“Alea iacta est.” He spread another sheaf of folders on the table. “She told me it was a quote from Julius Caesar as he prepared to cross the Rubicon.”
“What does it mean?”
Trey placed the empty bag on the floor. “It means, the die is cast.”
Chapter Thirteen
Trey sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by yellow pads, mechanical pencils, and sticky notes. He understood information best if he could process it spatially—flowcharts and bubble maps, lists and graphs—and he liked it hard copy. Every now and then he’d take a sip of tea. The caffeine would buy him an extra hour or so before he finally crashed, but he’d pay at the end. His sleep would be jittery, restless, no matter how many valerian root capsules he took.
I propped my chin in my hand and watched him. Yes, tomorrow would suck for him, but he was crisp and utterly capable at the moment. First, he’d sorted Keesha’s files into stacks. Then he’d hauled in the boxes we’d collected from his basement, now dusted and organized. I’d added my own research, the scattered online articles and magazine spreads, the lurid and the tacky all mixed up with the objective and professional.
He held his mug with both hands, his expression serious. “Tai—”
“I already know.”
“Know what?”
“Why the files are so secret.” I sat my coffee on the floor. “See, Garrity said the only reason you needed to be worried about breaching confidentiality was if those files revealed the identify of Keesha’s CI. But your worries felt bigger than that.” I tapped one folder, resting now on his knee. “I think Keesha is the CI. I think she’s working undercover for OPS.”
Trey didn’t say anything; he simply extended the file my way. I skimmed the interview transcripts. Every single time the CI’s name was mentioned, the name had been redacted. Not one mention of Keesha Price. Macklin, Talbot, lots of Trey Seaver in there too. But not a single CI.
And then I saw it. The same name, repeated, only not in the reports themselves. In the administrative section at the top of the page.
I pointed. “This is the OPS officer who investigated Macklin. And you.”
Trey nodded. But I was still puzzled. Why would Keesha make copies of these files? To protect Trey, certainly, in case the incident came up again. But the official record still existed. It was still accessible. Unless…
I gave the papers a satisfying thump. “She’s a double agent! An undercover OPS officer covertly investigating the OPS itself. She kept these copies because she worried the records might be altered, and then you’d have only your word to protect you.”
“She suspected that might be the case, yes.”
“But don’t they video OPS interviews?”
“Yes. But the division is moving its video evidence to cloud storage. They hired an outside company to do this. Occasionally a recording becomes corrupted. Or misfiled. Or lost.”
“Sometimes on purpose.”
“Price is certain of it. Gathering the evidence, however, is proving…challenging.”
I wasn’t surprised. At every intersection of the investigation process, there was a chance for someone to interfere. Involve an outside firm in such a crucial process, give its people discretionary oversight, and bam: major fox and henhouse situation.
I placed the file in its proper stack. “Did she catch the guilty party?”
“Parties. And no, not yet. The investigation is ongoing.”
“Four years ongoing?”
He nodded.
“So we have to treat these files like nuclear bombs?”
“Yes. But if I’m going to engage with Nicholas Talbot again, I needed to see the evidence again.”
“If you’re going to?”
“Correct.” He scrutinized the semi-circle of information fanned around him like a rainbow. “I haven’t decided yet.”
I drained the last of my coffee, rubbed my hands together. “In that case, we’d best get on with it.”
The next hours were a parade of blood and betrayal and bad ends. The crime scene photos were few and horrific, but it was Trey’s field sketches that hit me hardest. Drawn from an overhead perspective, they were bare and precise—blood spatter detailed as objectively as room measurements. He’d rendered the body of Jessica Talbot as a faceless figure, plain, a piece of evidence like the footprints or the shell casings…except for the waves of hair trailing across her face and the open palm of one hand. It was a painstaking detail, wrenching and human, and it revealed as much about Trey as it did about the body.
I closed the folder. “You told Keesha that Macklin would have done a better job of staging the scene. How?”
“The broken glass at the alleged entry site, for one.” He pointed to the map of the garage. “The Buckhead Burglar came in quietly, usually through a door after disarming the security system. He wouldn’t have shattered a side window. He never broke into an occupied home, and yet Jessica’s car was in the garage, a clear indication that she was still on premises, as was the fact that the security system was not armed.”
Trey had assembled the official crime scene sketches like a map of the home, each room a separate piece of paper. These were computer rendered, two-dimensional and bloodless. He pointed to the bank of doors overlooking the backyard patio.
“This would have been the entry site he would have most likely used. Hidden from the street, close to the main security box for easy disarming. The suspect fled through these doors, through the backyard and into a wooded area adjacent to Powers Ferry Road, and then, presumably, into Chastain Park where Macklin lost him. There was no hesitation, no wrong turns or backtracking.”
“You’re saying the killer knew where he was going?”
“Yes.”
Trey put out the mug shot. Nick Talbot in a dark golf shirt, his eyes wide, like a startled nocturnal animal. I tried to imagine him shooting his wife in the back, but the image wouldn’t take.
“Talbot had been having an affair for months,” Trey said. “That morning, he told family and friends that he was going golfing. And he did park at the golf club, at the
