Trey nodded. “Of course.”
“Good. The sooner we get this monster off our books, the better.”
He left without a good-bye, trailing a wave of aftershave. But I noticed he’d used the same word Nick had to describe the house.
Monster.
Chapter Nineteen
Trey studied Quint Talbot as the door slammed shut, doubly loud in the cavernous space.
“Well?” I said. “Was he lying?”
Trey didn’t look away from the door. “No. But he wasn’t telling the truth either.”
“Technically true but deliberately evasive?”
“No. There was no pretense. It seems as if…as if he knew the truth, but knew even more about not knowing the truth. Does that make any sense?”
“Not really.”
He blew out a breath. “I was afraid of that.”
He stood at the base of the stairs, the exact spot where he’d found the body of Jessica Talbot. Where he’d broken his training. Where he now stood making a concerted effort to not look at the floor.
I came up beside him. “Don’t get trapped back there.”
“Back where?”
“In the past. That’s not why you’re here.”
He faced me, his expression a mix of annoyance and frustration. “I know. I made mistakes then. And I’m still making mistakes.”
“What do you mean?”
“At the beginning. I couldn’t ask him…I was trying, but…”
I felt a pang of sympathy. Most of the time Trey handled his brain trauma as disinterestedly as he handled the other artifacts of the accident—the titanium rods in his spine and knee, the scar tissue, the migraines. But now he looked like somebody had pulled the rug out from under him.
“You couldn’t think of what to say?”
“Yes, but more than that. I was trying so hard not to say the wrong things—like anything from the files—that I couldn’t say the right things.”
“You got there eventually.”
He shook his head. “Eventually is not good enough.”
“Of course it is. You’re in virgin territory. You didn’t do investigations when you were a cop, and yet here you are in this crazy complex situation full of triggers and flashbacks and surprises. Maybe you weren’t as quick with the words as you wanted to be this time. So you prepare differently for the next time.”
“The next time?”
“Hypothetically speaking.”
He took a deep breath, released it slowly. His gaze was fixed on the staircase. It curved upward, a graceful spiral of white iron and golden hardwood. I tried to picture that awful morning—the blood and confusion, the barking of orders and crackle of the radio. Normally Trey was brisk, precise, procedural. But today he stood where he’d once knelt beside the body of Jessica Talbot.
“So here you are now,” I said. “Trey Seaver, premises liability and security agent. What do you do?”
He gave a start, as if I’d pulled him from a daydream. “Oh. You mean right now?”
“I do. Because if you’re gonna give this place a going-over, you’d best get on it. The staging team will be here soon.”
“Right. Of course.”
He reached into his jacket and pulled out the mechanical pencil and notepad he kept in there. He flipped open to a clean page, clicked the pencil to get fresh lead, and started sketching. This was always his first step in any premises assessment. First, he stood in the middle of the room and turned in a slow circle, like a human compass. Then he walked the perimeter, viewing the scene in different lights and from different perspectives.
I stood to the side, out of his way. The room was disturbing in its emptiness, like a socket where a tooth should have been. Looking more closely, I could see the holes in the plaster where cameras had once been mounted, tangled wires still dangling. There were gouges in the floor where equipment had been dragged, scuff marks on the baseboards. The room’s past permeated the walls and gave off something like a subconscious smell. It was nothing compared to Trey’s memories, however. I was sure those burned so bright he could practically touch them.
Engrossed now in his sketch, he had regained his former efficiency, quick with the lines and angles as the living area took two-dimensional form on his notepad. I tried to imagine it as the set of Buckwild, crammed with bodies and noise and glare. Here the lights, there the cameras…
The cameras.
“Trey?”
He continued sketching. “Yes?”
“This place wasn’t empty Friday night. When Quint and Nick were here. Quint said the production team cleared things out last night.”
“Correct.”
“Which means the reality show cameras were still here on Friday. You can see the marks where they were mounted. Like right there. And there.” I pointed to the corners of the room. “Maybe not operational, but…what are you doing?”
He had his phone out before I could finish. “I’m texting Finn. She needs to find that equipment. If there’s footage, she needs to preserve it.” He looked up from his phone. “Thank you. That was an excellent point.”
I shrugged off the compliment. “You know me. Queen of the Girl Detectives.”
He narrowed his eyes at me in a puzzled way, but then he got right back to pacing off the living area. I searched for a chair, and seeing none, took to the floor. I couldn’t bring myself to sit on the stairs. Watching Trey work was usually a visceral pleasure, but here, in this stark disturbing place, I couldn’t ignore an alarm bell of concern. What was he doing? Where was this leading? He was a goal-driven individual, a carrot-and-stick man. Did he think he could figure out what had happened to Jessica Talbot if he could figure out what had happened—or not happened—to Nick?
He stopped at the windows and contemplated the back yard. “Quint said he looked for bullets and didn’t find any.”
“That’s what he said.” I joined Trey. “But then, he’s not trained in looking, is he?”
Trey reached for the door handle. “No, he is not.”
Chapter Twenty
The back lot showed both the ravages of the Buckhead Buckwildness and the efforts of a professional cleaning crew. The annuals
