Chapter Two
Emmy’s brain glitched in a way that made her incapable of comprehending what her eyes were seeing. The revelation came in short, sharp flashes: a white sock on a slender foot, a purple Nike on the other, blue running shorts, matching top with white piping, streaks of pale flesh curtained by blood.
Allison Vickery’s sixteen-year-old daughter. She’d been shot in the head. The bullet had opened up a furrow on the left side of her skull. White bone flashed between sinew. Blood pulsed from the entry wound with every heartbeat. Slow, erratic, a faint signifier of life.
Jude moved first, dropping to her knees, rolling the girl onto her back. She grabbed a shirt from the bed and used it to staunch the wound.
“Mandy.”
The name of Allison’s only child rushed out of Emmy’s mouth. The girl had been a tween the last time Emmy had seen her, gangly and awkward and trying too hard to grow up.
“Mandy.” Emmy dropped the shotgun. She knelt down, gripped the girl’s hand. “It’s Emmy Clifton. I’m here with my sister. We’re gonna take care of you, baby. You need to hold on.”
She heard a noise behind her. Cole stood breathless at the doorway. He must’ve come running when he’d heard the last gunshot. His mouth hung open at the spectacle in the room.
“Go outside,” she ordered. “Flag down the ambulance. Seal off the crime scene. We need teams searching the woods. The shooter is armed and dangerous.”
Cole disappeared into the hall.
“Mandy?” Jude’s hands were on the girl’s face. “Mandy?”
Emmy caught a flash of white beneath flickering eyelids before they closed.
Jude pressed her ear to the girl’s chest. “She stopped breathing.”
They both moved in tandem. Jude tilted back the head, pinched the nose closed, sealed her mouth over Mandy’s.
Emmy laced together her fingers, rested her palms on the chest, lined up her shoulders over her hands, locked her elbows.
She felt Mandy’s chest rise as Jude gave her the first breath, then lower as the lungs emptied, then rise again on Jude’s second breath.
They both waited on the exhale to see if Mandy breathed on her own.
She did not.
Emmy started compressions.
The girl’s ribs flexed under the weight of Emmy’s body.
Breath huffed out of her mouth. CPR was an act of brutality, a desperate measure to force the heart to circulate blood.
To keep the organs functioning. To prevent the brain from dying.
Emmy felt one of Mandy’s ribs dislocate on the next compression, but she kept pushing to a two-inch depth, releasing, then pushing again, rhythmically counting off each reset until she reached thirty.
Jude leaned down and forced two more deep breaths into the girl’s lungs.
Mandy’s chest rose and fell each time, but she didn’t take her own breath.
Emmy started pushing again. She felt the sharp snap of a rib fracturing, the breaking sensation reverberating into the bones of her hands. She pushed again. Then again. Thirty times. Then Jude took over and the process repeated.
They were on the nineteenth round of CPR when Emmy finally heard the blessed howl of overlapping sirens in the street. Sweat was pouring off her body. Her shoulders were aching. The tendons in her wrists felt ready to snap. Her heart had turned into a hummingbird trapped inside her chest.
Footsteps pounded up the front stairs. Two paramedics rushed in with a backboard and medic kits.
They quickly took over. Equipment came out: syringes and shears and a breathing tube and packets of gauze and gloves and a portable defibrillator.
Emmy’s hearing felt muffled as Jude told them what had happened, what they had done, what wasn’t working.
Emmy wiped grit from her face. She was covered in white dust from the Sheetrock.
Her black dress showed dark spots where she’d knelt in blood.
She reached for the closest thing to help her stand, but Jude grabbed her wrist.
“No.”
She’d been reaching for the windowsill, about to contaminate the crime scene with her own bloodstained fingerprints.
Jude pulled her up to standing. Dragged her into the hallway.
Leaned her back against the wall. She braced her hands on Emmy’s arms. Looked her in the eye.
Stroked back a strand of her hair. Cupped her hand to Emmy’s face.
It was the most intimate thing that had ever happened between them and, despite the young girl bleeding out five feet from where they stood, the paramedics shouting, and Cole running back up the stairs, Emmy wanted nothing more than to put her head on Jude’s shoulder and cry.
Instead, she walked toward the curving staircase.
Cole shot her a questioning look. Emmy turned away from him, going into the front bedroom on her left.
She couldn’t leave Allison’s child alone in the house to die with strangers.
She looked out the window into the front yard.
Her vision was doing that shaky thing again, hands still vibrating with the sensation of breaking bone.
From the back bedroom, the sound of the portable defi-brillator charging up reminded Emmy of an emergency flare whistling into the air.
The paramedics’ voices took on an urgent treble under the staccato of Emmy’s heartbeat.
She silently swore at herself, tried to snap out of it.
This was an active crime scene. A killer was on the loose.
A cop was dead. A young girl was just as good as.
Emmy pulled her fingers into fists, blinked her eyes to clear them.
Looked out into the street again. Police vehicles were angled like pick-up sticks.
An ambulance was parked in the driveway.
Uniformed men were rushing around. Brett Temple was leaning against his cruiser, phone to his ear like he was ordering pizza for the tailgate party.
She heard the hard punch of the defibrillator delivering a charge. Emmy let her eyes close, conjured the image of Mandy’s body arcing into the air, the electric shock miraculously pulling her back into the living.
The loud wail of the flatline snatched away the fantasy.
She went back into the hallway. Cole’s eyes carefully tracked her approach. Dried blood lined Jude’s face where the bullet had nearly killed her.
“Okay.” Emmy couldn’t speak more than one word at a time. She told Cole, “Report.”
The defibrillator sent up another flare. Seconds passed. The charge hit. Flatline.
Cole’s eyes shifted to Jude, then Emmy, then back again. “Deputy.” Emmy forced strength into her voice. “Report.”
Cole reluctantly obeyed. “Crime scene’s taped off.
Neighborhood’s being locked down. We’ve got cruisers at all entrances and exits.
Brett’s coordinating the house-to-house and the search of the woods.
I requested a forensics team from the GBI.
I called the other cities for support. Highway Patrol’s been alerted, too. ”
Jude said, “Well done.”
Emmy cleared her throat. Looked down at the floor.
Her bare feet were stained red. She’d left bloody footprints across the wide-plank floorboards in the hallway.
“The victim downstairs is Allison Vickery. She was a detective with the Clayville Police Department until last year. Took her full retirement. She’s doing—was doing—PI work. ”
“Clear!” one of the paramedics called. There was another hard punch to Mandy’s chest. Then the flatline screaming out their failure.
Jude shushed out a slow breath. “What about Mandy’s father?”
“Never been in the picture. Allison married a man named Bill Garrison six years ago. Dated him for four years before that.”
“Do you know if she was cheating on him?”
Emmy turned to Cole, “Tell Brett to peel away two deputies to locate Bill. Keep it off the radio. We don’t want some jackass from Clayville going in hot.”
Jude said, “You need to go in hot. The husband is your top suspect. He could be destroying evidence or covering his tracks.”
Emmy hadn’t asked for her opinion. Jude wasn’t her boss, and this wasn’t her case. “You want me to perp walk him in front of the entire town? We’re not in San Francisco, Dr. Archer. I’m not gonna ruin a man’s reputation because I’ve seen too many Datelines.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Their eyes met. Another flare went up, a long, deafening whistle of the machine recharging for another attempt.
Jude recalibrated. “This is an expensive neighborhood on a detective’s salary.”
“Bill is North Falls people. Garrison Supply.”
Jude nodded. The family name went back to her time, but the phrase North Falls people had its own connotations: wealthy, connected, and mostly untouchable.
“Clear!”
Another hard punch.
Emmy held her breath. Hoped. Even prayed.
And then—
A short, sharp beep came from the machine. Then another. Then another.
“We’ve got her back!”
Emmy was finally able to pull enough air into her lungs to fill them. Jude bent at the waist, rested her hands on her knees, took a deep breath of her own.
The paramedics rushed past with Mandy lifted on a back-board. Her shirt had been cut open. Her arms and legs were strapped down. The girl was intubated. Blood was already staining the bandage wrapped around her head. The Ambu bag made a hard hissing sound as air was squeezed into her lungs.
The silence they left behind had an ominous feel to it, like none of this was over.
Jude looked like she was going to ask Emmy if she was okay again.
“Did you see the shooter?”
Jude’s mouth made a noise like she was choosing whether to let Emmy change the subject. “No, but I was standing over there when the gun fired.”