by Tina Whittle
I was incredulous. “You can’t possibly believe he did that.”
“I don’t believe it, no. But I do believe that if Mr. Talbot goes to the police, things are going to turn out badly. For me. For him. And for Trey.”
Trey closed his eyes, counted to three, and then opened them. “What do you want?”
An eminently sensible question. Finn had been waiting for it.
“Mr. Talbot wants to call the police. The Talbot Creative Group, headed by his brother Quint, does not. They want to handle it privately. I proposed a compromise.”
“Which is?”
“Mr. Talbot agreed to let me investigate instead of the police in return for an interview with you.”
Trey stared at her. “What?”
“One hour. Off the books. No recording devices. Just the two of you.”
Trey folded his arms. “And what does he think that will accomplish?”
“Perhaps he thinks you’ll confess all, I don’t know, but it makes my problem go away and it keeps you from getting dragged downtown and—”
Trey didn’t let her finish the sentence. He marched out the front door and climbed into the Ferrari. Then, as Finn and I watched, he ripped it into a three-point turn and rocketed out of the parking lot.
“Well,” I said. “So we have Trey’s opinion on that.”
Chapter Four
Finn watched the Ferrari’s taillights vanish around the corner. “I didn’t see that coming.”
I threw a hand in the air. “What did you think was going to happen? You come in here, accuse him of trying to kill someone—”
“I did not.”
“—and then you offer to take it all back if only he’ll sit down face-to-face with this man he’s convinced is a killer.”
Finn chewed her bottom lip, weighing her options. She had them, I was sure. She carried options like spare ammo, and she wasn’t sweating at all, not even in the humidity-thick confines of my shop.
“What are you really up to?” I said.
“Up to?”
“Right. This is just like Savannah. You take a job that’s got a lot of moral compromise in it, and for reasons I don’t get, pursue it with one hand and undermine it with the other.”
“I’m not undermining anything.”
“Then tell Nicholas Talbot to go to the authorities.”
“That would not be in his best interest. Trey’s either, and not just because he’ll get dragged downtown.” Her expression grew serious. “Savannah was hard on him.”
That was an understatement—Savannah had almost cracked him open. He’d followed me there against Marisa’s orders, and on the sly, an action which had gotten him suspended and almost fired. I’d been kidnapped and almost killed, and it had taken a lot of hard psychological work before Trey had let me out of his sight again. Decompensation, my brother called it. A psychological regression partly from PTSD, partly from the cognitive damage from the accident, and partly from whatever drove Trey toward protecting people, especially me.
I went behind the counter and poured the last of the cold coffee into a mug. I held the pot Finn’s way, but she shook her head.
“How much do you know about Jessica Talbot’s murder?”
I stuck the mug in the microwave. “That was before I moved here, but it was big news everywhere. Anytime a pretty rich white woman is killed, the whole country goes nuts. She was an actress, right?”
“A model with acting aspirations.”
Atlanta ran heavy with those. Small-town sweethearts arrived every day with stars in their eyes and Pinewood Studios in their sights. I pulled my coffee out of the microwave, spooned some sugar in. Finn stayed near the door, one eye on the parking lot.
“Nick Talbot was a producer,” she said, “back in Los Angeles. He and his brother Quint founded Talbot Creative with fair to middling success in the indie film market. Then Nick derailed himself with a very unglamorous drug arrest and tried to get a fresh start out here with a modeling agency. That flopped, but he met and married Jessica, a gorgeous wannabe who proceeded to spend every penny she could get her hands on. And sleep with every available man, if you believe the tabloids.”
“Do you?”
“I do. Nick was spreading himself around too, including an affair with the woman who is now his fiancée, and who also alibied him for Jessica’s murder, not that anyone believed her. Anyway, Nick and Jessica had a train wreck of a marriage. They were two steps from divorce court when someone broke into their Buckhead home one lovely morning and murdered her. Nick was charged in the crime, but during the preliminary hearing, evidence surfaced that Macklin, the first responding officer, had pocketed some of the victim’s jewelry. Macklin’s fence gets hauled in, and he lays the finger down.”
“The cop had a fence?”
“Oh, yeah. This was not his first larceny, as it turned out. He was also hip-deep in illegal gambling and prostitutes and maybe even extortion for some of Atlanta’s seedier loan sharks.”
“And Trey?”
“He was second responding. The Office of Professional Standards worked him over good too. He was pronounced clean, but Macklin was charged with felony theft by taking. He committed suicide before they could arrest him. But his crime tainted the evidence, and the grand jury didn’t indict.” She leaned back against the counter, folded her arms. “Nick Talbot’s life fell apart, though. He filed for bankruptcy, quit his fancy job. Now he works as a makeup artist on Moonshine.”
I almost choked on my coffee. “Moonshine the TV series?”
“Yeah. Talbot Creative produces it. A dark horse hit, they tell me, maybe their biggest.”
That was an understatement. The show filmed all over Kennesaw, especially in the outlying rural areas and around Kennesaw Mountain, lots of secret base camps, very hush hush. Deciphering the bright yellow directional signs emblazoned with code words was the hot thing to do, with star-spotting Twitter feeds and celebrity-finder apps flourishing. I’d looked into the vendor licenses for the show and abandoned that idea. Too rich for my humble blood.
“Nick Talbot lived the opposite of a Cinderella story,” Finn said, “and you can bet the entire Atlanta PD was happy to see him fall. So even if somebody took a shot at him, not a single cop in Zone 2 will care.”
“Wait a second, you said if somebody took a shot. Is there some doubt?”
She gave me a crafty look. “His brother Quint was there when it happened. He insists there was no shooting. He says what Nick thought was a gunshot was actually kids messing around in Chastain Park with some firecrackers.”
“His own brother doesn’t believe him?”
Finn drummed her fingers along the countertop. “Nick has suffered from a destabilizing mental illness for most of his adult life. Paranoid delusional disorder. He’s been involuntarily committed twice in addition to his stints in alcohol and drug rehab. After the grand jury trial, he was almost admitted a third time, but was released under the conservatory care of his brother.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means Quint is in charge of Nick’s life, everything from whether or not he takes his meds to his financial arrangements. Well, that used to be the case. A few years ago, a judge granted Nick’s fiancée custodial care, so Quint only controls the financial now. The fiancée wants that too, but Quint is arguing that she’s not doing a great job, that Nick is relapsing.”
“Exhibit A being the shooting that may or may not have happened?”
“Yep. Quint says he can find no evidence of a gunshot—no bullet, no nothing. He thinks Nick’s delusions are returning.”
“Are they?”
“That would be the simplest explanation.”
“But is it the right one?”
“It’s the one Nick’s brother believes.”
“What do you believe?”
She smiled. “I haven’t decided. But you understand now why nobody at Talbot Creative wants to get the police involved. And why I need Trey.”
And suddenly, I did. “You know, don’t you?”
“About Trey’s lie-detecting ability? Sure. Your brother wrote an article in last month’s Psychology Today. Trey is obviously Subject J.”
My brother’s fascination with Trey’s brain parlayed into another professional publication. Trey himself kept this particular function disguised and turned down to low. Truthfully, it was more of a handicap. In a world where people lied with every other breath, the cognitive overload could be overwhelming.
I smacked my coffee mug on the counter. “You want Trey to be your own personal lie detector.”
She winced delicately. “You make that sound so cold-blooded.”
“It is.”
“Not if I have something to offer in return, and I do—Trey has the chance to look Nick Talbot in the eye and find out once and for all if he is guilty of Jessica’s murder.”
She was right. That should have been bait enough to capture Trey’s interest.
“Trey can only pick out lies,” I said. “If Nick is suffering from delusions, if he believes what he’s saying, Trey won’t read it as deception.”
“I know. But I don’t think he’s delusional. I think something really happened. And I’d like to figure out what it was.” She looked straight at me. “Convince Trey to do this.”
“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 that he didn’t want the suspect to return for the weapon. And he didn’t want to leave me alone at the crime scene.”
This was a bare-bones description, even for Trey, who did not tend toward the flowery. He was speaking cop talk, the spare, just-the-facts-ma’am language of law enforcement reports everywhere. Who, where, and when sprinkled with the appropriate wiggle words when necessary. An “alleged” here, a “presumptive” there.
I kept my tone nonchalant. “Finn said he took some of Jessica’s jewelry.”
“He did, along with cash from the master bedroom upstairs. He may have taken other items, but there was no proof.”
“But they didn’t think you stole anything, did they?”
“I was never accused of theft, only of aiding and abetting the contamination of the scene to cover up Mac
klin’s crime. OPS investigated, and I was absolved. Regardless, the chain of custody was tainted. The evidence was ruled inadmissible. The charges against Talbot were dropped.”
“But you’re convinced he did it.”
“I am. Regardless of what Macklin did, the evidence implicated Talbot beyond a reasonable doubt. That scene was staged to look like one of the recent burglaries, which I am certain was the reason Macklin decided to take the jewelry. But he didn’t stage it. Someone else did. Before he arrived. He simply took advantage of that for his own purposes.”
“And you think that someone was Nick Talbot.”
“I do.”
“Finn said he had an alibi.”
“The woman he was having an affair with. Addison Canright. Her testimony was always suspect, and we could have broken it in court. If he’d been indicted.”
I looked at him. Underneath the clipped, no-nonsense diction, he was haunted. Not once had his index finger stopped its relentless tap-tap-tapping.
“Why?” I said.
“Why what?”
“Why is this hitting you so hard?”
He shook his head, stared down at his lap. “It’s complicated.”
“Because there’s something you’re not telling me.”
He hesitated, then nodded. I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“Something serious?”
Two seconds’ consideration, then another nod.
“What is it?”
He didn’t reply, not at first. He was doing some complicated emotional algebra, I could tell. I could almost see the flowchart in his head, decisions branching into choices, choices stagnating into dead ends. Finally, he found his answer.
He motioned for me to put on my seat belt. “It will be easier if I show you.”