Chapter Fifteen #3
“No, ma’am, I was not authorized to extend WitSec. If she was willing to testify, she would have to do it in open court. Plus, they wanted me to look into the original case against your sister’s ex.”
“Because?”
“Allison refused to name the man who sold the drugs to Jonah Lang.”
Emmy started to nod, as if that made sense. Only an insane person would try to drag the Rawleys into this.
Jude asked, “When did you find out that Allison wasn’t going into WitSec?”
“Thursday. I sent her a message through Discord to call me. She was understandably upset. I don’t blame her. I begged her to give me more time. I have friends in other agencies. I trained at Glynco with the Marshals. I wasn’t giving up.”
“What was Allison’s response?”
“She was crushed,” he said. “I crushed her. She believed in me. And she just cried, ma’am.
I didn’t know what to do. I tried to keep her talking, but she hung up.
Then I drove down to North Falls. Left our signal on the lamp-post. I guess I wasn’t as sharp as I thought I was.
Callaghan told me Allison took my picture.
If I’d seen her, she might still be alive. And her daughter …”
Jude listened to his voice trail off. “The signal on the lamp-post was for a meeting?”
“Yeah, if she saw it, she was supposed to meet me at the truck stop outside of Albany the next morning at nine. I got there at eight yesterday. I waited for five hours. She never showed. I guess I know why now.”
“Did she tell you why she needed protection?”
“She was worried about Reggie, but—” He paused.
“I’m just spitballing here, ma’am. You’re the expert.
I think Allison was desperate for a fresh start.
She kept talking about getting Mandy out of North Falls and starting over.
That’s what she wanted most. To do it all again, but maybe not make the same mistakes this time. ”
“Okay.” Jude knew that was all they were going to get from him. “Reid, what were you authorized to tell me?”
“That Allison didn’t have a case. All she offered was speculation.”
“I’m assuming your copy of her investigation into the Clayville PD is in deep storage somewhere at DOJ. What about Allison’s?”
“She never told me, ma’am, but she was smart. I know she kept back ups of her work somewhere.”
Emmy started typing on the laptop.
“Reid, there’s a way to silo yourself in the agency. Find an area that interests you. Stay out of politics. Keep your head down. Do your job.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He cleared his throat. “It’s been an honor talking to you. I appreciate the advice.”
The call ended.
Emmy’s fingers punched the keys on the laptop.
“Fucking Jonah.”
“Fucking Reggie,” Jude corrected.
“I’m not seeing anything on the hard drive that looks like Allison’s investigation. The most recent file saved on the hard drive is from four years ago. We’ll have to send this to Sherry.”
“What about the CDs?”
Emmy read the labels as she went through the stack.
“Anton Bruckner Symphony No. 7 Wiener Philharmoniker Herbert von Karajan. The Boston Pops at the Movies. Mozart Jubilee Edition. Beethoven Piano Sonatas. Rubinstein at Symphony Hall. The Boston Pops on the Fourth of July. London Philharmonic Hymns Triumphant.”
“Those are CD-ROMs. They can’t be written over. You can only save data to CD-Rs and CD-RWs.”
“Thanks for the lesson, Inspector Gadget.” Emmy went through the entire stack. “There’s nothing in here that flags Allison. We never talked about music.”
Jude said, “Let’s talk about Jonah’s drug bust. It’s never made sense to me that someone of Woody’s stature would sell to Jonah. And it makes even less sense that Woody would get caught.”
“If I’m a United States senator who grew up in Clayville, and somebody tells me that there’s a police officer down here who wants witness protection, but she refuses to give up the name of a drug dealer, I know immediately who that drug dealer is.”
“Lee?”
“No. I’ve spent the last two days watching people act like Woody is Voldemort. He’s got the whole town scared of saying his name.”
“That’s probably the same reason Reggie tried to trick you into thinking Woody was Dad’s informer. He assumed Jonah wouldn’t tell you the truth, and he knew nobody else in town would give up Woody. He set you up for a dead end.”
“He didn’t try to trick me. I fell for it. Allison didn’t bust Jonah and Woody. She busted somebody low on the totem pole that the Rawleys wanted to keep out of jail.” Emmy rubbed her face with her hands. “Goddam. I can’t believe how stupid I am.”
“Focus on what’s important,” Jude said. “What did we learn from that conversation?”
“Reggie didn’t have a strong motive, unless it was pure revenge.
If he knew Allison tried to rat him out, he also knew she failed.
” Emmy crossed her arms. “Reading between the lines, it feels like Allison was using the Giglio list as a means to an end. I mean, sure, she wanted Reggie and the squad to go down for being dirty, but what Allison really wanted was for her and Mandy to get away.”
“From Bill?”
“That’s what every asshole with internet access is saying.” Emmy’s frustration came roaring back. “But Allison had three hundred grand in her attic. Fake IDs for her and Mandy. Witness protection was the better solution, but she could’ve disappeared without the FBI.”
“That was her backup plan,” Jude said. “Look at the timeline. Tell me what Allison has been up to.”
Emmy huffed air between her lips. “Two months ago, she had a plan to reach out to the FBI. She wanted my help. I’d like to think she wanted me to figure out a way to keep Dad’s name out of it.
Force him into retirement. Get him to cooperate with the FBI.
It’d be like her to send the tip, then figure out later how to deal with the fallout.
She was smart, but she wasn’t strategic.
A lot of times she threw a bomb, then figured out how to run away after. ”
“It’s possible,” Jude said. “What happened next?”
“She worked her ass off investigating Reggie and the squad. Valerie, Talia Wilkinson’s mom, told me Allison was never home. That’s probably what she was doing—working the case. Then she handed it to Foley on a silver platter.”
“Keep going.”
“Thursday rolls around, Foley tells Allison that the plan won’t work.
That’s the same day she found out that Woody was harassing Mandy.
If you believe Lee Rawley, it was over Bill’s gambling debts.
Allison went to the Dew Drop Inn and threatened Woody.
Friday night, she went to see Bill at the Lazy Eight motel.
They got into a fight. According to motel security, she told Bill ‘you took the last good thing from me.’ Saturday around one, she was murdered. Mandy was shot.”
“You’re leaving something out.” Jude indicated the room. “Two months ago, she was spending hours locked in this room. She wasn’t talking to Reid Foley on the burner phone all that time. What was she looking for?”
“Something that happened in 2002.” Emmy went back to the drawer that had opened with Allison’s key. She thumbed through the sleeves of microfiche. “Atlanta Journal. Atlanta Constitution. Macon Register. Augusta Tribune.”
“Those are big publications. They have the money to digitize. We need something that would only be stored in this room.”
Emmy kept flipping through the sleeves. She stopped at one of the last sections. “The North Falls Register. The paper comes out twice a week. I can’t remember when they started putting it on the internet.”
“Most publications were online by the late nineties.”
“When you’re talking about North Falls, add twenty years.”
Emmy picked up a stack of sleeves. “2002. Twice a week means one hundred and two issues. They don’t print over Christmas and New Year’s. They’re roughly thirty pages each. Looks like there’s three issues per piece of film.”
Jude turned on the microfiche reader. The whir of machinery and bright light took her straight back to every term paper she’d ever written. “We can narrow our search to crime stories, right?”
“Aunt Millie wrote the police blotter.” Emmy handed her the sleeves. “She used to come down to the station every morning to see who’d been arrested.”
Jude hefted the thirty-four pieces of film in her hand. “You know what I’m thinking?”
“That this would go a hell of a lot faster if we just asked Aunt Millie.”