Chapter Five #2
Drake nodded. “The last time I saw them was three days ago. He was on the porch and Mandy was standing at the front door. They were super close, like close enough to kiss. And I figured they were making out again, you know, like about to go upstairs. But he pushed her back inside the house. And I didn’t think anything else about it until Ms. Vickery asked me about what was going on, and then I thought wow, he didn’t push her.
He shoved her. Really hard. Like, she stumbled backward, and I saw her start to fall before he slammed the door behind him.
So maybe none of it was, like, consensual. Maybe Mandy was scared of him.”
Emmy tried to keep the image out of her mind. “How many times total did you see him at the house over the last two weeks?”
“That’s what Ms. Vickery wanted to know. Maybe three times he was with Mandy? Usually during lunchtime, but once I had to take my mom home from work early ’cause her stomach was upset and we drove by, and I saw him through the front window on the far side of the house. Looked like he was alone.”
Emmy gestured toward the house. “The left side, where the dining room is?”
“Maybe?”
“And you told Ms. Vickery that, too?”
“Yeah.” He took the vape pen out of his pocket, nervously twisted it back and forth between his fingers.
“She tried to be cool with me, but I could tell she was pissed off and scared at the same time. She got in her car and headed toward the inter-state. Laid down some rubber. Left tire marks in our driveway. You can still see ’em. ”
“And you’re sure you had this conversation with Ms. Vickery two days ago?”
“A hundred percent. Thursday was my girlfriend’s birthday. I was about to jump in the shower when Ms. Vickery rang the doorbell.” Drake stopped twisting the pen. “There’s other people who know what she did next. Like, witnesses, but I doubt they’ll talk to you.”
Emmy felt her brain working the puzzle. She could guess why Drake was so scared to say the man’s name. “What did Ms. Vickery do next?”
“I mean, it’s what I heard she did.” He shrugged again, but there was no uncertainty in his tone. “Drove over to the motel. Kicked down his door. Pulled out her gun. Stuck it in his face. Said she’d kill him if he didn’t leave her baby alone.”
Emmy felt all the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand to attention. She knew the answer, but she had to ask, “What motel was this?”
“The Dew Drop Inn.”
Emmy nodded, but only to buy herself some time. “What did he do when she threatened him?”
“Laughed at her. Kept laughing until she left. He’s always been that way. He’s a stone cold—”
Drake cut himself off before saying the word, but Emmy said it for him. “Killer?”
He looked away. Took a deep breath. Slowly shushed out air between his teeth.
“Drake, I need you to say his name.”
“Miss Emmy, I—”
“Say it.”
He kept his gaze on the ground. Let out another long sigh. She could smell the sickly-sweet stench of vape on his breath.
His voice was no more than a whisper when he finally mumbled, “Woody.”
Emmy had known it was coming, but it still felt like an explosion had gone off inside her skull.
Wesley “Woody” Woodrow had come onto her radar twelve years ago. Back then, he’d been a junior in high school slinging hard drugs to North Falls kids. Now, he was helping his grand-father run the family’s drug trafficking business.
Emmy asked, “Do you know what kind of car he drives?”
“Mercedes G 63. Black with black rims.”
Emmy was more than familiar with the nearly $200,000 vehicle. “Have you ever seen it in Ms. Vickery’s driveway or in the neighborhood?”
“No, ma’am.” Drake took another shaky breath. “I figure he parked it somewhere on the other side of the woods and walked up from the back.”
Emmy watched his hands shake as he tried to power the pen back on. She heard an owl in the distance. Dusk was quickly turning into night. The air felt ominous, like the darkness had been summoned. The streetlights flickered on.
“Okay.” Emmy braced her hand on the roof of the car. “Look at me.”
He looked up, his gaze locking on to hers.
“I need you to forget we had this conversation, all right? Don’t tell your girlfriend or your bros or even your mother.
Just keep it to yourself, and I’ll do the same.
You didn’t see anything on the street. You’ve never seen anyone at Allison’s house who didn’t belong there.
That’s what my report will say, and that’s what you’ll put in your witness statement.
You had your radio turned up and you were minding your own business, all right? ”
His fear had gone phosphorescent under the glow of hers.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Emmy motioned for Cole to join them. She told her son, “Drake didn’t see anything. Take his statement and cut him loose.”
Her phone started to buzz as she walked away. Emmy saw a text message from Layla Paulson at the trauma center. Mandy was still in surgery. The bleeding was finally under control. Things were touch-and-go, but the girl was still alive.
For now, at least.
She texted Brett to send a deputy to the trauma center immediately to ensure Mandy’s safety.
She tucked her phone back into her vest pocket.
According to Drake, Allison had already been warned that Woody was spotted at the house with Mandy.
There was only one person Emmy could think of who would give that warning.
She ignored the pain in her body as she jogged up Coach Bell’s driveway. The woman had moved to a recliner in front of a huge television so she could watch a different football game. Emmy knocked on the window, then pushed it open.
“Emmy Lou?” Coach Bell stood from her chair and walked over. “Has something happened?”
“No, ma’am. Did you ever see Mandy with a boy at Allison’s house during the day?”
The woman looked shocked. “You don’t think Wesley Woodrow did this?”
Emmy clenched her teeth so tightly that her jaw muscle spasmed.
Coach Bell picked up on her anxiety. “Oh, no, honey. I’m so sorry. I would’ve told you before if I thought it was important.”
“How many times did you see Woody over there?”
“Only once,” she said. “Two days ago, which was Thursday, I was checking my mailbox and I saw him with Mandy at the front door. They were standing very close. She looked uncomfortable, but I assumed that was because she knew I’d tell her mother.”
“You’re sure it was Woody?”
“Absolutely. He stared me right in the face. It was chilling.” She leaned her elbow on the windowsill.
“I had that nasty piece of work in my health class one year. He was very polite, always did what he was supposed to do, but there was something about him that reminded me of a snake. His eyes were so cold, always studying you like you were a bug he wanted to squash. I went to school with his grandfather. Your sister could tell you some stories. Leroy Rawley was the exact same way.”
Emmy didn’t need more horror stories about Leroy “Bubba” Rawley. She’d grown up hearing them at the family dinner table. “You told Allison that you saw Woody with Mandy?”
“Immediately.” Coach Bell stared across the street as if she could still see Woody and Mandy there. “I assumed he was selling her drugs. He might be a Woodrow, but he’s a Rawley through and through. That’s the family business. Selling poison to children.”
They did more than that. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”
Emmy helped her close the window. She thought about the cash in Allison’s attic as she walked down the driveway.
Every woman she knew kept an emergency stash, but they accumulated it in tens and twenties over time, not bricks of hundreds, and they usually couldn’t afford to sit on more than a few hundred at a time.
She could think of only two scenarios where Allison might be able to build that kind of nest egg.
One had been shot down by Sherry earlier—skimming from Bill’s accounts.
The other reached back into Allison’s time as lead detective on the narcotics squad of the Clayville Police Department—being paid off by the Rawley family to look the other way.
There wasn’t a cop below the Mason–Dixon Line who didn’t know the Rawleys.
For generations, they had been an integral link in the drug supply chain from Florida up into New England.
Back in the sixties and seventies, Leroy Rawley had controlled half the state for the Dixie Mafia.
Leroy Jr. had started running heroin in the seventies before overdosing on his own supply.
Leroy the third, who reportedly went by Bubba, had trafficked crack in the eighties, then followed the trend into meth, then Oxy, and was currently a key supplier of fentanyl in the region.
Bubba’s younger sister, Tanya, had done her best to stay away from the family business.
His wife had died in childbirth. Their daughter Violet had ended up marrying a man who’d beaten her to death.
That man, Avery Woodrow, had been dealt with by the Rawleys, never to be seen or heard from again.
The son, an eight-year-old named Wesley, had been raised by Tanya until she’d died of cancer a few years ago.
By that time, Tanya was firmly back in the family fold, as was Bubba’s grandson with the serpent’s eyes.
As Coach Bell had said, Woody was a Rawley through and through.
With any other suspect, Emmy would’ve contrived a reason to bring him into the station for a chat.
Woody was not any other suspect. There was no way he’d voluntarily go to the station, let alone speak to her without one of his $1,000 an hour Atlanta lawyers.
Woody was cunning and clever, and he knew his rights better than most cops.
If Emmy picked him up, it had to be to arrest him, and to arrest him, she needed iron-tight probable cause, not off-the-record testimony from a terrified witness and a statement from a woman who thought she was standing up to a petty thug but was actually taking on an entire criminal organization.