“It’s hella risky, right?” Drake asked. “I know Ms. Vickery was retired, but she was a police officer. Chief Wilder used to park outside her house until a few weeks ago. You don’t keep seeing a girl like that unless you love her.”
Emmy had to clear her throat to speak. “Tell me what you saw.”
“I never even thought about it until Ms. Vickery asked me if I’d ever seen him hanging around the house. I didn’t wanna get in the middle of it, but she was really upset. Like, she was already crying before she got out of her car.”
Emmy kept her mouth shut so that Drake would keep talking.
“She said she was gone a lot, and her husband was alwaysworking, and she was worried ’cause she knew Mandy was skipping school at lunchtime and meeting some guy at the house, but she wasn’t sure who the guy was. And I told her she could set up a camera or something and she said that cameras could be hacked, and she didn’t trust them. She just wanted confirmation that he was here.”
Emmy didn’t push for a name. “When did this conversation take place?”
“Two days ago.”
“Thursday?”
“Yeah, I was just getting home from work, so around five, maybe. She came to the house to talk to me ’cause she knows I go home for lunch and she thought maybe I’d seen something.”
“Did Ms. Vickery tell you why she was worried?”
He looked away. His fear started pulling at his conscience again. “She said that Mandy had bruises on her back like somebody had beaten her. That Mandy wouldn’t tell how they got there. That maybe she had a boyfriend who was hurting her.”
“Allison didn’t think it was Bill?”
“No, ma’am. She straight up said she knew it was somebody else. That somebody had already warned her, but she needed to know how long it’d been going on.” Drake’s shrug was more like a jerk of his shoulder. “I wasn’t gonna say anything at first, but then Ms. Vickery told me about the bruises and—I mean that’s pretty bad, right? Getting all bruised up like that. Mandy’s just a kid.”
Emmy tasted bile again. “Drake, what did you tell Ms. Vickery?”
“That I’d seen the guy there a couple of times, but …” Drake’s voice trailed off. His cheeks flushed. He looked over her shoulder, then at the ground. “I’m not weird, okay? I don’t drive fast. I go the speed limit. And if something catches my eye and I see it, it’s natural to slow down, right? Human nature.”
“What did you see?”
He kept his gaze on the ground. “About two weeks ago, the garage doors were up, and I glanced over, and he had Mandy backed up against the storage shelves and he was touching her face, like, real intimate. Stroking her cheek, you know? And shewasn’t trying to stop him or push him away. Her hands were on his shoulders. She was looking up at him like she wanted him to kiss her. She was obviously into it.”
Emmy ignored the voyeurism. Her focus was on the brazenness it took for a nearly thirty-year-old man to intimately touch the face of a sixteen-year-old cop’s daughter in broad daylight. “That was the first time you saw him with Mandy at the house, about two weeks ago?”
Drake nodded. “The last time I saw them was three days ago. He was on the porch and Mandy was standing at the front door. They were super close, like close enough to kiss. And I figured they were making out again, you know, like about to go upstairs. But he pushed her back inside the house. And I didn’t think anything else about it until Ms. Vickery asked me about what was going on, and then I thought wow, he didn’t push her. He shoved her. Really hard. Like, she stumbled backward, and I saw her start to fall before he slammed the door behind him. So maybe none of it was, like, consensual. Maybe Mandy was scared of him.”
Emmy tried to keep the image out of her mind. “How many times total did you see him at the house over the last two weeks?”
“That’s what Ms. Vickery wanted to know. Maybe three times he was with Mandy? Usually during lunchtime, but once I had to take my mom home from work early ’cause her stomach was upset and we drove by, and I saw him through the front window on the far side of the house. Looked like he was alone.”
Emmy gestured toward the house. “The left side, where the dining room is?”
“Maybe?”
“And you told Ms. Vickery that, too?”
“Yeah.” He took the vape pen out of his pocket, nervously twisted it back and forth between his fingers. “She tried to be cool with me, but I could tell she was pissed off and scared at the same time. She got in her car and headed toward the inter-state. Laid down some rubber. Left tire marks in our driveway. You can still see ’em.”
“And you’re sure you had this conversation with Ms. Vickery two days ago?”
“A hundred percent. Thursday was my girlfriend’s birthday. I was about to jump in the shower when Ms. Vickery rang the doorbell.” Drake stopped twisting the pen. “There’s other people who know what she did next. Like, witnesses, but I doubt they’ll talk to you.”
Emmy felt her brain working the puzzle. She could guess why Drake was so scared to say the man’s name. “What did Ms. Vickery do next?”
“I mean, it’s what I heard she did.” He shrugged again, but there was no uncertainty in his tone. “Drove over to the motel. Kicked down his door. Pulled out her gun. Stuck it in his face. Said she’d kill him if he didn’t leave her baby alone.”
Emmy felt all the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand to attention. She knew the answer, but she had to ask, “What motel was this?”
