EMMA'S DEMISE

Our narrator, Mike Jorgenson, tells us how murders committed by the beautiful Emma Schulz, in Portage, Wisconsin, affected the lives of many of the people living there. Capital crimes are rare in Wisconsin’s small communities. Still, Mike knows the stories behind each crime affecting his close friends and associates. Mike explains how the murders affected himself and especially his wife, Shauna Williams.

   We learn about his unlikely romance with Shauna, the Columbia County Assistant District Attorney, and how their unlikely romance blossomed despite Mike’s insecurity with women. 

   Although he and Shauna are concerned when they learn that Amy, the office manager at Mike’s firm, was carjacked, they are shocked when they receive the news that Chaquan Simon, a local young black musician, was kidnapped after a hip-hop gig in Chicago. They knew Chaquan and his family very well. No one could imagine the two crimes were related. 

    A police detective is murdered, and Shauna has a motive. Mike manages to avoid a dalliance with another attorney representing the wife of one of his clients in a divorce proceeding. Roy Starsky called to report that he and his lover found a body in an abandoned car in northern Wisconsin. The vehicle was Amy’s, and the body was that of our hip-hop artist, Chaquan Simon. 

Phil Bressler and his wife investigated the murder. They discovered that an unlawful militia was behind the murders, the kidnapping, and the carjacking. Phil takes a stray bullet to his thigh when the leaders of the militia are taken down in a raid by the FBI. Mike speculates that the woman killed in the shootout is Emma. 

Nothing is what it seems, and Phil lies to Mike to get the background information for his investigation. He is nearly murdered, but were it not for his wife Susan, who is ultimately responsible for Emma’s demise.