Chapter Four #2
“The bullet passes through and breaks the side window panel by the door. The casing is there. We used the metal detector to find the slug in the yard. Before the killer can shoot again, Allison runs into the dining room, exits through the swinging door, and enters the kitchen.”
In her head, Emmy saw Allison use her injured right hand to push open the door. The print had appeared smaller because she was missing her thumb and index finger. She told Sherry, “There’s no way Allison thought she could outrun him. She was looking for a weapon to defend herself.”
“Right.” Allison hadn’t been a stranger to sudden violence. Her body had been trained to react by years of abuse. “But instead of the killer following her through the swinging door, he goes back the way he came.”
Emmy trailed Sherry down the hallway, tracing the shooter’s possible path to the kitchen.
The narrative paused for a moment. They both stood in respectful silence.
Allison’s body was still blocking the swinging door.
She was on her back, head propped at an awkward angle against the base of a cabinet.
Blood soaked the front of her shirt where she’d been shot in the chest. More blood was congealing on the floor.
A steak knife was by her right hand. Two white bones jutted out from the bloody stumps where her finger and thumb used to be.
Emmy realized that Allison’s wrist had broken when she’d fallen backward.
The pool of blood indicated her heart had still been pumping when she’d hit the floor, which meant she’d been aware she was dying as she bled out from the chest wound.
Jude would’ve probably said that a surge of adrenaline had bridged the horror, that Allison’s fight or flight would’ve convinced her this wasn’t the end, but all that Emmy could think about was the fact that Allison had died knowing that Mandy was all alone inside the house.
Sherry was right. The woman would not have been thinking about her own life.
She would’ve been terrified for the life of her daughter.
“Okay.” Emmy turned to Sherry. “Allison comes through the swinging door. The killer runs down the hallway. Then what?”
“There’s no time for her to go out the garage door.
She grabs a steak knife from there.” Sherry pointed to the empty slot in a butcher’s block on the counter.
Blood spatter dripped down the side. “She prepares to confront the killer at the swinging door, but then she realizes he’s already in the kitchen.
She turns again. He fires twice. The first bullet goes wide, hits to the right of the door. ”
Emmy saw the hole the slug had made between the trim and the cabinets.
“The second bullet hits her in the chest. She drops the knife. Falls to the floor. Probably bleeds out within a couple of minutes.”
Two minutes. The cruiser had been parked outside between the third and the fourth gunshot. They’d burned through time gearing up, preparing to breech. Was the last thing Allison heard before the blood left her heart the sound of Emmy coming through the door?
She couldn’t let herself think about that right now.
Emmy looked for the empty shell casings that would’ve been ejected from the side of the gun each time a bullet was fired. They were clustered near the kitchen island. “The killer was standing close when he shot her, roughly ten to twelve feet away. Did he search her?”
“He definitely touched her. Medical examiner will be able to give us more. She’ll be here in about an hour. What are you thinking?”
Emmy was thinking about the bloody handprints on the window sash upstairs. You didn’t get your hands wet standing twelve away. The shooter had touched Allison’s body. “Tell me about the murder weapon.”
“The gun belonged to Allison.”
Emmy felt acid flood into her stomach. It was a terrible thing for a cop to be shot with her own weapon. Even worse, the parts of the crime scene that had made sense suddenly didn’t make sense at all. Only a fool premeditated a murder and forgot to bring a weapon.
“Glock 19,” Sherry said. “Allison registered it seventeen years ago off a private sale. Probably used it as her backup piece. Hard to tell if we’ll be able to get prints off it. There was a lot of blood.”
Emmy realized she had stopped breathing. She parted her lips, drew in some air. “The G-19 holds fifteen rounds in the magazine?”
“Right, but Allison must’ve kept one in the chamber.
There’s only four rounds missing from the mag.
We found three shell casings down here. Haven’t found the fourth one yet, but when we do, that’ll tell us the location where Mandy was shot.
The fifth casing from the bullet that was fired at Jude should be in the main bedroom, but the way the ceiling came down—it’s a lot to comb through. ”
“You’re sure about Allison’s movements because of the blood from her hand? She has to get shot in the foyer first to leave the bloody print on the swinging door and on the butcher’s block?”
“Yes, and she’s not getting up after that kill shot to the chest.”
Emmy tried to find logic in the illogical. “The killer is wearing gloves. He doesn’t bring his own gun. He comes in through the back door. He takes Allison’s Glock from where?”
“Probably there.” Sherry indicated the green leather cross-body bag hanging from the back of one of the kitchen bar stools. “You saw the Crown Royal bag in the hallway? Jude told me that’s an old school trick for carrying your gun in your purse. Keeps lint off the firing pin.”
Emmy felt her jaw clench. Jude had apparently been treated to a tour of the crime scene, too. “That means the killer knew where the gun would be.”
“Or he came in looking for a knife and found the gun.”
Emmy didn’t like how convenient that sounded. “Why don’t you think the killer was already here talking to Allison?”
“You mean she got into a fight with Bill, and he grabbed her gun out of her purse, then chased her up the hallway to the front door?”
Emmy figured it could’ve just as easily been Reggie, but she nodded anyway.
“You’ve been on hundreds of domestic violence calls. Do their houses look like this?”
Emmy had to admit she was right. Except for the mess in the dining room, there were no overturned chairs or tables, no broken glasses or holes in the wall where someone had punched a fist or banged a head.
There was also the fact of the black nitrile glove.
You didn’t stop in the middle of a violent physical alter-cation to slip on some gloves before you killed somebody in a fit of rage.
Whoever had come here to kill Allison had entered the house and killed Allison.
Still, she said, “I’ll check with Brett to see if anybody in the neighborhood reported seeing Bill’s car this morning.”
“Jude already sent Cole to talk to the woman across the street. She told him that Allison’s Toyota was the only one in the driveway when the kid in the red Hyundai drove by with his radio up.
Shots were fired a few minutes later, so Bill’s car would’ve been parked outside if this was a spur-of-the-moment thing. ”
Emmy felt herself starting to bristle over Jude again. She motioned for Sherry to follow her back up the hall. It felt wrong to be tossing around theories in front of Allison’s dead body. “Isn’t there a scenario where Allison took the gun out of her purse when she heard the intruder?”
“She might’ve been off the job, but she was still a cop. If I’m in a situation where I draw my weapon, I’m not the person who’s gonna end up dead on the floor. Especially with my kid in the house.”
That was true enough. “You think Mandy saw it happen?”
“I think after the killer shot Allison, he went into the dining room to search through the paperwork. Mandy could’ve thought he was gone.
She walked down the stairs, or she accidentally made a noise, and he chased her upstairs and shot her.
My guess is it happened in the main bedroom since that’s how she accessed the attic.
She couldn’t have gone much farther with that kind of injury. Poor lamb must’ve been terrified.”
Emmy looked out the windows at the front yard, trying to keep the image of a scared sixteen-year-old girl out of her mind. “Where’d you find Allison’s Glock?”
“Under her bed upstairs. Shooter probably ditched it before he escaped. Jude says that could point to somebody who came here with a plan. He wore gloves. Left the murder weapon behind. Made sure nothing could be traced back to him. Didn’t hesitate when he realized Mandy was here.”
Emmy ignored the Jude part this time. She was more interested in why everything felt so off. “You saw the glove on the flat roof?”
“Jude said that could indicate the scene was staged.”
Emmy’s jaw started to ache. It was déjà vu going in the wrong direction. “She say anything else?”
“That the shooter could’ve broken the glass in the window and tossed the glove onto the roof to give himself a head start.
Jude was blacked out in the hallway after the bullet grazed her temple.
He probably thought she was dead. Then he heard you come running up the back stairs.
He escaped down the front stairs, ran down the hall and exited through the back door.
The glove on the roof sent your guys into the woods and gave him time to bolster his alibi. ”
At the baseball park.
Or the Clayville police station.
Or a drug trafficker’s stash apartment.
The Dew Drop Inn wasn’t just a haven for prostitutes and cheating couples, nor were illicit sexual encounters the only reason there wasn’t a single CCTV camera on the premises.
One of the region’s most prolific drug dealers worked out of room nineteen in the back.
The Clayville Police Department had known about the location for years, and for years, they had done absolutely nothing about it.
Then again, neither had Sheriff Gerald Clifton.
“Tell me about the $300,000 in cash.”
“Found it in the attic about a foot away from the access panel in the closet. Three bricks of hundred-dollar bills inside a sealed, blue plastic bin with a red top. I’ve got my guy recording the serial numbers on the bills so we can file a trace request with Treasury.
We should have the name of the bank Allison made the withdrawals from by the end of next week.
Looks like she got them in batches of $9,900 each. Jude said—”
Emmy didn’t need to hear what Jude said.
The Bank Secrecy Act required financial institutions to report any withdrawal over $10,000 to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which was under the umbrella of the US Treasury Department.
Allison was keeping the withdrawals below the threshold so a report wouldn’t be filed.
Of course, structuring withdrawals to avoid reporting was also illegal, but it usually took a long time for FinCEN to put that together.
Emmy said, “If she stayed under the reporting level, that’s roughly thirty withdrawals, right?”
“Yeah, but she was with Bill for ten years. Mandy was only six when they started dating. That’s a long time to build a nest egg.”
Taybee had said that Allison hired her shortly after the marriage. It made sense that Allison had started stockpiling cash then.
Sherry said, “We’re talking about this money like it’s Allison’s. Are you sure it’s not Bill’s?”
“Bill told me that Allison served him with divorce papers two weeks ago. There’s no way he would’ve left it behind.”
Sherry looked staggered by the news. Emmy had felt the same when Bill had thrown it in her face. For years, she had pleaded with Allison to leave him, and to have her finally do it without letting Emmy know felt like some kind of weird betrayal.
She told Sherry, “I heard from another source that Allison hired a forensic accountant last year to dig into Bill’s finances, but she dropped it when she went back to him.”
“You think she stayed with Bill so she could siphon money from his accounts?” Sherry considered the ramifications. “He’s rich, but he’s not that rich. Three hundred grand is a shit ton of money to go missing. And I don’t mean to be judgy, but Allison was always cheap with her money.”
Emmy took in the disarray in the dining-room office.
“If I came to this house looking for my stolen 300k, I wouldn’t start with all the paperwork on the table.
I’d be looking for a safe, tearing open mattresses and cushions, punching holes in walls.
And I wouldn’t shoot the only person who could tell me where it was. ”
“That’s some bad math, Emmy.” Sherry’s voice was little more than a whisper. “You know how this is gonna look. Dead cop plus three hundred grand equals dirty cop.”
Emmy wasn’t ready to go there yet. “Did you find any electronics?”
“Allison’s phone was in her purse. The biometrics were turned off, so we’ll have to crack the password.
Same with the laptop in the dining room and the tablet and laptop in Mandy’s bedroom.
I’m assuming the girl’s phone was in her back pocket when she fell through the ceiling.
The screen was crushed. It’ll take us a while to figure out if we can salvage any data.
For what it’s worth, Jude had Cole check all the 911 records.
Doesn’t look like Mandy called for help. ”
Emmy wondered if that was because Mandy had panicked or because the Clayville Chief of Police was already downstairs.
Or maybe Mandy had known about the $300,000 in the attic.
Or maybe all of those things had nothing to do with the shooting because every time Emmy pulled on a thread, another theory started to unravel.
Sherry asked, “Ready to go upstairs?”
Emmy’s foot was on the bottom tread of the stairs when she heard rap music playing loud enough to shake the windows.
She looked out into the street. Saw a red Hyundai KONA pull to a stop behind the crime scene van.
The light outside had changed since they’d entered the house. Dusk was brushing against the treetops.
Cole had found their witness before sundown.