Chapter One #3
Cole had Aunt Millie on his arm as he slowly walked her toward her ancient baby blue Cadillac.
Emmy let herself enjoy the sight of her son wearing a crisp suit and tie.
His wardrobe usually had two variations: his sheriff’s deputy uniform or baggy basketball shorts with T-shirts that had messages she’d aged out of understanding.
“He looks nice, right?”
Jude was leaning against Emmy’s sheriff’s cruiser, which Emmy supposed was her way of asking for a ride. Emmy opened her purse, fished out her keys.
Jude said, “I heard the school board scheduled Hannah’s hearing for the end of next month. Do you think they’ll let her teach again?”
Emmy opened the door.
Jude said, “One could argue that she’s the reason Gerald was killed.”
“One could argue she did you a favor, then.” Emmy stared at Jude over the roof of the car. “Didn’t you vow that you wouldn’t step foot back in this town until Dad was dead?”
“I did.”
Silence ensued, which had its own way of speaking.
Jude was a retired FBI agent with a PhD in criminal psychology from Stanford University. Trying to start an argument with her was like sneezing into a windstorm.
“Cole,” Emmy called to her son. “Let’s go.”
She slammed the door. Kicked off her cousin’s ridiculous high heels so her foot could make contact with the pedals.
The key slipped out of Emmy’s hand when she tried to jam it into the ignition.
She quickly snatched it back up. Her hands weren’t just sweaty.
They were shaking. Her heart was trembling in her chest again. She felt seized by anger.
Jude said, “I used to have debilitating panic attacks.”
Emmy was not having a panic attack. “Was this before or after you were an alcoholic?”
“Once you’re an alcoholic, you’re always an alcoholic.”
“Like being in a street gang.”
“Emmy Lou.”
Without warning, tears sprang into Emmy’s eyes. Jude’s soft tone of voice, the cadence, sounded so much like Myrna that Emmy turned her head to see if her mother was sitting beside her.
“Sweetheart,” Jude whispered. “You can fight the world, but the world is always going to win.”
Emmy took a stuttered breath.
“Holy shit, Mom.” Cole clambered into the back seat. “Whoever that Cousin Ace is, everybody sure hates him.”
She adjusted the rear-view mirror. “Straighten your tie.” Emmy put the engine in gear.
She nosed ahead of Uncle Penley’s Jaguar and nearly clipped Taybee’s Mercedes as she cut the line to leave for the reception at the farm.
A few horns were honked, but Emmy ignored them.
Her fingers didn’t loosen on the wheel until they had reached the interstate.
The thrum of tires on asphalt reverberated inside the car.
The silence felt companionable until they passed the newly erected sign where I-16 met 475.
GERALD CLIFTON MEMORIAL INTERCHANGE
Jude flipped down the visor so she could see Cole in the mirror. “How is Cousin Ace related?”
“Millie said he’s not consang-something.”
“Consanguineous. Sharing the same ancestors.”
“Okay, that makes sense because he was engaged to Cousin Shannon, then he cheated on her and called off the wedding, but he wouldn’t tell her who he cheated with.”
“Handsome and discreet. Great combination.”
Emmy tuned out the after-show commentary.
She focused on the road, her cop’s radar silently scanning the surrounding vehicles for expired tags and improper lane changes.
Brake lights glowed. Drivers needled down to the speed limit.
She took the exit toward Taybee’s farm. Passed the gas stations and fast-food restaurants. Darted around a tractor hauling hay.
Her hands relaxed on the steering wheel.
The feeling of wrongness had finally dissipated.
Things would’ve been so much easier if she could just work all the time.
Emmy usually spent her Saturdays catching up on paperwork at the sheriff’s station.
She should be there right now. There was still a hell of a lot she had to do.
Clifton County had a population of roughly 20,000 and was comprised of four cities.
Fewer than a thousand people lived in the county seat of North falls, which was bordered by the Flint River.
The actual falls were in Verona, home to a sprawling auto parts factory.
Ocmulgee had the outlet stores along US 19 that brought in tourists and bargain hunters.
The vocational school was in Clayville. The three larger cities had their own police departments, but North Falls was under the purview of the sheriff’s department and its sixteen deputies, all of which fell on Emmy to manage.
A burst of laughter pulled her back into the car.
Cole asked, “What’d she do?”
Jude said, “Showed up at the river basin in her housedress and pin curls. Told me to get in the car before I got a spanking.”
Emmy blinked, and for just a moment, she could see Myrna standing in her faded old housedress with her hands jammed into her hips.
Cole said, “One time, she came into my first-period math class and dropped my sheets on the floor ’cause I kept forgetting to make my bed.”
Jude gave a sharp laugh, then tried to pull Emmy into the reminiscing. “What about you?”
Emmy had plenty of stories about Myrna’s parenting style, not all of them humiliating.
Her mother had learned how to play Coldplay’s “Clocks” on the old upright in the living room for Emmy’s birthday one year.
She had walked the floors with Emmy when she was pregnant with Cole.
She had loved devising word puzzles, drawing maps for treasure hunts, hiding clues in sock drawers and lunch boxes.
Unfortunately, Emmy couldn’t share any of these stories because the shard of glass had returned to her throat.
She tried to clear it, but that only made the cut deeper.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jude reaching to offer comfort.
Emmy put both hands on the steering wheel and made a quick left turn.
Cole shifted in the back seat. Emmy could feel Jude’s curious gaze.
Emmy had accidentally turned too soon. She should’ve taken the next left toward the back roads to Taybee’s farm.
There was nothing to do now but go the long way, which was no hardship considering the hundreds of Cliftons who would soon be slurping devilled eggs and whispering too loudly about Cousin Ace having the gall to show up at Myrna’s funeral.
She dropped the speedometer to twenty. They were on Sunflower Trail in a residential area of North Falls called Clifton Gardens.
All the streets were named after flowers and lined with four-bedroom colonial-revival homes that had been designed and built by a trio of Clifton brothers after the First World War.
The real estate market within the city limits was as restrictive as it was incestuous.
Homes tended to pass down through generations.
Emmy had spent her childhood visiting friends and relatives who lived in the neighborhood.
She was as familiar with the layouts as she was with her own home.
Jude said, “This used to be where the machinists from the factory lived. Back then, you could make enough money to buy a house and send your kids to college.”
Cole took the bait. “Wow, tell me more about how great things were in the last century.”
Emmy rolled down the window, let the warm air tighten the skin on her face and sting her eyes.
She glanced into the rear-view mirror again.
Cole was animated, telling a story about a friend who’d tried to raise alpacas to help pay off his student loans.
Jude started laughing. Emmy took a shallow breath.
She wouldn’t make it through the rest of the day if she stayed in her head like this.
She was trying to think of something to say when a sharp, sudden pop cracked open the air.
Emmy tensed.
Her brain held on to the lingering echo.
Not a car backfiring or illegal fireworks. No hunters would be near a residential area, and they would be using rifles. Emmy had been around firearms all of her life. She knew the sound of a small-caliber handgun.
So did Jude. She rolled down her window.
Emmy tapped the brake. The cruiser slowed to a crawl. She heard it again—two this time, louder, more distinctive, and very close.
Pop. Pop.
They all ducked below the glass line. Emmy felt her heart slam into her spine. Adrenaline flooded her senses, sharpening her vision, electrifying her skin.
“On the right.” Jude pointed up the road, her arm tensed like an arrow notched into a bow.
Emmy punched the gas. The cruiser lurched toward the rise. She grabbed the mic off the dash, but Cole was already calling it in on his phone.
“Active shooter near the sixteen-hundred block of Clifton Gardens. Requesting immediate backup and medical.”
“There.” Jude was pointing again. One house down on the right.
Corner lot. Two-story brick with white trim.
Both garage doors up. Blue Toyota RAV4 parked nose-out in the driveway.
Trunk gaping open. Suitcase on the ground.
Front door closed. Side window broken. A girl’s bicycle was lying on its side on the front lawn.
Pink frame. White seat. Long sparklers draping down from the handlebar grips.
Emmy swerved against the driveway, angling the cruiser to block the intersection.
She released the latch on the trunk before she got out.
Her mind rolled through the possibilities as she rushed to the back of the cruiser and grabbed her twelve-gauge shotgun: home invasion, sexual assault, domestic violence, kidnapping, abduction, burglary gone wrong.
Pop.
Emmy flinched. The gunshot felt like it was inside her head.
She told Jude, “Backup will take at least ten minutes.”