Page 112 of The Secrets We Hide
“Jesus H. Christ,” Dervla mumbled. “Is this about Hannah? You want me to vote to hire her back? All you had to do was ask.”
Emmy wondered if anybody cared beyond saving their own asses anymore. “This is about a mother and her child who were shot one street over from where you live.”
Like Reggie, Dervla’s breathing was heavy through the phone. “Yeah, Reggie was here for about an hour. Then I drove him back to his car at the gas station. Not like he could park out front on a Saturday afternoon when everybody was home. Look, I told all this to Brett. He said that he would use his discretion.”
Brett’s discretion had wasted Emmy’s valuable time.
Dervla said, “Be careful what you’re doing, Emmy. There’s a lot of women in this town just having some fun, and that’s all it is, and we don’t need your judgment.”
“Okay.”
She ended the call. Reggie had slithered to the bottom of her list. He was brazen, but only an idiot would put himself one street over from a murder he’d planned.
Emmy tapped her laptop to wake it. Entered a search on the Georgia Campaign Finance Commission’s website to look up all the donors to Bernadette Grayson’s mayoral campaign. She hit download on the spreadsheet. She was watching the rainbow wheel spin when Julian Vanderbilt knocked on her open door.
He said, “Check your email. We tracked down the names you gave us. Not much to tell. Three of them are dead. Only one has a record.”
“Thanks. Take over for Brett. He was looking at old cases that overlap with Allison Vickery. They should be on his desk.”
“Yes, boss.”
Emmy clicked open the email. Waited for the file to download. A notification banner slipped into the corner of her screen. She had forgotten that Valerie Wilkinson had agreed to cometo the station with Talia at six. She needed somewhere comfortable to talk to the girl. There were only two hard, wooden chairs in her office and the interrogation room was meant to be intimidating.
“Julian?” She waited for him to turn back around. “Get Levi to help you tote the couch in here from the lobby. Put it against the wall.”
“Yes, boss.”
She was reaching for her laptop when it occurred to her that he had called herboss. Emmy didn’t have time to consider what had changed. She banished the hateful thought that Jude’s advice to delegate was the reason.
Emmy opened the background checks. She hadn’t told Gregg and Julian where the list had come from or why she’d wanted information on seven random strangers. Details on criminals were usually easy to find, but only if they got caught. The jurors on the Neil Delano trial had been living their best lives since they’d sentenced a likely innocent man to prison. Julian and Gregg had found their profiles on Facebook and Instagram, their names in local news stories and obituaries.
Cal Nader’s tractor repair business was the largest employer in Bristle Top, Montana.
Guy Harrison had been a celebrated beach bum in Key West whose obituary described him as always the first to buy a stranger a drink.
Victoria Daniels was currently a successful art dealer in Paris.
Geraldine Hopkins had been an unmarried quilt enthusiast whose estate had left half a million dollars to the North Falls Community Library.
Chuck Douglas had owned an appliance repair shop in Atlanta before being convicted of vehicular manslaughter and sent to Macon State Prison.
Mitch Bellingham had retired as an electrical engineer at the auto parts factory after punching the clock for thirty years.
Emmy silently added back a name she’d left off the search.
Bernadette Grayson was the mayor of Clayville, and a partner in one of the largest legal firms in the state. Twenty-four yearsago, she’d been waitressing at the truck stop off the interstate when she’d been selected as a juror. Then Neil Delano had gone to prison, and suddenly, she’d had enough money to go to college, then law school.
Bernadette’s success story was not vastly different from that of her fellow jurors. Almost every single person on the list had seen their lives demonstrably change for the better after the trial.
The only outlier was Mitch Bellingham. Emmy read his obituary from theNorth Falls Register. Mitch had enlisted at seventeen, then served two tours of duty in Vietnam before returning to Verona to start a family. His wife had died fifteen years ago. His son was a schoolteacher in Alabama. He had two grandchildren, one at Auburn, another at Alabama. He’d died from pancreatic cancer last week at the Azalea Place Assisted Living and Nursing Home.
Emmy was familiar with the high-rise facility on the outskirts of North Falls. Myrna had died in the memory care center, a name that managed to be both condescending and misleading, because the care was hit-or-miss and all the memories were nightmares.
According to the obituary, Mitch Bellingham had spent the last five years of his life in the general wing before moving into hospice. Emmy knew the facility pressured families to clean out rooms as quickly as possible. Her stomach clenched at the thought of packing away Myrna’s photographs and various gifts she’d gotten from students over the years. Her mother’s body hadn’t even gone cold yet, but Emmy had been nearly frantic to clear things out that night so that she didn’t have to ever go back again.
She shook her head, because her brain didn’t need to go there. She swiped the keypad to open a search for the nursing home’s phone number.
The cursor didn’t move.
