Andrea tried to think how she’d feel if the entire course of her adult life had been changed by one person. Actually, it didn’t take a lot of imagination.
She told Bible, “I am assuming there’s no proof, otherwise Ricky would be arrested. Has anyone interviewed her?”
“You don’t go straight on at a rattlesnake, you grab that sucker by the tail.”
Andrea had heard the phrase before. The best way to break a suspect was to surprise them with information they didn’t know you had. That was where the inspector with Judicial Security probably came in. Andrea and Bible were babysitters, not investigators.
She asked, “Does the judge know Ricky wrote the threats?”
“Indeed she does,” Bible said. “But it’s a theory, not a provable fact. The Marshals are keeping the Vaughns safe on the outside chance I’m wrong. And I know this is hard to believe, partner, but I have been wrong before.”
“Wait a minute.” Andrea saw a gaping hole in his explanation. “You told me last night that the profile for a person who threatens a judge is a suicidal middle-aged white male.”
“That’s true, which would make Ricky an outlier. Marshal rule number—”
“Oh, come on.”
“All right, you got me.” His shit-eating grin reminded her of Mike. “I could’ve told you Ricky was on my radar straight outta the gate. I was screwing with you, partner. You’re hiding shit. I’m hiding shit. We gotta build trust, right? We good?”
Andrea forced her molars to unclench. “We’re good.”
“Fantastic,” Bible said. “So, here’s something else you should know: Ricky’s only an outlier because she’s female. That I know about, she’s attempted suicide at least three times over the years.”
Andrea felt her lips part in surprise.
“First time was a single-car accident when she was in her twenties. Second time she OD’d in the middle of the street on her fortieth birthday. Pretty spectacular—she stopped traffic. Third time was in custody at the jail. Tried to hang herself in Stilton’s holding cell after Dean had her arrested on the restraining order.”
“You asked Stilton about suicides and he left Ricky completely out.”
“Yep, which means he was lying,” Bible said. “The first two I could see slipping his mind, but the last one was four years ago and happened inside his own shop.”
Andrea had to take a moment to think all of this through. There was a glaringly obvious reason that Stilton was trying to keep away two US Marshals. “You laughed when I told you Ricky said Jack Stilton killed Emily.”
“Not gonna say Jack ain’t on my list, but there are much better suspects.”
Clayton Morrow. Jack Stilton. Bernard Fontaine. Eric Blakely. Dean Wexler.
“This is a crazy question,” Andrea warned. “But could the lost trust fund money be a motive for the attack? Obviously, Ricky is still pissed off about it. I can see where both she and her brother would blame the judge for ruining their lives.”
“Didn’t witnesses place Eric in the gym during the time of the attack?” Bible asked. “And nobody saw Ricky there.”
“But witnesses aren’t always reliable. Everybody in Emily’s friend group has some kind of alibi. They can’t all be telling the truth.”
“That’s true. And people generally only say what they think you want to hear.”
“I think I’ve answered my own crazy question,” Andrea said. “This wasn’t about the judge and the trust fund. Whoever killed Emily wasn’t mad at Esther. They were mad at Emily. Her face was beaten to a pulp. Two vertebrae in her neck were broken. She was stripped out of her clothes. She was thrown away in a Dumpster. Why do all that instead of dropping her in the ocean, which was twenty yards away?”
“You do all that because it’s personal,” Bible said. “And you’re not really good at murdering.”
She said, “So, that brings us back to the motive everyone assumed from the beginning: Emily was going to publicly name the father and the father shut her up.”
“Right.” Bible had clearly reached the same conclusion as Andrea. “Forty years ago, Wexler took himself out of the running. Claimed he was sterile.”
Andrea knew this from her reading. “Bob Stilton took him at his word, but there was no medical record or doctor’s affidavit in the—”
“File?”
Bible was grinning again. He’d gotten her to admit that she had read the Emily Vaughn’s investigation file.
He said, “You got anything else to tell me?”
Andrea had one more detail, but it hadn’t come from Emily’s file. “Dean Wexler told me that Emily was drugged at a party. That’s how she got pregnant. He told me she never found who did it.”
Bible didn’t seem surprised by the news, but he had talked to more people than Andrea had, including Emily’s own mother.
He said, “I’m guessing you’ve got a theory on what happened that night?”
Andrea guessed she did. “Emily Vaughn was attacked sometime between six to six thirty on April 17, 1982. The sun set around seven forty-two.”
Bible started nodding, like this was what he wanted.
“The violence of the attack points to a known assailant. The weapon was already in the alley, so it was probably spur-of-the-moment. Some black threads were found on the pallet, but all of the boys were wearing black that night. After the attack, the assailant likely hid Emily behind a pile of trash bags and waited until it was dark to move her.”
“What else?”
“The witness statements. Stilton said he left the prom early and watched TV with his mother. Clay was seen dancing with a cheerleader, but the times are spotty. Nardo’s the same—people saw him, then they didn’t. Ditto with Dean Wexler, who was there as a chaperone. He was seen and then not seen. Eric was at the prom. Witnesses saw him have an argument with Emily moments before the attack. Then they saw him walk away. In his statement, Eric claims he left early and spent the rest of the night watching movies with his sister.”
Andrea had to stop for a breath. She also had a new detail. “At the time, Ricky’s witness statement backed up Eric’s story, but just now at her house, she told me that Clay couldn’t be the killer because she saw him at the prom dancing with a cheerleader all night.”
“Sandwich the before and after.” Bible’s poker face had cracked. “Take yourself back to Ricky’s house. How was she acting when you first got there? What was she like by the time you left? Then drill down to the middle. Was she nervous? Was she looking you in the eye or—”
“She looked exhausted when she opened the door. Like she hadn’t slept all night. And then when she returned from the garage, she was manic, and she stayed that way the rest of the time.” Andrea had already guessed the probable explanation. “When I first got there, Ricky knocked back two pills from one of her prescription bottles. I think when she returned from the garage, the drugs had kicked in. She went off script. She accidentally put herself near the crime scene when she clearly wasn’t there. Worse, she exonerated Clay Morrow.”
“Why is that worse?”