Page 49 of We Are All Guilty Here

“Girl, I could get in all kinds of trouble for telling you that.”

Emmy closed her eyes. Hannah could ask for the information. She was Madison’s legal guardian. The only problem was that Emmy would have to ask her to.

“Shit,” Louise said, but Emmy heard a clacking sound as she started typing. “Okay, Dr. Carl has her on point-fifteen milligrams of Solaire-Freedom. That’s twenty-four pink and four white pills in a blister pack.”

Emmy recognized the description. It matched the pills she’d found in Cheyenne’s stash. “When did she start?”

“Lemme look back.” Louise made a humming noise as the keyboard clattered again. “Okay, here it is. Brought in the paper script on September thirteenth. Picked it up on the fourteenth.”

“What about Cheyenne Baker?” Emmy was careful again so that she didn’t fall into the past tense. “Is she taking birth control, too?”

“Oh hell no,” Louise said. “When the family first moved here, Cheyenne’s doctor back in Iowa had her on thirty days of amoxycillin to treat her acne. Gave the poor thing the screaming shits.I mentioned to Ruth that she might want to try birth control and you would’a thought I told her to skin the child alive.”

That sounded like Ruth Baker. “Did Hannah pick up Madison’s birth control?”

“I’ve got no idea. And if I ask at the front counter, they’ll want to know why.” She paused. “Why aren’t you asking Hannah?”

“She’s got enough going on right now.” Emmy didn’t dwell on the evasion. She’d thought of another idea. “Was Madison’s birth control filed on Hannah’s insurance?”

“Oh, that’s smart.” More clacking, more humming. “Nope, she didn’t use insurance. Costs 178 dollars a month, which is ridiculous. Says here the last time Madison got it filled was June twenty-eighth at twelve twenty-one. Cash transaction.”

That tracked. Madison got out of summer school at noon. There were four pills missing from the blister pack, which meant they’d been started on the first day of the month.

“Thanks, Louise. I owe you.”

“Just find those sweet babies,” Louise said. “I know you’ve always held Hannah in your heart, but promise me you’ll bring them home.”

“Okay.” Emmy told herself she was using her father’s amorphousokay, that she was not making a promise she wasn’t sure she could keep. Before Louise could follow up, Emmy ended the call. She glanced back at Gerald. He was talking to one of the crime scene techs, a lanky man in a white Tyvek suit.

She looked down at her phone like she was reading something important, but the truth was that she needed a moment to collect herself. She tapped through cousin texts that her eyes were too blurry to read. Aunt Millie had left six voicemails. Emmy didn’t need to listen to them. They were always the same. Her aunt’s gruff voice announcing, “Millie Clifton,” followed by a series of sharp clicks as she tried to get the receiver back into the cradle.

Emmy silently ordered herself to get her shit together. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand and got back to work.

Dust swirled around her pants and covered her shoes as she walked toward the van. The brutal sun had bleached the Georgia red clay to a high white that was so hard to look at her eyesstarted to water. She could see the crime scene techs were starting to pack up their equipment, literally pulling up stakes. The yellow tape dropped to the ground. Close up, she recognized the lanky, Tyveked crime scene tech as Special Agent Michael Berry-Lawhorn.

He nodded a hello to Emmy. “I was telling your dad our second team just found a bullet casing on the soccer field. Half-buried in the soil. Got crushed by one of the tires on the car. They’ve sent it to ballistics, but the thinking is it’s from a twenty-two Mag rimfire cartridge.”

“That’s for a rifle or a revolver,” Emmy said. “We’ve got a suspect with a registered Glock 20 that takes a ten-millimeter round.”

“I can tell you with near certainty that’s not the gun that was used,” Michael said. “If your victim had taken a ten-mil shot to the head, there’d be bone and brain everywhere. A twenty-two is smaller and lighter. Knocks around inside the skull like a pinball. The only thing that usually comes out is blood.”

Gerald asked, “You find anything here?”

“Nothing jumped out, but give me a second and I’ll take you through the scene.”

Gerald waited until Michael had walked toward his crew to tell Emmy, “Ruger has a rimfire pistol. Standard model. One-button takedown. Bolt-action. Drop-down mag. Nice gun.”

Emmy would never know firearms like her father did. “What’s the application?”

“Sport, mostly. Target shooting. Plinking.” He added, “Browning Buck Mark. Beretta Neos. Colt Ace. There’s more. Ruger’s the best.”

“I can’t see Dale shooting cans off a fence post in his free time.” Emmy googled the Ruger on her phone. The semi-automatic pistol had first been manufactured in 1949. “Looks like something you’d see a Nazi waving around in an old war movie.”

“Based off the Japanese Nambu.”

She put her phone back in her pocket. “Dale’s still the best suspect. The pros don’t cancel the cons.”

“Maybe haven’t found the right con.”

---