Page 89 of The Secrets We Hide
Jude didn’t give her the chance to change her mind. “What’s next?”
Emmy’s head tilted to the side as she looked over Jude’s shoulder. One of her deputies was walking down from the station. Jude recognized the cupcake eater from before.
“Gregg.” Emmy stood up. “What is it?”
“The manager at the Lazy Eight refused to talk to me, but then I remembered that a buddy of mine from high school works hotel security.”
Emmy had clearly not been expecting the initiative, but she nodded for him to continue.
“He told me Bill’s been Mr. Laid-back Easygoing since he checked in. Then Allison Vickery showed up the night before the murder. Sounds like they both got their drink on. Around midnight, guests started calling down to the front desk complaining about a fight. My buddy goes to check it out, and he hears a woman screaming, ‘You took the last good thing from me.’ Like, at the top of her lungs. He said she was shook.”
Emmy glanced back at Jude. “Did he hear anything else?”
“Nah, he knocked on the door. Allison calmed down real quick, didn’t look hurt, said she was fine, begged him not tocall the police. Bill said he’d pay for the damage. There was a bunch of broken lamps, a chair turned over. Nothing my buddy ain’t seen before. He told the guy at the front desk to follow up, made a note in his report, and that was that.”
“You said the manager refused to talk to you?”
Gregg shrugged. “Yeah, kind of a prick.”
“Okay.” Emmy seemed ready to dismiss him, but then she changed her mind. “Take a closer look at the manager. There might be a reason he’s being cagey. I’m getting reports that Bill was paying women for sex. The manager might be facilitating those transactions or looking the other way. Tell him I don’t care. I just wanna know about Bill. We need to pin down his alibi.”
“Damn.” Gregg was clearly impressed. “You got it, boss.”
Emmy waited until he was gone to turn back to Jude. “Am I stupid for following a lead off Reggie?”
“You could subpoena Allison’s medical records to see if Bill really gave her the clap.”
“I could also ask Louise at the Good Dollar if Allison got a script for antibiotics filled.” Emmy’s phone came out of her pocket. She started texting.
Jude should stop being surprised by these small-town workarounds. The shooting had just crossed the twenty-four-hour mark. Absent an abduction or kidnapping, subpoenas took days or even weeks to garner any actionable information. Emmy had her response in seconds.
“Thumbs up from Louise. Allison filled a script for doxycycline. I guess that means Reggie was being honest about something.” Emmy pocketed the phone. “I feel like I’ve got all these threads dangling in front of me, and I don’t know which one to pull first.”
Jude was happy to be back in her role as sounding board. “What are the options?”
“Woody’s at the bottom of the list now. Reggie’s still at the top. So is Bill. Neither one of them is going to talk to me. I don’t have any leads on the UnSub. If the UnSub even exists.”
Jude watched her pace the sidewalk.
“I could talk to Mandy’s teachers, but I feel like they’re notgonna know more than Talia and Skylar. Kids that age are too good at hiding things. And part of me wonders if that’s even the right direction and I’m being a stubborn idiot and I’m not seeing what’s right in front of me.”
“Bill?”
“It’s the first thing you asked about when we were in Allison’s house—is she married? Is she cheating on her boyfriend? You know the statistics better than me. Seventy-five percent of abuse-victim homicides occur when the victim tries to leave. Female victims of abuse are five to six times more likely to be murdered with a gun when a gun is in the house. An intimate partner is guilty of the murder at least forty percent of the time. Forty-five percent of murdered abuse victims have been strangled before. Bill choked Allison so many times I actually texted her a link to a research paper on it. Strangling is so predictive of murder it’s called a Practice Homicide.”
Emmy stopped pacing.
She said, “All of it points to Bill.”
“Statistics are not evidence.”
“I feel like I made a mistake not following Bill to the hospital yesterday and trying to pin him down.”
This was why Jude had told her to delegate, but now wasn’t time for a lecture. “You don’t know if that would’ve worked. Bill doesn’t have to talk to you.”
“The game started eight minutes late at the ballpark. Nobody knows why Bill was late. He had his coaching assistant warm up the kids. Came in right as they were throwing out the first pitch. The hood on his truck was still hot when I got there. I don’t know if Gregg’s gonna get the motel manager to open up, but Bill’s alibi during the shooting feels shaky.”
Jude tried to let her off the hook. “You’re not even halfway through the first forty-eight hours. When you make an arrest and when you’re called on the stand to testify, you need to be able to say you looked at everybody, not just Bill.”
