Page 22 of The Secrets We Hide
Emmy wasn’t happy that Jude had stuck around to talk to Sherry. “You find any shoe impressions?”
“We checked the perimeter. Nothing.”
“Okay.” Emmy looked down the hallway toward the back door. Bill would’ve entered the house through the front or used the garage door that led into the kitchen. Reggie probably would have, too. Unless this was planned from the beginning. “What’s your theory of the shooting?”
“Allison was probably standing about here.” Sherry positioned herself so that she was facing the front door. “I’m thinking she came back inside to finish packing, but she locked the door behind her in case Bill—or whoever—showed up. So, she’s got her back to the hallway. She uses her key to lock the deadbolt. Drops her keys into the bowl. Then she hears someone coming up behind her.”
Emmy conjured the images as Sherry spoke—Allison turning toward the hall, the shadowy figure of a man pointing a gun. The black nitrile gloves must have sent a spike of terror into her heart. Premeditated. Not spur of the moment. Before the killer had entered the house, he’d already thought about covering his tracks.
“So,” Sherry continued. “Allison’s kid’s upstairs. She’s not going down without a fight. She reacts, tries to disarm him. As she’s reaching for the gun, the killer fires. The first bullet takes off the thumb and index finger of her right hand. You can see them over there.”
Emmy looked at the yellow markers near the coffee table in the living room. The glint of light was off Allison’s thumbnail.
“The bullet passes through and breaks the side window panel by the door. The casing is there. We used the metal detector to find the slug in the yard. Before the killer can shoot again, Allison runs into the dining room, exits through the swinging door, and enters the kitchen.”
In her head, Emmy saw Allison use her injured right hand to push open the door. The print had appeared smaller because she was missing her thumb and index finger. She told Sherry, “There’sno way Allison thought she could outrun him. She was looking for a weapon to defend herself.”
“Right.” Allison hadn’t been a stranger to sudden violence. Her body had been trained to react by years of abuse. “But instead of the killer following her through the swinging door, he goes back the way he came.”
Emmy trailed Sherry down the hallway, tracing the shooter’s possible path to the kitchen.
The narrative paused for a moment. They both stood in respectful silence.
Allison’s body was still blocking the swinging door. She was on her back, head propped at an awkward angle against the base of a cabinet. Blood soaked the front of her shirt where she’d been shot in the chest. More blood was congealing on the floor. A steak knife was by her right hand. Two white bones jutted out from the bloody stumps where her finger and thumb used to be. Emmy realized that Allison’s wrist had broken when she’d fallen backward. The pool of blood indicated her heart had still been pumping when she’d hit the floor, which meant she’d been aware she was dying as she bled out from the chest wound.
Jude would’ve probably said that a surge of adrenaline had bridged the horror, that Allison’s fight or flight would’ve convinced her this wasn’t the end, but all that Emmy could think about was the fact that Allison had died knowing that Mandy was all alone inside the house. Sherry was right. The woman would not have been thinking about her own life. She would’ve been terrified for the life of her daughter.
“Okay.” Emmy turned to Sherry. “Allison comes through the swinging door. The killer runs down the hallway. Then what?”
“There’s no time for her to go out the garage door. She grabs a steak knife from there.” Sherry pointed to the empty slot in a butcher’s block on the counter. Blood spatter dripped down the side. “She prepares to confront the killer at the swinging door, but then she realizes he’s already in the kitchen. She turns again. He fires twice. The first bullet goes wide, hits to the right of the door.”
Emmy saw the hole the slug had made between the trim and the cabinets.
“The second bullet hits her in the chest. She drops the knife. Falls to the floor. Probably bleeds out within a couple of minutes.”
Two minutes. The cruiser had been parked outside between the third and the fourth gunshot. They’d burned through time gearing up, preparing to breech. Was the last thing Allison heard before the blood left her heart the sound of Emmy coming through the door?
She couldn’t let herself think about that right now.
Emmy looked for the empty shell casings that would’ve been ejected from the side of the gun each time a bullet was fired. They were clustered near the kitchen island. “The killer was standing close when he shot her, roughly ten to twelve feet away. Did he search her?”
“He definitely touched her. Medical examiner will be able to give us more. She’ll be here in about an hour. What are you thinking?”
Emmy was thinking about the bloody handprints on the window sash upstairs. You didn’t get your hands wet standing twelve away. The shooter had touched Allison’s body. “Tell me about the murder weapon.”
“The gun belonged to Allison.”
Emmy felt acid flood into her stomach. It was a terrible thing for a cop to be shot with her own weapon. Even worse, the parts of the crime scene that had made sense suddenly didn’t make sense at all. Only a fool premeditated a murder and forgot to bring a weapon.
“Glock 19,” Sherry said. “Allison registered it seventeen years ago off a private sale. Probably used it as her backup piece. Hard to tell if we’ll be able to get prints off it. There was a lot of blood.”
Emmy realized she had stopped breathing. She parted her lips, drew in some air. “The G-19 holds fifteen rounds in the magazine?”
“Right, but Allison must’ve kept one in the chamber. There’s only four rounds missing from the mag. We found three shell casings down here. Haven’t found the fourth one yet, but when we do, that’ll tell us the location where Mandy was shot. The fifth casing from the bullet that was fired at Jude should be in the main bedroom, but the way the ceiling came down—it’s a lot to comb through.”
“You’re sure about Allison’s movements because of the blood from her hand? She has to get shot in the foyer first to leave the bloody print on the swinging door and on the butcher’s block?”
“Yes, and she’s not getting up after that kill shot to the chest.”
