Page 104 of We Are All Guilty Here

The speaker echoed with the sound of Elijah blowing his nose.

Belinda asked, “How’s Carol taking it?”

“They only let us talk for a minute.” He balled the tissue in his hand. “She’s devastated. She blames herself for letting Paisley go out on her bike. She should’ve driven her.”

“It’s nobody’s fault,” Belinda said. “Not yours and not Carol’s. Paisley always takes her bike to school.”

“Not that early.” Elijah reached for the pack of tissues. He wiped under his eyes. “I could’ve driven her. I could’ve … I could’ve done a lot of things.”

“Well, I’m just gonna say what we’re both thinking, and that’s how this little fun we’ve been having is over, right? You need to be there for Carol, and I guess I’m gonna go visit my aunt Jenny up in Copper Hill so I’m not getting nasty looks every time I leave my apartment.”

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I’m just so fucking sorry.”

Jude turned away from the monitors to look at Emmy. “She’s not a sex worker. She’s an affair, right?”

“Right, but I guarantee Elijah was also cheating on Belinda with a sex worker. His story about meeting somebody online last year and going to the motel and how he was supposed to leave the money was too elaborate to be based on anything but the truth.”

“Agreed,” Jude said. “We need to speak to his secretary again. She noticed that Elijah had a standing meeting on the last Fridayof every month that coincided with money missing from petty cash. She’ll be able to tell us when it started and when it ended, and whether or not there’s a different pattern for a different woman now.”

The speaker shook with the sound of Elijah blowing his nose.

Belinda reached over to take his hand. She asked, “Do they know who took her?”

“Some Mexican, probably.”

“Fucking Mexicans,” Belinda said. “The whole town’s going to hell.”

“The whole fucking country.”

Emmy let out a long sigh. At least they still had their racism. She turned the volume off, asked Jude, “What now?”

“I want to reopen the Broken Angels case.”

Emmy gathered from the quick response that Jude had been thinking this for quite a while. For her part, Emmy needed a moment to adjust to the swift change in direction. She was as bad as Elijah, only looking at the things that were put directly in front of her.

She told Jude, “You want to see what Dad and I got wrong.”

Jude looked circumspect. “Let me ask you this. What was Gerald’s plan?”

“What do you mean?”

“TheMisguided Angelpodcast drops. The twelve-year-old rape kit down in Metter gets tested. Adam’s DNA is matched. He’s released from death row. What was Gerald’s plan?”

“To put Adam back in prison.”

“Right,” Jude said. “If you don’t know what to do, start at the beginning.”

Emmy was never going to get used to hearing this stranger quote her father. “Dad already asked Virgil to get all the old file boxes out of storage at the GBI field office. We were going to review everything at his place over the weekend.”

“Why do it at Virgil’s?”

“Dad didn’t want it getting out that we were reopening the case.”

“That ship has sailed,” Jude said. “Tell Virgil to bring every-thing to the station and we’ll go through the case together.”

“Absolutely not,” Emmy said. “Paisley Walker is our priority.”

“Sweetheart, we’ve almost hit the twenty-four-hour mark. This isn’t a parent or acquaintance abduction. Paisley didn’t run away. She’s not hiding somewhere. A predator took her. We’re not in a sprint anymore. This is a marathon. All we can do is hope to find the body so that Carol and Elijah can hopefully know some peace.”

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