Page 93 of We Are All Guilty Here

Emmy scoffed. “No wonder they didn’t want you in profiling. Adam Huntsinger wasn’t any of those things.”

“There’s always a lot of pressure when a child goes missing. With two abducted, you can get lost in the urgency. Mistakes get made.” Jude turned back to her. “Are you sure it’s Adam?”

“I’m sure I’m not going to let you disparage my father’s police work.”

“Nonetheless.” Jude turned away again. “We’ve narrowed it down from 20,000 suspects to roughly 2,500, which is much more manageable, don’t you think?”

Emmy wasn’t going to give her an inch. “Trust me, you don’t want to know what I’m thinking right now.”

“The Walkers are up on the right.”

Emmy felt her teeth grit. She knew where the damn house was. She nosed the cruiser into the curb, stopping short of the mailbox. Someone had painted the family name on the side.

The Walkers’

Jude said, “Does no one understand possessive apostrophes anymore?”

Emmy heard Cole’s laughter from the back seat. Listening to this woman run down a case like Gerald was bad enough. Hearing her snipe about punctuation like Myrna was hell on earth.

“Cole,” Emmy said. “Call the station. See if they’ve got an ETA on the brother driving over from Alabama. I don’t want to be surprised.”

“Yes, chief.”

Jude started to get out of the car, but not before turning back toward Cole. “Sweetheart, I know it’s hard, but you should call her sheriff now.”

The door closed before Emmy could correct her. She had tounwrap her fingers from the steering wheel before she could get out. She looked at Jude over the top of the cruiser. “You can stop your Socratic method with my son. He knows how to be a cop, and he knows what to call me.”

She gave a curt nod. “Understood.”

Cole started to get out of the back. Emmy closed the door, trapping him inside. She told Jude, “I wanna make this clear in case you’re not seeing it. I don’t want you here, and the only reason I’m putting up with your presence is because you seem to know what you’re doing. The minute you stop being valuable is the minute you’re off this case.”

Jude nodded. “Okay.”

“Don’t okay me like you’re part of my family,” Emmy said. “You just bragged about spending forty years trying to bring lost children home to their parents, but it never once occurred to you to bring your own ass home?”

Jude said, “Twenty-seven years.”

“What?”

“That’s how long I worked at the agency. Twenty-seven years. Not forty.”

Emmy opened the door for Cole, then walked toward the Walkers’ house.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Carol Walker opened the front door with a string of rosary beads in her hand. She blinked in the darkness before remembering to turn on the porch light. Her movements were slow and careful, as if every gesture was designed to draw the least amount of attention. Jude’s gut signaled this was probably not a parent abduction. The woman was too cowed. Grief and worry hadn’t worn her down overnight. She had the demeanor of someone who’d spent her entire life being told that she was wrong. The only way Carol Walker would ever leave her husband was on a stretcher or in a hearse.

“Ma’am,” Emmy said. “I’m sorry, we don’t have any news about Paisley. You remember my son, Deputy Clifton. This is Jude Archer. She’s with the FBI.”

Carol’s slow nod made it clear she’d only heard the first part about Paisley. She was no longer drugged, but her eyes had a glassy quality. She worked her rosary beads with the furtiveness of a trapped bird as she led them into the living room.

Jude studied her from behind. The time was coming up on five in the morning and Carol was wearing white leggings under a long denim skirt that looked like it had been slept in. So did her white blouse with lace trim along the collar and the cuffs of the long sleeves. The fussy living room complemented the old-fashioned look with its floral patterns, glass figurines, and doilies. The temperature was too hot. The lights too bright. No dust was visible. Everything was in its place. Appearances were clearly important to the woman. Jude’s guess was that Carol probably knew that her husband strayed, just like she was probably tooafraid to confront him over it. The only question now was whether or not she knew the name of her husband’s mistress.

Emmy had clearly made the same assessments. She had zeroed in on the array of family photographs hanging on the wall behind the couch. Different sizes, shapes, frames, colors. They were all centered around a giant cross with Jesus carved in full, three-dimensional color. His head hung down, the blood from the crown of thorns rendered in bright red rivulets on either side of his pained face.

This was definitely not a family that would consider divorce as an option.

“Is Elijah—” Carol’s voice was timid. “Is he okay? I called up to the station, but they said he couldn’t talk to me, and he didn’t answer his cell phone.”

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