Page 20 of We Are All Guilty Here

She turned to look at him. She knew what was coming before he even said it.

“You’re gonna have to talk to Hannah.”

Emmy slowly nodded her head.

“Need to search Madison’s room. Find out if she’s been hiding anything. Look for the missing burner. Any other burners. Cash. Drugs. Pills.”

Emmy kept nodding.

Gerald pushed up the turn signal to take a left onto Delilah. Emmy looked at her watch. It was one in the morning, yet the lights were on in every single house. There were open garagedoors, empty carports, so many people walking in the street with flashlights that they looked like a swarm of fireflies.

They were all looking for Madison and Cheyenne.

Gerald nosed the car into the curb in front of Dr. Carl’s house. Emmy checked her phone as she got out. Two more texts from her crazy aunt. The cousins text had blown up again, but the potluck vs. restaurant argument had reached a detente. Taybee had created a spreadsheet that referred to a map overlaid with search areas she had assigned to various branches of Cliftons. No one was questioning her authority. For once, they were all in complete agreement about what had to be done.

The last text was from her mother. Cole had finally nodded off in Emmy’s old bed. She let herself feel the relief of knowing her child was cared for. Emmy was about to return her phone to her pocket when it started to ring.

She answered on speakerphone so her father could hear. “Dylan, we’re both here. What do you have?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I know Cheyenne and Madison from seeing them in the halls, but they’ve never been in trouble with me.”

Emmy was disappointed but not surprised the two girls had managed to stay clear of the school’s law enforcement officer. They were demonstrably good at keeping secrets. “What about Jack Whitlock?”

“Dr. Carl’s son?” Dylan sounded slightly alarmed. His fourteen-year-old daughter was probably a patient. “Jack’s not in the popular group for sure. Kind of quiet. Kind of a loner. I’ve never had any one-on-one with him.”

Again, not surprising. A school resource officer’s job was safety and crime prevention. Dylan’s days were filled with breaking up fights, tracking down petty thieves, and walking the hallways to remind the students there was a cop on duty—none of which would put him in direct contact with kids who knew how to stay out of trouble. Or at least give off the appearance.

She asked, “Who are the dealers at school?”

“Nobody,” Dylan said. “North Falls High does not have a drug problem.”

Emmy almost laughed. “Are you kidding me?”

Gerald cleared his throat. “Dylan, Emmy will meet you at the school first thing in the morning. Give her the rundown. She’ll need to talk to the guidance counselors, teachers, kids. Make a list.”

Like Virgil, he hesitated, but only for a second. “Yes, boss.”

Emmy ended the call. She asked her dad, “What was that?”

Gerald didn’t answer. He walked up the driveway toward Dr. Carl’s house. Emmy followed, trying to turn her brain away from the strange phone call and concentrate on the task at hand.

As of right now, Jack Whitlock was their only lead in the disappearance of Cheyenne Baker and Madison Dalrymple. The girls had been missing for over four hours. The odds that they would be found alive were dropping into the single digits.

Emmy let her gaze travel around the property. The red brick ranch-style home with crisp white trim and a carport on the left-hand side was another Clifton family special, this one designed to take advantage of government-backed mortgages provided to returning World War II veterans who were eager to start their families. Three bedrooms. En suite in the primary. Hall bath. Living room. Kitchen. Den. No basement.

There was only one vehicle parked in the carport, Dr. Carl’s black Volkswagen Jetta. The rest of the space was taken up by a long workbench and several metal storage cabinets. Everything was tidy and in its place, unlike the yard, which had gone to hell since Monica had left. The flower beds were mostly weeds. The grass looked parched. No one had cleaned out the gutters in a good long while.

The bigger problem was that, unlike every other house on the street, the lights at Dr. Carl’s were turned off. Not even the porch light was on.

Gerald glanced back at Emmy. All the bad explanations passed wordlessly between them.

Torture. Rape. Murder. Patricide. Suicide.

Jack Whitlock was a sixteen-year-old white male who was unpopular at school and described as a quiet loner. Emmy knew for a fact that Dr. Carl kept at least one weapon in the house. She had seen him at the shooting range with a SIG MCX that had a sixteen-inch hammer forged barrel, a skeletonizedside-folding stock, and a thirty-round magazine. The nearly $3,000 rifle was billed as a home defense weapon, but the military styling had an ungodly appeal to weekend warriors, divorced fathers, and school shooters.

Emmy unsnapped the strap around her Glock for the second time that night.

Gerald walked up the two steps to the front porch. He waited until Emmy was positioned behind him and to his right. He raised his fist and gave the door three hard knocks. Each one was loud enough to sound like a gunshot, which was by design. You didn’t knock tentatively if you didn’t know what was waiting for you on the other side.

---