Chapter Twenty
Emmy paced the library floor with her phone pressed to her ear and her hand gripping the watch in her pocket.
She was listening to the distant sound of tinny pop music and silverware hitting plates at a popular family restaurant in Verona.
Valerie Wilkinson hadn’t answered her phone when Emmy called.
Neither had Talia. They weren’t at their house.
Cole had tracked them through a photo of a hot fudge sundae that Talia had posted on her socials.
Emmy had sent a deputy to hand the woman his phone.
He must’ve found her. She heard a short conversation before Valerie came on.
“Sheriff? What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry to bother you. I need to ask Talia a question.”
“Well, can it wait?” Valerie sounded exasperated. “I took Talia out for a treat to help take her mind off things.”
“Ma’am, I sent a deputy to find you in a restaurant. This can’t wait.”
Valerie sighed. She still hadn’t processed the urgency.
Emmy kept pacing. She could see Cole standing by the circulation desk. His expression was hard. He was pissed off at her for keeping him underfoot when there was a manhunt going on. “Ma’am?” Talia sounded scared. She knew why Emmy was calling.
“Sweetie, I’m not mad,” Emmy said, but she was actually furious. Not at Talia, because kids did stupid things. She was mad at herself for not putting the pieces together sooner. “I need you to tell me the truth now. The older man that Mandy was seeing. Is Shane Russell her father?”
Talia sucked in some air. “Yes.”
Emmy felt like somebody had punched her in the throat.
“I mean—” Talia exhaled. “I don’t know for sure, ma’am. That’s what Mandy told me, but I promise I didn’t tell you because there’s no way I believed her.”
Emmy believed Mandy, if only because it made a hell of a lot of sense. “Why not?”
“’Cause Mandy always had this fantasy of, like, somebody rescuing her. Like, for forever. And then one day she’s saying her dad is gonna rescue her and we were like, it’s the same fantasy she had when we were little so it can’t be true.”
Emmy heard Echoes of Skylar saying that Mandy had dreamed her father was a duke who would send his private jet to whisk her away. Then Mandy’s real father had shown up after serving sixteen years of hard time in prison and used his fists to beat his way back into her life.
“Talia, when you and I spoke in my office earlier, I asked you if Mandy ever planned to go away with Russell. You told me that he’d never asked her to leave. That Mandy had resigned herself to nobody saving her.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying now. That it was a fantasy,” Talia repeated. “Then Skylar said it didn’t matter if the old guy was her father or just a creepy pedo. That Mandy didn’t want to be saved, otherwise she would’ve told people what was happening or tried to run away.”
Emmy pressed her fingers into her eyelids. These girls were killing her. “Do you believe that?”
“I guess a little?” Talia said. “But then, her mom was a cop and she couldn’t get away, plus look what happened to her ’cause she’s dead now, and Mandy almost died, so maybe it’s better that she didn’t try?”
“It’s not right, though.” Emmy put some authority into her voice. “You should never let anyone hurt you. No matter what. You can always call me any time and I will make sure you’re safe.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Talia said, but surely the girl was thinking about the fact that Emmy hadn’t kept Allison safe for the last ten years. “Thank you.”
“Okay.” Emmy didn’t have time to hate herself right now. “Put your mom back on the phone, please.”
Valerie had clearly been listening. “Sheriff, what the hell is going on? Does he know where we live? Talia, why didn’t you tell me about this?”
“Ma’am, I can’t tell you what to do, but I would go to a hotel. My deputy will stay right outside your door until Shane Russell is caught.” Emmy caught Cole’s eyes. “I promise you, another child will not be hurt on my watch.”
“God,” Valerie whispered. “Okay. Okay. We’ll leave now.”
Cole waited for Emmy to hang up before going back at her.
“This isn’t right. I have a job to do, Mom. I’m not a baby.”
“You’re my baby, and if you don’t want to stay with me, then you can go to your dad’s, but I swear to God if you try to go out on those streets, I will lock you in a cell myself.”
“Mom—”
“Stop.” Emmy couldn’t take much more of this. She’d already had one nervous breakdown today. “I told you he knows who I am. That means he knows who you are, too.”
“Great, you want me to lead him right to Dad.”
They should be so lucky. “Coleman, please. I can’t do my job if I’m worried about you. That’s the end of it.”
He clearly wasn’t going to let it end, but the door to the staff area opened. Jude had retrieved the stack of music CDs from the archive room. Barbara was trailing behind her, a curious look on her face. She’d thrown a coat over her pajamas. She was clearly expecting an explanation.
Emmy dashed her hopes. “Cole, take Barbara somewhere quiet. I need you to get her statement about Allison using the library. Dates and times. Anything she can remember.”
Cole’s jaw was so clenched it could’ve been wired shut. Still, he gestured toward a seating area, telling Barbara, “Ma’am?”
Jude showed Emmy one of the CDs. “The Boston Pops on the Fourth of July. Look at the label. It’s inkjet, not professionally printed.”
Emmy remembered noticing that the label was smeared but at the time, she’d thought that was because it was old.
Now, she could see the ink hadn’t had time to dry before being removed from the printer.
The lines on the waving American flag bled into each other.
The serifs on some of the letters had been lost because the jets were clogged.
Everything was so obvious now. The plastic bin with the money was in a blue bin with a red top.
Both Louis Singh and Teena Nixon had said that Mitch was a patriot.
She walked down the row of computers, Jude’s boots thudding behind her.
Emmy chose the station at the very back of the building.
She used her library card to log into the computer.
The ancient IBM laptop from the archive room was already at GBI headquarters because Emmy had sent them the wrong thing.
Jude sat in the rolling chair beside her. She slid the CD into the slot.
Emmy heard a whir from the machines. The disc name and extension looked unfamiliar—
03_02.wmv
“WMV is a legacy format from the early two thousands.” Jude leaned across Emmy and started typing. The screen went black, then lines of code started to scroll. “You’ll need a K-Lite Codec Pack and Handbrake to open it.”
Emmy rolled her chair out of the way so Jude could sit in front of the monitor.
She looked at her sister in the glow of the screen.
Laugh lines fanned out from her eyes, extended under the Band-Aid at her temple.
Her eyeliner needed a touch-up. She’d gone too long without seeing her hairdresser.
But there was a natural beauty about her.
The way she didn’t take herself too seriously, even though she had every right to.
The fact that she was the smartest person Emmy had ever met.
That no matter what, she always held Emmy up when she faltered.
There was a new stop on the swinging pendulum between gratitude and irritation: confusion.
Emmy had humiliated herself outside the nursing home.
She’d never had anything like that happen in her life.
She’d thought that she was dying. Even Hannah had never seen her so broken.
Emmy couldn’t understand why she was okay that Jude had borne witness.
The woman was a stranger. Emmy knew almost nothing about her, and yet she had trusted Jude with her life.
And now she was leaving.
“Almost done,” Jude said.
Emmy cleared her throat. “How do you know about all this stuff?”
Jude kept typing. “In the old days, computers didn’t just work when you plugged them in. We had to figure out how to fix them ourselves.”
After a few minutes, she hit the enter key. The CD whirred again. The file opened.
The video showed an empty hallway. Marble tiles.
Dark blue walls. Heavy oil paintings of horses and Greek gods on the walls.
The colors were faded, the lines fuzzy, like the video was in low-def.
Definitely older. The corners of the image were rounded off, as if the camera lens was positioned behind a hole inside a purse or jacket.
Emmy tapped the volume key. She heard the low murmur of voices somewhere far from the microphone.
Then she heard breathing.
The camera moved forward. Now she saw a living room.
Two giant couches faced each other over a massive coffee table.
Four huge club chairs stood sentry at the ends.
The walls were painted a dark rust. Heavy burlap-colored curtains were tied back to reveal giant windows overlooking a swimming pool and rolling backyard.
The sunlight was waning. All the lamps and overheard lights had been turned on.
A large tube TV was perched inside a built-in bookcase.
There was a full bar in the corner. The fireplace had an ornately carved marble mantel.
An Irish wolfhound the size of a donkey walked between two couches.
He plopped over onto his side in front of the fireplace.
Emmy could hear the sound of the dog’s tongue lapping against his foreleg as he groomed himself.
The camera moved again. There was a slight bounce to it, because the person holding the camera was walking.