Chapter Eighteen
Emmy felt a rush of adrenaline as she walked into the station.
She knew in her gut that the case was about to break open.
There were too many overlapping names, too many coincidences, too many people hiding secrets, telling lies, thinking they were safe because twenty-four years had passed and Neil Delano was gone and the lawyers were dead and the transcripts had been tossed out and the old records had been shredded and nobody was talking, but what they failed to understand was that Emmy knew every cog on every wheel that kept this entire town running.
County agencies, like every other arm of government, tended to lose a lot of paperwork either through mistake or neglect.
One rule every department could be relied upon to follow was to always keep receipts.
Periodic audits kept track of every dollar that came into and went out of the system, and if you couldn’t account for an eraser, the government would haunt you for the rest of your natural life.
Louis Singh had said it himself. All the jurors who’d served on the Delano trial had been paid fifteen dollars a day.
The signed receipts from those payments were stored in the records department deep in the bowels of the courthouse, and Ginny Saddler, who, in addition to being Drake Saddler’s mother, was the clerk of the Superior Court for Clifton County, would know exactly how to find them.
The woman had been halfway into her Sunday night drinking binge when Emmy had called her at home.
Right now, Cole and Jude were driving Ginny to the courthouse to find the receipts.
Emmy poured herself a cup of coffee in the squad room.
Two of her men were doing deep dives into the juror names she’d gotten from Louis Singh.
Emmy hadn’t wanted to waste time looking them up on her phone standing outside the hardware store.
Deputies Julian Vanderbilt and Levi McGuire were firmly in Brett’s camp.
Both men usually smirked every time Emmy gave them an order, but now they had their heads down over their computers.
Brett was in the back talking on the landline. He’d dragged almost every box out of storage and stacked it around his desk to show how busy he was. Emmy was reminded of the pillow forts Cole used to build in the living room. Brett put his hand over the receiver when he saw her looking.
“Emmy.” He motioned for her to come over. “Need to talk to you a minute.”
She walked into her office. Took off her duty vest. Started silently strategizing ways she could approach Bernadette and Reggie.
The best way might be to play them against each other.
Their strained relationship made a hell of a lot of sense now.
Bernadette wasn’t worried about Reggie’s corruption.
She was worried that he would expose her for being corrupt, too.
The smart play would’ve been to keep Reggie onside, but Bernadette had staked her election on cleaning up Reggie’s department.
The right amount of pressure might turn one of them against the other.
Emmy sat down at her desk. Almost everything in this investigation seemed to tie back to the trial.
Allison had spent hours researching it. She had left clues for Emmy in case anything bad happened.
Even Jude had agreed it all led back to 2002.
Emmy had spent hours spinning in circles, but she was finally heading in a straight line.
What do we know?
Ezekial Gilchrist was one of the wealthiest men in the region who didn’t have the last name Clifton. He’d made millions in farming, then branched out into logistics, tying the Flint River to Port Bainbridge, which transported crops to the Gulf of Mexico via Apalachicola.
Twenty-four years ago, Evelyn Gilchrist had been murdered.
The jury had been on the verge of acquitting Neil Delano, the man who’d been accused of killing her. At the last minute, a rookie cop had swooped in with damning evidence. Then one juror had died, another man’s wife had gone missing, and they all came back with a unanimous guilty verdict.
What do we think we know?
There was no way Gilchrist hadn’t used his money and influence to buy a guilty verdict.
According to Louis Singh, there had been one juror who’d kept badgering everyone to reveal which way they were leaning. The Pushy Juror had to be Gilchrist’s man on the inside. He’d figured out who the not guilty votes were and exerted pressure to change their minds.
When that hadn’t worked, he’d bribed them with Gilchrist’s money.
When money hadn’t worked, he’d found other ways.
Mitch Bellingham was a veteran, a man of character who’d believed in right and wrong.
Then his wife had been kidnapped, and he’d done the wrong thing for the right reason to get her back.
She had been returned home safe at the end of the trial.
Ruel Clifton had inherited more wealth than any person ought to have.
He’d spent his days fishing, riding his horses, teaching his four sons to shoot, and spoiling his tiny baby daughter.
Ruel couldn’t be bought, and his last name had made his family untouchable, so he’d been drowned in the Flint River.
“Emmy, listen.”
Brett was standing in her doorway. He looked annoyed. Behind him, she could see two sets of eyes watching from the squad room.
“This ain’t about Bill anymore. I don’t care whatever wild goose chase you’ve got going on. You need to stop punishing me with this bullshit hospital duty. I’m already exhausted with a baby at home and one on the way.”
Emmy didn’t think about the fact that she hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in years, that she’d watched her father die six weeks ago and buried her mother the day before.
She didn’t even think about Brett’s curt tone when he’d finally picked up her urgent call from the hospital, or that she’d heard his baby crying in the background when her call had woken him up.
She thought about Cole’s birth. That she’d lost nearly four pints of blood and dislocated her pelvis pushing him out, and that she’d been back on the job three weeks later wearing an adult diaper to catch the blood and urine that were still seeping from her body.
“Get the fuck out of my office.”
His mouth opened, but there were no words, which was a good look for him. Then he broke the spell. “What?”
“Now.”
Emmy picked up the receiver on the phone. Dialed Reggie’s home number. Waited through two rings. She saw Brett slump back to his desk. Julian and Levi were smirking, but for once, it was not directed at Emmy.
Reggie answered, “’Sup, playa? Hellbitch still breaking your balls?”
Emmy almost laughed. Of course he’d assumed a call from the Clifton County Sheriff’s Department was his good buddy Brett Temple. “Hey, Reggie.”
“Emmy.” Reggie was the one who laughed, but not like it was funny. “Heard you had your guys asking around about the Rawleys this morning. Anything I can help you with?”
Emmy wondered at his brazenness. “Actually, I’d appreciate that. Why don’t you come to the station and we can talk?”
He grunted. “You asking me to come in for a formal interview?”
“I wouldn’t call it formal. More like two colleagues having a chat.” Emmy waited, but he didn’t respond. “If your knee is hurting too much to drive, I could send Brett to pick you up.”
He grunted again. “This about my alibi?”
“Reggie, I went to vacation Bible school every summer break with just about every woman over forty in this town. You think I don’t know whose house you’ve been rolling up to at fourteen eighty-eight Dahlia Drive?”
There was a moment of prolonged silence. “What’s this about? Why’d you call?”
Emmy knew how to be silent a hell of a lot better than he did.
She wasn’t ready to give him a warning shot over the bow.
There were a lot of skeletons in Reggie’s closet, not just the one from 2002.
She wanted him to sweat, to worry about what she knew, who she had told, when she was going to come for him.
“Emmy, listen …”
She listened, but he didn’t finish his thought. She could tell he was gearing up for some lies and some bluster. She looked at her father’s wall clock. The second hand ticked in the quiet.
“Okay.”
Emmy returned the receiver to the cradle.
She slipped her cell phone out of her vest pocket. Ignored the string of text notifications from Taybee. Pulled up a familiar number.
“Emmy!” Dervla McClatchy’s voice was raised to be heard over what sounded like a football game, two bickering teenage girls, and Taylor Swift competing for dominance in the background.
“I’m sorry about that post on NextDoor. I thought it was set to private.
You’re doing a great job. I was just making a stupid joke. ”
Emmy guessed she knew what Taybee had texted. “Were you at home when Allison was shot?”
“What?” Dervla barked a fake laugh. “That’s crazy!”
The racket in the background slowly faded as Dervla clearly went somewhere more private. Her house was large. Her family owned a car dealership. Her husband was a lawyer who worked for the auto parts factory and traveled overseas more frequently than was good for his marriage.
“Hon, didn’t you talk to Brett?” Dervla spoke in a hoarse whisper. “He already asked me if I heard anything. I told him I left the house about ten minutes before it started. Had some work to do at the dealership. Didn’t even know what had happened until George called to see if I was okay.”
Emmy looked up at Brett. He’d started throwing things around his desk like a toddler. He snatched his jacket off the back of his chair. Stomped across the squad room. “Were you alone at the house before you left?”
“George took the girls to see his mama down in Florida.” Emmy had to hand it to her for keeping her tone conversational. “Were you alone at the house?”
“Jesus H. Christ,” Dervla mumbled. “Is this about Hannah? You want me to vote to hire her back? All you had to do was ask.”