Page 129 of We Are All Guilty Here

Jude studied the spray of blood in the photo. Cheyenne had landed hard enough to scatter the gravel. She said, “The Bad Guy knew he was going to kill her. There’s no way to walk back hitting a child on a bike. He knew that he wasn’t going to leave a witness.”

Emmy said, “The only reason he didn’t kill her immediately was because he realized the miniSD was missing from the Nokia.”

“With Cheyenne, it was transactional, not sexual,” Jude noted. “That’s the exact opposite of how he dealt with Madison. She was taken somewhere remote so that he could have time with her. He tortured her for hours. He let his fantasies play out.”

Emmy found a school photograph of each girl. Unlike withthe others, she carefully placed each one on the table. “Madison still had her baby fat. She looked like a child. Cheyenne looked like a young woman.”

A reverent silence filled the room. They all needed a moment to absorb the brutality behind the deaths. Madison’s face was almost cherubic. Her front tooth was snaggled. She had long blonde hair down past her shoulders. Cheyenne’s dark hair was shorter, cut in a choppy shag. Her make-up was heavier. Her lips were pouting in the photo. She was trying so hard to be older, to live a life that had been snatched away from her.

Jude took a deep breath. “Madison was held in an isolated location for at least twelve hours. The Bad Guy could’ve kept her longer. Why didn’t he?”

Emmy said, “After Millie told me Adam Huntsinger was the Perv, news got out pretty quickly that we were looking for him. Dad and I went straight to his parents’ house. Clayville PD spotted his truck parked in front of the Hang Out. Dad and Virgil went to pick him up. I got a call from Hannah maybe five minutes after they left. If she knew, everybody knew.”

Jude asked Virgil, “How long had Adam been at the bar?”

Virgil shrugged, but said, “Your uncle Penley guessed maybe an hour.”

“It’s not Adam.” Emmy sounded dead certain. “Everything we’ve outlined so far points to a control freak capable of strategic thinking. The abductions and murders of Cheyenne and Madison were well planned and executed. Adam Huntsinger’s impetuous and stupid. His rap sheet is filled with dumb people crimes—open container, drunk driving, moving violations. He can’t even remember to bring his driver’s license half the time. There’s no way he could’ve pulled this off.”

Jude said, “We’re not at the point where we know anything for a fact. Let’s keep an open mind.”

Emmy started shaking her head again. She looked shell-shocked. “We got it wrong.”

“Let’s look at alternatives.” Jude went back to the whiteboard. She wrote Adam’s name at the top. “We’re all familiar with the case against Adam. Who were the other men in Cheyenne and Madison’s lives that came up during the investigation?”

Virgil took over when Emmy didn’t respond. “Felix Baker is Cheyenne’s father, Paul Dalrymple is Madison’s, Dale Loudermilk had them both in his choral group. Wesley Woodrow had a drug angle that could’ve overlapped. Dr. Carl Whitlock saw Madison as a patient.”

“We’ve eliminated Felix, but I’ll leave him in.” Jude wrote out the names below Adam’s, then added Father Nate. “Cheyenne’s family was Catholic, right?”

Emmy started to rally. She thumbed through a stack of folders. “We ruled out Nate. He was in Smyrna meeting with the Archbishop of Atlanta. I drove up there to talk to him myself. This is a photo from that day.”

Jude looked at the photograph. Nate was standing alongside a bunch of other fat, white men in fancy dresses, all giving a thumbs up to the camera. “What’s the drive to Smyrna from North Falls? Three hours?”

“Just about,” Virgil said “Nate was up there for the entire day. Highway Patrol tracked his Cadillac on both their scanners and traffic cameras.”

Jude had to admit that she was impressed. Gerald had known Nate for decades, but they’d still run the lead back to the root. “What about Paul?”

“He was with Hannah,” Emmy said. “I saw him off and on the whole day at the park. So did Brett Temple. Paul was intoxicated by the time the fireworks show started.”

Virgil supplied, “Dr. Carl was with his son, Jack Whitlock, all night. They alibi each other. I ran down the browsing history on Jack’s computer. He was online the entire evening but for the forty-five minutes when he went to watch the fireworks with his dad in the backyard.”

Jude remembered Carl. He’d been one of Tommy’s friends. “What about Walton Huntsinger? He’s the town dentist. Everybody I knew went to him when we were kids. Were Cheyenne or Madison his patients?”

“He did an emergency filling on Cheyenne when they first moved to Clifton, but Walton was out of town over the Fourth.” Emmy opened another folder. She slid a photograph across the conference table. “This is a selfie we printed out from Walton’sphone that proves he was nowhere near North Falls when the girls were abducted. There’s an organization called the Tooth Troopers he volunteers with. They were working out of the American Legion Hall in Bridgeport, West Virginia, for three days. Walton rented a car since the transmission was slipping in his Jetta. That’s why Adam had access to it.”

Jude looked at the selfie of Walton Huntsinger standing in front of a stone building. She easily recognized his lined face. Same affable smile. Same squinty eyes. Same jet-black hair. “The family certainly loves their hair dye.”

Cole said, “He was pretty old back then. He’s probably peeing dust by now.”

“Cole.” Emmy scolded. “Walton’s only a few years older than Virgil.”

“I’m not peeing dust, son.” Virgil gave Cole a sharp look before finding a yellow carbon copy of a rental car receipt. He slid it in Jude’s direction. “The Hertz over in Verona verified Walton took out a car on July second and returned it about half an hour before Emmy and Gerald found him at his house.”

Emmy said, “His suitcase was still in the hall. He was in the shower when Dad knocked on the front door.”

“All right.” Jude went to the next name. “What about Woody?”

Virgil took over again. “He was at Lake Allatoona with his father’s people. They got rowdy with another group on the lake. The cops got involved. Couple of folks went to the hospital. Stirred up all kinds of shit. Real patriotic way to celebrate the Fourth.”

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