Chapter Fourteen
Jude walked down Main Street, dread slowing her pace. She felt her eyes watering behind her sunglasses. She had forgotten how different the light was in the south. Brighter. Starker. Prone to exposing things you preferred left in the dark.
Seeing Lee Rawley so unexpectedly had thrown her, but Emmy’s questions had nearly brought Jude to her knees.
She’d felt like a boxer on the ropes. The only thing that had saved her was the shock value of her admission.
Emmy had let Jude walk away, but Jude was under no impression that she would let it go.
The second Emmy caught her breath, she would start peppering Jude with questions.
The sheriff’s station was up ahead. Jude wasn’t strong enough for a lengthy interrogation.
She sat down on a metal bench in front of the flower shop.
She looked down at her hands. They were shaking worse than Emmy’s ever had.
On some level, Jude had known if she stayed in North Falls long enough, she would run into Lee eventually.
She’d assumed it would be on her own terms, not that she’d be walking in the middle of a yard and find herself trapped in the gaze of his cold, blue eyes.
Jude had let herself forget the visceral fear that Lee could inspire.
She’d somehow lost the memory of his jocular laugh that always rippled with violence under the surface.
A car drove by. Then a second one. Then a third. She heard the distant ring of church bells as service let out. Jude looked across the street at the lamp-post. The bricks in the sidewalk. The scuffed edge of the curb.
Another memory pushed its way in. Not from Memphis or North Falls, but from Folsom State Prison. Jude had asked Freddy Henley to talk about his childhood. He’d given her one of his patronizing laughs.
You gotta bury the bad memories, doll. Keep ’em outta the sunshine. Don’t never let nobody make you dig ’em up.
Easy for a psychopath to say. They were incapable of feeling remorse because they never held themselves responsible for causing harm.
Everyone else was always to blame. The only regret they ever felt was when they were caught.
For non-psychopaths, bad memories were like seeds.
If you buried them, they would only grow.
Jude felt a shadow fall over her face. She looked up at Emmy.
“Did I give you enough time to get your story straight?”
“It’s not a story,” Jude said. “It’s my life. Lee’s life, too. For what that’s worth.”
Emmy looked out at the street. Watched the church traffic roll by.
Jude took a deep breath. “Lee was Tommy’s friend, not mine.”
“Really?” Emmy sounded dubious.
“Ask him.” Jude had already texted Tommy to warn him. “We all steered clear of Lee. At least the girls did. Even back then, we knew that Lee Rawley was the kind of man who left Jane Does on the highway.”
Emmy finally looked down at Jude. She was waiting for more.
“Tanya was my age. We weren’t friends so much as we had something in common. Celia and I used to do lines of coke with her in the bathroom.”
Emmy looked into the street again. The damning detail had taken away some of her skepticism, but Jude knew she would weigh every syllable.
“All the kids from school would go to the bar on the weekends. The drinking age was still eighteen. Not that Penley made us show IDs. We’d all get hammered, then drag race on the interstate.”
“Come on.” Emmy’s skepticism roared back. “My parents were born in the 1940s. You think I don’t know the plot to Rebel Without a Cause?”
“Then you can guess how it ended. My car T-boned Lee’s truck. Tommy and I were okay, but—”
“Tommy was with you?”
Jude couldn’t stop for questions. “Lee hit the concrete barrier. Flipped at least half a dozen times. Landed upside down on the opposite side of the interstate. They had to cut him out of the truck. He was Life Flighted to Grady Hospital in Atlanta. He nearly lost his arm. You saw it. He still doesn’t have full use. ”
Emmy slowly sat down beside her on the bench. “That’s a felony charge. Serious Injury by Vehicle. Up to fifteen years in prison. Plus whatever the going rate was for a DUI.”
“It was the early eighties. White teenagers from good families didn’t get in trouble for DUIs.”
“It’s hard to get them in trouble now.”
“Helps when your father is the sheriff.” Jude realized she was gripping the arm of the bench. She forced her hand to relax. “But the car accident crossed a line. Dad was getting pressure to charge me.”
“From the Rawleys?”
“Rawleys don’t go to the law. If they’d wanted me hurt, they would’ve used their hands.”
Emmy nodded her understanding. “That’s what Lee meant when he said he can’t abide a girl being punished for something that’s not her fault.”
Jude was usually proud of Emmy’s recall, but now it felt like a loaded weapon pointed at her head. “Lee was speeding, too. It could’ve just as easily been my car that flipped. Even criminals have a sense of fair play.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” Emmy drummed her fingers on the metal bench. She was looking for holes. “If the Rawleys didn’t force you to leave, why did you have to go?”
Jude felt like her toes were dangling over a steep cliff. “The town turned against me. North Falls people.”
Emmy nodded again. She had likely seen the same scenario play out her entire life. “What about Tommy?”
“He supported me, but he had to go back to college. I was the easy target. And it’s not like I had a good reputation to begin with.
I was an obnoxious brat. I dated around.
Sang in a rock band. Smoked like a chimney.
Drank like a fish. Dressed like a hippie.
Every cliché you can think of. They were ready to stone me before the accident.
Afterward, there was a wall of hate everywhere I went.
” Jude couldn’t believe that all these years later, she still felt the sharp sting of rejection.
“So I boosted Millie’s Caddie and I left town. ”
“You stole Millie’s car?” Emmy gave a surprised laugh. “Is that why she’s so pissed off at you?”
“One of the many reasons.”
“Okay.” Emmy gave the same nod as before. “That’s why you never came back home.”
“It’s complicated,” Jude said, which was another deflection, because they both knew the statute of limitation on most felonies was four years, not forty.
Jude had been in the clear long ago. If the Rawleys hadn’t been after her, the only reason not to go home was because she didn’t think she had a home to go to.
“I’m gonna say something awful.” Emmy looked across the street. “I don’t understand Mom and Dad just letting you go like that.”
Jude looked across the street, too.
“Forty years,” Emmy said. “I feel like a knife is twisting in my heart when Cole takes a long vacation. I track him when he goes fishing on the river. You couldn’t pry him away from me.”
“You wouldn’t have liked the person I used to be.” Jude wasn’t going to let herself cry. “Martha Clifton taught me a lot, but it came at a cost.”
Emmy turned toward her. “You’ve been diminishing yourself since you got here.”
Jude was laid bare by the observation.
“Too accommodating,” Emmy said. “Too deferential. Too apologetic. Too silent. Not Clifton-silent. Silent-silent. Like you’re waiting for the ax to fall.”
Jude said nothing, but her guard was so high that she could barely see over it.
“At first, I thought that’s just how you are, but you’re not any of those things. Are you?”
Jude was grateful for her sunglasses so she didn’t have to look Emmy in the eye. She was so clever, her girl. From the moment Jude had stepped foot back in North Falls, she had been terrified of saying or doing the wrong thing and being sent away—not by the town, but by Emmy.
“You don’t owe me anything. You never wronged me. I never even met you until right now.” Emmy was studying her. “What I’m saying is, it’s been six weeks, but I feel like you’re just now showing me yourself as a full person.”
Jude knew she was being offered an opportunity. Long-ago habits resurfaced: deflection, denial, distraction. “Did Woody’s alibi check out?”
Emmy didn’t answer immediately. Jude found herself holding her breath. She had built her professional career off predicting behavior, but she had no idea what Emmy was going to say next.
“Yes.”
Jude slowly released the breath.
Emmy clearly noticed, but she showed unprecedented kindness and kept talking. “Woody was in Dekalb County at the time of the shooting. That doesn’t mean he didn’t get one of his thugs to do it, but my gut is telling me it’s not him.”
Jude had difficulty swallowing past the lump in her throat. “One name off your list.”
“Could you get a read off Lee Rawley when I asked him about Clayville PD?”
Jude rummaged in her purse for a tissue. “No, but it was a good question to get out there.”
Emmy waited for her to dry her eyes. “I’m trying to follow the clues, but I’ve got this voice constantly whispering in the back of my head that tells me Reggie is a part of this.”
Jude asked, “Do you think he’s the shooter?”
“I think he’s got a strong motive. I’d bet my paycheck Allison tried to rat him out to the FBI alongside Dad.
If any cop in this town is on a Giglio list, it’s Reggie Wilder.
You saw him yesterday. He’s got a temper.
He hates being called out on his shit. If he’s not the shooter, or he didn’t send somebody to kill her, then he’s definitely wrapped up in the reason she was trying to leave. ”
Jude tried to tread carefully. “And Bill?”
“Well, that’s a good question. There’s a broker in town who handles insurance for North Falls people. I called her while you were on your little walk. Asked her if Allison had any policies. She checked the national database.”
Jude noticed that her sarcasm felt more like teasing. “And?”