The Plot Thickens
“Correct. However, according to his new wife, Trey Locke is terrified of flying. Why is that?”
“Bad experience? Didn’t he muster out early?”
“He did. By all accounts, he served his time, but with no great distinction. So yeah, that’s possible.
He came home on scheduled leave, got his wife pregnant, then, without knowing she was knocked up, eight weeks later, suddenly separated and returned home for good, only to walk in on Christmas Eve and find Chloe murdered. That’s the story we’ve been told.”
“All right. Why the sudden shift? Why’d he want to get home so badly?”
“Excellent question. He never explained it, at least not to my liking. He also claimed not to know Chloe was pregnant but told me several times he wanted to come home and have a family. So they were trying, or at least not preventing things. The birth control pills found in the house were unused and out of date.”
“Could she have been pregnant by someone else?”
“DNA said no. It was his.”
“Okay. Where are we going here?”
“Getting out of the military is hard, right? Especially before your time’s up?”
“Depends. If he was discharged for wrongdoing, say, or had a mental illness. Did you look at his records, see what the separation papers said?”
“I tried. They were classified.”
Drake sets down his fork.
“And?”
“What if Chloe’s murder had something to do with Andrew’s classified separation from the Air Force, and we’ve been looking at it all wrong this whole time?”
“You thinking maybe she was killed to send a message?”
She smiles. “Your mind is a terrifying place, Agent Sheehan.”
“You’re the one leading me there.”
“You know how sometimes you hear hooves and you think horses? I was pretty focused on Andrew as the prime suspect. Well, I maybe needed to be hearing zebras instead.”
“Occam’s razor. First thing they teach us in the Academy.”
“Right. So I’ve been looking at the old cases from a decade ago.
The night Chloe was killed, there was a report of a break-in, the next town over.
A farmer called in that someone had slept in his barn overnight, taken off in the morning with a few shotguns and a hunting jacket.
Nothing that raised too much of an alarm, there’s plenty of drugs in these small towns, plenty of people looking for a safe, warm spot to shoot up. Guns get stolen all the time.”
“But now you’re wondering if it was something more?”
“Well, in the absence of any real evidence against Andrew, and the fact that his alibi was ironclad, yeah, I’ve been wondering if there was more.
The farmer had cameras on his gates, and there was a man driving down the road, captured for a heartbeat, in a single frame—a man who was definitely not Andrew Locke. A man with curly blond hair.”
He plays with his last fry. “Pretty vague. No one in the general area matches that description?”
“No. Small town, right? No one matching that description lived in Malogen. So I did some looking at strangers who were in the area around the time Chloe Locke was murdered. Malogen’s a small town, hard to reach, and everybody’s nosy, in each other’s business.
But we’re not that far from Atlanta, which means millions of people pass through the general area weekly. ”
“In other words, it was a needle in a haystack, trying to find a shadow on a cloudy day.”
“Yeah. I couldn’t tie any threads together at all.
Except for the phone call I got two weeks after the murder.
It came to the station—the number was untraceable.
Male, unidentifiable accent, but if pressed, I’d say eastern European.
Wanted to know if there was any movement on the Andrew Locke case. I asked for an ID, and he hung up.”
She takes a long sip of tea.
“The next day, Andrew jumped bail and took off.”
“And hasn’t been seen since, until now.”
“Right. We know he went to Mexico after Chloe’s murder because he met Brooklyn there.
He reinvented himself as Trey Locke, told her a story about a falling-out with his folks, got her pregnant, and they’ve been nestled up here in Nashville ever since, where he’s had a long-term money-laundering-slash-funneling operation going on at ‘uncle’ Bob Gussin’s company.
Are they in on it, or is he acting alone? Then he gets spooked by something—”
“Or someone.”
“Or someone. Tries to run, and it all goes to shit. He bumps into Eden Barrow, freaks out, and takes off, without his new family. And a man with curly blond hair follows him from the airport. He might have been trying to retrieve them from Barrow’s house but ended up hitting Brook with the car instead.
Bad, bad luck. Then somehow, his passport ends up at his parents’ house, and of course, they’re very dead.
And there’s this.” She waves the bandaged hand. “The stranger was looking for Andrew.”
“Did he have curly blond hair?”
“I think so, but it was dark. I’m just saying, there’s a bigger plot afoot here. Add in Gussin telling the FBI Andrew’s been stealing millions from TGG . . .”
“So this isn’t really about the murders. It’s about the money.”
“I think it’s always been about the money.
I think he stole from his boss and got busted.
I think he ran, and they caught up with him before he got away, because of a total fluke that slowed him down and took him to Atlanta instead of London.
Whether they were following, driving, or waiting, I don’t know. ”
“Put a pin in that fluke for me, okay? Let’s back up. Andrew came from money, right? The parents were überwealthy?”
“Very.”
“Does he inherit?”
She ticks the side of her nose with her forefinger. “There you go. That’s what I’ve been digging around in. Yes. I spoke to their family lawyer, Aaron Pollan. Andrew gets everything once they move through probate. And it’s a lot of money.”
“But surely if he’s convicted of murdering them, he doesn’t inherit.”
“No. Then it goes to his next of kin.”
“Brooklyn, I assume?”
“Now that’s where it gets tricky. It goes into a trust, which is in her name. But guess who the trustee is?”
He holds her eyes as if staring at them will help him read her mind. “Andrew?”
“Nope. Robert Gussin.”
He sucks in a breath. “Oh. That’s . . . interesting.”
“I thought so, too.”
The server clears their plates, and Drake orders coffee for them both. “I think it’s going to be a long night.”
“You betcha.” He seems to have forgiven her the omission; he has his teeth in the story now.
“All right. Let’s back up even further. How did the Lockes get their money? What did Locke Senior do?”
“Andrew Locke Senior is the grandfather. Locke Junior, the colonel, is his dad, called Andy. Andrew is the third. The money was generational. Colonel Locke had a distinguished military career—Air Force—and then married Lucy Carmichael, who was from Dahlonega. Lucy inherited a substantial amount of wealth from her family, adding to his own fortune. He retired as a bird colonel, and by then Locke Senior was dead, so they moved into the house in Malogen. Upstanding people, community oriented, until Andrew’s murder accusation, at least.”
“And Locke Senior? What did he do?”
“He was Air Force, too, and when he retired, he worked for Lockheed, in their Marietta plant. Rumor mill being what it is, small-town network, all of that, he was supposedly involved with some rather unsavory characters who wanted to get their hands on some of the classified data he was working with. The Soviets were all over the aerospace guys back then. It was the beginning of the Cold War, and they needed to know what our capabilities were. Put it this way: Locke Senior got really rich, really fast. Bought the house, the land, and set up shop as a gentleman farmer.”
“So is this the family business, you think? Passing secrets to our enemies?”
“I don’t know about that. Right now, I’m just relaying rumors.
My family’s lived in this town for a long time, too.
I remember my dad and Locke Senior getting drunk at a party once, and Locke was rambling on about the fog of war, how men do the craziest things when they don’t see another path out.
That men will do things you’d never expect when they’re cornered.
They are no better than animals in a trap, desperate to live.
That’s what he said. It’s always stuck with me.
It’s what I look for in every crime, really, what the suspect might do if they’re cornered. It’s the why behind everything.”
“Money’s not the only reason, Theresa. Love is, too. Love makes people do the most insane things.”
There is something in his voice, longing, maybe? It makes her shift her chair closer to the table. It makes her want to get the check and leave. But they have a job to do.
“This is true,” she says.
“But that’s a long way from Andrew killing Chloe, then a decade later stealing money from his uncle, trying to kill his new wife, and promptly murdering his parents.”
“It is. I’m just trying to lay out all the pieces for you.
If this is bigger than just a domestic murder, if there’s some sort of generational criminal action taking place .
. . we might need a different approach. We need his military records.
We need to know exactly what was happening when he mustered out. ”
Their coffee arrives in thick mugs, and Drake doctors his with cream and two sugars. She takes hers black. It is strong, and the heat is welcome. She hasn’t felt warm through since the night of the murders.
“Are Brooklyn and Andrew living within their means?” Drake finally asks. “Racking up debt?”
“No major debt. But he’s been systematically emptying their accounts over the past few months.
He had a plan, he saw a way out. No question he was running.
He bundled up his family and tried to disappear with them.
I think whoever it is he’s running from caught up to him, and that’s why he left Hartsfield.
Whoever the curly-headed man is in the video, he got to him, somehow.
Andrew put the family on the plane to Italy and thought they’d left.
He thought they were safe. Or it’s something worse, and he’s been snatched.
Or he’s at the bottom of a lake somewhere.
If he was stealing large sums of money .
. . People tend to get pissed off when they find out they’ve been cheated. ”
“What do we know about the Gussins’ company? Outside of their website and PR machine, I mean.”
“Other than their very public profile as the leading venture capital firm in the country? Not nearly enough. VC is a murky field anyway. Lots of money flows in from all kinds of sources, and NDAs can cover all sorts of malfeasance. Look at the Theranos case. Elizabeth Holmes went to jail for misleading her investors. She’s one of many.
We need to dig deeper into that world, make sure all they’re saying is true. ”
“You think the Gussins are lying?”
“I didn’t say that. It’s just all very convenient, and I’m suspicious by nature. A rogue employee covers a lot of sins.”
Drake sits with this. Night is descending. The restaurant is filling up, agents and soldiers coming in, medical personnel in scrubs, pale from too much time spent in the hospital.
“And your hand? Tell me the truth about how it happened. What did he threaten you with?”
“Well, duh. A knife.”
Drake looks utterly shocked, and she laughs.
“Sorry. Hanging curveball. What did you think? Obviously, my life’s on the line, and now yours might be, too. Which is what I was trying to avoid. But now that I’ve spilled the beans, I really need to find Andrew Locke. With all of this new knowledge, maybe you can help me do that.”
He nods, eyes hooded. “I can help you do that. But honesty between partners from here on out, yes? You need to tell me everything.”
“Is that what we are? Partners?”
He takes her good hand. “Yes. But if you withhold from me ever again, Detective Lee, it will be the last time we talk.”
“Yes, sir, Agent Sheehan. Agreed.”
“Good. Now let’s go to pull this case together so we can get on to better things. I want to start back at the beginning. Tell me everything about Andrew Locke and his murdered wife, Chloe.”