Chapter Three #2
She studied Bill from a distance. He hadn’t changed since the last time she’d seen him. Average height. Bulging gut. Receding hairline that he was overcompensating for with a bushy mustache. His knees were bent, his focus trained on the player at bat. Swing and a miss. Bill clapped his hands.
He called, “Good effort, Bailey. Let’s go.”
Emmy felt the heat of a few curious stares.
Some of the fans in the bleachers had taken notice of her presence.
She considered what they were seeing. The interim sheriff wearing a freshly starched uniform shirt over a bloodstained black dress, borrowed shoes sliding around her bare feet, wet hair looking dirty and lank despite her best efforts with the garden hose.
Then she saw Hannah, who was sitting by herself.
Empty space had cleared around her as if she had a disease nobody wanted to catch.
She had changed out of her funeral clothes and into jeans and a T-shirt.
Large sunglasses shielded her eyes. Her Tigers hat was pulled down low.
Emmy shouldn’t have been surprised to see her here.
Hannah’s son had played ball since peewee. Her head turned toward Emmy.
Emmy lifted her chin.
Hannah stood up. People stared with open hostility as she walked down the bleachers. Emmy didn’t think it was because they had loved Gerald Clifton so much as because they loved having someone to hate.
Hannah’s sunglasses came off. She gave Emmy’s outfit a quick glance. “I heard about the shooting in Clifton Gardens.”
“What’d you hear?”
Hannah offered her hat to Emmy. “That a little girl found a gun lying around and accidentally shot herself.”
Emmy guessed Coach Bell had started answering her phone. She twisted her hair into a knot on the top of her head, then used the hat to trap it in place.
“Em?” Hannah had noticed Gregg on the other side of the bleachers. His hand was resting on the butt of his Glock. “Do I need to take Dave home?”
“Wait until I get Bill out of the way.”
Emmy started to leave, but Hannah grabbed her arm. She slipped off her Nikes, slid them toward Emmy with her foot.
They had always worn the exact same size. Emmy stepped out of the HOKAs, knelt down to tie the Nikes tight. “I’ll always keep him safe.”
“I know.”
Emmy walked onto the field, waving for the umpire’s attention. He gave her a frown of disapproval but held up his hands to stop the game.
Bill glared at her, crossing his arms over his chest, tracking her progress with his beady, mean eyes.
She couldn’t tell if his fury was from guilt or because he’d never come across Emmy under good circumstances.
Or Gerald, for that matter. That’s what happened when you used your fists to get whatever you wanted.
Especially if you used them against your wife.
“Bill, I need to talk to you.”
He tensed, but he didn’t reach for a weapon or try to run. “I don’t know if you noticed, sugar, but I’m kind of busy here.”
She nodded him away from the dugout. Bill hesitated before following Emmy up the foul line. She led him past the first base coach and didn’t stop until they were through the side gate and standing in the parking lot. The fence was on Bill’s left. Gregg positioned himself on the right.
Bill made a point of noticing they had boxed him in.
His eyes narrowed. Hands pulled into loose fists.
He looked at Emmy with something like disgust. They had stood like this before, each squaring off against the other in a parking lot.
Emmy had been threatening to arrest him for choking his wife until she’d lost consciousness, and Bill had been threatening to have Allison arrested because she had fought back.
Bill asked, “Is this about last night?”
“What happened last night?”
His mouth twisted into a sneer under his mustache. He knew how to navigate a domestic violence interrogation.
Emmy made a point of looking at his hands, arms, and legs to check for scratches or bite marks. “Could you lift up your shirt for me, please?”
He snorted. “We were both hammered. She gave as good as she got.”
“Poor Bill.” Emmy kept her voice low. “Were you terrified she would hurt you? Break the bones in your face? Rupture your spleen? Strangle you until you passed out? Were you in fear for your life?”
Emmy tensed when Bill’s hands moved, but he was only lifting his shirt to show underneath. He did a slow turn, making a show of it. Emmy ignored his hairy belly hanging over the tensed waistband of his shorts. No weapons. No dried blood spatter. No defensive injuries.
“You happy?” Bill let his shirt drop. “I could sue you for abuse of power. See if you win the election with that hanging over your head.”
“I need you to account for your movements today.”
“Are you kidding me?” He glanced back at Gregg like he needed a man to weigh in. “Are you really asking me for an alibi? What happened? Allison stub her toe and blame me?”
Emmy waited him out.
“I was at the Lazy Eight, okay? I’ve been living out of a goddam motel for two weeks because my lawyer says I can’t go back inside my own goddam house that I’m still paying for.”
Emmy was very familiar with the circumstances that might compel a lawyer to tell a man he couldn’t go home. “Allison filed a restraining order against you?”
“She filed everything against me. I got served papers at the store. My family’s place of business.
That’s the kind of psychopath she is. My mother was there, for chrissakes.
She nearly had a heart attack. God knows how much this is gonna cost me.
Damn lawyer made me pay five grand up front just to talk to him. ”
Emmy needed a second to process the information. She had begged Allison for years to leave Bill. “Allison filed for a divorce two weeks ago?”
“Are you stupid?” Bill asked. “Yes, she filed for divorce two weeks ago. No, I’m not gonna roll over for her no matter how many cops she sends to harass me.”
“What other cops did she send?”
“Take a guess, Scrappy Doo.”
“Reggie?”
Bill opened his mouth, then closed it. He looked back at Gregg. Took notice that the kids were no longer on the field. Emmy could tell from the sudden change in his demeanor that he’d finally taken in the fact that the sheriff and a deputy had stopped an afternoon baseball game to talk to him.
“What’s going on here?”
“There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just gonna be straight with you. Allison is dead.”
He laughed. Then he saw that Emmy wasn’t joking. Still, he shook his head in disbelief. “What?”
“An intruder shot and killed Allison at the house.”
“No …” His head kept shaking. “That can’t … no …”
Emmy gave him time to come around to the truth. “You got any idea who would want to hurt her?”
“Every—” The word got caught in his throat. “Everybody knows Reggie’s got a temper.”
“Mandy was shot, too.”
Bill looked genuinely stunned. Tears sprang into his eyes. He took off his hat. Used the back of his arm to wipe his face.
“They’ve got her in surgery over in Albany. It’s not looking good.”
“Y-you …” Bill’s voice was shaking. “You know I would never hurt Mandy.”
Emmy thought about the worn shoe cubbies that had served as a makeshift ladder to the attic. You didn’t hide from somebody you knew was never going to hurt you.
“Mandy wasn’t more than a baby when me and Allison got together.
I watched her grow up. I know I’m not her real father, but I’ve always been her dad.
Just ’cause I never signed the paperwork don’t mean she’s not mine.
” He covered his eyes with his hand. “Jesus. Who would hurt that sweet little girl?”
“There’s gotta be somebody, Bill.”
“Allison pissed off a lot of people.” His hand dropped away.
He was on firmer ground with somebody else to blame.
“She was on the job twenty years, then she was running around town spying on cheaters. She arrested her share of bad guys. Worked with even worse ones. You know what happened when she left. She threatened a lot of folks who don’t like being threatened. ”
“What folks?”
Bill wiped his eyes again. Stuck his hat back on his head. “Do you have a family app on your phones, something like Life360? Maybe we can figure out who she’s been talking to by tracking her recent locations.”
Bill reflexively reached for a phone in his pocket. Emmy couldn’t tell if he was remembering it was left in the truck or coming up with a lie. “No, we never used anything like that.”
Emmy guessed lying had won out. She needed to keep him talking, preferably in a confined space. “Let’s go back to the station and see if we can come up with some names. Maybe there was a suspect she mentioned or—”
“No, I need to be with Mandy.” He started toward the parking lot. “I don’t want her waking up all alone. Somebody who loves her oughtta be there.”
Emmy walked beside him. “You’re in no state to drive, Bill. Let me take you. It’ll be faster in my car. I’ll put the lights on.”
He hesitated. “All right, yeah, thanks.”
Emmy motioned for Gregg to toss her the keys. Bill had almost reached her cruiser when he abruptly stopped. He turned to look at Emmy. His beady eyes had narrowed again. He’d seen through her ruse.
“I’ll drive myself.”
Emmy watched him walk toward his Chevy. She motioned for Gregg to let him go. Bill only looked back once before climbing into his truck and speeding off.
She told Gregg, “Put a cruiser on him. Make it conspicuous.”
Gregg clicked his radio for dispatch. Emmy took out her phone.
She texted Layla Paulson at the trauma center to make it clear that Bill Garrison was not Mandy’s legal guardian and was not allowed near the girl unless Emmy was standing between them.
Then she sent a second text to Brett telling him to request a search warrant for the CCTV footage from the Lazy Eight motel going back fourteen days.
Gregg asked, “Where to, chief?”
“Back to Allison’s.”