“Finn—”
“Three and a half years ago, somebody shot Jessica Talbot twice in the back and then point-blank in the chest as she lay paralyzed at the foot of her staircase. If Trey tells me Nick Talbot is guilty of that, I’m cutting the Talbots loose, all of them. But if he tells me Nick Talbot is innocent…” She shrugged. “Then I have work to do.”
“And money to make.”
“That too.” She headed for the door. “Because I’m an optimist, I’ve gone ahead and scheduled the interview with Nick. It’s Monday at five.”
“That’s two days from now!”
“Which should give you plenty of time. So work your wiles. Remind him how good closure feels. Also remind him that if Nick does end up calling the police, he’s gonna be in the thick of another investigation. I am certain Marisa will not like that.”
Finn had that correct. Marisa didn’t like any publicity she didn’t create herself. She’d be annoyed if Trey’s name ended up in the papers again, but if she found out he was meeting with Nick Talbot, she’d go full tornado and drop a trailer on him.
“I’ll talk to him,” I said. “That’s all I’m promising.”
“That’s all I’m asking.” Finn pulled open the door. “I’ll let you get on with it. Because you and I both know he drove that Ferrari around back and is sitting there right now waiting for you.” She smiled. “Call me.”
Chapter Five
I closed the door after her and locked it, unplugged the coffeepot, and switched off the lights. Then I got two cold Pellegrinos from the fridge and took them to the back lot, where I found the Ferrari parked next to my Camaro.
Trey didn’t look at me when I got in. He kept his eyes straight ahead, backbone rigid, index finger tapping against the steering wheel. The sun burned low behind us, thick and heavy as syrup.
I handed him a Pellegrino. “All right. One of two things has happened. Either you got overwhelmed and came out here to recuperate. Or you got fired up and came out here to marshal your resources for a full frontal assault. Which is it?”
He turned his face toward me. I didn’t see an ounce of backdown in him.
“Okay,” I said. “The latter. Good to know. You wanna start by telling me what’s really going on? Because you didn’t say a lot in there, but the one thing you especially didn’t say was ‘fine, call the authorities.’ And that, boyfriend of mine, is not like you.”
He twisted open the Pellegrino and took a long swallow. Part of me wanted to poke harder, but I knew that would only make him lock down. Whatever this was, it was tender. I had to go slow and easy.
I leaned back in the seat. “Finn said taking her offer was in your best interest. She reminded me that this would not go over well with the boss lady, which is true, but…there’s something else going on, isn’t there?”
He flexed his fingers, rested his hand once again on the steering wheel. “Yes.”
“Care to explain?”
He considered. “The murder happened approximately three and a half years ago, in January. Right before the accident.”
So there was my first clue. That time had been a tumultuous one in his life, a harbinger of even more tumult to come. A rainy night, a tractor-trailer crossing into his lane, no place to go but headfirst into a concrete embankment, no time for even a skilled driver like Trey to avoid a collision. His mother had died in the crash, his most wrenching and tangible loss, but there were other losses, some of them only becoming clear when he’d blinked back into consciousness after five days in a coma.
Frontal lobe damage, the doctors said, cognitive impairments in language processing and executive function, the control center of the personality. His IQ stayed the same, but his ability to think peripherally or abstractly took a hit. His long-term memory improved, however, as did his ability to tell when others were lying—surprising new strengths that came with their own challenges. Unable to effectively filter the stream of memories and deception coming at him, he grew more easily overwhelmed, less willing to engage. So he took the money from his legal settlement and bought a high-rise apartment and a fast car and a wardrobe straight out of the Italian-style issue of GQ, shoving his former life into storage.
And now he was telling me a new story from that time. One that had hit him hard.
He stared at the dashboard as he spoke. “I was second on the scene. I got the call for backup when I was less than a mile away, so I arrived within approximately two minutes. I was met in the living room by Macklin, weapon drawn, saying that he was in pursuit of the suspect. There was what appeared to be blood on his shirt, and he had his hand pressed over his forehead. Multiple contusions there and on his right cheek.”
“Macklin was hurt?”
“Yes. He said that he’d surprised the suspect, who then bludgeoned him with a handgun and fled. He told me there was one victim at the foot of the stairs, female. Deceased. He told me to finish clearing the house, and then he ran into the backyard. The patio doors were already open. I called in backup and EMTs.”
“And then?”
He took a deep breath, then let it out slow. “Macklin returned. He said he’d lost the intruder in the park.”
“What park?”
“Chastain Park. Across the street from the Talbots’ backyard. Macklin said he’d found the presumptive murder weapon, however, a nine-millimeter semi-auto that turned out to belong to Nicholas Talbot. Macklin said it had been dropped at the edge of the property.”
“He picked it up? Aren’t cops supposed to leave things as they found them?”
“Yes, usually. But his justification, a valid one, was
