Wendy Walker - Emma in the Night - The bestselling new gripping thriller from the author of All is Not Forgotten

Abby had grown impatient with her.

Verse number two. Abby explained that whatever happened to them, they had been vulnerable to it. And that vulnerability had started at home. It always did. In spite of how these stories were depicted in the news, it was not a mystery what lured teenagers from their homes. An acute traumatic event. Chronic neglect, abuse, instability, dysfunction. The dark void of unfulfilled need. The vulnerability to sexual predators, terrorist groups, religious fanatics, antigovernment extremists. The perpetrator found a way to satisfy that need, to give it what it craved. The predator became a drug. The teenager, an addict.

So when the initial frenzy died down, when they realized the girls were long gone and that finding them would require a slow and methodical unraveling of their lives, Abby had turned back to the family.

When she opened her eyes, the room was still. Her keys were there, on the table next to the chair, and she took them in her hand. She walked to the door and let in the harsh sunlight and a burst of hot, oppressive air from the outside.

No one had objected then. In fact, the entire investigation turned inward, on the family, and on the Martin home in particular. Physical forensics were done at the house. Bank accounts, credit cards, phone records were collected and analyzed. Friends and neighbors were interviewed.

Abby could recall the conversations then, at the start of the investigation. “Yes, yes, this is all good information. All good.” Teenage girls had gone missing. Where there’s smoke, there must be fire—so they looked for the embers close to home.

The girls’ father, Owen Tanner, had been happily married to his first wife before they were born. He and his wife had a little boy, Witt. They had a nice house, family money. Owen worked in New York City at an import firm his family owned. They specialized in gourmet foods, which were his passion. He had a healthy trust and didn’t need the income, but his wife thought it was good for him to work. Ironically, that’s where he’d met Judy York, the sexy brunette with large breasts and a magnetic personality. Owen had hired her to manage the office.

After the affair, his divorce and the new marriage, Judy and Owen had the two girls in four years. According to Owen, Judy had not been an ideal caregiver to her young daughters. She was capable, he’d insisted. But she was not willing. Owen said that she slept twelve hours every night, then watched reality television and shopped for clothes all day. She would open a bottle of wine at five o’clock and finish it by ten when she went to bed, words slurring, that magnetic personality suddenly repulsive. She told him, allegedly, that she had done her part by giving birth.

This had been the first alarm bell.

With her Bible now open, the verses spilling out, Abby bounded to her car as if she could somehow outrun them. None of this would matter now. Because Cassandra Tanner was home. Because soon she would know the truth and whether she’d been right or wrong. Because soon she would know if she could have saved them from whatever it was that had happened.

Agent Leo Strauss had been the lead on the investigation. It had not been their first time working together, so there had been a rapport. He had been her mentor, in work and in life. His family had included her in holiday dinners. His wife, Susan, baked her cakes on her birthday. There had been a bond between them that made it difficult for Abby to hide what she was thinking. How Judy had seduced Owen Tanner. Neglected her children. Had an affair with a man from the country club. About the bitter custody fight. And about the toxic home Judy made for her daughters with Jonathan Martin and his son, Hunter.

Abby had thought the investigation would barrel down this freeway once they had the divorce file and, in particular, the report of the attorney who had been appointed to represent the children. The guardian ad litem, or GAL, as they’re called in Connecticut. It was right there in an independent record—the voice of Cassandra Tanner four years before she disappeared. Telling them all that something was not right in that house. Something with Emma and Jonathan Martin and Hunter. To Abby’s ear, it was a ghost from the past telling them where to look.

That report had been the second alarm bell. But the forensics had not supported her theory.

Verse number three .

The shrink—“What did you think they would do with this report from the divorce file? After all the forensic evidence came up clean? The house, the phones, the money? All they found was one broken picture frame—isn’t that right? Which the mother said resulted from the girls’ fight over a necklace?”

She thought they would order psychiatric evaluations. She thought they would conduct more coercive interviews. She thought they would see what she could see.

The shrink—“The woman who wrote that report during the divorce—the GAL—she dismissed Cass’s concerns about the Martins, didn’t she?”

Yes, she did. But she was an incompetent hack. She dismissed the fears of an eleven-year-old girl, believing her mother instead—believing that girl was lying to help her father.

The shrink—“Because the father, Owen, was so devastated by the affair and the divorce, right? Parents do that in custody fights. Use the children . . .”

Yes, they do. But Owen agreed to settle, to spare the children. Anyone who’s worked in that field knows that the person who cares more about the children usually loses. And Owen lost. There was nothing to indicate he had told his daughter to lie.

Then there was the story about the necklace.

Verse number four.

The shrink—“This is when you decided to push for the psychiatric evaluations? When you found out about the necklace?”

Judy Martin told the story to the press. How she bought the necklace, a flying-angel medallion on a silver chain, for Emma and how Cass was bitterly jealous—and how they’d been fighting about it the night they disappeared.

Only that wasn’t the truth. Leo interviewed the woman at the store who sold Judy that necklace—a twenty-dollar trinket. The woman was the store’s owner, a small shop that catered to teenage girls with overpriced jeans, short miniskirts and trendy throwaway jewelry. She knew the girls and their mother. They’d been shopping there for years, and the mother never failed to express her disdain for the merchandise in a whispered voice that would carry throughout the store.

The woman recalled two encounters with Judy Martin and the necklace. In the first, Judy, Cass and Emma stopped to browse while shopping for school clothes. The younger girl, Cass, picked up the necklace and sighed. She asked her mother to buy it for her. Judy Martin took it from her hands, told her it was “cheap garbage” and that she should learn to have better taste. The girl asked again, telling her mother how much she loved it. The angel reminded her of Tinker Bell from Peter Pan —and that had been her favorite book when she was little. Apparently, her father had read it to her every night. Peter Pan. This did not help her cause. Judy Martin admonished her even more harshly, and then started walking away. Both girls followed. The older one, Emma, bumped shoulders with her sister, making her trip. She held up her hand to her forehead in the shape of an L. Loser.

The next day, Judy Martin returned and bought the necklace. The woman remembered smiling because she thought the mother was buying the necklace for the girl who’d asked for it—the younger one. Leo asked her, holding two pictures in his hands—“Are you certain it was this girl, Cass Tanner, and not this girl, Emma Tanner, who picked out the necklace?”

The owner was certain. “When I saw that interview, the one with the mother, Judy, I couldn’t believe it. She was saying how she’d bought the necklace for the older daughter, Emma. And I guess she did—right? Gave the necklace to Emma and not to the other sister, who wanted it?”