Emory awoke Monday morning in a panic. I need to check the photos. He threw the blanket off his body and dangled his feet from his bed to look at the alarm clock on his nightstand. It’s 4:15. I slept almost five hours – and without a narcotic sneaked into my system.
The night before, after dropping Jeff off and taking a quick trip to the Regional Forensic Center, Emory came home and crawled right into bed – a rarity for him.
I know I’m missing something. One of the benefits of snapping so many pictures during open cases was that his subconscious mind could catch tiny inconsistencies that his conscious eye would need to keep reviewing to recognize. Those inconsistencies would nag at him until conscious attention was paid to it – a feeling that had hit him as he slept.
Emory walked naked from the bed to the desk, pulled his phone from the charger and opened his most recent photo album. Scrolling past the newer pictures, he slowed down at the ones taken at Rick Roberts’ house. The special agent flipped through pictures of the rooms until he came to the kitchen, wincing at the charred body on the floor. Seeing nothing new, he backtracked to the bedroom, to the dresser. He zoomed in and checked each framed photo on the dresser top one by one. The white-framed picture stuck out from the others, and as he focused on the photo, he did find something of interest.
It was a picture of Rick Roberts with a group of students at last year’s science fair. Each of his three students stood behind a three-by-two-foot table, on top which sat their personal science project. The tables were lined up side-by-side, and taped to the front of each was a sign with the school name and city, the student’s name and the name of the project. Rick stood just to the left of his students’ three tables, in front of an empty table. Although the table was empty, it did have a sign, most of which was cropped out of the picture. Emory zoomed in further to try reading the sign. All he could make out on the first line was “High School,” but on the second line he saw, “Ridge.”
“That’s got to be Barter Ridge,” Emory muttered to himself. “One of Rick’s students must not have made it to the science fair for some reason.”
He looked at the line below the city and saw, “garotti.”
That’s it!
Emory showered and dressed but forced himself to wait until 6 a.m. to send separate texts to Wayne and Jeff to arrange pickup times and locations. To pass the time, he checked the online news, soon finding a disturbing local story. Under the heading, “Drugged water panic in Tennessee,” was the subheading, “Is your drinking water safe?”
“Crap.” He started reading the article to make certain it was about the Algarotti factory, and sure enough, the name of the company appeared in bold, hyperlinked text in the second paragraph. “Crap, crap, crap.” The story was accurate in reporting that drugged water was shipped to several cities in Tennessee, but almost everything else was wrong. It misled readers into thinking that the tainted Algarotti water was in the supermarkets, offices and churches – that none of it was safe to drink. “We got it in time,” Emory muttered. “How did they…” Even before he could ask the question, he knew the answer. “That damn security guard!”
A moment later, his phone rang, and for the next several minutes, Victor chewed Emory out for letting the story leak. When Emory told him his suspicions about the security guard, Victor let him know that his next call would be to fire Clarence. “Thanks to you, he won’t be the last one I have to let go. This will ruin my company!”
When Victor hung up on him, Emory took several deep breaths to relieve some of the tension tightening his torso. “Crap.”
An hour later he was picking Wayne up in front of his house. During the short ride to Jeff’s office, the older man told Emory what he had found out about Scot’s life before he was hired at the Algarotti Smoky Mountain Springs factory.
“Scot Trousdale worked for three years as a manager at a nightclub here in Knoxville called If Tomorrow Comes.”
“Seriously?” Emory asked when he heard the name of the club Jeff had taken him to the week before.
“You know the place?”
Emory didn’t want to get into details, so he kept his answer simple. “I’ve heard of it.”
“Okay. Well, Scot’s planned distributor here – the one we arrested last night – is someone who worked as bartender at the same club. Before that, Trousdale worked retail. He graduated from Tennessee Tech nine years ago with a bachelor’s in business. He was arrested once for selling marijuana but was never convicted. Besides peddling drugs, his favorite hobby is fighting. He has a brown belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and he’s competed in some local tournaments – winning some, losing some.”
Emory rubbed his sore neck with his free hand. “Yeah, I’ve experienced that firsthand.”
“You got him. That’s what’s important. From the texts you’ve sent me, it looks like you’ve had quite an eventful weekend.”
“Yeah, I need to fill in the details for you.”
“Wasn’t that PI…What’s his name again?”
“Jeff.” Who you’re about to share a car with. This is going to be a ride from hell. Or to it.”
“Jeff? What kind of name is Jeff for a private eye?” Wayne laughed, but when Emory didn’t play along, he finished his question. “Weren’t you two together when the skating coach went up in flames?”
“Yes.” Where is he heading with this question?
“And again when the evil stepmother almost bought it.”
“Yeah.”
“Man, people aren’t safe when you two are together. You two are like nitrogen and glycerin.”
Nitrogen and glycerin? What the hell are you talking about?
Wayne nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. I know some chemistry too.”
That isn’t how you make nitroglycerin. Screw it. Let him have it. Emory gave him a polite chuckle.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you that you were right about Victor’s gun.”
“It’s the one used to kill Rick Roberts’ dog?”
“I talked to Cathy this morning, and she told me to let you know. It only had Victor’s prints.”
“Probably wiped after shooting the dog.”
Wayne looked out the window and pointed. “Hey, you missed the interstate.”
Emory’s lips tightened. “We have a stop to make before we get on the road.”
“What stop?”
He waited a second before blurting out, “I promised to give a ride to the PI.”
“What?!” Wayne slammed the side of his fist into the door. “Why are you helping him?”
“Because I gave him my word, and I’m going to abide by it. He helped me out this weekend – when you weren’t there.” Emory knew that statement would anger Wayne more but also play to his guilt for being just a forty-hour-a-week employee.
“Hey, I have a family! Let’s see how many damn hours you work when you get married and have kids.”
Wayne’s retort demonstrated just how little he knew about his partner. “That wasn’t my point,” Emory said, although it was. “We wouldn’t have Scot in custody without him, and the drugs he shipped would be on the street now.”
Wayne unclenched his fists but muttered a few grunts. “Tell me everything that happened.”
“I will, but we’re here.” Emory nodded toward Jeff, who was standing on the sidewalk in front of his office.
“Great,” Wayne groaned.
Wearing his own clothes now and a wide grin, Jeff jumped into the back seat and didn’t hesitate a breath before he started needling Wayne. “Agent Rome. Agent Fuckwad.”
Wayne looked over his shoulder and growled at him, “It’s Special Agent Buckwald! Dick.”
“Ooh, sorry. Emory, can we stop by the bookstore? I forgot to pick something up this morning.”
Emory smiled at Jeff’s grinning reflection in the rearview mirror. “We don’t have time. I was just about to apprise Wayne of everything that’s happened over the weekend. Maybe you could fill in any blanks.”
“Sure.”
“I’m not going to talk about the case in front of this wannabe!” Wayne insisted with an angry thumb jabbing the air over his shoulder.
“Fine with me,” Jeff said. “Stay ignorant, Special Agent Fuckwad.”
Wayne turned around like he was going to jump over the seat. Emory threw a hand to his right shoulder to stop him, causing the car to swerve. “Cut it out!”
“I’m going to kick his fucking ass!” Wayne screamed as he turned back around to face the windshield.
Jeff just laughed.
Emory grimaced at the man in the back seat. “You two are acting like children. Wayne, he was there. Jeff, antagonism doesn’t encourage results.”
“Depends on the results you’re after,” Jeff muttered.
“Enough! We’ve got a long ride ahead of us, and I don’t know the first thing about being a referee.” Emory eyeballed Wayne and then Jeff in the rearview mirror. “I’ll begin.”
With that, Emory began recounting the weekend’s events, including the attack on his father at the Algarotti factory, Pristine’s poisoning, their dealings with the Claymons, Scot’s plan and arrest, and everything they had learned about Ian. Jeff filled in a couple of gaps, but both of them left out Emory’s accidental drugging and everything that happened at the Romes’ house. Emory closed by telling them both about the picture on Rick’s dresser. “Ian was supposed to go to that science fair, but Rick didn’t let him after he caught him cheating. I want to get that picture first thing.”
“That’s pretty thin,” Wayne said. “Would all of that have embarrassed the kid enough to kill his teacher?”
“Humiliation at that age can be crushing, and when it morphs into anger, it can feed a powerful thirst for revenge,” Emory told him. “Ian has jumped grades, earning nothing but A’s. I imagine a perfect score throughout school was pretty much a given for him, until Rick gave him that C.”
Jeff added, “Teenagers’ emotions are like a hundred times more volatile than adults. Look at all the school shootings. Almost all of them have revenge for humiliation, real or imagined, as the primary motive.”
Wayne was unmoved. “I don’t buy it.” He told Emory, “You’re giving up too easy on Scot. Murder’s only a baby step up from manufacturing drugs. We just need to press him harder to get the truth out of him. He’s the murderer. Maybe he killed them both because they found out what he was up to.”
“If that’s true, we should ask Pristine if she knew,” Jeff said.
“I think she’s still in the hospital,” Emory told them. “Maybe we can go there after Rick’s.”
All seemed to be in agreement with the plan, so as soon as they entered the Barter Ridge city limits, they headed to Rick Roberts’ house. On the way there, Emory answered his ringing phone. “Hi Dad. You’re on speakerphone. I have Jeff and Wayne with me.”
“Good,” the sheriff said. “I’ve got some awful bad news to tell you guys.”
“What is it?”
The sheriff clicked his tongue. “Scot Trousdale escaped.”
“Escaped?!” Emory exclaimed, and it was echoed by the others in the car.
Jeff threw a hand to his forehead. “Oh my god.”
“Wait a second, wait a second here,” Wayne said, shaking his head. “The drug dealer and our prime suspect for the murders has honestly escaped from your jail? Oh that’s right – you don’t have a real jail in this damn town.”
Emory shot Wayne a scolding look. “Dad, how did he escape?”
“We’re still trying to figure that out.”
Emory glanced at Wayne and then back at Jeff. “Okay. We’ll be there shortly.”