Page 99 of We Are All Guilty Here

Jude asked, “Reggie, when’s the last time you saw your niece?”

“Christmas.” He rubbed his wrists. “I had to get permission from my parole officer. I was still on the ankle monitor. They only took it off two weeks ago. You can check with him, right? I called him before I left to get here. All this is on the record.”

“Does your PO know how old your wife was when she got pregnant?”

“Shit.” He kept rubbing his wrists. “She came on to me, okay? She was working at the McDonald’s down the road. We just hit it off, is all. Her parents gave us permission to get married. You can ask them.”

“Cole.” Emmy’s voice was shaky. “Walk Reggie to the house. Get the parole officer’s number. I’ll run down the rest.”

Cole dutifully followed orders as the two men headed up thesidewalk. Jude hung back. Emmy looked as if she wanted to say something, but changed her mind. She took her phone out of her pocket. She looked at the screen for a moment, then she dialed a number.

Jude didn’t listen to the call. She studied Emmy’s face. The tension in her brow. The exhaustion in her eyes. Being at the center of an investigation into a child abduction could take years off your life. Add to that watching Myrna slowly fade away, seeing Gerald shot to death, then having to deal with a virtual stranger who knew everything about your family but nothing about you. Any one of those things could break even the strongest person. Jude didn’t know how she was still standing.

“Okay.” Emmy ended the call. “That was Virgil. He’ll track down the WaWa footage. Damien got the information from Elijah’s CashApp. The landscaper is named Antonio Ramirez. He lives in Phoenix with his family. The black truck is registered in Arizona in his name. Seth sent some agents to knock on his door, but there’s no way Elijah saw Antonio in the street yesterday morning.”

“Why is Virgil reporting that information to you and not Seth Alexander?”

Emmy held out her hands in an open shrug. “Does it matter?”

“Yes, it matters. There’s a chain of command. You’re not an afterthought in this investigation. You’re the acting sheriff. Seth should report directly to you, not through a retired deputy.”

“Virgil was a cop for longer than I’ve been alive. He knows what he’s doing.”

“Emmy.” Jude tempered her tone. “I can’t imagine what the last twenty-four hours has been like, but you need to listen to me if you want your job when this is over. You’re all over the place. You need to rein yourself in. You’re going to miss the important details.”

“You wanna give me a detail I’m missing?” Emmy asked. “You told Dad you wouldn’t step foot back in town until he was dead. Is this your victory lap?”

“That’s a conversation for another day. Right now, you need to put your head down and do your job. You can find new ways to hurt me later.”

“You think I’m the one hurting you?” Emmy scoffed. “Take a close look in the mirror, lady. That’s my blood in your teeth.”

Jude looked up at the sky. She took a deep breath before diving back in. “You’re exhausted. You’ve been through a terrible trauma. It’s understandable that you need to take it out on somebody.”

“Stop psychoanalyzing me. I can’t fight with you anymore.”

“I’m not asking you to fightme. I’m asking you to fightthem.”

“Mom.” Cole was clearly used to inserting himself in between two warring adults. He was trotting up the walkway to distract them both. “I talked with Reggie’s parole officer. His story lines up. All of it, even Shelley’s parents giving permission for them to get married.”

“Jesus.” Emmy was looking down at a text on her phone. “It’s Peggy. She wants to see the picture.”

“What picture?” Cole asked.

Emmy shook her head again, but whether it was to tell him not to ask, or to acknowledge how much worse the situation had just gotten was beyond Jude’s powers of deduction.

Jude reached into her purse for the envelope. “We should send her both. There’s an off chance she might recognize the other one.”

“Fine.” Emmy’s voice was monotone. She told Cole, “Elijah had pornographic photos on his phone. Close-ups of a man and a woman’s genitals. He was probably passing off the man’s photo as his own. I thought Peggy might recognize the woman if she’s one of her waxing clients.”

“Oh,” Cole said. “Okay.”

Jude assumed someone of Cole’s generation had seen worse than anything Elijah Walker had on his phone. She held up the woman’s photo so that Emmy could take a picture. Then she held up the man’s, saying, “There’s more than one mole that might identify him.”

Cole’s eyes went wide, but to his credit, he kept a straight face.

“Shit.” Emmy hissed out a long stream of air between her teeth as she sent the texts. She asked Jude, “Why didn’t you press Carol about Elijah’s affair?”

“Do you think she would’ve told me the truth?”

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