Page 20 of The Secrets We Hide
“She dropped it two months ago, and it was for workplace retaliation,” Emmy said. “Who else?”
Cole went silent for a beat. He was trying to put together thepieces. “If you take out Bill and Reggie and all the other stuff we know, that leaves a retired cop and her daughter both being shot in broad daylight in the middle of a residential area on a Saturday afternoon.”
Emmy placed Hannah’s Nikes on top of her dirty clothes inside the duffel. She pushed open the door, reached out for Cole’s hand so she could jump down without jarring her tailbone.
“Keep going.”
“That’s a really brazen way to kill somebody. It’s like they’re trying to send a message.”
Emmy traded the duffel for her utility belt. “Who’sthey?”
“Allison used to run the narcotics squad. Could be she put away a trafficker who bided his time to get revenge.”
Emmy checked her Glock to make sure Jude had left a round chambered. “I imagine Reggie’s thinking the same thing. He’s probably got his people combing through her cases right now.”
“But Reggie had a thing with Allison, right?”
Emmy nodded.
“So if Reggie’s actually the shooter—”
“Then he’s going to find someone else to pin it on.”
Emmy reached into the trunk of her car and fished out her First Aid kit. She was dry swallowing some Tylenol when three figures in full Tyvek suits came out of the house.
She recognized Sherry before the masks and hoods came off. She was shorter and slimmer than the men who flanked her. She had to tilt up her head to talk to them. Emmy knew what that was like. Sometimes she got home at the end of a shift and felt like every nerve in her neck was pinched.
Sherry unzipped the suit as she walked down the porch stairs.
Emmy asked, “You find anything?”
“Not much,” Shery said. “Just the murder weapon and three hundred grand in cash.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Emmy felt sweat racing down her back. The hooded Tyvek coveralls were so swelteringly claustrophobic that she longed to rip them off and run over to Coach Bell’s front yard to hose herself down again.
Instead, she nodded to Sherry that she was ready to go.
They walked in tandem across the yard, their suits crinkling as they climbed the porch steps. A numbered, yellow marker had been placed by the broken glass from the side panel by the door. Emmy steadied herself on the railing while she slipped a pair of booties over her boots.
“What do you think?” Sherry kept her voice low. “Was it Bill?”
“Don’t know,” Emmy admitted. “You’d have to be a psychopath to beat a woman the way he beat Allison and still show up smiling at church every Sunday. Faking some tears would be easy.”
“And Reggie?”
Emmy walked across the porch, picked her way past the shattered glass. A fine aerosol of blood spiderwebbed across the pieces. She pushed open the door. The deadbolt stuck out like a tongue as it pulled away from the splintered jam. She had breached the house under two hours ago, but it was a very different experience without the fear of being gunned down.
All the overhead lights and lamps had been turned on. Everything was on full display. To her right, she could see a chocolate-colored leather couch and a matching loveseat in the formal living room, both of which looked like they’d never beenused. Two more yellow markers had been placed around the oak coffee table, calling attention to what looked like large globs of blood. The one on the right glistened under the light from a bronze floor lamp.
She told Sherry, “Mandy’s wound was shallow. The bullet should be in the house.”
“We’ll find it.”
Emmy turned to her left. The dining room was even messier than she’d remembered. She couldn’t really examine anything until Sherry had processed the room, but it was easy to see that the killer had been looking for something. Papers were scattered everywhere—invoices, receipts, file folders, photographs. Mandy’s backpack had been emptied. A box of colored chalk had fallen onto the floor beside the broken laptop. There was no telling how long it would take for the GBI’s tech team to break into the hard drive. Everything would take weeks or months to come back—blood analysis, DNA, fingerprints.
She asked, “You locate the birth certificates? A will?”
