Chapter Seven #3
A sound had broken the moment. As with everything else, Emmy couldn’t recall the stray details.
A car door slamming outside. The rumble of the pipes as someone turned on the shower upstairs.
They had both pulled away at the same time.
And then Myrna had looked at Emmy with alarmed confusion, and instead of a mother seeing her child, Myrna had seen a stranger.
Before Emmy could say anything, her mother had mumbled a faint apology and walked away.
Now, Emmy sat back on her heels. Let herself breathe. Steadied her shaking hands.
She found her phone in her pocket. Dialed the first number she’d dialed in the tenth grade when she was finally allowed to have a cell phone.
Twelve years had passed since Hannah had seen Emmy’s name come up on her caller ID. Her voice was filled with panic when she answered. “What’s wrong?”
Emmy wiped her nose with her sleeve. She’d managed to find some tears after all. “What are you doing?”
Hannah let out a long shush of breath. “Aunt Barb took Dave for the night. I’m in my pajamas listening to my Lilith Fair playlist and eating a leftover fried pork chop sandwich on white bread over the sink.”
Emmy laughed, and the release was like a pressure valve opening inside her chest. “That sounds amazing.”
“What about you?”
She looked around the deserted road. Made herself stand up. “Going for a walk.”
“It’s past midnight.”
“I didn’t have any fried pork chops to make a sandwich.”
“Touché.”
Emmy wiped her nose again. If she went any farther, she’d be at Celia and Tommy’s. She turned, started walking back toward the house. “There’s a reality show about making pottery that I used to watch with Mom. It was soothing, you know? Repetitive. Everybody being kind to everybody.”
“That sounds nice.”
Emmy sniffed. “Couple of months ago, we were watching it on the couch, and out of the blue, Mom looked at me and said, ‘I could never be a nudist. How would I clean my glasses?’”
Hannah laughed. “She was always so funny.”
“I’m sorry I let you go.” Emmy blurted out the words.
She had no idea where the thought had come from and no desire to trace it back.
“When you told me that I should leave Jonah, I didn’t listen.
And when I finally managed to get away, I was embarrassed that I stayed with him for so long.
And I blamed you for telling me the truth when I should’ve blamed myself for not listening to you sooner. ”
“I know,” Hannah said. “But I’m glad you got away.”
“He never hit me,” Emmy said. “Not with his fists.”
Hannah’s silence had a familiar heaviness.
Emmy thought about Allison, all the excuses she had made for Bill.
Emmy could say it was different with Jonah—that she’d never been sent to the hospital, that she’d never really feared for her life—but arguing about who had it worse took the focus away from the fact that it never should’ve happened in the first place.
“He slapped me. Always with an open hand so he wouldn’t leave a mark, but he slapped me. Grabbed my arm. Squeezed my wrist so hard I could feel the bones moving. And he pushed me down the stairs when I was pregnant with Cole. I told everybody I tripped, but—”
Emmy touched her fingers to her cheeks. Her skin felt like it was on fire.
“After that, I just complied. I never fought back. I never told him to get the hell out of my house. I had a damn gun on my hip. I could’ve stopped him, but I was scared. And I look at him now and I think, ‘What the hell was wrong with you? No wonder Hannah was so fed up.’”
“Em—”
“He’s nothing. Just a stupid, inconsequential shitstain who showed up at his ex-mother-in-law’s funeral stoned.” Emmy had reached the house. She kept walking toward the other end of the road. “I’m sorry, Hannah. I’m so damn sorry.”
“Well,” Hannah said. “Neither one of us made good choices, but we each got an amazing son for our foolishness, and that ain’t nothin’.”
Emmy felt her cheeks glowing with shame again. She was in no position to take credit for Cole after the way she’d treated him today. “Jude thinks I have PTSD from taking care of Myrna.”
“Do you think she’s right?”
“She must be, because I just told her she’s a nasty bitch like our dead mother.”
Hannah was quiet for a beat. Of all people, she knew how much that was out of character for Emmy. “The irony here is that Myrna would’ve probably agreed with you.”
Emmy felt some of the guilt start to ebb. Hannah wasn’t wrong.
“This investigation you’re working on,” Hannah said. “It’s a lot. And you don’t have your dad to talk it out anymore.”
Emmy’s fingers traced the points on the sheriff’s star that was pinned to her chest. She walked back toward the house.
“Your sister’s a hot-shit retired FBI agent. She traveled around the country saving abducted children and caught a serial killer in her free time.”
“Yeah, well, even the sun shines on a dog’s ass occasionally.”
Hannah chuckled, but she wasn’t easily deterred. “The point is, if she wasn’t your sister, you’d be going straight to her for help.”
Emmy had reached the driveway. Jude’s Jeep was still there. The light was on in the kitchen. The woman was either a glutton for punishment or she was waiting to rip off Emmy’s head.
“Look, from everything I know about sisters, it’s like that scene in that movie where you’ve got two men who are mad at each other, and they’ve each got one end of a rope clenched between their teeth, and both of them’ve got bowie knives, and what happens is, one of them has to let go of the rope, or they both have to fight it out to the death. ”
Emmy’s lips curved into a grin. “That’s from The Long Riders. Mom made us watch it on a snow day while she graded papers.”
“Well, there you go. You can find a rope and some Bowie knives, or you can work it out with Jude.”
She made it sound so easy. “I hate it when she’s right about things.”
“She’s only right because she’s so much older than you.” Emmy smiled at the dig.
“It’s not lost on me that I told you for years to go to therapy, then your prodigal sister shows up and she’s a therapist.”
“Criminal psychologist.”
“You’re never too old to start criming.”
They both went silent. Hannah had skirted too close to reality. “Okay.” Emmy started to hang up, but she caught herself.
“Thank you.”
A moth was beating against the porch light as Emmy climbed the stairs.
The screen door made a screeching sound when she opened it.
There was a black carry-on suitcase waiting by the door.
Emmy felt the wrongness start to edge back into her body.
There hadn’t been a moment in the last six weeks when she’d felt happy to have her sister here, but the thought of her leaving filled Emmy with an inexplicable anxiety.
She found Jude leaning back against the kitchen sink. Arms crossed. Lips pursed. Emmy blinked, and she saw Myrna leaning the same way, the exact same look of wariness in her expression. Maybe bowie knives would’ve been easier.
Emmy spoke first. “I shouldn’t have said that about Mom.”
Jude narrowed her eyes, clearly waiting for a but that ricocheted the blame.
Emmy forced herself not to grip together her hands. “I think Dad was a dirty cop.”
Jude’s expression didn’t change.
“Last year, Jonah was arrested with enough weight to buy him prison time. Allison Vickery made the arrest, had him dead to rights. Dad asked Reggie to make the charges go away, so Reggie had Allison lose the drugs on the way to the lab. The case falling apart destroyed her career. She rode a desk into retirement.”
Jude didn’t move. She stared at Emmy, clearly trying to make a decision.
“At the very least, Dad was involved in a conspiracy to destroy evidence.”
Jude looked away, still lost in the static of uncertainty. Something made her decide to engage. She slowly pulled out a chair. Sat down. Leaned her elbows on the table.
She asked, “Do you believe Reggie’s telling the truth?”
Emmy couldn’t dwell on why she felt so relieved that Jude had posed the question. “Why would he lie?”
“Because of this.” She pointed at Emmy. “You’re spinning out instead of focusing on who murdered Allison Vickery.”
Emmy wasn’t spinning out. “Reggie isn’t that smart.”
“You don’t have to be smart to be cunning.”
Emmy looked out the kitchen window. That sounded exactly like something her father would say. She turned back to Jude. “Reggie told me that Dad was running a confidential informant deep inside the Rawley family. Do you know who they are?”
Jude didn’t have to answer the question. Her visible unease was like a third person in the room. “Tommy and I went to school with Lee and Tanya.”
“Lee?”
“His father was Leroy. We called him Lee.”
“Lee had a daughter. Husband beat her to death. The Rawleys disappeared him. They had a son everybody calls Woody.” Emmy sat down across from Jude at the table.
“Reggie told me that Woody is Dad’s guy on the inside.
Which makes sense. Nobody’s ever been able to catch Woody on anything.
He’s arrogant, smart, and very good at staying out of trouble.
The reason Dad asked Reggie to kick Jonah’s case was to protect Woody. ”
Jude stared openly. “And Dad never mentioned any of this to you?”
“I thought he told me everything, but I had no idea.”
Jude sat back in her chair. Looked at the floor as she thought it through.
She was making another decision. She looked back at Emmy.
“You and I have talked about Dad before. The two different versions we each had. Even when he was trapped inside a bottle of Old Rip, my Gerald Clifton was never a dirty cop. I can’t believe that your Gerald was, either. ”
“What’s the explanation? Assuming Reggie’s telling the truth. Why would Dad ask him to make the arrest disappear?”
“Could be he wanted to protect Cole’s father. That he asked Reggie for leniency and Reggie took it to the extreme by destroying evidence. Allison might not have even been a part of it.”
That sounded like the Allison Emmy had known. Even with the unexplained cash in the blue bin, she didn’t buy that Allison was a dirty cop. “What about Woody?”
“What about him?” Jude asked. “Reggie’s the one who admitted to you that he destroyed evidence.
That’s a crime. He could go to prison. We both know he’s shady as hell.
You can smell it on him from fifty feet.
He’s found the perfect explanation for the case against Woody and Jonah going away.
Dad’s dead. Woody won’t talk. Jonah is an imbecile.
And now Allison Vickery is dead, too. Who’s left to testify against Reggie if it gets out that he ordered the destruction of evidence to cover for the Rawley family? ”
Emmy’s brain couldn’t hold on to all the theories swirling around this case.
Every time she thought she’d zeroed in on a suspect, a new piece of information sent her off in the opposite direction.
“That’s either really convenient for Reggie or you’re saying that Reggie had something to do with Allison’s murder. ”
“Well—”
Jude’s response was cut off by the sound of Emmy’s phone buzzing. She looked at the Caller ID. Sherry Robertson wouldn’t be calling this late without good reason.
Emmy put her on speakerphone. “What’s up, Sherry?”
“I just talked to one of Mandy’s doctors. She’s not out of the woods, but she’s been trying to wake herself up. Blinking her eyes. Moving around. Figured you’d want to be here in case she can talk.”
Emmy couldn’t feel any relief. She’d picked up on the tension in Sherry’s voice. “Is there something else?”
“Yeah,” Sherry said. “I’ll tell you when you get here.”
The call ended. Emmy looked at Jude again. “I asked Sherry to process Mandy for evidence. I think she probably found signs of recent abuse.”
“Go.”
Emmy stood up. Saw the suitcase by the door.
Jude said, “We can talk about that later.”
Emmy unclenched her teeth. “You can tell me on the way to the hospital.”