Jude should’ve been used to surprises about her parents by now. “What did Dad say?”
“He said her hair had always been beautiful.” Emmy shrugged. “I told you before, Dad was really big into forgiveness before he died. He kept telling me that you have to learn from your mistakes. That mistakes can give you a reason to forgive.”
Jude supposed during her parents’ nearly seventy years of marriage, there were a lot of transgressions each of them had forgiven. Why that compassion had never extended to their only daughter was a question she would grapple with for the rest of her life.
She asked Emmy, “What was that phone call you took on the porch?”
“Bryce Cody, Mandy’s surgeon. He told me there was tattooing around Mandy’s head wound.”
“Poor girl.” Jude could only imagine the fear. “What else did he say?”
“Mandy’s X-rays showed hairline fractures that were consistent with abuse. He couldn’t give me a timeline. That’s not his area of expertise. But he said it’s months, not years.”
“Two months?” Jude asked.
“He thinks so. Which means we’re back to our UnSub. Or Woody.” Emmy shrugged, but she was clearly conflicted. “Cole tracked down the camera you told him to look for.”
Jude caught a slight change in her voice when she’d said Cole’s name. “Everything okay?”
“I’m perfect,” Emmy said. “Bill pawned Allison’s camera right after the murder. He used a driver’s license in the name of Michael Cooper.”
“Cooper.” Jude recognized the name. “Allison got fake IDs for her, Mandy and Bill. They were all leaving town together?”
“And Bill doesn’t have an alibi for the shooting.”
Jude said, “That’s not enough to arrest him, but it’s a good start.”
“You’re forgetting about the money,” Emmy said. “Why isBill pawning Allison’s camera when there’s three hundred grand in the attic?”
It was a good question. Every time something pointed at Bill, another detail pointed in the other direction. “Bill was part of the plan to leave and start over, but he didn’t know about the money that would make all of that possible?”
“Who the hell knows?” Emmy shrugged, but it was clearly wearing on her. “I looked up Neil Delano’s inmate record. He served two years on a life sentence before he died.”
Jude needed a second to change direction. “How old was he when he died?”
“Twenty-eight,” Emmy said. “I put in a request for the autopsy report, but his record says he died of third-degree burns to the face, neck and hands.”
“Sounds like Prison Napalm.” Jude couldn’t suppress another shudder. She’d seen the aftermath of an attack firsthand. “Inmates cook it on hot plates in their cells. Heated sugar water. Sometimes they add oil. The sugar raises the boiling point, so the temperature can brush up against two hundred fifty degrees. The oil increases the viscosity. The sugar makes it sticky. When somebody throws it at your face, it sticks like glue. The weight makes the flesh peel from the bone. It gets into your nose and throat, burns through your windpipe. The burns on his hands were defensive. He was trying to wipe it off.”
“Jesus.”
“Prison is a tough place, but it can be torture for gay men.” Jude looked out the window. They were close to downtown. “Is it odd to you that a lot of the same names keep coming up?”
“North Falls has fewer than a thousand people. Half of them are named Clifton. The rest are Colemans, Garrisons, Wilders, Gilchrists—”
“I get it.” Jude had not missed the claustrophobia of small-town life, which could be wonderful if you were born into the right family and isolating if you were not. “Let’s spitball about the trial. Millie said the verdict was a foregone conclusion.”
“It’s Ruel I’m curious about. That’s odd—drowning in your waders.”
Jude had spent her childhood on the Flint. She knew howunpredictable the current could be. “When the Albany dam closes, the river reverses. The water can rise anywhere from two to three feet in a matter of seconds.”
“Yeah, I grew up here, too. They post the times for the closings. Ruel was a sportsman. He’d know when the river was going to reverse. The weird thing is, he was an angler, not a fly fisherman. I don’t know why he’d get in the water unless his boat got caught on something.”
“He was wearing waders while he fished from his boat?”
“It’s not smart, but it’s not unheard-of.” Emmy took out her phone, her eyes darting between the screen and the road. “I’ll get Cole to ask Verona PD if they still have a record of the death. I remember Ruel drowned on their part of the river. Dad went with old Chief Stevens to give Cynthia the death notification. Taybee was still in college. Father Nate drove over to Athens to pick her up.”
“I’m sure Taybee has copies of everything.”
