Chapter Eighteen #2
Emmy wondered if anybody cared beyond saving their own asses anymore. “This is about a mother and her child who were shot one street over from where you live.”
Like Reggie, Dervla’s breathing was heavy through the phone.
“Yeah, Reggie was here for about an hour. Then I drove him back to his car at the gas station. Not like he could park out front on a Saturday afternoon when everybody was home. Look, I told all this to Brett. He said that he would use his discretion.”
Brett’s discretion had wasted Emmy’s valuable time.
Dervla said, “Be careful what you’re doing, Emmy. There’s a lot of women in this town just having some fun, and that’s all it is, and we don’t need your judgment.”
“Okay.”
She ended the call. Reggie had slithered to the bottom of her list. He was brazen, but only an idiot would put himself one street over from a murder he’d planned.
Emmy tapped her laptop to wake it. Entered a search on the Georgia Campaign Finance Commission’s website to look up all the donors to Bernadette Grayson’s mayoral campaign. She hit download on the spreadsheet. She was watching the rainbow wheel spin when Julian Vanderbilt knocked on her open door.
He said, “Check your email. We tracked down the names you gave us. Not much to tell. Three of them are dead. Only one has a record.”
“Thanks. Take over for Brett. He was looking at old cases that overlap with Allison Vickery. They should be on his desk.”
“Yes, boss.”
Emmy clicked open the email. Waited for the file to download.
A notification banner slipped into the corner of her screen.
She had forgotten that Valerie Wilkinson had agreed to come to the station with Talia at six.
She needed somewhere comfortable to talk to the girl.
There were only two hard, wooden chairs in her office and the interrogation room was meant to be intimidating.
“Julian?” She waited for him to turn back around. “Get Levi to help you tote the couch in here from the lobby. Put it against the wall.”
“Yes, boss.”
She was reaching for her laptop when it occurred to her that he had called her boss. Emmy didn’t have time to consider what had changed. She banished the hateful thought that Jude’s advice to delegate was the reason.
Emmy opened the background checks. She hadn’t told Gregg and Julian where the list had come from or why she’d wanted information on seven random strangers.
Details on criminals were usually easy to find, but only if they got caught.
The jurors on the Neil Delano trial had been living their best lives since they’d sentenced a likely innocent man to prison.
Julian and Gregg had found their profiles on Facebook and Instagram, their names in local news stories and obituaries.
Cal Nader’s tractor repair business was the largest employer in Bristle Top, Montana.
Guy Harrison had been a celebrated beach bum in Key West whose obituary described him as always the first to buy a stranger a drink.
Victoria Daniels was currently a successful art dealer in Paris.
Geraldine Hopkins had been an unmarried quilt enthusiast whose estate had left half a million dollars to the North Falls Community Library.
Chuck Douglas had owned an appliance repair shop in Atlanta before being convicted of vehicular manslaughter and sent to Macon State Prison.
Mitch Bellingham had retired as an electrical engineer at the auto parts factory after punching the clock for thirty years.
Emmy silently added back a name she’d left off the search.
Bernadette Grayson was the mayor of Clayville, and a partner in one of the largest legal firms in the state.
Twenty-four years ago, she’d been waitressing at the truck stop off the interstate when she’d been selected as a juror.
Then Neil Delano had gone to prison, and suddenly, she’d had enough money to go to college, then law school.
Bernadette’s success story was not vastly different from that of her fellow jurors. Almost every single person on the list had seen their lives demonstrably change for the better after the trial.
The only outlier was Mitch Bellingham. Emmy read his obituary from the North Falls Register.
Mitch had enlisted at seventeen, then served two tours of duty in Vietnam before returning to Verona to start a family.
His wife had died fifteen years ago. His son was a schoolteacher in Alabama.
He had two grandchildren, one at Auburn, another at Alabama.
He’d died from pancreatic cancer last week at the Azalea Place Assisted Living and Nursing Home.
Emmy was familiar with the high-rise facility on the outskirts of North Falls. Myrna had died in the memory care center, a name that managed to be both condescending and misleading, because the care was hit-or-miss and all the memories were nightmares.
According to the obituary, Mitch Bellingham had spent the last five years of his life in the general wing before moving into hospice.
Emmy knew the facility pressured families to clean out rooms as quickly as possible.
Her stomach clenched at the thought of packing away Myrna’s photographs and various gifts she’d gotten from students over the years.
Her mother’s body hadn’t even gone cold yet, but Emmy had been nearly frantic to clear things out that night so that she didn’t have to ever go back again.
She shook her head, because her brain didn’t need to go there. She swiped the keypad to open a search for the nursing home’s phone number.
The cursor didn’t move.
Emmy swiped again, but her finger left a streak of sweat.
Her hands were suddenly shaky. Her vision blurred on the screen.
She didn’t understand what was happening until she recognized the wrongness flooding back into her body.
A current of low-level anxiety. A niggling fear that she had missed something important, said something wrong, done something stupid, and it was too late to fix any of it.
She turned her head toward the wall so that nobody could see her face. She squeezed her eyes closed. Clenched her fists. She couldn’t tell if the incessant ticking sound in her head was from the clock on the wall or from her memory of the electric motor lowering her mother into the ground.
Myrna would’ve been so annoyed with Emmy for losing her shit. Her father wouldn’t have been too pleased, either. He’d always told Emmy that his version of Prozac was to put his head down and do his job.
She opened her eyes. Wiped her palms on her legs. Tapped open Life360. Cole was still at the courthouse. She took a photo of the obituary and sent it to him with a text message:
Call to see if Mitch Bellingham’s belongings are still in the building. Also verify if he died of natural causes asap.
Emmy’s finger hovered over the arrow to send the message. This wasn’t delegating. This was being a coward. The thought of calling anybody at the place her mother had died made Emmy feel physically ill.
She sent the message.
The spreadsheet that listed all of Bernadette Grayson’s campaign donors had finally downloaded.
Emmy had to wipe her hands again to click it open.
There were several pages because the election had gone to a close runoff.
Emmy recognized a lot of the names. There were several Cliftons alongside the usual families that were involved in politics.
Most of the amounts were in the fifty-to-one-hundred-dollar range. Then she got to the third page.
Gilchrist, Ezekial: $5,100.00
Emmy happened to know more than she wanted to about campaign contributions for state and local candidates in Georgia. The limit was capped at $3,300 for primary and general elections, plus another $1,800 for runoffs.
Gilchrist had maxed out on both.
She scrolled through the rest of the spreadsheet, looking for PACs and businesses. The Clayville Chamber of Commerce. The Society of Georgia Litigators. Gilchrist Logistics. Gilchrist Shipping. Clifton Tool and Dye. Southwest Georgia Car Dealers Association. The ECGM Trust.
Emmy opened her browser. Searched for the ECGM Trust in Clifton County.
The Evelyn C. Gilchrist Memorial Trust.
The photo on the homepage showed a woman around Emmy’s age with thick, blond hair. Narrow face. High cheekbones. She looked like she’d been a model, which made sense. From everything Emmy knew about Ezekial Gilchrist, he liked to collect fine things.
She clicked through to more photos and found several with the couple together.
Fundraisers, balls, political events. Ezekial always had his hand at the small of Evelyn’s back or arm wrapped around her slim waist. Some people might have thought he was being chivalrous.
To Emmy, it looked like he was claiming a prize.
She went back to the spreadsheet for Bernadette’s campaign.
The total amount of money on hand was around $150,000.
That was a staggering amount for a small municipality like Clayville.
Emmy happened to know that her cousin Carly had raised around three grand during her last election for North Falls mayor, and half of that had come from Penley.
Bernadette was clearly building a war chest. Everyone knew she had larger political ambitions. In two years, she would probably run for a seat in the Georgia House of Representatives. From there, she could launch a campaign for state senate, then work her way up to the governor’s office.
Which meant that Emmy had to tread very carefully.
She couldn’t pick up the phone and ask Bernadette if she remembered serving on a jury in 2002.
Calling the remaining jurors was a dicey proposition, too.
They might still be in touch. Asking questions too soon could trigger all kinds of panic.
The sort of panic that had gotten Allison killed.
“Coming through,” Julian said. He had one end of the couch. Levi had the other. The seat was too wide to fit through the door. “We might have to take the legs off.”