Chapter Six #2
But she had been tired. Just so heart-achingly, bone-crushingly tired.
For the last seven years, every second of her life had been trapped in a state of prebereavement.
Even now that her mother lay in a grave, she didn’t know how to wrap her head around mourning the loss of a body when the loss of her mother’s mind had been an excruciatingly slow turning of the screw.
Two sharp knocks on the office door pulled Emmy out of her misery. Brett walked in without waiting for an invitation.
“Okey doke.” He slouched into a chair and put his boots up on her desk. “Just got off the phone with Vanderbilt. They finished the door-to-door at Clifton Gardens. Talked to everybody except two folks who are out of town. Nobody saw nothin’ before, during or after the shooting, is the upshot.”
Emmy wasn’t surprised. North Falls residents tended to be proactive in reporting suspicious people in their neighborhoods. They didn’t wait for the cops to knock on their door.
She asked, “How well did you know Allison?”
“Enough to say hey, but that’s about it. You know how the Drama Queen freaks out when I talk to other women.”
Emmy wasn’t a fan of Brett’s wife, but she knew he’d given her good reason to freak out. “Did any of our cases overlap with Allison’s while she was working narcotics?”
“Beats me. You were chief when she was heading the drug squad. That’d be your territory. Why’re you asking?”
Emmy wasn’t going to explain that she was looking for connections between Allison and Woody. She waved for Cole’s attention, beckoning him to join them.
“Yes, boss?” He leaned his shoulder against the doorjamb. He looked tired. She was about to make his long day even longer.
“I need you to cross-reference any investigations our department worked on with Allison Vickery or the Clayville drug squad.”
“Might wanna expand that,” Brett said. “Something interesting came up during the door-knocks. Couple of the folks thanked us for being in the neighborhood so much. Said it made them feel safe.”
Emmy skipped the part where he was just now deigning to drop this information. “We don’t have any patrols in Clifton Gardens.”
“Exactly,” Brett said. “So, I asked them what color the squad cars were, and they said black with blue stripes.”
There was only one force in the county that drove vehicles with those colors. “What are Clayville squad cars doing patrolling North Falls streets?”
“You can ask Reggie when he shows up. Heard he had to get the fluid drawn off his knee after your little run-in.” Brett gave her a stern look. “You know, Emmy, I’ve never known you to play dirty like that.”
“It’s boss.” Cole’s tone was clipped. “She’s the sheriff, so you should call her boss.”
Emmy snapped, “And Brett’s your superior officer, so you shouldn’t be telling him what to do.”
Cole’s cheeks flushed.
She asked him, “Did you get anything off the doorbell cameras?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat when he swallowed. “Nothing yet. Four cameras caught the sound of gunfire. I emailed the files to you.”
“Good. Send them to Sherry for analysis. Anything else?”
He glanced at Brett before looking back at Emmy. “Yesterday, a Clayville squad car was parked at the curb in front of fourteen-eighty-eight Dahlia Drive for twenty-eight minutes.”
Emmy verified, “That’s one street over from Allison’s house?”
“Yes, ma’am. The next-door neighbor’s camera caught it.”
Emmy felt the same roil in her stomach from before. “Was it Reggie?”
Brett said, “Reggie drives an unmarked.”
“He does now.” Cole’s tone was sharp. “He hydroplaned off the interstate a few weeks ago. Just got his ride back today.”
Emmy didn’t need an accident report. She asked Cole, “Could you see inside? Catch a squad number on the car? License plate?”
“No, ma’am. I saw the driver-side door open, but not who got out.
The camera was pointed down more toward the porch.
But I saw a marked Clayville SUV on two different cameras three days ago.
One driving west on Sunflower and the other heading south on Dahlia.
Couldn’t see inside. Didn’t see the plate or number.
But the left front bumper was cracked, so I know it was the same SUV. ”
“Okay,” Emmy said. “Pull somebody off patrol to help you look at all the footage. I want to know how often Clayville squad cars have been in Clifton Gardens.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Emmy watched Cole shuffle toward his desk. She didn’t have time to regret embarrassing him in front of Brett. Her focus had been on Woody and the unknown older man, but now she was wondering about Reggie again.
Brett said, “Come on, Em. He’s not a bad kid. Cut him some slack.”
“Get your feet off my desk. How did you know Reggie’s on his way here?”
Brett’s feet hit the floor, but his mouth couldn’t find a plausible explanation. “What?”
“You said, ‘You can ask Reggie when he gets here,’” Emmy quoted. “How did you know he’s on his way?”
Brett’s cheeks were more flushed than Cole’s had been. “I just assumed—”
“Since Cole’s looking at the camera footage, I need you to cross-reference those cases. Anything Allison or the drug squad worked on with our department. Search back at least five years. Prioritize any investigations that crapped out without an arrest.”
Brett studied her for a beat. “You got it, boss lady.”
Emmy opened her laptop so she had something to occupy herself while Brett shut the door behind him.
She gripped her hands into fists. Looked over her laptop into the squad room.
Cole was slumped at his desk like she’d spanked him at the grocery store.
Brett had started ordering around deputies like a drill sergeant.
And Emmy was the nasty bitch who was pretending to work in her office.
She opened her email. Clicked on one of the files that Cole had sent.
Emmy’s eyes blurred on the image of a black and blue striped squad car pulling up to the curb in an otherwise empty street.
There was no sound on the video. The station had gone silent.
The ticking clock on the wall hit her eardrum like an ice pick.
Her own heartbeat provided a jumpy staccato.
She thought about all the times she had sat across from her father at this same desk and asked him for advice on how to be a good leader, and all the times she had gone home and sat at her mother’s kitchen table and begged for guidance on how to be a good mother, and Emmy was so overwhelmed by a sense of aloneness that she had trouble drawing in a full breath.
A bark of male laughter pulled her out of her head.
Brett was talking to Reggie Wilder. The police chief had changed out of his uniform and was wearing black sweatpants and an aggressively tight navy T-shirt.
He was leaning on a black cane. His left knee was bent at an awkward angle.
A rigid plastic brace with a metal hinge made his leg look like he’d taken it off a robot.
Both men turned to look at Emmy. Brett’s discomfort was palpable, like he’d been caught by the teacher. He patted Reggie on the shoulder, then gave Emmy a mock salute before slinking off to his desk.
Boss lady.
When you were too much of a coward to call a woman a bitch to her face.
Emmy stood up. Opened the door. She girded herself as Reggie limped toward her.
She knew he was here to try to bully his way onto the investigation.
There was no way Emmy was going to let that happen.
Allison and Mandy had been shot in North Falls, which meant the investigation belonged to the Clifton County Sheriff’s Department.
And Reggie Wilder still fell squarely on her list of suspects.
“Emmy,” Reggie said. “Let’s get this over with.”
She was saved a response by the lobby door swinging open.
Bernadette Grayson, the mayor of Clayville, was on her phone.
There was a no-nonsense air about her, like she had a lot of other places she needed to be.
Everyone knew the mayoral job was a stepping stone to something bigger.
She held up her finger to Emmy, asking for a second to finish the call.
“Well I don’t know what to tell you,” Bernadette said. “I don’t know how long I’ll be.”
Emmy recognized the tone of a woman who was arguing with her husband.
There was no amount of money or power that could insulate you from that.
Emmy looked away, pretending like she couldn’t hear every word of the call.
Reggie offered no such favor. He stared openly, clearly enjoying Bernadette’s discomfort.
The City of Clayville had a long history of mayors who’d been elected to clean up the police department.
Reggie had outlasted them all.
“Oh, for the love of—” Bernadette looked at her phone. Clearly, her husband had hung up on her.
She dropped the phone back into her purse.
Her expensive-looking heels stabbed at the floor tiles as she walked through the squad room.
The mayoral gig was a side hustle. Bernadette’s real life was spent as a named partner at a law firm that represented most of the agricultural businesses in south-west Georgia.
Emmy bet the big, leather bag hanging from her arm could pay her electric bill for the next fifty years.
Reggie stepped in front of the mayor, slowing down her pace, leaning heavily into his cane as he walked toward Emmy. Bernadette muttered a curse. They looked like siblings in a competition to see who could annoy the other one the most.
Emmy went back into her office. Sat down in her chair.
Over the years, she had watched her father navigate countless, pointless meetings with politicians and city law enforcement.
Gerald had been a master at shutting people down.
Cliftons tended to come in three varieties: talked too much, didn’t talk enough, or talked to themselves.
Gerald had fallen squarely in the middle of the scale.
No one questioned him because they knew he wasn’t going to give answers until he was damn good and ready.