“Emmer grew up in a two-parent household with three sisters—one younger and two older than him—and two brothers, both older than him. He’s originally from Virginia. Parents and three of his siblings still live there. He’s never been married but that’s the least interesting reason I called.”
“We’re all ears,” said Gretchen.
Josie’s fingers froze as she spotted a text exchange that made fireworks go off in her brain.
“I’ve been digging around,” said Annette. “Seeing as you’ve got no probable cause to get into Emmer’s devices, and he won’tlet you check them to verify his alibis for the nights in question. Very suspicious, that.”
The exchange had been just before their big date at Sandman’s.
Dani wrote:Wear the blue shirt.
Turner:I’ve got lots of blue shirts.
Dani:The one I bought you for Christmas the year Cass’s Elf on a Shelf was tragically killed in a scooter accident.
Turner:That elf had it coming.
Dani: Are you suggesting it was foul play?
Turner:That case is closed. What if I can’t find the shirt? That was a long time ago.
Dani:Are you or are you not at this very moment wearing the shoes you had on when you graduated from the academy?
Turner:Not answering that without a lawyer present.
“What did you dig up without probable cause?” Gretchen asked Annette.
“Let’s just say I followed Professor Library Card around a bit, and guess what? He’s got himself another little co-ed who hasn’t realized that he’s a sex crime waiting to happen.”
“Shocker,” Josie said as she kept reading. The texts had the tone of the kind of hard-won intimacy that came with a long and sometimes grueling shared history. One in which you could laugh now about things that had been completely confoundingand exhausting when they happened. One in which even many of the most trying times could be romanticized once you’d successfully survived them.
“Well, Emmer’s been sneaking around with this girl from a class he taught this past spring called—get this—Victorian Sexualities.”
“That’s a thing?” Gretchen asked.
“Exactly what I said,” Annette replied.
Josie read the rest as she waited for Annette to go on even though she knew exactly where this story was going.
Dani:You’re lucky I like keeping old things around.
Turner:I prefer vintage.
Dani: Well, I can’t wait to spend the night with my vintage husband.
Turner:I miss us.
Dani:I know.
The last bit was flirty and kind of funny—sweet—except for the note of wistfulness in Turner’s very un-Turner-like confession.I miss us.
Dani’s response was the reason Josie’s brain had flagged this exchange, just waiting for the right time to nag her about it. She hadn’t said:Me, too. That was the response Josie would have expected, especially for a woman who went from handing Turner divorce papers to upending her life and their daughter’s to move to a new city hours away from her only family so they could try to salvage their marriage. Again.
Instead, she’d said,I know. There were no tone indicators in text messages, unless you added emojis, but there was something in that response that spoke of sadness and the inevitable end of something. Behind that “I know” was a woman humoring a man she knew she was going to disappoint, and she had, getting into an argument with him before they even left the restaurant.
Annette’s voice pulled Josie from her thoughts. “I talked to this girl—informally—after I accidentally ran into her at the little coffee shop near her apartment. After I figured out she goes there every morning. She told me she’s stayed over at Emmer’s house almost every night for the past two weeks, including the nights the Barnes women were murdered and Dani and Cass were taken.”
“So Emmer is out,” Gretchen said. “He’s got alibis but he didn’t want to give them up because?—”
