Chapter 5: The Yard

Tierney left the pier fast, with her coat held shut at the collar.

Samson stopped beside me and watched her go.

"That was your friend."

"Was."

"What did she give you?"

"A drawer I haven't seen," I said. "And a free defense."

I told him about the billing sheets, the pro bono case and the transfers out of Brice's personal account.

He listened with his jaw set.

"A defense lawyer doesn't pay his own client," he said. "Not for nine days of trial."

"No."

"Unless the client has something on him."

That night, a small envelope dropped through the slot in my mother's front door.

There was no stamp and no name.

Inside was a thumb drive and a torn sticky note in Tierney's handwriting. Don't text me. He checks my phone.

Samson was still at the kitchen table with a pot of tea he had insisted on making.

He plugged the drive into my laptop.

There were forty-one files.

We read for two hours.

At the end, Samson turned the screen toward me.

It was a bank record. A transfer of four thousand dollars, from Brice Wynn, to Tull Roofing.

It repeated on the first of every month.

Nineteen months of it, starting the week after the acquittal.

The last one was dated the first of July.

"That's not a fee," Samson said. "That's hush money."

"He's paying Tull to keep quiet."

"About what? Tull killed your mother. He's the one who needs the silence."

"Unless he doesn't," I said.

We looked at each other across the laptop.

Neither of us said the next thought out loud.

It was too big, and we both had too much to lose by being wrong.

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