They flipped cards the entire time she talked. I could picture them in some neighborhood bar with a beer-sticky floor, slapping down cards after a shift, surrounded by laughter. I was watching history, this moment added to a daisy chain of other moments going back years.
Keesha claimed the next jack. “But since you’re all about alibis, you know your boy Nick Talbot has a solid one.”
“The woman he was having an affair with. We could have broken her testimony in court.”
“That sweet thing with the batty-bat eyelashes and heart full of love?” She scoffed. “Please. Nobody was breaking that child.”
“Regardless, no connection was ever found between Macklin and the Talbots.”
“That’s because people stopped looking for it when he blew his brains out. But there’s a big hole in that case, and it’s shaped like Joe Macklin.”
Garrity was right—she and Trey had matching grudges. As much as Trey wanted to take down Nicholas Talbot, Keesha wanted to take down Joe Macklin.
Trey flipped a card. “If Macklin had staged the scene, he would have done a better job. He knew the details that would make it look authentic. But Talbot didn’t. Talbot only knew what he’d read about in the newspapers.”
“Macklin was working fast. He made mistakes.”
“Those mistakes weren’t cop mistakes, they were civilian mistakes, and you know it.”
Her eyes flashed as she flipped her card, an ace. “You know what I know? I know that when you got there you were supposed to secure the scene. But you didn’t. Instead, you rendered aid to the victim. The dead victim. Before you cleared the house.”
Trey flipped his card. The Jack of Clubs. But he didn’t move to claim it. Neither did Keesha. It lay between them on the table, untouched.
“Now why would you do a fool-ass thing like that?” she said.
He stared at the jack. “I don’t know. I remember feeling as if I were watching from somewhere else in the room. Watching somebody else count off the compressions and clear the airway.”
My heart felt light in my chest. Disassociation. A psychological reaction to overwhelming stress.
He shrugged, eyes still on the table. “And then I was myself again. And I had her blood on my hands. On my knees. On my mouth. So I stood up. I secured the scene. And then I went back to my cruiser for the first aid kit for Macklin.”
“I know what happened,” Keesha said, her voice tightening. “I found out when I read the OPS report. Not because you told me. You never said a word to me.”
He looked puzzled. “How could I tell you that I’d made that kind of fundamental mistake?”
“Just like that. That’s how.”
He shook his head. “You did not tolerate failure, not in yourself, certainly not in your partner.”
“I don’t give a good goddamn about what you did wrong! I care that you could have been killed!”
“But I wasn’t. There was no suspect on premises.” His expression stayed calm, but it was a manufactured calm. “Is that why you took the files without telling me? Because I wasn’t honest with you?”
“I took them because I couldn’t trust you.”
Trey froze. Then he reached forward and claimed the jack, started shuffling it into his deck. “Okay.”
Keesha arched an eyebrow. “That’s all you got to say to that?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to say that you’re sorry. Because I came to the hospital that night, after the accident. I came the next morning. I came over and over and over again. But all I got was the wall.” Her voice shook, old pain rising to the surface. “And now you show up at my training. But not for me. Because you want those damn files.”
He stopped shuffling. “You don’t think…that’s not why I signed up to help with the training. In the woods. With the mosquitoes and the poison oak and the…things in the trees.”
Her brow creased. “Squirrels?”
“Right. Squirrels. I don’t like squirrels. But I volunteered anyway because I wanted to see you. I wanted to…I was trying to…I can’t find the word. Three syllables, starts with R.”
I knew the word. But I wasn’t about to interfere.
“Reconnect,” Keesha said.
“Yes. That’s it. I was trying to reconnect. But I’m very bad at it.”
Keesha’s expression didn’t change. “You suck at it.”
“Yes. But I am sorry. For all of it.”
She didn’t say anything for an entire minute. Then she switched her dark luminous gaze on me. “Seaver says you’re his partner now. You know what that means?”
I was startled, but I’d been expecting the question. Trey and I had gone over this before she’d arrived. He had not used that word casually, he’d explained. It meant something to her, and to him. Did I understand? he’d asked.
“Yes,” I said.
Keesha shoved the deck his way and stood, leaving the messenger bag on the sofa. “The files are yours now. For as long as you need them, or until I need them back, or until I tell you to burn ’em to fucking ash. We clear on that?”
He stood up too. “Very clear.”
“And if you really want to reconnect, next time let me know that’s what you’re doing, all right?”
“All right.”
“We’ll find a squirrel-free zone.”
She let a smile flicker around her mouth. She started walking toward the door, Trey right behind. She paused in the threshold.
“I’m still a better shot,” she said.
Trey shrugged. “I still run faster.”
“Maybe. But I’m gaining on you, Seaver.”
She held out her fist, knuckles first. He tapped it lightly with his own. Then she left without looking back. Trey closed the door behind her. He didn’t even hesitate, went right to the sofa and started removing files from the bag.
I came out of the kitchen. “You digging into all this right now?”
“Yes.”
He stacked several folders on the coffee table. There were dozens more in the bag, hundreds of pages. I checked the time. Nine o’clock. I opened the cabinet and pulled down the coffee and a box of lapsang souchong tea, both highly caffeinated.
“Trey?”
“Yes?”
“Keesha’s tattoo.
