Page 131 of We Are All Guilty Here

“Accomplices in serial abductions aren’t common, but they’re not rare, either. Typically, it’s a man and a woman caught up infolie à deux, but when it’s two men, the crimes can be exceptionally brutal. Leopold and Loeb. The Toolbox Killers. The Hillside Stranglers.”

Emmy looked shaken. “If Adam had an accomplice, that person could be the one who took Paisley.”

Jude said, “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. These are theories right now. We don’t have anything concrete.”

Virgil volunteered, “I can call the prison and see if we can get Adam’s visitation logs.”

Emmy said, “Use Dad’s office. Don’t let anyone else hear you.”

Jude added, “Ask for a list of all the guards on his tier andany prisoners who did meal and mail delivery service or rolled the library cart. Get all the scans of his emails and any other correspondence.”

“Wait.” Emmy stopped Virgil at the door. “Call Dooley State Prison, too. I want to know who’s had any contact with Dale Loudermilk. Check all the same things, plus his commissary. See if anybody on the outside is making his time inside a little easier.”

Jude said, “Dale was caught red-handed on the porn. He knew he was going to be doing some serious time. If he really did have an accomplice, his silence wouldn’t come cheap.”

“Got it.” Virgil gave her a salute on his way out.

Jude looked back at the whiteboard. She felt in her bones that they were getting close. Her eyes scanned the names again. She’d tried so hard not to let her horrific experience with Adam cloud the way she looked at the facts of his case, but his name was at the top of the list for a reason. She remembered Emmy talking about how a lot of the evidence against him wasconsistent withand notmatched exactly. An accomplice could explain the disparities.

She asked Cole, “What kind of car did Dale drive?”

“He drove a truck. White Ford F-150. Six years old.”

Emmy went to the laptop. “The car he was vacuuming and cleaning with a bleach solution at five thirty in the morning was a three-year-old black Audi A4 that belonged to his wife, Esther.”

Jude watched the monitor again as Emmy arrowed through the images: different angles of the trunk, rear and front bumpers, several shots of the interior, the seats, floorboards, steering wheel, and console, another tight shot of the edge of the trunk’s lid that showed where some paint had been chipped off.

Emmy explained, “Dale told us the paint got chipped when he took his lawnmower to get it repaired.”

Jude asked, “He loaded a lawnmower into the Audi and not the truck?”

Emmy’s nod acknowledged the thin excuse. “He did a good job cleaning the car. There wasn’t any paint transfer from whatever the trunk slammed down on. There were no marks that we could see on the front left bumper. Obviously because of the bleach, none of our tests showed positive for blood or bodyfluids. At the time, we assumed Dale cleaned out the car because he was hoping we wouldn’t find out that he’d given Madison and Cheyenne rides home from school.”

Jude asked, “A plastic tarp was brought up when they dragged the pond, right?”

“Yep,” Emmy said. “Big enough to line the trunk, but there was no forensic evidence on the plastic.”

Cole cleared his throat. “What about the numbers on the sticker?”

Jude had no idea what he was talking about. “Show me.”

Cole worked the laptop to select a photo of the Audi’s interior. The steering wheel was at the center of the frame. He zoomed into the upper left-hand corner of the windshield. There was a small, square decal with a logo for the Speedy Go Garage. Below it was written the date and mileage of when the next oil service was due.

Cole said, “Those high-end cars, you get the oil changed every 10,000 miles or twelve months, whichever you hit first. The sticker says the next oil change is due on July second of the following year, which means the oil service was performed two days before Madison and Cheyenne were abducted.”

“That makes sense,” Emmy said. “Esther’s sister was in Florida the week before. She picked her up on her way back to Carrolton. Dale took her car to get the oil changed while she was out of town.”

Jude found her reading glasses. She got closer to the monitor so she could look at the numbers. Her gut told her that Cole was onto something. She said, “Keep going.”

He went to the whiteboard and started writing. “The sticker says that the next oil change is due when the odometer hits 16,483, right? So if you subtract 10,000 from that number, that means that two days before Cheyenne and Madison were abducted, the odometer was at 6,483, right?”

“Shit.” Emmy pinched her fingers on the trackpad to show the console behind the steering wheel. “The mileage on the odometer is 7,173.”

Cole drew a line under the number so that he could work the problem. “That’s—”

“Six hundred and ninety,” Jude said. “In two days, Dale put 690 miles on the Audi.”

Cole said, “If he went on a round-trip, that would be 345 miles each way.”

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