Page 126 of We Are All Guilty Here

Virgil said, “That’s not an overstatement. I’ve got the logs here.”

Jude waited as he shuffled through some paperwork. She could see the black AT&T logo at the top of the pages. Emmy’s handwritten summations were below the Bates stamp.

“Here we go.” Virgil pushed his glasses up his nose so he could read it. “July Fourth, there were eighteen phone calls between Madison and Cheyenne’s second burner. There were ninety-seven texts back and forth. Then it comes up on six o’clock, and they stop all communication. It doesn’t pick back up until eight, but all the calls and texts are from Madison. There’s no response from Cheyenne. The last ping from her phone on the North Falls cell tower was at five fifty-eight. It never pinged again. She must’ve powered it off.”

Jude said, “Or the Bad Guy did.”

“Here’s the thing.” Emmy stood up from her chair. She’d obviously found her second wind. “The neighbors say Cheyenne left the house on her bike around three thirty. We don’t know what she was doing for those two and a half hours before she turned off her phone. Nobody saw her in town. There weren’t that many CCTV cameras on the streets or in stores back then. Most people were at one of the fireworks shows.”

Virgil said, “Only one cell tower served North Falls. The geo-data wasn’t as precise, so we couldn’t narrow down where Cheyenne was other than in the North Falls city limits.”

“How hot was it that day?” Jude asked.

“Hundred degrees in the shade,” Emmy answered. “That’s a good point, though. She had to be somewhere with air conditioning. The library was closed. Maybe the Chilly Treat?”

Virgil said, “They were all interviewed. Nobody saw her.”

“Maybe the neighbors were wrong about the time Cheyenne left the house?” Emmy guessed. “Or maybe she circled back without them seeing?”

“Okay.” Jude could feel them spinning their wheels again. “Cheyenne had three phones. The flip phone, the first burner, and the second burner. Tell me about them.”

Emmy answered, “The first burner was confiscated by Celia at school. Cheyenne did a factory reset on her way to Celia’s office.”

“The reset wiped it completely clean,” Virgil said. “Quantico couldn’t get anything off it.”

Emmy continued, “We found Cheyenne’s second burner in her back pocket when the bodies were recovered. The device was submerged in the water too long to be able to recover any data. We never found the flip phone, but we know that Cheyenne carved her initials on the case—C.B.”

Virgil took over, anticipating the next question. “Madison’s iPhone was found crushed on the soccer pitch. The GBI lab wasn’t able to recover anything. None of the devices were backed up to the cloud. We found a laptop that Cheyenne’s mother donated to the church, but it was wiped clean. The family desktop computer was clean. Madison’s laptop was clean. All of thedigital footprints were either wiped, lost, or didn’t exist in the first place.”

Jude thought of something. “What kind of flip phone was Cheyenne using?”

“Nokia,” Virgil said. “Used to belong to her father, Felix. He passed it down to her when he got an iPhone. They didn’t want her going online without them knowing.”

“What’s the model?” Jude asked.

“I’ve got it in here somewhere.” Virgil started shuffling through a thick stack of papers. “Gonna be a minute.”

Emmy nodded at Cole to give him a hand.

Jude told her, “Let’s put the focus back on the Bad Guy. What was his July Fourth like? You’re assuming he was supposed to meet Cheyenne on the backroads, right?”

“Theoretically,” Emmy said. “We don’t know if he surprised her, or they planned to meet. Her necklace and her blood were found on the stretch behind Taybee’s farm.”

Jude couldn’t stop herself from chuckling. “Of course Taybee got the farm.”

Emmy rolled her eyes but stayed on point. “If the meeting was planned, I’m assuming that the Bad Guy told Cheyenne to turn off her phone at six. He wouldn’t know that we couldn’t geo-locate her position from the cell tower. My guess is she was supposed to meet him around six thirty. They were going to do whatever they were going to do. Then, Cheyenne was going to meet Madison at the park by eight at the latest.”

“Why were the Bad Guy and Cheyenne meeting?”

“For sex?”

Jude had to ask, “An hour and a half for a blow job?”

“Maybe she was finally going to agree to penetration?” Emmy shrugged. “Fifty bucks for oral versus several hundred, maybe even a thousand, for full-on sex. Cheyenne wouldn’t know how long it would take if that was really her first time. She tried to pretend like she was sophisticated, but she was still a child.”

Jude could see the pain in Emmy’s expression. She had known Cheyenne Baker. The theoretical had become personal.

Jude said, “All right, Cheyenne and the Bad Guy were goingto meet for sex around six thirty. He was meant to pick her up on the backroads. Then what?”

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