Page 23 of The Secrets We Hide
Emmy tried to find logic in the illogical. “The killer is wearing gloves. He doesn’t bring his own gun. He comes in through the back door. He takes Allison’s Glock from where?”
“Probably there.” Sherry indicated the green leather cross-body bag hanging from the back of one of the kitchen bar stools. “You saw the Crown Royal bag in the hallway? Jude told me that’s an old school trick for carrying your gun in your purse. Keeps lint off the firing pin.”
Emmy felt her jaw clench. Jude had apparently been treated to a tour of the crime scene, too. “That means the killer knew where the gun would be.”
“Or he came in looking for a knife and found the gun.”
Emmy didn’t like how convenient that sounded. “Why don’t you think the killer was already here talking to Allison?”
“You mean she got into a fight with Bill, and he grabbed her gun out of her purse, then chased her up the hallway to the front door?”
Emmy figured it could’ve just as easily been Reggie, but she nodded anyway.
“You’ve been on hundreds of domestic violence calls. Do their houses look like this?”
Emmy had to admit she was right. Except for the mess in the dining room, there were no overturned chairs or tables, no broken glasses or holes in the wall where someone had punched a fist or banged a head. There was also the fact of the black nitrile glove. You didn’t stop in the middle of a violent physical alter-cation to slip on some gloves before you killed somebody in a fit of rage.
Whoever had come here to kill Allison had entered the house and killed Allison.
Still, she said, “I’ll check with Brett to see if anybody in the neighborhood reported seeing Bill’s car this morning.”
“Jude already sent Cole to talk to the woman across the street. She told him that Allison’s Toyota was the only one in thedriveway when the kid in the red Hyundai drove by with his radio up. Shots were fired a few minutes later, so Bill’s car would’ve been parked outside if this was a spur-of-the-moment thing.”
Emmy felt herself starting to bristle over Jude again. She motioned for Sherry to follow her back up the hall. It felt wrong to be tossing around theories in front of Allison’s dead body. “Isn’t there a scenario where Allison took the gun out of her purse when she heard the intruder?”
“She might’ve been off the job, but she was still a cop. If I’m in a situation where I draw my weapon, I’m not the person who’s gonna end up dead on the floor. Especially with my kid in the house.”
That was true enough. “You think Mandy saw it happen?”
“I think after the killer shot Allison, he went into the dining room to search through the paperwork. Mandy could’ve thought he was gone. She walked down the stairs, or she accidentally made a noise, and he chased her upstairs and shot her. My guess is it happened in the main bedroom since that’s how she accessed the attic. She couldn’t have gone much farther with that kind of injury. Poor lamb must’ve been terrified.”
Emmy looked out the windows at the front yard, trying to keep the image of a scared sixteen-year-old girl out of her mind. “Where’d you find Allison’s Glock?”
“Under her bed upstairs. Shooter probably ditched it before he escaped. Jude says that could point to somebody who came here with a plan. He wore gloves. Left the murder weapon behind. Made sure nothing could be traced back to him. Didn’t hesitate when he realized Mandy was here.”
Emmy ignored the Jude part this time. She was more interested in why everything felt so off. “You saw the glove on the flat roof?”
“Jude said that could indicate the scene was staged.”
Emmy’s jaw started to ache. It was déjà vu going in the wrong direction. “She say anything else?”
“That the shooter could’ve broken the glass in the window and tossed the glove onto the roof to give himself a head start. Jude was blacked out in the hallway after the bullet grazed hertemple. He probably thought she was dead. Then he heard you come running up the back stairs. He escaped down the front stairs, ran down the hall and exited through the back door. The glove on the roof sent your guys into the woods and gave him time to bolster his alibi.”
At the baseball park.
Or the Clayville police station.
Or a drug trafficker’s stash apartment.
The Dew Drop Inn wasn’t just a haven for prostitutes and cheating couples, nor were illicit sexual encounters the only reason there wasn’t a single CCTV camera on the premises. One of the region’s most prolific drug dealers worked out of room nineteen in the back. The Clayville Police Department had known about the location for years, and for years, they had done absolutely nothing about it.
Then again, neither had Sheriff Gerald Clifton.
“Tell me about the $300,000 in cash.”
“Found it in the attic about a foot away from the access panel in the closet. Three bricks of hundred-dollar bills inside a sealed, blue plastic bin with a red top. I’ve got my guy recording the serial numbers on the bills so we can file a trace request with Treasury. We should have the name of the bank Allison made the withdrawals from by the end of next week. Looks like she got them in batches of $9,900 each. Jude said—”
Emmy didn’t need to hear what Jude said. The Bank Secrecy Act required financial institutions to report any withdrawal over $10,000 to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which was under the umbrella of the US Treasury Department. Allison was keeping the withdrawals below the threshold so a report wouldn’t be filed. Of course, structuring withdrawals to avoid reporting was also illegal, but it usually took a long time for FinCEN to put that together.
