This Is Madness
I am frozen. I can’t move. I can’t breathe. I can’t think.
“You,” the man said. “You.” Me. My husband is wanted for my attempted murder.
Trey tried to kill me? Impossible. That I would remember.
“You’re out of your mind,” I say at last. “Trey would never hurt me.”
“And yet here you are.”
“My husband isn’t capable of trying to kill me. What a ridiculous thought.”
Sheehan ignores my pleas. He has an iPad in his hand and sets it on my side table.
“This is a video from the night you were hit by the car. Detective Lee saw the whole thing. She was talking to you at Eden Barrow’s house.
They’d just told you about the murder of Andrew’s first wife.
You got upset and ran into the street. The car that hit you was captured on several neighborhood video cams.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“It’s crucial for you to see. It might jog your memory.”
The video is queued up on the screen, but before Sheehan can hit play, Margot makes a noise of pain or derision—I can’t tell which—and slams the iPad case shut. “That’s not fair. You can’t show her the accident.”
“That’s up to Mrs. Locke,” Lee says. “I agree that she needs to see this.”
Margot’s voice is soft but frantic. “Brook, you don’t have to watch that. They can’t make you.”
It strikes me that my sister doesn’t want to see the video of her twin almost dying. I don’t particularly want to, either.
“Why is it so important for me to watch myself get hurt?”
“Because you don’t believe us. You will once you see this.” Sheehan is staring at me with narrowed eyes. “For someone who’s just learned she is a target, you don’t seem terribly concerned.”
“Because I don’t believe you. Nor do I believe that Trey is on the run from you for some nefarious deeds. That’s preposterous. My husband is not a criminal.”
Sheehan’s gaze moves to Margot. “You haven’t told her?”
“Told me what?”
Margot’s face, so like my own, twists in fury. “She’s been out of sedation for less than a day. Stop it, right now. The doctors don’t want her stressed.”
“Margot? What are they talking about? What do you know about this?”
Margot’s face is covered in misery.
“Tell me.”
“It’s what I told you earlier. Someone tried to hurt you at the hospital in Atlanta.” She glares at Sheehan. “And there’s no reason we need to get into all of it right now.”
“Yes, we do.” Sheehan clears his throat again. “The sooner we find out what Mrs. Locke remembers, the quicker we can put all of this to bed. And clearly she needs to see it for herself to start taking us seriously.”
“I’m. Right. Here. Talk to me, damn it.”
Detective Lee is a motherly sort. She gives me gentle vibes, incongruous with the weapon strapped to her belt. “You’ve had a terrible trauma. We understand that, more than you realize. If it were your family, I’m sure you would want the police investigating to do everything they could, right?”
“Of course I would. But I don’t understand. Why would someone try to kill me? I’m nobody.”
Margot strokes my forehead. I don’t want her touch. I want the truth. “Tell me.”
The FBI agent fiddles with his iPad again. Another video. This time, a long hallway, easily identified as a hospital. And a man in scrubs who pauses briefly by a door, then disappears inside.
Margot gasps. “That’s Trey.”
I glance at my sister. “I told you.”
“Told her what?” Detective Lee asks.
“That Trey came to see me in the hospital. He told me he didn’t do what he was accused of.”
Margot steps to my side. “Brook was so out of it, I didn’t believe her. That’s really him. Trey was at the hospital in Atlanta?”
“Yes,” Detective Lee said. “The cameras went down an hour later, and you were attacked soon after.”
The FBI agent’s voice gentles. “You’ve escaped tragedy twice, Brooklyn. We want to ensure that you are never hurt again. Can you work with us? Can you help us?”
Margot turns her back on them. She leans in close. Whispers, “You don’t have to, Brooklyn. You can wait.”
I summon an inner reserve. Maybe seeing the accident will shake free my memories.
“They can’t make me, but I want to. If it will help, go ahead.”
Sheehan reopens the iPad. “We’ve compiled this from several videos. It’s a little jerky, but you’ll understand well enough.” He hits play.
The video is dark, grainy. I see an SUV’s lights whip around a corner. Then a sequence of shots. The SUV is going fast. So fast.
A woman enters the frame. She is mid-turn, leaning precariously toward the street. She falls. The SUV hits her midway down. She is thrown through the air, disappearing from the frame. Taillights now, and then it ends.
It’s over in a heartbeat. I squeeze my eyes shut. The lights in my face, the sense of falling, then flying. Blackness. It is me, I know this, but it doesn’t feel right. Something is missing.
“Keep watching,” Sheehan says.
I open my eyes. The next sequence is close-ups. It’s even more grainy. The video stops as the car turns onto the street. It zooms in on the driver of the vehicle.
The man’s face is fuzzy, pixelated. Impossible to recognize.
“Who is that?”
“We believe this is your husband, Andrew Locke.”
“No, it isn’t.”
Blond curls. Blue eyes. Vodka shots by the lake. The scratchy wool of a picnic blanket. A gunshot. Blood.
Impossible.
Sheehan clears his throat. He’s had a cold recently; it makes a ripping noise. “We’ve run this through the FBI’s NGI facial-recognition system. It matches the man we saw leaving the Atlanta airport, and it matches the man who boarded the plane with you in Nashville. This is your husband.”
“But it’s not. I think I’d recognize my own husband. This man doesn’t even have a beard.”
“Then he shaved it.”
“Margot, is that Trey?”
My sister squints at the screen, blows out a breath. “Impossible to tell. But I don’t think so.”
“I agree. It’s not him. Besides, if he left me, why would he bother coming back? If he wanted me dead, why go to all these lengths instead of just murdering me in my sleep in our bed at home?”
Detective Lee sighs. “The doctor says your difficulty with facial recognition will clear up soon. Is that correct?”
That traitor. The cops are, too, pretending they didn’t know about my TBI. They’re trying to trap me. “He shouldn’t be discussing my medical situation with you.”
“All right.” Lee opens her phone. “Any chance you recognize this person?”
The black-and-white photo shows a man wearing an unlabeled ball cap and a white surgical mask.
“Is this some sort of Rorschach test? I can’t even see his face. How am I supposed to recognize him?”
She flips through a few more pictures, one with two men in an SUV. Something tickles my brain, but I’m not sure what it is that I’m even seeing. Ghosts.
“Sorry. No idea. Why?”
“He’s just someone we’d like to talk to.”
“I’ll take your word for it. Like I said, I’m pretty foggy about the day of the accident.”
Sheehan steps in. “Mrs. Locke, I know this is all very difficult to understand, and we’re adding quite a bit of stress to your situation.
Let’s back up, and I’ll explain a little more about what we know and what we don’t.
We’ve spoken with your aunt and uncle at length over the past few days.
Your husband gave no notice that he was leaving the country.
On the contrary, the morning you left, he sent a message to work that he was feeling ill and would call in later in the day. He—”
“He called in sick this morning.”
Who said that? I remember that.
“Wait wait wait. Give me a second here. The morning we left—” It takes me a minute to access the data. “Italy. We were going to Italy.”
“Correct.” Sheehan looks pleased.
“Because Bob sent Trey on this trip. There was a conference in Milan.”
“That is not true. There was no conference. Bob Gussin wasn’t aware of Andrew’s plan to leave the country.
Everything we’ve discovered points in one direction—Mr. Locke was running.
He’s been embezzling from the company for several years.
Mr. Gussin discovered an anomaly in the books and came to the FBI seeking a forensic accountant.
Their contracts are sensitive, and he didn’t want to alarm anyone without proof.
Our team discovered a rather sophisticated skimming system.
Mr. Locke managed to move upwards of $40 million out of the accounts over the past few years. ”
I scoff. “I know I have a head injury, but that’s impossible. Trey would never do something like that. He loves Bob and Pat. They are his family.”
“They aren’t his family,” Lee says sharply. “His family is dead.”
The FBI agent lays a calming hand on the detective’s arm.
“There’s more. Our accountants have traced about half of the funds.
The rest has disappeared into the cryptocurrency system.
Your husband has a crypto wallet somewhere.
We need to find that. We have searched your house, his office, but he must have it on him.
Unless he told you about it, and you have an idea where it might be?
A safety-deposit box or some other place you keep things that are precious? ”
I roll my eyes at him. It hurts. My head is throbbing.
“This is a fantasy you’ve concocted. I have no idea what you’re talking about, and that’s not because of my faulty memory.”
“Facts don’t lie, ma’am.” Sheehan is getting frustrated, and the detective puts a hand on his arm to calm him. They put off a vibe together. They’re involved. I wonder if that matters.
“And what is Detective Lee’s role in all of this?” Margot asks. She’s pale as milk, two spots of hectic red on her cheeks. It happens to both of us when we’re upset; I assume I’m the mirror image at the moment. “If the FBI has taken over the case, why are you still involved?”
“She worked the case of Chloe Locke’s murder,” he replies simply. “Andrew’s first wife.”
That bizarre echo sounds in my head. Eden. “I suppose he didn’t tell you he murdered his first wife?”
“I was not aware that my husband was married before.” But this sounds weak and unconvincing.
I am losing faith. In the onslaught from these people, it’s impossible to keep up any sort of pretense.
What I remember, what I don’t, what is real, what is imagined .
. . Tears choke my throat. I stare at the screen, at the face of the stranger behind the wheel of the vehicle that nearly took my life.
The one they say is my husband. But it’s not Trey.
I know that isn’t him. It can’t be. He would never try to kill me.
He came to tell me he wasn’t guilty, and for me to remember—
“And I will do anything for you, Brooklyn. Anything.”
Oh, Trey. My darling. What have you done?
I can’t hold them back anymore; the tears spill over onto my cheeks. I don’t bother to wipe them away. They need to see how damaging they’re being with this line of questioning. Sheehan takes pity on me and closes the iPad.
“I understand how difficult this is, Mrs. Locke. To learn your husband is part of an active investigation of this magnitude has to be overwhelming. You were clearly upset by the news of his first wife’s demise.
You fled into the street and were hit by this car.
It was lying in wait, by the way. Waiting for you to leave the house, parked around the corner, with a view of Eden Barrow’s front porch.
It was a crime of opportunity, but one that was clearly planned. ”
“Now my own husband didn’t just try to kill me, he stalked me, too, after flying me to another state, and somehow managed to pull all this together without knowing where we were heading after we were bumped from a flight? Do you hear yourselves?”
A frustrated sob escapes my chest. I glance at Theresa Lee again. Her face is soft, blurry, gentle. I remember that same look when she handed me something, something that made me so upset I ran from the house.
The file. The file on the murdered girl.
Trey tried to kill me.
No, he didn’t. I don’t believe that for a second. I would have had an inkling of the kind of darkness that was needed to be capable of taking a life, sharing his bed all these years.
Sheehan is speaking again, pulling me from my thoughts.
“To find out he tried to kill you—twice—has to hurt. I understand you’ll need some time to come to terms with this.
But your husband is a wanted man. I have to find him before he tries to hurt you again.
That he’s trying to eliminate you tells us you know something that can impact this investigation.
All I ask is that you continue to keep an open mind, and if you remember anything—anything—that feels out of place, you get in touch. ”
He sets down two cards. “The felonies your husband has committed are going to mean a long jail sentence—maybe even the death penalty. We’ll put him away where he can’t hurt you again. I promise you that.”
“What about Eden Barrow? Is she in danger?”
“Everyone connected to your husband is in danger. We have people watching over Ms. Barrow, your sister, your kids, and you, of course.”
I hear the words he’s speaking but can’t comprehend them.
I blame my bruised brain, but maybe I just don’t want to allow the thought that my sweet, silly, adorable husband is some kind of criminal mastermind.
The idea of Trey committing any of these crimes feels ridiculous, like a play being staged, something I absolutely wouldn’t enjoy because the actors were too over the top, too on the nose, not disappearing into their roles but becoming caricatures of the characters they were supposed to portray.
But he is not kidding. The gleam in Sheehan’s eyes, the tension in his shoulders, the way Lee watches me like I’m a bomb that might go off at any second . . . My husband is in trouble. Serious trouble.
And so am I.