernails had already dug angry furrows into the skin.

“Cheyenne called multiple times in the same day. Alma was getting suspicious. There was no plausible reason for a teenage girl to be calling me so often. Or at all, really. Virgil kept saying we had to do something about it, but I was hesitant. We’ve never done anything like that in town.

We always make sure to keep our activities away from North Falls. ”

Emmy noticed the switch to present tense.

Walton hadn’t fully accepted that he was going to die in prison.

Maybe that was a good thing. Every one of Virgil’s trophies needed to be tracked to a case.

Jude’s contacts had already identified five murdered young women in five different areas that Walton had traveled to with the Tooth Troopers.

In every case but one, Virgil’s time sheet showed that he’d taken at least two days off from work.

Emmy could remember joking with him about spending all of his time in the company of horses.

Jude told Walton, “Go back to the plan.”

“Virgil told me how to set up my alibi.” Again, he gave a detailed answer.

“Dale gave me the Audi to drive to Muscle Shoals. I used Adam’s license to book a round-trip ticket to West Virginia.

I paid cash like he said. After I landed, I walked down to the Legion Hall to take the photo to prove I was there.

Then I caught the return flight to Muscle Shoals.

I drove the Audi back to Dale’s. Virgil met me there.

We got in the car, and we collected the girls. ”

Jude asked, “Who got in the car?”

“Me and Virgil.”

A new detail. A new question answered. The night of Madison and Cheyenne’s disappearance, Emmy had wondered how one man had controlled two fifteen-year-old girls. Two predators made perfect sense.

Jude asked, “Did you, Dale or Virgil do anything to prepare the car?”

“Uh, yes,” Walton said, as if he’d just remembered. “Dale lined the trunk with a tarp. I think it was black. Virgil was furious because he’d told Dale to duct tape the edges so it was sealed. But Dale was always a prick. He saw everything as a game of chicken.”

Cole whispered a curse. Emmy checked in on him. His hands were balled into tight fists like he wanted to go through the monitor and beat the hell out of Walton.

Jude asked, “How else was Dale involved that night?”

“That was it.” Walton shrugged. “Dale let us use Esther’s car, but he stayed home.

I told you he likes them younger. The only reason he helped was because he knew Virgil could arrest him.

We were both terrified of Virgil. I don’t have to keep reminding you that he was a cop, but it mattered.

He could destroy us in an instant. He lorded it over us. ”

Emmy tried not to focus on the pathetic, whining tone.

Jude didn’t seem to have any problem ignoring it. “You and Virgil got into the Audi. You left Dale’s house. Where did you go?”

“We were early, so Virgil drove around for half an hour. He’d arranged to meet Cheyenne at six thirty on the backroads.”

“Did she know you were going to be there, too?”