Page 33 of We Are All Guilty Here

“Dad?” Emmy said into the receiver.

“The blood at the scene. Two liters, medical examiner says. Looks like a head wound. Probably a gunshot.”

Two liters of blood. Emmy had lost that much during labor.The surgeon had told her that she would’ve died without a transfusion. “So, we know that one of them is dead.”

“Blood type is O-positive,” Gerald continued. “Had Dr. Carl look up Madison’s. She’s A-positive.”

Despite the dire implications, Emmy felt a sliver of hope. “Madison could still be alive.”

“Could be.” Gerald’s tone was absent hope. “FBI wants a press conference. Tip line’s gonna be busy.”

“I’ll swing by the school, then report to the station.” She was about to hang up the phone, but then she realized that her father was still speaking.

“How’d it go with Hannah?”

“Madison’s room was clean. No cash, burners, drugs. Nothing.” Emmy listened to his pointed silence. “It wasn’t good, Dad. She’s not going to forgive me.”

“Okay,” he said, but he wasn’t finished. “Been thinking about what you told me in the car. Need to talk it out.”

Emmy leaned her back against the wall. She could hear the noise of the station under the rasp of his breathing. He wasn’t referring to the case. You didn’t talk it out unless it was something deeply personal.

She told him, “Go ahead.”

“When you were Madison’s age. Those men who came out of the woodwork. The ones who made you feel bad. You were right. I would’ve gotten mad about the wrong thing. I’m sorry.”

“I was talking about parents in general, not you.” Again, Emmy listened to his silence. He didn’t believe her. Probably because she wasn’t telling the truth. “It’s okay, Dad. It was a long time ago.”

He held the silence for another long while. “Okay.”

Emmy let out a slow breath. She couldn’t have this conversation right now. She was her mother’s child. She wanted to make plans. To take action. To do something. “Kaitlynn told me she overheard Cheyenne telling Madison about a sexual relationship she was having with an older man. She was taking money from him. They were both planning on running away to Atlanta.”

“Overheard it when?”

“At the end of the school year, so the last week of May.”

“Recent.”

“Sixteen thousand dollars in a lockbox takes more than two months to accumulate. Could be the kidnapper wasn’t the only older man who was paying Cheyenne for sex.”

“Tricked her out?”

“Pimps don’t let their girls hold onto that much cash.”

“Jealousy motive?”

“Maybe, but why take Madison, too?” Emmy realized that there were always explanations for Cheyenne, but never any for Madison. They couldn’t keep running in that circle. The thing that tied the girls together was the thing that would lead them to the kidnapper. “Did they manage to get any fingerprints off the broken necklace that was found on the backroad?”

“Chain’s small. Takes a special process. FBI sent it to Quantico.”

“Was anything else found on the pitch? Bullet casings or—”

“Unclear,” Gerald said. “FBI’s tracking down the tire impressions. GBI’s working the trace evidence.”

“I told Jack Whitlock that he needed to swing by the station to look at a line-up this morning. I need to put together some six-packs. Hopefully, Dylan or somebody at the school will be able to steer me in the right direction. I have to think someone called the Perv is in our records.” Emmy’s brain was finally waking up. She needed to write this down. “I also want to try to track down Cheyenne’s laptop that the mother donated to the church. And we need to locate the flip phone that’s on her family’s plan. The father told me last night she scratched her initials into the plastic casing. We should update the searches so everybody knows to look for it. I’ll get to the station as soon as I can.”

“Okay.”

Emmy slipped the receiver back on the hook. She looked at her watch. The staff was probably shuffling into school. There was no time for reflection. Only one blood type had been found at the scene. They were less than halfway to the twenty-four-hour mark since the kidnapping. Fuck the statistics.

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