Chapter Ten #4
Emmy held the spoon in the air. She thought about the fake driver’s licenses that were found in Allison’s back pocket. “Mandy, do you mean the driver’s licenses your mom had made for both of you?”
“Lost—” Mandy had to stop to cough. “Lost it.”
“Your mom lost one of the licenses, but she found it on the table?”
Mandy closed her eyes. Took a few deep breaths.
Emmy tried again. “Do you know why your mom had the licenses made?”
Mandy coughed again. “Gotta hide.”
“Hide from who?”
Mandy coughed, wincing from the pain.
“How about some more ice?” Emmy spooned some chips into Mandy’s mouth again. Watched the slow movement of her lips as she chewed. “Baby, can you look at me?”
Mandy’s eyes slit open. She was fighting the lure of sleep.
“I need your help, because I’m trying to understand what happened. Your mom was looking for the driver’s licenses on the dining-room table?”
“Made a mess.” Mandy’s eyelids closed again. “He—he doesn’t like …”
Emmy felt her muscles tense as she waited, but Mandy didn’t finish the sentence. “Your dad doesn’t like when your mom makes a mess?”
“No … not … I can’t …”
Mandy’s breath caught.
“You can’t what?” Emmy asked. “Mandy?” Her eyelids fluttered. “I can’t …”
There was a finality to her words. Her eyes closed. Her jaw sagged open.
She’d fallen asleep.
“I think that’s all she’s got in her.” Layla went to the other side of the bed. She used the back of her hand to stroke Mandy’s cheek. Then she looked at Emmy and shook her head. “Maybe try again tomorrow evening?”
“Okay.” Emmy started to go. “Do you mind getting security up here until one of my deputies arrives?”
“Of course.”
“Thank you.”
Emmy walked into the hallway. Her ears held on to the sound of the heart monitor as she walked toward the emergency stairs. It wasn’t until she was pushing open the door that she heard the thump of Jude’s boots behind her.
From nowhere, Emmy felt a sudden flash of irritation.
She needed time to think about what Mandy had said.
Emmy had already wasted almost two hours talking about dirty cops and the FBI and all manner of bullshit when what she should’ve been focusing on was protecting a vulnerable child who was completely alone in the world.
Jude followed her down the stairs. “Allison was searching for the driver’s licenses. That implies that leaving was a last-minute decision.”
“I’ll get somebody to take you home.”
“Oh-kay.” Jude drew out the word. “Have I done something?”
Emmy picked up the pace as she dialed Brett’s number. Listened to five rings before the call went to voicemail. She hung up and dialed again.
“Emmy?” Jude rounded the landing above her. “What’s going on?”
“I have work to do. I don’t need my big sister holding my hand.” She ended the call and dialed again. “I told Brett to put a deputy on Mandy’s room. Goddammit. He’s not answering.”
“His phone is off in the middle of a homicide investigation?”
“I don’t need that tone, either.”
“What you need is to jerk a knot in Brett’s ass so he respects your authority.”
Emmy tapped Brett’s number again. Her hands had started to sweat. She had to get out of this hospital. “Maybe he would respect my authority if you weren’t always under my feet like a puppy pad waiting for me to shit myself.”
“Emmy Lou.” Jude had managed to narrow the distance between them.
“Establishing the chain of command is always a priority. Everything flows from that. You can’t investigate this case single-handedly.
You need a team behind you that follows your orders.
You have to make it clear to Brett that you’re in charge. ”
“How am I supposed to do that?” Emmy spun around to face her. “Enlighten me with your three hundred years of investigative experience, Dr. Archer.”
“You think you’re giving him inches but he’s taking yards.”
“Oh, wow. Thank you. I didn’t realize Brett was constantly undermining my authority until you trotted out a ruler metaphor.
” Emmy tapped the number again as she continued down the stairs.
“You either don’t understand, or you’ve forgotten how much people loved Dad.
Brett worshipped him. He’d push back against anybody trying to take over. ”
“You’re not trying to take over. You are literally his boss. You don’t have to prove to anybody that you deserve to wear Dad’s shoes.”
“I literally spent half my day wearing somebody else’s damn shoes.”
Emmy was about to hang up the phone when Brett finally answered.
“What?” His voice was groggy. She could hear a baby crying in the background. “Jesus, Emmy, I was asleep.”
“I told you to assign a deputy to Mandy Vickery.”
He was silent a beat, then repeated, “What?”
“I told you to put a deputy on Mandy’s door as soon as she was out of surgery.”
“Well, yeah,” Brett said. “But then you told me to go through all our cases that overlapped with Allison’s. I needed the extra manpower.”
Emmy gripped the phone so hard that she felt like it was going to break. “Brett, get your lazy ass out of bed and drive to the trauma center right now or don’t bother showing up for work ever again.”
“Emmy, I—”
She ended the call and shoved the phone back into her vest pocket. Jude’s footsteps were heavy behind her. “That good enough for you, Dr. Archer? Is that what you wanted me to do?”
“You have every right to suspend him.”
Emmy had never been so happy to see a basement door. “So he can pout like a baby and call me a bitch behind my back?”
“Sweetheart, if you don’t think he’s already doing that, then you’re not half the detective I thought you were.”
Emmy felt her hands draw into fists as she walked toward the cafeteria.
Jude said, “If you need to pick a fight with me, then let’s fight about the thing that upset you.”
“I’m not upset.”
Jude laughed. “You’re a case study in upset.
You feel like you failed Mandy. You’re holding yourself responsible for not being able to help Allison leave Bill.
I’m sure being in a hospital is bringing back memories of keeping death watch over Myrna.
Reggie put you into a tailspin about Dad. You’re worried about—”
“Jesus Christ.” Emmy stopped so abruptly that Jude skipped ahead a few feet. “Why are you constantly analyzing me? We don’t have to talk about everything. Sometimes, shit just sucks and you have to keep working anyway.”
Jude held up her hands in surrender, but she didn’t really give up. “If you don’t slow down, your body will find a way to make you. I know it’s hard for you to believe, but I’m looking out for you.”
“I know it’s hard for you to believe, but I’ve spent the last forty-two years being perfectly fine without you.”
Emmy punched open the door to the cafeteria. She heard Jude catch it before it closed. Unbelievable. She was like a piece of toilet paper Emmy couldn’t get off her shoe.
Sherry Robertson was seated in the back facing the door. Two cups of coffee were on the table in front of her. She had a strained look on her face.
Emmy silently struggled to switch off her irritation. She saw evidence bags at Sherry’s feet. Recognized Mandy’s purple Nike shoe, her white socks streaked with blood, blue running shorts and matching top with white piping. Test tubes with cotton swabs.
“Dr. Archer,” Sherry said, because everybody who ever wore a badge worshipped Jude. “I’m sorry I only got one extra cup of coffee.”
“She can have mine.” Emmy sat down across from Sherry. “Tell me.”
Sherry waited for Jude to sit down. She tapped through her phone as she spoke. “I processed Mandy. Looks like somebody beat the hell out of her.”
Emmy took the phone. Her brain needed a moment before she could comprehend what she was seeing. Drake Saddler had already told her about the bruising, but seeing the damage with her own eyes was another matter.
Jude had put on her glasses. Emmy angled the phone so she could see.
The first image showed Mandy’s back. Dark welts in the kidney area. A deep, red scratch across her spine.
Sherry said, “My guess from the color of the bruising is that this happened a couple of days ago.”
Emmy nodded, because that had been her guess, too. “Everything bad in Allison and Mandy’s life happened either two months ago, two weeks ago, or two days ago.”
Jude zoomed in on the scratch. “See how the depth tapers off to the right? That implies a left-handed attacker. I’d guess that the man who did this wears a ring that has a stone or a sharp edge.”
“Like a wedding ring?” Emmy asked. “Bill wears a gold band.”
“Maybe.” Jude curled her hand into a fist. “See how the index and middle finger are more prominent?”
Emmy swiped through the rest of the photos. A clear imprint of fingers wrapped around Mandy’s right arm. Black spots up and down her back. Dark purple outlines tracing the curve of her shoulder blades.
Someone had taken their time with the girl.
No wonder Allison had gone to the motel and threatened to shoot Woody.
The question was, had she threatened to kill the right man?
Emmy looked at Jude. She wished like hell she’d used their time in the stairs to talk about Mandy’s halting answers to Emmy’s questions instead of arguing with her sister about the chain of command.
Jude said, “Some of these marks are older than the others. It’s been going on for a while.”
Emmy handed her the phone. “Two months? Two weeks?”
Jude nodded, but said, “Maybe.”
“I can’t believe I’m asking this.” Sherry sounded resigned to the answer. “Do you think Allison knew that Bill was abusing her, too?”
Emmy wasn’t sure it was Bill. She wasn’t ready to tell Sherry about the Woody connection, or about the unknown man Talia had mentioned. “Mandy asked for Bill upstairs. If he shot both of them, I don’t think she’d want him in the same room.”
Jude said, “If she can’t recall the shooting, she could be falling back into trauma bonding.
Victims often develop a toxic, emotional attachment to their abusers.
Particularly with children, where they’re so reliant on adult care.
The cycle of intense fear and intermittent kindness creates a chemical and emotional dependence. ”
Emmy tried not to bristle at the lecture. People kept pushing her toward Bill, but no one talked about actual evidence that would justify an arrest.
She asked Sherry, “What else did you find?”
“I took fingernail scrapings under Mandy’s index and middle finger of her right hand.
Looks like some blood and skin cells, which could mean she managed to scratch him.
I’m gonna process her clothes for the usual—DNA, blood, saliva, sperm, gunshot residue.
I’ll drive them back tonight and try to rush them through. ”
Emmy knew there was more. “And?”
Sherry reached down to the evidence bags, found the one with Mandy’s shoe. The Nike looked brand new but for a scuff mark on the heel. Sherry held it up for Emmy to see.
The heel wasn’t scuffed. The foam had a deep gouge that was roughly the width of a quarter and twice as thick. There was no telling how deep the gouge went. A thin bead of white silicone had concealed the tampering, but the impact from the fall had dislodged the repair.
Sherry said, “I asked radiology to X-ray it for me while you were upstairs.”
Jude still had the phone in her hand. Sherry reached over and swiped to another image: an X-Ray of the shoe. A small, flat rectangle was embedded inside the heel. Approximately one inch square. Black and white. Dots and dashes. Squares and cylinders.
Jude asked, “Is that a circuit board?”
“All I know is it doesn’t belong in there. I want to take it to the lab so they can open it up under controlled conditions.”
Emmy asked Jude, “You’ve seen this before?”
“Once, but it was sewn into the lining of a backpack. Turned out to be a parental abduction. There’s a type of GPS tracker you can put on a dog or cat collar. The plastic case is thick, but the insides are roughly this size. My guess is we’re looking at the circuit board from one of those.”
Jude handed Sherry back the phone. “This took access and planning. Allison could’ve tracked Mandy through her phone or an AirTag. Whoever concealed this thing didn’t want Mandy to know about it.”
Sherry said, “Or Allison.”
Emmy tasted bile in her mouth. The unknown man had moved to the top of her list.
She asked, “What if Mandy was already in the attic when the killer shot her? She went up there to hide, and he found her with the tracker he put in her shoe.”
“It’s possible,” Sherry said. “But why not take the money? There’s no way he wouldn’t have seen it.”
Jude was giving her a puzzled look. “What are you thinking?”
“The killer didn’t go to the house to murder Allison. He was there for Mandy.”