I sleep in the next day and watch an Everybody Loves Raymond marathon, useless and without purpose. My head aches and I have that oppressive, smothering feeling again that makes me want to end it all.
I spend most of the day arguing with myself, mentally citing reasons to live versus reasons I shouldn’t. Then I spend hours hating myself for my self-pity.
I get my Bible and read the books of 1 and 2 Samuel and remember that my condition is not unique. When David escaped Saul’s spears, he probably had a little PTSD himself. He managed to survive living in a cave while he dealt with that betrayal. He derailed his life a couple of times and always paid dearly, but he survived.
I can survive too.
By the time I reach the midnight hour, when life looks its most hopeless, I choose hope. I manage to sleep through the night.
In the morning, I decide that I’m worthless in this quest for Casey Cox. I don’t know where she is, and every lead takes me to a dead end, or worse. Maybe I’ll just quit.
At ten o’clock I go for a jog, forcing myself to run at least a mile. It will stimulate endorphins that I badly need. I drag myself around the neighborhood, sweating through my clothes, and can’t wait to circle back to my apartment. The mailman is at the boxes when I get back, so I wait for him to leave, then check my own box.
Bills, junk mail, and one small box from some cell phone company. I haven’t ordered anything, but it’s definitely addressed to me.
I take it up to my apartment where Everybody Loves Raymond is still playing. I flick on the light and get a bottled water. As I’m drinking, I pick up the small package. I check the address again. It says it’s from Atlanta and the postmark matches. I frown as I peel off the tape and open the box.
It’s a thumb drive lodged between two wads of paper.
My breath catches. Could this be from Casey?
I grab my laptop from the kitchen counter, sink down on my couch, and jab the thumb drive into the USB port. I finish off my water as the computer detects the new device and it shows up on the screen. I click on the thumb drive. There’s a folder named “Cox Files.”
Unbelievable. Who sent this? Sara Meadows before she died? No, she barely knew my name. Keegan? Maybe he finally answered my request. But he wouldn’t have sent it from Atlanta. My heart trips. It has to be from Casey.
I click on it and see a list of files. Some are documents, some audio clips, and there’s one video named “Sara Meadows.”
I click on the video, wait as it loads, then it pops up on my screen. Ms. Meadows has on the blouse she was wearing in the video Keegan was watching yesterday. This must be the same video.
“This is Brent Pace.” My heart stumbles as I hear my friend’s voice. “I’m interviewing Sara Meadows, employed with the Shreveport Police Department. She was a clerk in the evidence room at the time of Andrew Cox’s death—and still works there. Ms. Meadows, you said you were good friends with Officer Cox in the years leading up to his death.”
My mouth falls open as I watch the video. She tells of the suspicions she had about some of the cops in the department. “There were some deaths when people fought back, and the findings of those homicides weren’t consistent with the evidence logged. Andy was looking into some of the things these guys had bought with the money, paid cash for, and put under different names so they wouldn’t be caught. After a couple of weeks, he came back to me, really shaken at what he’d found. Within three weeks, he was dead.”
Brent asks her what I would have asked. “Did you tell anyone at the police department?”
“No, I was afraid. I thought they’d kill me too,” she says. “But I made note of the evidence that came in, the stuff that was disregarded, like blood evidence from unidentified people. After the CSIs logged the evidence, the lead investigators determined what was relevant. The rest was pushed aside. It always worked out that they were the ones investigating these deaths.”
Investigators on murder cases? Detectives? What is she saying? I listen as she goes on, then Brent asks her the same thing that’s on my mind.
“Why would they have logged that as evidence if they were trying to cover it up?”
“The crime scene investigators logged it,” Ms. Meadows says. “I think most of the CSIs are good guys. They did their jobs. I’m sure the killers had cleaned up the scenes as much as they could, but they couldn’t hide everything. If the CSIs logged something that implicated the detectives, they just quashed it.”
She describes how Casey found her father, and her thoughts on the kind of person who could leave that kind of scene for a twelve-year-old girl to find. Yes, she must have been traumatized—not to mention changed forever—by something like that.
“So you don’t think the CSIs are involved?” Brent asks.
“I didn’t until one of them was killed in a single-vehicle accident . . . just out of the blue. Other one retired and left the state.”
“So let me get this straight,” Brent says. “The detectives who covered up . . .”
“The only ones I know for sure are Gordon Keegan and Sy Rollins.”
I lean back, both hands on my head. I stare at the video, stunned, unable to hear anything else.
Let’s say she’s right. If Keegan and Rollins are dirty, what does that mean? Did they manipulate the evidence in Brent’s murder? Did they kill Brent? Did they kill Ms. Meadows?
I grab the remote and turn off the TV. Then I back up the video and force myself to focus.
She tells him she made a copy of the evidence logged in. Did she give it to Brent? I finish the video, then go back to the files and look for that evidence. Yes, there it is. The file named “Evidence Log.”
So this is why Keegan didn’t want to share the file with me. Too much didn’t add up.
I feel the energy seeping back into my veins, my muscles, my bones. It’s more than endorphins from running. It’s purpose.
This doesn’t tell me whether Casey killed Brent, but it does raise questions about his death. And her sending me the thumb drive tells me that she wants me to know the truth.
On the other hand, she’s extremely smart. She could be manipulating me.
But no one I’ve talked to has called her manipulative. They’ve all been consistent in their love for her. And I talked to Sara Meadows myself. She was cautious . . . afraid . . . and she wanted to talk.
I feel sick that the old woman who made it this far with such a burning secret died for it in the end. Brent may have died for that same secret. Was Miss Sara killed because Keegan learned I’d spoken to her yesterday? Or did he decide to target her right after he saw the video? Was cancer taking too long to kill her?
It feels like I just crawled through the fallout of another IED. I have to be careful. Suddenly I feel paranoid. Someone might be listening to my calls, even to the things I say in my apartment. The paranoia doesn’t feel like PTSD. It feels like realism. I have to get a message to Hannah with an e-mail address that Keegan isn’t watching. It’s imperative that I talk to Casey.
If all this is true, and Keegan and his cohorts are involved, then he doesn’t want Casey to stand trial. He wants her dead.
Isn’t that what Hannah warned?
I have to get out of here. I decide to go back to Atlanta. Casey’s most likely within driving distance of there, at least. I have to keep an open mind and proceed with caution. I still can’t be sure she’s not a psychopathic killer.
The psychopath is either my source or my target. I have to figure out which.