Girl, Forgotten (Andrea Oliver 2)

“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.”