“That blue collection box we passed on the way from the library. No cameras on it. No fingerprints that can be used,” Bible said. “They were mailed over the holiday, one on Friday, then another on Saturday, then Sunday and Monday. They were all addressed to the judge’s chambers at the federal courthouse in Baltimore, same building as the one you were in today. We all got a kind’a family up there between the federal judges and the Marshals. I’ve known the judge and her people for years. We look out for each other.”
Andrea tried another question, “Was the rat sent to the courthouse?”
“Nope,” Bible said. “The box with the rat didn’t get mailed. It was left in the judge’s mailbox at her city house, which is located in Guilford, an up-your-butt part of North Baltimore, a dog’s leg from Johns Hopkins and Loyola.”
“Where the judge’s husband, Dr. Franklin Vaughn, taught economics before he retired last year.”
Bible clicked his tongue, she guessed as a reward for Andrea doing her homework.
She asked, “Are they the same people? The death-threat-letter mailer and the rat-dropper?”
“Could be the same guy, could be it’s two guys.”
“Guys?”
“In my experience, if a woman’s gonna kill you, she’ll do it to your face.”
Andrea had found that to be true in her experience, too. “Are you reading anything into the dead rat? Like, that sounds like a Godfather kind of thing—you ratted us out.”
“I appreciate your taste in movies, but no. The Baltimore Crew is dead and gone and the judge don’t really work them cases anymore,” Bible said. “Now, so, you’re probably wondering why we ain’t in Baltimore right now. Lucky for us, it’s summer recess, otherwise the judge would still be going to work every day at the courthouse. No way she’d come running back home because of one dead rat. The lady likes a schedule. She’s been spending the summer months at the Longbill house since her confirmation. Her car drove them here this morning at the crack of dawn, which is exactly what the judge has been doing for two hundred years. What you gotta keep at the front of your mind at all times is, the judge is gonna do what the judge is gonna do.”
Andrea caught his meaning, not least of all because of the googling she’d already done. Every photograph of Judge Esther Vaughn showed a stern-looking woman staring down the camera, invariably wearing a beautifully colored scarf to accent a severe black suit. The descriptions in the articles were a stroll down #MeToo lane. Several articles from the nineties notably called Judge Vaughn a difficult woman. The early aughts saw her described in a far more squishy complicated woman. More recently, all the strong I adjectives were invoked: imposing, imperious, intelligent, and, most commonly, indomitable.
“Anyways, that’s your nutshell on the judge,” Bible said. “Don’t really matter at the end of the day who mailed what and why, whether or not it was the same person or multiple persons. The judicial inspector back at Baltimore HQ is tracking that rabbit. We’re not the investigators. Our only job is to keep the judge safe.”
Andrea felt her throat tighten. Everything was starting to feel very life and death, not least of all because she had a loaded gun on her hip. Would a crazy person really come after the judge? Did Andrea have the nerve to stand between an eighty-one-year-old woman and a potential assassin?
Bible said, “You and me, we drew the short straw since we got here later in the day. We’re on the night shift, keeping our peepers wide open in case the rat-mailer or the death-threatener shows up. Got it?”
Andrea could only focus on one part: night shift. She had been longing for a bed in a quiet hotel room since her flight had been delayed.
“First stop.” Bible pointed to a squat, yellow brick building a few yards away. “We’re gonna meet the chief of police. Marshal rule number twelve. As soon as you can, you gotta let the locals know we’re here, make ’em feel appreciated. I wanted to wait for you before I made the introductions. You got any questions so far?”
She shook her head as they climbed the stairs. “Nope.”
“Good deal. Here we go.”
Andrea caught the door with the edge of her duffel bag before it closed behind him. She shifted her backpack over her shoulder and walked inside. The lobby was the size of a prison cell. Immediately, she smelled Lysol competing with the pungent odor of urine cake. The toilets were directly across from the front desk. Less than ten feet of space separated them.
“Good evening, officer.” Bible gave a quick salute to the very tired-looking sergeant manning the desk. “I’m Deputy Bible. This is my partner, Deputy Oliver. We’re here to see the big boss.”
Andrea heard a groan come out of the cop’s mouth as he picked up the phone. She directed her attention to the wall around the toilets, which was plastered with photographs documenting the members of the Longbill Beach Police Department going back to 1935. Andrea followed the dates with her eyes, crossing from one side of the bathroom doors to the other until she found what she was looking for.
The 1980 photo showed a Lego-jawed police chief with three men on either side of him. The caption read: BOB STILTON AND THE SQUAD.
Her heart did an odd flip.
Chief Bob Stilton had been the investigating officer on the Emily Vaughn case.
Andrea felt her throat work again. The chief was exactly how she’d pictured him—beady-eyed and mean-looking with the bulbous red nose of an alcoholic. In every photo, his fists were clenched so tight that his hands were bleached of color. Judging by his reports, he wasn’t a fan of either grammar or punctuation. Or laying out his deductive reasoning. The statements and supporting documents and diagrams were all in order, but the man had excluded any field notes that might reveal his thoughts on the shape of the case. The only indication that Clayton Morrow was even a suspect appeared in two lines of text the chief had scribbled out at the bottom of the last page in the file, which happened to be the autopsy report—
MORROW KILLED HER. NO PROOF.
Andrea moved to the next photo on the wall, which was dated five years later. Then another five years passed to the next photo. She kept going down the line. The force grew from six to twelve men. Chief Bob Stilton became more bent with age until the 2010 photo showed a younger, less round version taking center stage:
CHIEF JACK STILTON AND THE SQUAD.
Andrea knew that name, too. Jack Stilton was the son of Chief Bob Stilton. Back in 1982, the younger Stilton had provided a witness statement in cramped, block handwriting, relaying the last time he’d seen Emily Vaughn alive.